Adding social media links to your website gives visitors an easy way to find your business on Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn, TikTok, or WhatsApp. Most businesses place these as small clickable icons in the site header or footer. How you add them depends on whether your website runs on WordPress or was custom-built.
Before you start
Gather the full web addresses of each social media profile you want to link to, for example your Facebook page URL or your WhatsApp click-to-chat link. Double-check each URL opens the correct profile before adding it to your site.
Always set social links to open in a new browser tab so visitors don't lose your website when they click through. This is done by adding target="_blank" to the link.
If your website uses WordPress
- Log in to your wp-admin dashboard.
- Check whether your theme has built-in support first. Go to Appearance, then Customize, and look for a section called Social Icons, Social Links, or similar. Many modern themes let you paste your profile URLs directly here and will display matching icons automatically.
- If your theme has no built-in option, install a plugin instead. Go to Plugins, then Add New Plugin, and search for a well-reviewed social icons plugin.
- Activate the plugin and follow its settings page to enter your profile URLs and choose an icon style.
- Most social icon plugins add a widget you can place in your footer or sidebar. Go to Appearance, then Widgets, to drag the social icons widget into the area you want.
- Save your changes and view your homepage to confirm each icon links to the right profile.
If your website is custom-built (not WordPress)
On a custom-coded site, you add social links directly in the HTML, usually in a header or footer file that appears on every page.
- Open your website's files using your file manager or an FTP connection.
- Locate the header or footer file, often named something like header.php, footer.php, or a shared include file, depending on how the site was built.
- Add a link for each platform using an anchor tag, for example:
<a href="https://facebook.com/yourpage" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Facebook</a> - To show an icon instead of plain text, use an icon font library such as Font Awesome, or upload small icon images and reference them as the link's background or content.
- Save the file and reload your website to confirm the links appear and work correctly on both desktop and mobile.
Keep a note of every place a social link appears on your site (header, footer, contact page). If you ever change a username or move to a new platform, you'll need to update it everywhere it was added.
A note on WhatsApp links
Instead of a normal profile URL, WhatsApp uses a click-to-chat link in the format https://wa.me/ followed by your business number in international format, with no spaces, plus signs, or leading zeros (for a Kenyan number this generally means starting with 254). Use this link the same way as any other social icon.
If you'd rather have a designer add and style these for you as part of a full website refresh, see our web design services.