The Instagram Shopping feature lets you show the catalog and pricing of your products within the photos on your Instagram account.
This means that users browsing on your Instagram account will be able to see a ‘View Products’ icon on your posts.
Once they click on it, they will be able to see the names, descriptions, and prices of the products tagged in the post, and on further clicking, they will be directed to your Instagram store to view all your products.
Upon tapping again, the users will then be taken to your WooCommerce store that is linked to your Instagram account.
This allows you to create a shop front for your online store on the Instagram platform and directly promote your products on social media to increase sales.
Plus, Instagram is used by over 1 billion active users, which helps you to reach a wider audience.
The Downsides of Using Instagram Shopping
Even though Instagram Shopping can help increase your sales, it’s not easy to set up. This is because to set up an Instagram Shopping store, you must first meet Instagram’s requirements.
Here is a list of all the requirements that you must fulfill to set up an Instagram Shopping store:
You must have the latest version of the Instagram app.
Your site must be connected to an eCommerce platform for selling products.
You must convert your Instagram account into a Business account and add your public business information.
Be a Facebook page admin or set up a Facebook Business Manager account.
Your Instagram account has to be connected to your Facebook page.
Have an eligible product catalog connected with a Facebook shop to sell products on Instagram.
Go through the domain verification process.
Follow all of Instagram’s commerce policies.
Another downside of Instagram Shopping is that you can only sell physical products on the platform. This is because you can only tag physical products in a post.
Moreover, Instagram still hasn’t introduced the Instagram Shopping feature in some countries. This means that even if you meet the requirements, you may not be able to sell products on Instagram simply because the feature isn’t available in your region.
Having said that, let’s see how to set up Instagram Shopping in WordPress.
How to Sell Products on Instagram With Instagram Shopping
You can sell WooCommerce products on Instagram by turning on the Instagram Shopping feature.
However, keep in mind that you will need a business account on Instagram to do this. You will also need to meet the platform’s requirements and wait for their approval first.
You will also need to set up your WooCommerce store first. If you haven’t already done this, then please see our complete WooCommerce tutorial.
Step 1: Submit Your WooCommerce Store for Instagram Review
To send your WooCommerce store for the platform’s approval, you will need to visit the Commerce Manager page on the Meta website.
Here, click on the ‘Get Started’ button to be directed to the next screen.
From here, you will have to select the ‘Create a shop’ option to sell your products on Instagram.
After that, just click the ‘Get Started’ button to continue.
Next, simply add products to your catalog and then submit the store for review to Instagram.
Once you’ve done that, Instagram will review your online store and then send you their answer over email in the next few days.
Step 2: Turn On the Instagram Shopping Feature on Your Account
Once you have set up a business Instagram account and your online store has been approved by Instagram, you need to open your Instagram app and select the three-line menu in the top right corner of the screen.
This will open a prompt where you have to choose the Settings » Business option.
If your account has been approved for Instagram Shopping by the platform, then you will see a ‘Shopping’ menu on the screen that you have to click or tap on.
Next, you need to select the ‘Continue’ button on the screen and then pick one of your product catalogs to set up Instagram Shopping.
Once you are done, don’t forget to click the ‘Done’ button to store your settings.
You have now successfully set up an Instagram Shopping store.
Step 3: Add Products to Your Instagram Shop Using Product Tags
Now that you have set up your Instagram shop, you can easily add a post for your products by clicking on the ‘Share Photos’ button.
You need to add a product description and call to action (CTA) for the product in the caption and then click on the ‘Tag Products’ option.
After that, tap the section of the post where you want to add the product tag.
This will open a search box where you need to type the product’s name and select it on the screen.
Finally, click the ‘Done’ button and then the ‘Share’ button at the top to make your product post live on your Instagram account.
Now, users will be able to view the product details in the post, and clicking on the tag will open your Instagram Shopping store.
How to Set Up Instagram Shopping on Your WordPress Website
Even though Instagram Shopping can increase your revenue, it is super hard to set up and get your store approved.
Another easier way to sell products on Instagram is to display your shoppable Instagram feed on your WordPress website.
This way, visitors will easily be able to view your Instagram product reels, posts, and videos without needing to visit your Instagram account. They can also buy products directly from your online store.
It is the best Instagram plugin for WordPress that lets you easily create, customize, and embed your shoppable Instagram feed on any page or post on your WordPress site.
Note: You can also use the free version of the Instagram Feed Pro plugin. However, we will be using the premium plan for this tutorial.
Upon activation, you need to head over to the Instagram Feed » Settings page from the WordPress admin sidebar.
Once you are there, enter the Smash Balloon license key for the plugin into the field and click the ‘Activate’ button.
You can find this information in your account on the Smash Balloon website.
Next, visit the Instagram Feed » All Feeds page from the WordPress dashboard and click the ‘+ Add New’ button.
You can now start creating your own shoppable Instagram feed for WordPress.
This will direct you to the ‘Create an Instagram Feed’ page, where you have to select the ‘User Timeline’ option as the feed type and click the ‘Next’ button.
This means that Smash Balloon will directly fetch posts for the feed from your Instagram account and even update the feed automatically once you post new photos on your Instagram account.
You will now be taken to the ‘Select one or more sources’ page, where you will have to connect your Instagram account.
To do this, click the ‘+ Add Source’ button.
This will direct you to the Smash Balloon website, where you will be asked to select your Instagram account type.
Here, click the ‘Business’ option to move to the next step. You will then be asked if you have connected your Facebook account using Smash Balloon before.
Here, simply select your answer and then move to the next step.
Keep in mind that to connect your Instagram account with WordPress, you will first have to connect your Instagram account with your Facebook page.
To do this, click the ‘Connect with Facebook’ button.
This will direct you to your Facebook account, where you have to select your business Instagram account from the prompt.
After that, click the ‘Next’ button to continue.
Next, you have to select the Facebook page that you want to link to your WordPress site.
Once you’ve done that, just click the ‘Next’ button to move forward.
Facebook will now ask you to manage the plugin’s access rules for your Facebook page.
Simply click the ‘Done’ button to allow Smash Balloon access to your Facebook page.
Once you do that, you will redirected to your WordPress dashboard, where you have now successfully connected your Instagram and Facebook account to your website.
To start creating a feed, you need to click on the popup of the Instagram account that you just linked to your website.
After that, click the ‘Next’ button to continue.
How to Create an Instagram Feed for Your WordPress Site
Upon selecting your account, Smash Balloon will open the Instagram feed in the live feed editor.
Here, you will notice a live preview for the feed on the right with all the customization options in the left column of the screen.
From here, simply click the Settings » Shoppable Feed tab to open more settings.
On the new screen, turn on the toggle to activate the Shoppable Feed feature.
Smash Balloon will now show an ‘Add’ button next to all of the product posts on your Instagram Feed.
Next, click on the ‘Add’ button above an Instagram post from your feed to open its settings in the left column.
Once you do that, just type the product’s URL from your WooCommerce store into the ‘Product Link’ field and click the ‘Add’ button.
Now, when a user clicks on this product while browsing through your Instagram feed, they will be directly taken to the product’s page on your WooCommerce store.
You can now repeat these steps for all of the posts in your feed to make your products shoppable.
You can even change the URL of a product by clicking the ‘Update’ button on the posts.
Finally, click the ‘Save’ button at the top to store your settings. You have now successfully connected your Instagram Shopping account with your WooCommerce store.
How to Customize the Instagram Shopping Feed
You can easily customize the Instagram shopping feed that you’ve just created by using the live feed editor.
First, you can click on the ‘Feed Layout’ tab in the left column to change the layout of your Instagram feed.
From here, you can use the Grid, Carousel, Masonry, or Highlight option. The live feed preview will automatically be updated according to your chosen option.
Depending on the layout, you will get some extra settings that you can use to fine-tune your feed.
For example, upon choosing the ‘highlight’ option, you can pick the element that will be used to highlight different posts, including a pattern, post ID, or hashtag.
You can also select the padding and height of the feed by filling in those fields.
Once you have made your changes, don’t forget to click the ‘Save’ button to store your settings.
With Smash Balloon’s live feed editor, you can also customize the color scheme and header, add a load more button, and further customize your Instagram feed.
How to Add the Instagram Shopping Feed to Your Website
To add the Instagram Shopping feed to your website, you need to visit the Instagram Feed » All Feeds page from the WordPress dashboard.
From here, copy the shortcode next to the Instagram feed that you created.
Next, open a page or post in the block editor.
Once you are there, click the ‘+’ button on the screen to open the block menu. Next, find and add the Instagram Feed block to the page.
By default, the Smash Balloon will display a random feed.
To embed your Instagram feed on the page, simply paste the shortcode into the ‘Shortcode Settings’ section in the block panel and click on the ‘Apply Changes’ button.
Finally, click the ‘Update’ or ‘Publish’ button to store your settings.
You have now successfully added your Instagram Shopping feed to your WooCommerce store.
Bonus: Promote Your Products With Affiliate Marketing
Apart from selling your products on Instagram, you can also make money in your online store by starting your own affiliate program.
Other small businesses or influencers can join your referral program and promote your products or services on their websites in exchange for a commission.
This can be a cost-effective way to advertise your products or services. It can even help you build a community of affiliates who are passionate about your products and are willing to help you spread the word.
The easiest way to build an affiliate program for your website is by using AffiliateWP, which is the best self-hosted affiliate program plugin for WordPress.
It makes it easy for beginners to launch a referral program and grow their online sales by integrating with WordPress plugins like WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, and WPForms.
Plus, AffiliateWP lets you monitor affiliate clicks, sales, and payments and comes with amazing features like a built-in affiliate dashboard, affiliate coupon tracking, a referral link generator, and more.
We hope this article helped you learn how to sell your WooCommerce products on Instagram. You may also want to see the best WooCommerce hosting and our expert picks for the best WooCommerce plugins for your online store.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
Want to explore the recent trends and statistics in the creator economy?
The industry is home to content creators worldwide and grows a lot every year. From full-time content creators to hobbyists, the creator economy is made up of different creator profiles with different skills.
The creator economy also favors brands around the globe. It offers collaboration opportunities and helps businesses use different platforms to engage with their target audiences.
In this article, we have gathered a ton of creator economy statistics that will help you know the industry inside out.
List of Creator Economy Statistics
To help you explore all the different insights in our research post, we have divided the creator economy statistics into different categories.
By clicking the links below, you can jump to the section that you are most interested in and view the different statistics:
The estimated worth of the creator economy is $104.2 billion.
The creator economy is expected to double in size by 2027.
The creator economy has 207 million content creators worldwide.
The industry has 200 million active content creators.
The creator economy has over 2 million expert content creators.
Shopify is a leading company supporting the creator economy, with an annual revenue of $5200 million.
The creator economy is growing at a really fast pace. It is expected to double in the next few years as the industry welcomes new content creators every day.
Leading companies contribute to the creator economy’s growth by either providing services to content creators or working with them to promote different solutions.
This makes it possible for both brands and content creators to benefit from partnerships.
If you are a content creator, then you can join affiliate programs within your niche and make money writing about and promoting these products. Alternatively, you can work directly with brands and get sponsorships.
Apart from social media platforms like YouTube and TikTok, it’s a good idea to create a WordPress website. This will give you full control over your content. Plus, having a website makes it easier for brands to find you and reach out to you for partnerships.
As a business, you can enter the creator economy by sponsoring influencers or starting your own affiliate marketing program with a plugin like AffiliateWP. That way, you can quickly get more referrals to your products and services.
Creator Profile Statistics
There are more than 45 million professional content creators in the creator economy.
51.9% of content creators in the industry are women, with men making up 48.1%.
The creator economy has more than 162 million amateur content creators.
46.7% of people identify as full-time content creators, followed by 42.7% as part-timers.
10.6% of people consider content creation a hobby.
Only 0.96% of content creators have more than 1 million followers.
The gender gap in the creator economy is not that high. However, the industry has more female content creators than men.
The majority of people in the industry work as full-time content creators. However, there are some who work 9–5 and create content to make a decent amount of money.
Influencer Statistics
The current estimated value of the influencer industry is $17.4 billion, which is expected to grow to $22.2 billion by 2025.
The expected growth rate of the influencer industry is 14.47%.
78% of influencers earn around $23,500 per year.
The average influencer income is $76 per hour.
83% of people believe influencer marketing is an effective marketing tactic.
Brands spend $6 billion on influencer collaborations.
82% of the total influencer marketing budget is spent on influencer collaborations in the United States.
On average, lifestyle influencers pitch $994 for a collaboration, followed by fashion influencers at $912.
On average, brands spend $257 per collaboration with an influencer.
The average time influencers take to respond to collaboration requests is 14 hours.
Influencers usually take 16 days to wrap up a collaboration.
42% of influencers prefer to be paid for a collaboration.
26% of influencers produce user-generated content like reviews, unboxings, testimonials, etc.
50% of people prefer purchasing products from their favorite influencers.
Influencers are active on at least 2 social media platforms.
Professional content creators have a lot of influence in their niches. This makes them ideal candidates for brand collaborations.
For this reason, around 68% of companies prefer working with influencers. The creator economy acts as a bridge. It allows brands to onboard influential content creators and helps independent creators make a living from collaborations.
Influencers generally have a huge follower base. So, they can help your business increase its brand awareness and connect with online communities.
85% of full-time content creators enjoy what they do.
1/3 of content creators prefer creating a single type of content.
58% of content creators generally produce 2–4 types of content.
94.5% of content creators use AI tools.
For more than 25% of full-time content creators, follower growth is a preferred metric to measure their success.
37% of full-time content creators prefer working solo.
45% of part-time content creators prefer hiring staff.
More than 35% of full-time content creators prefer creating content around entrepreneurship.
More than 20% of hobbyists prefer creating content around personal development.
Only 5% of content creators spend more than 40 hours each week creating content.
A majority of full-time content creators and hobbyists prefer to work alone. However, most of the part-time content creators do not mind hiring help.
Creators usually experiment with different types of content until they find what works for them. However, full-timers generally prefer creating content that talks about new business ideas.
Full-time content creators measure success by the rate at which their followers grow. Plus, they do not shy away from using AI tools to be more efficient at work.
For example, with AI-powered tools like All in One SEO (AIOSEO), you can easily optimize your written content for search engines.
AIOSEO comes with a powerful AI title and description generator that can help you write better headings and meta descriptions for your written content. This can help you improve your rankings in Google and get a bigger audience for your content.
Earnings Statistics
More than 45% of content creators use revenue as a metric to measure their success.
52% of content creators are monetized (make money from their content).
78% of monetized content creators are women.
59% of beginner content creators are still waiting for monetization.
Monetized content creators generally earn $51 per hour on average.
32% of content creators own businesses related to creative work.
The average income of content creators who run a business is $75 per hour.
28% of content creators make income through partnerships and promotions.
29% of content creators generate revenue through affiliate links.
35% of content creators make a living through ad revenue.
25% of content creators earn $50–100K a year.
Only 2% of content creators make more than $1 million a year.
To make more than $1 million a year, content creators need more than 5 million followers.
26% of content creators make the most money from TikTok and YouTube, respectively.
48% of people do not mind paying a subscription fee to access exclusive content.
29% of people want to support their favorite content creators because they inspire them.
35.3% of people give tips to their favorite content creators to support them.
50% of people have tipped their favorite content creators at least once.
More than 40% of people tip $5 to $10 on average to their favorite content creators.
Most content creators let their earnings define their success. So, they often choose to own a business even if they are already monetized on social platforms.
Monetized content creators make the most money from TikTok and YouTube. Female content creators have the advantage here.
Apart from business income and ad revenue, content creators also earn through affiliate links and paid promotions.
Furthermore, the majority of people are willing to pay a premium fee to get exclusive content from their favorite content creators. This means you can easily make more money by making restricted content.
You could make a membership website. That way, users will need to pay to get past your paywall and get access to your content.
For example, 40 Aprons is a health and wellness blog that uses MemberPress to offer its visitors access to premium content like diet plans and secret recipes.
29.3% of content creators publish content frequently on social media to engage their audiences.
5.6% of content creators host meetups to increase engagement.
62% of content creators say that focusing on a particular niche helps them get more engagement and reach.
More than 25% of content creators say that Instagram is the top channel for generating engagement.
Engagement is one of the main metrics that content creators use to measure their performance.
To meet engagement goals, content creators often focus on a specific niche and create content around relevant topics.
Publishing content on a regular basis is the key here. However, some content creators go the extra mile and host virtual events or in-person meetups to engage with their audiences.
Running competitions and giveaways on your website is also an excellent way to boost engagement.
With RafflePress, you can easily run giveaways on your WordPress website without having to hire a developer. This can help you get more followers and shares on social media, as well as subscribers to your email list.
Challenges Statistics
14.6% of content creators say their greatest challenge is finding brand deals.
63% of full-time content creators have experienced burnout at least once in the last 12 months.
13% of full-time content creators consistently have extreme levels of stress, followed by part-timers at 9%.
More than 45% of full-time content creators say the pressure to post everywhere causes burnout, followed by content fatigue at around 44%.
It may seem like content creators are living the dream. However, they can have challenges from time to time.
Always meeting audience expectations can be overwhelming. It can severely affect the health and well-being of some content creators.
Whether they are full-time content creators or part-timers, creators often report extreme levels of stress trying to meet the demand for new content.
When you create content day in and day out, you may eventually run out of content ideas.
The WPBeginner Blog Post Idea Generator can come in handy here. The tool instantly generates 100s of content ideas to help you find new topics and inspiration.
YouTube Statistics
With 2.2 billion monthly active users, YouTube is one of the most popular social media platforms.
YouTube channels grow by 36% per year.
69% of influencers on YouTube are women, followed by men at 31%.
YouTube supports multiple languages, covering 95% of internet users.
197 million YouTube users are from the United States.
29% of children in the United States want to be YouTubers or vloggers one day.
Only 3% of YouTubers make 90% of the money generated through the platform.
An average content creator on YouTube has a 1/57 chance of crossing the 10,000 subscribers milestone.
10% of the content published by popular YouTube channels gets 79% of the total views.
70% of YouTubers prefer creating long-form content.
On average, brands spend $418 to collaborate with YouTubers.
25% of people prefer to watch live streams on YouTube.
25.9% of people prefer YouTube for tipping or subscribing to their favorite content creators.
YouTube is one of the leading social media platforms. Creators use the platform to engage their audiences with long-form content and make a living from ad revenue.
However, this is not the only way content creators earn money through YouTube. People also prefer the platform for live streams, where they support their favorite creators through tips.
So, if you are a content creator, live streaming on YouTube is a good option for you to grow your income.
You can also embed your live stream on your WordPress website. This is one of the most effective ways to attract more viewers and grow your audience.
Plus, you don’t need to hire a coding expert for this. You can simply use Smash Balloon YouTube Feed to embed your YouTube streams on your website.
Instagram Statistics
25% of people say that Instagram has the potential to generate the highest return on investment (ROI).
29% of brands plan to invest the most in Instagram because of the platform’s potential to help them grow their audiences.
Instagram is one of the most popular platforms, with 2 billion monthly active users.
79% of influencers on Instagram are women, followed by men at 21%.
9 out of 10 Instagram users consume video content on a weekly basis.
89% of Instagram users live outside the United States.
11% of Instagram users in the United States use the platform as their go-to news source.
Instagram is also an ideal place for content creators to score brand deals and sponsorships.
Instagram users are also generally very active. So, engaging them may be easier compared to other platforms.
Smash Balloon Instagram Feed can help you with that. Using this plugin, you can easily add customizable social media feeds to your website and show your content to more people.
TikTok Statistics
26% of content creators say that their preferred social media platform is TikTok.
TikTok has over 1 billion monthly active users.
53% of TikTok users are women, followed by men at 46%.
76% of influencers on TikTok are women, followed by men at 24%.
80 million monthly active users on TikTok are from the United States alone.
37.3 million active users on TikTok represent Gen Z.
TikTok users are active for around 95 minutes on a daily basis.
56% of brands prefer TikTok to collaborate with influencers.
The highest-earning content creator on TikTok is Charli D’Amelio.
TikTok is one of the fastest-growing social media platforms. Over 1 billion people use the app to get their daily dose of content, especially people from Generation Z.
This is why most content creators prefer TikTok to showcase their creativity to their fans. TikTok is also preferred by many brands for partnerships.
Facebook Statistics
With 2.9 billion monthly active users, Facebook is one of the most popular social media platforms.
26.4% of people who use Facebook are millennials.
Facebook is the source of news and updates for 43% of adults in the United States.
TikTok may be the preferred platform to engage Generation Z. But Facebook is the go-to place for content creators who want to connect with millennials.
Businesses often use Facebook to create an online community. It helps them humanize their brand and engage with their audience.
We even do the same at WPBeginner. We created our own Facebook group called WPBeginner Engage to help WordPress users improve their websites and connect with 95k+ like-minded people.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
Do you want to create a custom Instagram feed in WordPress?
An Instagram feed can keep your site fresh and engaging while also getting you more likes, shares, and Instagram followers.
In this article, we will show you how to create a custom Instagram photo feed for your WordPress website.
Why Include an Instagram Feed on Your WordPress Site?
Adding an Instagram feed on your WordPress site lets you show fresh content to your visitors without lots of extra work. It also encourages readers to follow you on Instagram.
Instead of manually adding images in the WordPress block editor, you can simply create a feed that updates automatically every time you post new photos to Instagram. You can even show other people’s photos on your site by creating a hashtag feed.
In the following image, you can see an example of a brand that uses a custom Instagram feed to show user-generated content.
In this way, you can use a custom Instagram feed to provide valuable social proof and make more money online.
That being said, let’s see how you can create a custom Instagram photo feed in WordPress.
How to Create a Custom Instagram Photo Feed in WordPress
First, you will need to install and activate the Smash Balloon Instagram Feed plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Note: In the guide, we are using the premium version of Smash Balloon, as it allows you to create a completely custom Instagram feed. with hashtag feeds and shoppable images. If you are just getting started or have a small budget, then there’s also a free Smash Balloon Social Photo Feed plugin.
After you’ve installed the plugin, head over to Instagram Feed » Settings.
You can now enter your Smash Balloon license key into the ‘License Key’ field.
You can find this information in the confirmation email you got when you purchased Smash Balloon and also in your Smash Balloon account.
After adding your license key, go ahead and click on the ‘Activate’ button.
Once you’ve done that, you are ready to create a custom Instagram feed. To get started, select Instagram Feed » All Feeds and then click on the ‘Add New’ button.
Smash Balloon will now show all the different types of Instagram feeds that you can create.
Simply select the type of feed you want to add to WordPress, and click on ‘Next’.
If you just want to display your Instagram photos, then you can use a Personal Instagram account. However, you will need a Business Instagram account if you want to create a hashtag feed or show the posts that your account is tagged in.
If you select ‘Publish Hashtag’, then you will need to type in the hashtags you want to use. To show multiple hashtags in the same feed, simply separate each hashtag with a comma.
Once you have done that, just click on ‘Next’.
Do you want to show posts that your account is tagged in? You will need to select ‘Tagged Posts’ instead and then click on ‘Next’.
No matter what kind of feed you are creating, you will need to connect WordPress to your Instagram account.
To get started, click on the ‘Add Source’ button.
After that, choose whether you want to show images from a personal or business account.
If you select the button next to ‘Personal’, then Smash Balloon won’t include the Instagram avatar and bio in your header by default. However, you can always add the Instagram avatar and bio manually in the plugin’s settings.
After choosing ‘Personal’ or ‘Business’, just click on ‘Login with Facebook’.
You can now select the Instagram account that you want to feature on your WordPress website and click on ‘Next’.
After that, check the box next to the Facebook page that’s linked to the Instagram account you want to use.
With that done, you need to click on the ‘Next’ button.
You will now see a popup with all the information Instagram Feed Pro will have access to and the actions it can perform.
To restrict the plugin’s access to your Instagram account, simply click any of the switches to turn it from ‘Yes’ to ‘No’. Just be aware that this may affect the photos that appear on your WordPress blog or website.
With that in mind, we recommend leaving all the switches enabled. When you are happy with how the feed is set up, go ahead and click on ‘Done’.
You will now see a popup with the Instagram account you just added to your website.
Simply check the box next to that account and then click on ‘Add’.
Instagram Feed Pro will now take you back to the Instagram Feeds » All Feeds screen.
To create a custom Instagram feed, just check the box next to the Instagram account that you want to use. Then, click on ‘Next’.
The plugin will now create an Instagram photo feed that you can add to any page, post, or widget-ready area.
How to Customize Your Instagram Photo Feed
By default, Smash Balloon will open your feed in its editor, ready for you to customize.
On the right, you will see a preview of your Instagram photo feed. On the left-hand side are all the settings you can use to customize the social media feed.
Most of these settings are self-explanatory, but we will quickly cover some key areas.
To change the layout, simply click on ‘Feed Layout’ in the left-hand menu. You can now choose from a Grid, Masonry, or Carousel layout.
There is also a Highlighted layout that highlights every third photo by default.
As you click on the different options, the live preview will automatically update to show the new layout. This makes it easy to try different designs and find the one you prefer.
By default, Smash Balloon shows the same number of photos on desktop computers and mobile devices. You can preview how the Instagram feed will look on desktop computers, tablets, and smartphones using the row of buttons in the upper-right corner.
Smartphones and tablets typically have smaller screens and less processing power, so you may want to show fewer Instagram photos and videos on mobile devices.
To do this, just type a different number into the ‘Mobile’ field under ‘Number of Posts’.
By default, Smash Ballon will split your photos into 4 columns on desktop, 2 columns on tablet devices, and a single column on mobile.
Do you want to use a different number of columns? Then just scroll to the ‘Columns’ section in the left-hand menu.
You can now type a new number into the Desktop, Tablet, or Mobile fields.
After making your changes, click on the ‘Customize’ link. This will take you back to the main Smash Balloon editor, ready for you to explore the next settings screen, which is ‘Color Scheme’.
By default, Smash Balloon uses a color scheme inherited from your WordPress theme, but it also has ‘Light’ and ‘Dark’ themes that you may want to use for your Instagram feed.
By default, Smash Balloon adds a header to the Instagram feed, which is your profile picture and the name of your page. This can provide some useful extra context so that visitors understand where these images are coming from.
To change how this section looks, return to the main settings screen and then select ‘Header’.
On this screen, you can change the background color, show your Instagram bio, change the header size, and more.
By default, the header includes your Instagram profile picture. However, you may want to show a different image, such as your site’s custom logo.
To change the profile picture, click on ‘Add Image’ under ‘Show custom avatar’. You can then either choose an image from the WordPress media library or upload a new photo.
You can also add a different bio. For example, you might add a call to action that encourages people to visit your Instagram page.
To create a unique Instagram bio, simply type into the ‘Add custom bio’ box.
When you are happy with how the header looks, click on the ‘Customize’ link to go back to the main settings screen.
Now, you need to click on ‘Posts’.
To start, you can switch between boxed and regular layouts for the individual posts inside the Instagram feed.
To do this, select ‘Post Style’.
You can now click to select the layout you want to use.
If you select ‘Boxed’, then you can change the background color, add a box shadow, and increase the border radius to create curved corners.
When you are happy with your changes, just click on the ‘Posts’ link to return to the previous Smash Balloon screen.
This time, select ‘Images and Videos’.
Smash Balloon automatically analyzes your Instagram photos and shows them at the best resolution. We recommend using these default settings, as they are designed to boost your WordPress speed and performance. However, you can make the Instagram images bigger or smaller if you need to.
To change the image size, simply open the ‘Resolution’ dropdown and choose one of the default WordPress image sizes from the list.
Once again, click on the ‘Posts’ link to return to the previous screen.
This time, select ‘Caption’. On the next screen, you can show the Instagram caption next to each image by clicking on the ‘Enable’ slider.
If you add Instagram captions to your feed, then you can change the text size and color and set a maximum text length.
With that done, just click on the ‘Posts’ link to return to the previous screen.
The next setting is ‘Like and Comment Summary’.
Here, you can add or hide the total number of likes and comments on each image. If your Instagram posts get a good amount of engagement, then these numbers can encourage people to visit your Instagram page or start following you on social media.
As always, you need to click on ‘Posts’ to return to the earlier screen.
The final option is ‘Hover State’, which is the overlay that Smash Balloon adds to a post when you hover your mouse over it.
Here, you can choose the information that Smash Balloon shows when someone hovers over a post using the settings under ‘Information to display’.
You can also change the color of the hover overlay.
When you are happy with the changes you have made, click on the ‘Customize’ link.
This takes you back to the main Smash Balloon settings page, where you can click on ‘Load More Button’.
Here, you can help the ‘Load More’ button stand out by changing its background color, text color, and hover state.
You can also try adding your own messaging to the button by typing into the ‘Text’ field.
While we recommend leaving this button enabled, you can remove it. For example, you might encourage people to visit your Instagram by limiting the number of photos they can see on your site.
To remove the button, simply toggle off the ‘Enable’ slider so that it turns grey.
If visitors like what they see, they may decide to subscribe using the ‘Follow on Instagram’ button that appears below the embedded feed.
Since it’s such an important button, you might want to add some custom styling to help it stand out. To do this, select ‘Customize’ to return to the main settings screen. Then, select ‘Follow Button’ in the left-hand menu.
Here, you can change the button’s background color, hover state, and text color.
By default, the button shows a ‘Follow on Instagram’ label.
You can replace this with your own messaging by typing into the ‘Text’ field.
Smash Balloon comes with a built-in lightbox that allows visitors to open your Instagram photos and videos without leaving your website.
To configure this feature, go back to the main Smash Balloon settings screen and then click on ‘Lightbox’.
Here, you can change how many comments Smash Balloon will show in the lightbox.
If you don’t want to use the lightbox feature, then you can disable it using the ‘Enable’ slider.
When you are happy with how the Instagram feed looks, don’t forget to click on ‘Save’ to store your changes.
You are now ready to add the Instagram feed to your WordPress website.
Showing a Feed of Your Instagram Photos in WordPress
You can add the custom Instagram feed to your website using a block, a widget, or a shortcode.
If you have created more than one feed using Smash Balloon, then you will need to know the feed’s code to use a widget or block.
To get this code, you must go to Instagram Feed » All Feeds and then copy the text under ‘Shortcode.’
In the following image, we will need to use instagram-feed feed=4.
If you want to embed the Instagram feed in a page or post, then you can use the Instagram Feed block.
Just open the page or post where you want to embed your custom Instagram feed. Then, click on the ‘+’ icon to add a new block and start typing ‘Instagram Feed’.
When the right block appears, click to add it to the page or post.
The block will show one of your Instagram feeds by default. If you want to show a different Smash Balloon feed, then find ‘Shortcode Settings’ in the right-hand menu.
Here, simply add the shortcode and then click on ‘Apply Changes.’
If you are happy with how the custom Instagram feed looks, then you can go ahead and publish or update the page.
Another option is to add the Instagram Feed widget to your website. This is a great way to show an Instagram feed on every page of your site. For example, you might add the Instagram widget to the WordPress theme’s sidebar or footer.
To add the Instagram Feed widget to your site, head over to Appearance » Widgets. You can then click on the blue ‘+’ icon towards the top of the screen.
In the panel that appears, type in ‘Instagram Feed’ to find the right widget.
As you can see in the following image, there are two Instagram Feed widgets, so make sure you use the right one.
Next, simply drag the widget onto the area where you want to show the Instagram feed, such as the sidebar or similar section.
The widget will automatically show one of the feeds you created using Smash Balloon. If this isn’t the custom Instagram feed you just created, then type the feed’s code into the ‘Shortcode Settings’ box.
After that, click on ‘Apply Changes.’
You can now make the widget live by clicking on the ‘Update’ button. For more information, please see our step-by-step guide on how to add and use widgets in WordPress.
Another option is embedding the Instagram feed on any page, post, or widget-ready area using a shortcode.
Simply go to Instagram Feed » All Feeds and copy the code in the ‘Shortcode’ column. You can now add this code to any Shortcode block. For help placing the shortcode, please see our guide on how to add a shortcode.
Are you using a block-enabled theme? Then you can use the full site editor to add the Instagram Feed block anywhere on your WordPress website.
In the dashboard, go to Appearance » Editor.
By default, the full-site editor will show the theme’s home template.
If you want to add the Instagram feed to a different area, then click on either ‘Template’ or ‘Template Parts’.
The editor will now show a list of all the template parts that make up your WordPress theme.
Simply click on the template where you want to show the Instagram feed.
WordPress will now show a preview of the design.
To edit this template, go ahead and click on the small pencil icon.
After choosing a template, just hover your mouse over the area where you want to add the Instagram photo feed.
Then, click on the blue ‘+’ button.
Once you have done that, you need to type in ‘Instagram Feed’.
When the right block appears, click to add it to the template.
As always, Smash Balloon will show a feed by default. You can change this feed by adding a shortcode following the same process described above.
Bonus: Let Customers Buy Your Products Through Instagram
If you have an online store, then you can also use your custom Instagram feed to easily sell your products.
Smash Balloon Instagram Feed Pro allows you to tag your Instagram images with product links so that users are able to click on them and buy them directly instead of navigating through your product pages. This can increase sales and boost profits in your store.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
Are you looking for a way to add social media icons to WordPress menus?
The logos for sites like Facebook and Twitter are instantly recognized by people all over the world. By adding these icons to your menus, you can promote your social media profiles in an eye-catching way that doesn’t take up a lot of space.
In this article, we will show you to add social media icons to WordPress navigation menus.
Why Should You Add Social Media Icons to Menus?
By adding social media icons to your website, you can encourage people to visit your different social networking profiles. This can get you more followers and engagement across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and more.
One option is to add social media icons to your WordPress sidebar or a similar widget-ready area. However, when people want to visit a new page, they typically look at your navigation menu first.
By adding social media icons to your WordPress menus, you can often get more clicks, engagement, and followers across all your social media profiles.
Social media icons can also grab the visitor’s attention without adding extra text to your menus. This allows you to promote lots of different profiles in a small amount of space.
That being said, let’s take a look at how to easily add social media icons to WordPress menus.
Video Tutorial
If you prefer written instructions, just keep reading. Simply use the quick links below to jump straight to the method you want to use:
When creating your social icons, you can use any image that you have uploaded to the WordPress media library.
For example, many of the top social media companies provide logos that you can use on your website, such as the Twitter brand toolkit. You can also download icons from online libraries like the Font Awesome website.
Menu Image also integrates with the Font Awesome plugin. This allows you to browse and import all the Font Awesome icons directly from the WordPress dashboard, including icons for all the major social networks. For this reason, we recommend installing the Font Awesome plugin.
No matter how you plan to provide the social media icons, you will need to install and activate the Menu Image plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Upon activation, you may want to take a look at the icon sizes and change them if necessary. To do this, you need to go to Menu Image » Menu Image.
When creating your social icons, you can use any of the default WordPress image sizes, such as thumbnail, image, or large. Menu Image also lets you choose between three unique sizes that are set to 24×24, 36×36, and 48×48 pixels by default.
These sizes should work well for most WordPress websites, but you can change them by typing different numbers into the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd Menu Image fields.
With that done, click on ‘Save Changes’ to store your settings.
To add icons to a navigation menu, head over to Appearance » Menus. By default, WordPress will show your site’s primary menu.
If you want to add social media icons to a different menu, then just open the ‘Select a menu to edit’ dropdown.
You can then choose a menu from the list and click on ‘Select.’
To start, you will need to add each social profile to your menu as a new link.
When you are ready, click to expand the ‘Custom Links’ section and then type in the address of the social media page you want to use. For example, you might enter the URL of your Facebook group or YouTube channel.
You will also need to type in some ‘Link Text’. In a later step, you will have the option to change where this title appears in the menu or even hide it completely.
With that done, click on ‘Add to Menu.’
This item will now appear in the right-hand column.
To add a social media icon, simply hover over the new menu item.
Then, click on the ‘Menu Image’ button when it appears.
Note: If you don’t see a ‘Menu Image’ button, then click on ‘Save Changes’. Now, the ‘Menu Image’ button should appear when you hover over any item in the menu.
You can now decide whether to use an image from your WordPress media library or an icon provided by Font Awesome.
To use a ready-made Font Awesome icon, click on the radio button next to ‘Icon’.
Then, select ‘Fontawesome’.
You can then click on ‘Brands’.
You will now see all the branded icons, including icons for all the major social networks. When you see the image you want to use, just give it a click.
Another option is using your own icon from the WordPress media library by selecting the ‘Image’ radio button. Then, click on the ‘Set Image’ link.
You can now either choose an image from the WordPress media library or upload a new file from your computer.
No matter where you get the icon from, Menu Image will show a preview on the right.
You can now change whether the link title appears above, below, before, or after the social media icon using the ‘Title position’ settings.
Many social media icons are instantly recognizable, so the link title may be unnecessary. If you are adding lots of social icons to a navigation menu, then titles can even make your menu look more messy and complicated.
With that being said, you may want to hide the title by selecting the ‘Hide’ radio button.
As you make changes, the live preview will update automatically, so you can try different settings to see what looks the best.
Finally, if you are using your own image, then you can resize the social media icons using the ‘Image Size’ dropdown.
Bigger icons will grab the visitor’s attention, but they can also be distracting. With that in mind, you may want to try different sizes to see what works best on your WordPress blog.
When you are happy with how the social media icon is set up, simply click on ‘Save Changes’.
Simply repeat these steps to add more icons to your WordPress menu.
You can even add icons to other important items in the navigation menu. For example, you might add icons to your contact form or WooCommerce checkout page.
When you are happy with how the menu is set up, just click on ‘Save Menu.’
Now, you can visit your website to see the new social media icons in action.
This is how it looked on our demo website.
Method 2: Using the Full Site Editor (Block Themes Only)
WordPress has a built-in Social Icons block that allows you to create a menu containing social media icons and then display them in a nice layout.
This block comes with built-in icons for all the major social networks, so you don’t need to install a plugin like Font Awesome or upload icons to your media library. However, you can only add social media icons and links to the Social Icons block, so it isn’t as flexible as the Menu Image plugin.
If you are using a block theme, then you can add a Social Icons block to any part of your website, such as the header or footer. In this way, you can show a social media menu across your entire website.
To get started, head over to Appearance » Editor in the WordPress dashboard.
By default, the full site editor shows your theme’s home template, but you can add social icons to any template or template part. You can even add social media icons to parts of your website you can’t edit using the standard WordPress content editor.
For example, you can add a social media menu to your site’s 404 page template.
To see all the available options, you need to select either ‘Templates’ or ‘Template Parts’.
You can now click on the template or template part that you want to edit.
As an example, we will add social media icons to the WordPress header, but the steps will be the same no matter which template you select.
After making your choice, WordPress will show a preview of the template or template part.
To continue, click on the small pencil icon.
With that done, click on the blue ‘+’ icon in the top-left corner.
In the search bar, you must type in ‘Social Icons.’
When the right block appears, drag and drop it onto the theme template.
To add the first icon, just click on the ‘+’ icon inside the block.
In the popup that appears, type in the icon you want to add, such as ‘Twitter’ or ‘Facebook’.
When the right icon appears, simply click to add it to your WordPress blog.
Now, click on the new social media icon.
This opens a small bar where you can type in the URL you want to link to, like your Facebook page.
To add more social icons to WordPress, simply click on the ‘+’ icon and repeat the same process described above.
After adding all the social media icons, you may want to customize the block. To do this, click to select the Social Icons block and then click on the ‘Block’ tab.
You can change the icon’s justification, alignment, and orientation using the ‘Layout’ settings.
By default, all the social media links will open in the same tab. To keep visitors on your website, you may want to click to enable the ‘Open links in new tab’ toggle.
By default, WordPress shows the social icons only, without any text.
If you want to show text next to each icon, then click to enable the ‘Show labels’ toggle.
Next, click on the ‘Styles’ tab.
Here, you can change the button style by clicking on ‘Default’, ‘Logos Only’, or ‘Pill Shape’.
Finally, you can change the space between the social icons using the settings under ‘Block Spacing’.
When you are happy with how the menu looks, click on the ‘Save’ button.
Now, if you visit your website, then you will see the social media icons live.
Bonus: How to Promote Your Social Media Profiles
Adding social media icons to WordPress menus is a great way to get more followers and engagement across your different accounts. However, there are lots more ways to promote your Twitter, Facebook, and other social profiles.
The best way to get more followers and engagement is by embedding a live social feed on your website. This allows you to show the latest posts from multiple accounts, along with buttons that visitors can use to engage with your posts or follow you on social media.
The best way to add social media feeds to your website is by using Smash Balloon. It’s the best social media feed plugin for WordPress and lets you embed live feeds from Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and more.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
Do you want to create a responsive slider for your WordPress website?
Sliders are commonly used on the front page of websites to showcase your most important products, services, testimonials or other content in an interactive way.
In this article, we will show you how to add a responsive slider to your WordPress website.
Why Add a Responsive WordPress Slider to your Website?
Some sliders autoplay, so they move between slides automatically. This allows you to display lots of information in a small space, which leaves plenty of room to show other content.
For this reason, many websites use sliders on their most important pages, such as a landing page, home page, or sales pages.
Even if a slider is set to autoplay, visitors can typically move between slides manually by clicking on navigation buttons. In this way, a slider encourages visitors to interact with your site, which makes it more engaging.
You can see in the GIF below how dynamic a slider can make a page.
With that said, let’s see how you can easily create a responsive slider in WordPress. Simply use the quick links below to jump straight to the method you want to use.
Method 1. Create a Responsive WordPress Slider Using a Plugin (Quick and Easy)
If you want to create a simple slider that looks good on desktop and mobile, then we recommend using the Soliloquy plugin.
This WordPress slider plugin lets you create slides using images from your media library and can also show videos hosted on third-party platforms like YouTube.
You can also add alt text and captions to each slide, which is great for WordPress SEO.
First, you’ll need to sign up for a Soliloquy account. After that, you can install and activate the Soliloquy plugin on your website. For more details, you can follow our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Upon activation, go to Soliloquy » Settings in the WordPress dashboard and enter your license key.
You can find the key by logging into your account on the Soliloquy website. After entering this information, click on the ‘Verify Key’ button.
With that done, you can add a new slider to your WordPress website by going to Soliloquy » Add New.
You can start by typing in a title. This is just for your reference so you can use anything that helps you identify the slider in your WordPress dashboard.
Next, it’s time to add images and videos to the slider. You can either drag and drop files onto the editor, or click ‘Select Files From Other Sources.’
Meanwhile, platforms like YouTube are optimized for video, so you can show high-resolution videos in your sliders without negatively affecting your website.
After choosing a video hosting platform, you’ll need to upload all the videos you want to include in the WordPress slider. If you’re not sure how to upload videos, then we recommend reading the official documentation or user manual for your chosen video platform.
With that done, simply click on the ‘Select Files from Other Sources’ button and then select ‘Insert Video Slide.’
You can now go ahead and paste the video’s URL into the ‘Video URL’ field.
Soliloquy shows all the supported link formats along the right-hand side, so make sure your link uses one of these formats.
With that done, you can go ahead and type a title into the ‘Title’ field. This is just for your reference so you can use anything you want. You can also add alt text, which will help the search engines understand what this slide is all about.
After that, you can type an optional caption into the ‘Caption’ field. This will be shown in a grey bar along the bottom of the video before the visitor presses ‘Play.’
If you don’t want to show this bar, then simply leave the ‘Caption’ field empty.
When you’re happy with the information you’ve entered, you can create more slides by clicking on ‘Add Another Video Slide.’
To configure this new slide, simply follow the same process described above.
Once you’ve created all your slides, go ahead and click on ‘Insert into Slider.’
You’ll now see all your slides in the ‘Currently in Your Slider’ section.
Next, you can click on the ‘Configuration’ tab and change the slider display settings. For example, there are options to choose a new slider theme, change the image size, and change the position of the slider and captions.
You can also customize the slider arrows and the pause/play button, adjust the transition speed, change the delay time, and more.
Next, you’ll want to make sure your slider looks just as good on mobile devices, as it does on computers and laptops.
That said, click on the ‘Mobile’ tab and check the box next to ‘Create Mobile Slider Images.’
By default, Soliloquy will hide captions for mobile users. Often, this helps the slides fit more comfortably on the smaller screens typically used by smartphones and tablets.
For that reason, we recommend leaving this setting disabled, but you can check the box next to ‘Show Captions on Mobile’ if you prefer.
With that done, click on the ‘Misc’ tab. Here, you can add custom CSS to your slider, edit the slider title and slug, and export the slider.
When you’re happy with how the slider is set up, go ahead and click on the ‘Publish’ button.
Soliloquy will automatically create a shortcode that you can add to any page, post, or widget-ready area.
The easiest way to add the slider to your site is by using the Soliloquy block. Simply go to the page or post where you want to show the slider and then click on the ‘+’ button.
In the popup that appears, type in ‘Soliloquy.’
When the right block appears, click to add it to your WordPress blog or website.
After that, open the Soliloquy block and select the slider you just created.
You can now click on the ‘Update’ or ‘Publish’ button to make the slider live.
Method 2. Create a Responsive Slider Using a Page Builder (More Customizable)
If you want to create a simple slider, then a plugin such as Soliloquy is a good choice. However, if you want to add an advanced slider to landing pages, custom home pages, or even your WordPress theme, then we recommend using a page builder plugin instead.
It also has an Image Carousel block that you can use to create stunning sliders.
You can simply drop this ready-made block anywhere on a page and then customize it using the powerful drag-and-drop editor.
First, you need to install and activate the SeedProd plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Note: There is a free version of SeedProd that lets you create professional designs no matter what your budget. However, we’ll be using the premium SeedProd plugin since it comes with the Image Carousel block. If you’re creating a slider to promote your products or services, then the premium plugin also integrates with WooCommerce and all of the best email marketing services.
After activating the plugin, SeedProd will ask for your license key.
All of SeedProd’s templates are easy to customize, so you can use any design you want. When you find a template you like, simply hover your mouse over it and click on the checkmark icon.
You can now type a name for your landing page into the ‘Page Name’ field. SeedProd will automatically create a ‘Page URL’ using the page name.
It’s smart to include relevant keywords in this URL wherever possible, as this will help search engines understand what the page is about. This can often improve your WordPress SEO.
To change the page’s automatically-generated URL, simply type into the ‘Page URL’ field.
When you’re happy with the information you’ve entered, click on ‘Save and Start Editing the Page.’ This will load the SeedProd page builder interface.
This simple drag-and-drop builder shows a live preview of your page design to the right. On the left is a menu with all the different blocks and sections you can add to the page.
When you find a block you want to add, simply drag and drop it onto your template.
To customize a block, just click to select that block in the SeedProd editor. The left-hand menu will now update to show all the settings you can use to customize it.
As you’re building the page, you can move blocks around your layout by dragging and dropping them. For more detailed instructions, please see our guide on how to create a landing page with WordPress.
To create a responsive slider using SeedProd, simply find the Image Carousel block in the left-hand menu and then drag it onto your layout.
Next, click to select the Image Carousel block in the page editor.
You can now go ahead and add all the images you want to show in the slider. To start, click on the ‘Image 1’ item that SeedProd creates by default.
You can now either use a photo from SeedProd’s built-in library, or click on ‘Use Your Own Image’ and choose a file from the WordPress media library.
After choosing an image, you can add a caption that will appear below that image. SeedProd doesn’t display captions by default, but we’ll show you how to enable them later in this post.
When you’re happy with how the slide is configured, click on the ‘Add Images’ button to create another slide.
To add more slides, simply follow the same process described above.
After adding all the images to your slider, it’s time to customize how that slider looks and acts.
In the left-hand menu, click to expand the ‘Carousel Settings’ section.
To start, you can switch between light and dark modes for the slider’s navigation buttons.
To try these different modes, click on the buttons next to ‘Navigation Color Mode.’ The live preview will update automatically so you can see which mode you like the best.
By default, the carousel shows a single slide, and visitors will need to use the navigation controls to see more content.
However, you may want to show multiple slides at once by opening the ‘Slide to Show’ dropdown and choosing a number from the list. This can be useful if the slider has lots of content and you’re worried visitors might not click through all the slides.
By default, visitors will need to click to see the next slide. With that in mind, you may want to enable autoplay, as this often increases how many slides a visitor sees.
To do this, click to enable the ‘Autoplay’ switch and then specify how long each slide should stay onscreen by typing a number into ‘Autoplay Speed.’
If you added captions to your images, then make sure you click on the ‘Show Caption’ slider to turn it from ‘No’ to ‘Yes.’
You can also change the caption alignment.
Depending on the background color, you may need to change the caption color before they’re visible to visitors.
To do this, click on the ‘Advanced’ tab and then use the ‘Caption Color’ settings.
You can further style the text by clicking on the ‘Edit’ button next to ‘Caption Typography.’
This adds some settings where you can change the font size, line height, spacing, and more.
When you’re happy with how the captions look, you can add different box shadows to the slides using the ‘Slider Image Styles’ dropdown.
These shadows can really make the slides stand out, so it’s worth trying different shadows to see whether they fit your page design.
In the ‘Advanced’ tab you’ll also find settings that let you add a border, change the spacing, and even create an entrance animation.
Most of these settings are self-explanatory so it’s worth looking through them to see what different kind of effects you can create.
When you’re happy with how the slider looks, you can continue working on the rest of the page. Simply drag blocks onto your design and then customize them using the settings in the left-hand menu.
If you want to delete a block, then simply hover over it and then click on the trash can icon when it appears.
When asked, go ahead and click on ‘Yes, delete it.’
When you’re happy with how the page looks, it’s time to make it live by clicking on the ‘Save’ button. Finally, select ‘Publish’ to make your slider live.
Method 3. Create a Slider Using Smash Balloon (Best For Social Posts and Reviews)
We’re more likely to try things that we see other people buying, using, or recommending. With that being said, it’s a good idea to show social proof on your website including customer reviews, testimonials, or even positive comments you’ve got on social media.
The easiest way to show social proof on your site is by using Smash Balloon. Smash Balloon has plugins that allow you to embed content from Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
However, showing lots of positive comments and reviews on your online store or website can take up a lot of space.
That’s why Smash Balloon comes with built-in carousel layouts and templates that you can use to create responsive sliders. This allows you to create social media and review slideshows with just a few clicks.
Even better, Smash Balloon will fetch new content automatically so the slider will always show the latest posts.
Another option is showing the content from your own social media accounts.
If visitors like what they see, they might decide to follow you on social media.
To help you get more followers, Smash Balloon comes with ready-made call to action buttons that you can add to your sliders.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
Are you looking for easy and smart ways to automate tasks and increase sales in your WooCommerce store?
By automating tasks in your online store, you can save time and money while growing your business and increasing sales.
In this article, we will show you how to use WooCommerce automations to increase sales.
Why Automate Your WooCommerce Store?
If you are running a WooCommerce store, then you probably spend a lot of your time performing repetitive tasks. These can be anything from sending marketing emails for your online store to processing customer invoices.
Wouldn’t it be nice if you could automate all of those tasks and focus on growing sales and your business instead?
Luckily, you can use the best WordPress automation tools and plugins to automate WooCommerce tasks. By doing this, you will save time, offer a better user experience to your customers, and ultimately increase sales.
With that being said, here are 15 WooCommerce automations to increase sales:
1. Use Automation to Personalize Your Email Marketing
Are you keeping in touch with your customers using an email newsletter? You may not be taking advantage of all the automation tools available in your email marketing software.
For example, the best email services like Constant Contact, Sendinblue, and Omnisend all have integrations with WooCommerce. They allow you to personalize your emails by adding the customer’s name and more.
They also let you set up a Welcome email series using a drip campaign. This is a sequence of automated emails that will go out automatically to new customers.
You can learn how to get started by scrolling down to the automated drip emails section of our guide on how to send automated emails in WordPress.
Additionally, if you are looking for a complete tool that offers WooCommerce email customization and automation, then we highly recommend using FunnelKit Automations.
Apart from letting you fully customize your WooCommerce emails, it also lets you set up smart, automated follow-up emails and workflows to boost your sales.
You can get started with FunnelKit Automations by selecting an automation from a library of handy templates.
For example, you can automatically send an email series to new customers, recover abandoned carts, send promotional emails to selected audiences, and more.
There is also an option to create your own WooCommerce automation from scratch. You will then see a visual email automation builder where you can make any customizations that you need.
For example, the screenshot above shows the workflow for sending out a thank you email after a customer makes their first order. You can even see in-line analytics for each email.
Tip: We recommend combining FunnelKit Automations with an SMTP service like WP Mail SMTP. This will make sure your emails are delivered to your customers and won’t get lost or end up in the spam folder.
2. Set Up an Automated Marketing Campaign With Push Notifications
You can also run an automated marketing campaign using push notifications instead of emails. These notifications go directly to the user’s web browser or mobile device. This means they have a much higher engagement rate, similar to SMS messages.
The easiest way to set up automated push notifications is with PushEngage. It is the best web push notification software for WordPress, and over 10,000 businesses use it to send targeted messages.
For each notification, you can change the title, message, URL, icon image, and more by expanding it.
There is also a preview of how your notifications will look in the browser.
PushEngage also lets you choose when to send each notification. For example, you can immediately send the first notification and select a different time for the following one.
3. Let Customers Track Orders With Automated Transactional Emails
WooCommerce will need to send different transactional emails to your customers. These help them get order confirmations, track their order status, get invoices, and find out more information about your online store.
The FunnelKit Automations dashboard makes it easy to create a new automation. You can simply click on one of the plugin’s many templates.
You can filter the list to quickly find the WooCommerce automation you wish to use. For example, you might want to send automatic thank-you emails to repeat customers.
You can then customize the automation using the visual automation builder, including the content of the email.
SMS messages are an effective way to keep your customers up to date. They have a 98% average open rate, with 95% of messages being read in the first 3 minutes!
You can send automatic texts to your customers when their orders are dispatched or their status changes. You can automatically send SMS notifications to your customers or let them opt in at checkout.
As a business owner, there is a lot to manage. If you are still creating invoices manually, then you can switch to professional invoicing software that automates all invoicing and payment processes. Then, you will be free to focus on growing your business.
A plugin like WooCommerce PDF Invoices makes it easy to automatically generate invoices, collect orders, and manage your finances.
With automatic recurring payments, you don’t have to spend time manually sending invoices and waiting for payments from your customers.
Plus, adding subscription payments to your eCommerce business will give you a more consistent cash flow, fewer payment errors, and fewer payment delays.
6. Use Automated Store Activity Notifications to Boost Sales
Automated FOMO and social proof notifications can also increase sales in your WooCommerce store.
FOMO, short for fear of missing out, is a marketing technique used to create excitement about a product. It uses psychology to encourage customers to make buying decisions faster.
Plus, social proof shows visitors that other customers have purchased your products. This can convince users that your online store is trustworthy.
TrustPulse automatically monitors activity on your site. When potential customers are close to buying something, they will see a notification showing that another customer has just made a purchase.
By simply displaying social proof, you will give your visitors a small push to complete their purchase. To learn more, see Method 1 of our guide on how to use FOMO to increase conversions.
7. Automatically Display Your Best Product Reviews
Would you like to automatically display the best reviews of your products from across the internet? You could copy and paste them manually, but that is a lot of work. Plus, there would be a delay before they appear on your website.
Luckily, Smash Balloon has a Reviews Feed Pro plugin that lets you automatically show off your best reviews from platforms like Google Reviews, Yelp, TripAdvisor, and more.
It comes with pre-designed templates, so you can display your reviews in different layouts, including showcases, carousels, grids, and more.
The Reviews Feed automatically copies your website’s design so that the reviews look like a natural part of your website rather than content embedded from another platform.
8. Use an Automated Sales Funnel to Boost Sales Conversions
A sales funnel is the path a user takes on your website to become a customer. It is made up of the specific pages a user may visit before making a purchase.
For example, a new visitor might land on a blog post, then view a product page, then go through your checkout flow.
Unfortunately, only 10% of shoppers, on average, will add anything to their carts. After they do, 60-80% of them abandon their carts without completing the purchase.
Luckily, you can use FunnelKit, the best WooCommerce sales funnel plugin, to change that. You can use the plugin to optimize each step, offer a better user experience, reduce distractions, and nudge users toward completing their purchases.
For example, it comes with a one-click Upsells feature, which allows users to add products to their carts on their way to the checkout.
FunnelKit also lets you customize the user journey with pre-checkout offers, custom checkout form layouts, beautiful templates, and more.
For instance, the FunnelKit Funnel Builder lets you add order bumps to boost profits if someone adds $X to their cart. You can also add one-click order bumps to your checkout page.
9. Reduce Cart Abandonment With Popups and Push Notifications
As we said earlier, 60 to 80% of people who add items to their cart don’t actually buy them. This means if you have an online store, then you are losing out on a lot of sales.
Luckily, you can use automatic push notifications to reduce cart abandonment rates. For example, you can pop up a notification when a user is about to leave your website and offer a coupon or free shipping.
Or, if the customer already has discounted items in their cart, they may just need some reassurance that they are making the right decision. Push notifications like these can help you recover 3 to 8% of abandoning cart sales.
But what if the customer leaves your site before they see the popup? Push notifications can also help you connect with your visitors after they leave your website. These messages will display in your subscriber’s browser even when they are not actively browsing your store.
The easiest way to do this is with PushEngage. It is the best web push notification software on the market, and it is used to send over 15 billion push messages every month.
You can also significantly reduce cart abandonment by simply improving your online store and checkout process. We share plenty of proven tips with real examples in our guide on how to recover WooCommerce abandoned cart sales.
10. Send Automated Coupons to Bring Back Customers
It costs 5 times more to get a new customer than to keep an old one. Over time, people may lose interest in your website, forget about your products, or start shopping with a competitor.
One way to bring those customers back is to automatically send them a coupon code via email. You can use automation tools to send a coupon to customers who have become disengaged, such as when they don’t place an order for 2 months or have stopped opening emails.
Another good use for automated coupons is recognizing and rewarding customers when they engage with your online store. For example, you might send a coupon after a customer reviews one of your products.
This builds loyalty to your store and can get you more sales. It also encourages shoppers to review more products in the future.
You can also schedule coupons in advance so that they go out automatically on popular holidays like Black Friday, Christmas, New Year’s, Mother’s Day, and Valentine’s Day. This will leave you free to focus on promoting your offers and getting as many sales as possible.
Additionally, as we mentioned earlier, you can also offer a coupon in a popup. Showing a coupon at the right time makes a huge difference in converting your website visitors into paying customers.
You can also use automation to post your online store content to your social channels. This lets you keep your social followers engaged with fresh content.
Uncanny Automator has integrations with all popular social platforms. It will let you publish new blog posts on Facebook, show off your latest product images on Instagram, advertise your sales on Twitter, and more.
You can learn how to do this step-by-step by following our guides on how to automatically post to Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
12. Automatically Display Social Media Content in WooCommerce
Are you looking for ways to show fresh content without doing any extra work? One way to do that is to automatically display your latest social media activity in your WooCommerce store.
This can save you time and keep your website content fresh and engaging for visitors. Plus, it can boost social proof by displaying your social media followers, comments, and like counts.
Smash Balloon automates your website content by displaying your latest social media activity. It is a popular social media feed plugin for WordPress that is used by over 1.4 million websites.
For example, you can add a Facebook feed to WordPress, and new posts will automatically appear in real time. Your customers can also like, share, and comment on your WordPress posts, which is a great way to get more engagement on Facebook.
You can change the feed’s color scheme, design a custom header, add ‘like’ and ‘load more’ buttons, and much more.
If you are posting beautiful photos and engaging videos to Instagram, then it makes sense to post that content to WordPress too.
You can even show other people’s photos on your site by creating a hashtag feed or displaying the posts that other people have tagged your account in.
In the following image, you can see an example of an online store that uses a custom Instagram feed to show user-generated content.
The best thing is that WPForms easily integrates with many other tools and plugins, so you can easily automate any action after someone fills out your form.
For example, when someone fills in an order form, you can use conditional logic to send an email notification to the correct department, depending on the product that was purchased.
You can also send a confirmation email to the customer who filled in the form to let them know you will be in contact soon. This a nice gesture that lets your users know that you have received their information.
In addition, by using the Google Sheets Addon, you can send any form fields you want to a spreadsheet. This will allow you to use spreadsheet features to analyze the data and collaborate with others in your team.
To automate your forms further, Uncanny Automator will let you connect WPForms and other form plugins to 100+ third-party services without having to pay fees to services like Zapier.
For example, you can create an Uncanny Automator recipe to send customer form data to Airtable. Then, your team will be able to access and use the data easily.
14. Automate Live Chat Using Artificial Intelligence
Automated chatbots are the future of live chat software because they allow you to engage with your customers 24/7. They can free up time by automatically answering common customer questions, generating leads, improving user experience, and making more sales.
Chatbot.com is the best AI chatbot software for WordPress. It lets you easily automate live chat on your website by setting up your own chatbot using a drag-and-drop builder. You don’t need to do any coding or have any special technical skills.
It even comes with pre-built templates that you can use as a starting point to quickly get your AI chatbot up and running. These templates include different scenarios like selling products, customer service, recruitment, bookings, and more.
For example, you can use the eCommerce bot template to walk your customers through the entire buying process. There are even templates for specific industries, including a coffee shopbot, recruitment bot, and restaurant bot.
If visitors want to communicate with a real person, then you can easily forward them to your customer support agent, phone support, or any of ChatBot’s live chat software integrations, such as LiveChat.
15. Use Uncanny Automator for Even More WooCommerce Automations
This article contains many specialist tools that do specific automation jobs very well. By contrast, Uncanny Automator is a Swiss army knife that allows you to create all types of automation workflows without having to write any code.
It acts as a bridge so that you can get different WordPress plugins talking to each other, as well as loads of third-party services.
You create automation by building Uncanny Automator recipes, consisting of triggers and actions. The action will be automatically run when a user or WooCommerce triggers an event.
Here are some of the WooCommerce triggers you can use to run a recipe:
A customer viewing a product
A customer adding a product to their cart
A customer paying for a product
A payment failing
A customer reviewing a product
And much more
Then the recipe can automatically run any of these WooCommerce actions:
Creating an order with a product
Changing the price of a product
Generating and emailing a coupon code
Giving an order a specific status
There are dozens of recipes that you can create, allowing you to save hundreds of hours while running your online store more efficiently.
For instance, you can use Uncanny Automator to automatically create a new customer account when someone submits a contact form on your website, or send notifications to Slack.
Bonus: Track Conversions to Learn How to Increase Sales
To use any marketing automation platform effectively, you will need easy-to-understand reports that tell you exactly what is working for your business and what isn’t.
MonsterInsights is the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress. It lets you get a clear picture of what is happening on your site and what you can do to bring in more sales.
It comes with WooCommerce conversion tracking, form submissions, outbound link tracking, and user tracking.
Its Reports page has an ‘eCommerce’ tab that shows your most important conversion metrics, including the conversion rate, transactions, revenue, and average order value. Below that, you will see a list of your top products with quantity, sale percentage, and total revenue.
You will also see your top conversion sources. You can use this report to attract more customers and offer exclusive discounts for customers from specific sources.
You can also connect Google Sheets with WooCommerce to easily record and manage your orders and customer data. Once the information is in a Google Sheet, you can easily filter it based on factors like the order total, the customer’s location, coupons used, and more.
You can then share this information with your team, even if they don’t have access to the WordPress dashboard. For example, you can easily send this data to your suppliers, marketing departments, or other team members.
You are even able to turn this data into charts and graphs. All of this makes it easier to analyze the information and then use these insights to fine-tune your business and get more sales.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
Do you want to add a ‘click to tweet’ box in your WordPress posts?
These simple boxes allow readers to share quotes from your posts with a single click. This makes them a great way to get more engagement on social media and drive extra traffic to your website.
In this article, we will show you how to add click to tweet boxes in your WordPress posts.
Why Add Click to Tweet Boxes in Your WordPress Posts?
A ‘click to tweet’ button makes it easy for readers to share quotes from your posts and pages.
Visitors can simply click a button to create a tweet that contains the quote, plus a link to the page or post where the quote is featured.
Depending on how the box is set up, the tweet may even tag your Twitter account.
When social media users see lots of people posting your content, they’re more likely to engage with you.
In this way, click to tweet boxes can increase your blog traffic, get you more followers, and create a buzz around your brand on social media.
All of this can translate to more sales on your online store, new subscribers for your email newsletter, and much more.
With that being said, let’s see how you can easily add click to tweet boxes in your WordPress blog posts.
How to Add Click to Tweet Boxes in Your WordPress Posts
The easiest way to create a click to tweet box is by using Better Click To Tweet. This plugin allows you to add a quote box to any page or post using either a shortcode or a block.
The first thing you need to do is install and activate the Better Click To Tweet plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Upon activation, head over to Settings » Better Click To Tweet to configure the plugin’s settings. In the ‘Your Twitter Handle’ field, type the account you want to tag in tweets that get shared.
There’s no authentication process, so you can add any Twitter account to the plugin’s settings, including an account that you don’t own.
You can also override this setting for individual click to tweet boxes, so it’s easy to tag lots of different accounts across your WordPress blog.
If you use custom short URLs, then make sure to check the box next to ‘Use short URL.’ This will force the plugin to show the WordPress shortlink instead of the full URL, which is important if you use tools to track link clicks in WordPress. Again, you can override this setting for individual click to tweet boxes.
With that done, click on ‘Save Changes.’
How to Add a Click to Tweet Box Using the WordPress Block
You can add a click to tweet box to any page or post using shortcode or a block. Since it’s the easiest method, let’s start with the block.
Simply open the page or post where you want to create a box and then click on the ‘+’ button.
In the popup that appears, start typing in ‘Better Click to Tweet.’ When the right block shows up, click to add it to the page.
You can now type in the quote you want to use.
By default, the plugin shows a ‘Click to Tweet’ prompt, but you can replace this with your own messaging. For example, if you’re running a giveaway or contest in WordPress then you might encourage readers to quote the tweet, in order to enter the competition.
To do this, simply click to select the block.
Then, type your custom messaging into the ‘Prompt’ field.
By default, the plugin will tag the account you added in its settings, but you can override this and tag a different account instead.
To make this change, simply type a different username into the ‘Twitter Username’ field.
Tagging your Twitter account is a great way to get more followers and engagement. However, if you simply want to get more visitors to your website then you can remove this tag, so the quoted tweet simply contains a link.
To do this, click to disable the ‘Include the username in Tweet?’ toggle.
By default, the plugin includes a link to the page or post where the quote box is featured. If you prefer, then you can use a different link instead. This can be useful if you want to get more visitors to a specific page, such as the landing page for a product or service that’s mentioned in the blog post.
To do this, simply type the URL into the ‘Custom URL’ field.
You can also mark the link as nofollow, which is useful if you’re linking to a third-party website such as a client or affiliate marketing partner.
Another option is removing the link, so the tweet just has the tagged account. This is a good option if you simply want to get more engagement on Twitter, rather than drive people to your website.
To do this, click to disable the ‘Include URL in Tweet’ toggle.
When you’re happy with how the quote box is set up, click on the ‘Publish’ or ‘Update’ button to make it live. Now if you visit your WordPress website, you’ll see the quote box in action.
How to Add a Click to Tweet Box Using a Shortcode
If you want to show the same quote on multiple pages, then adding and configuring each box separately can take a lot of time and effort. Instead, it may be easier to paste the same shortcode into multiple locations.
To start, you may want to use the following shortcode:[bctt tweet="Quotable Tweet"]
This will create a tweet that tags the account linked in the plugin’s settings and includes a URL to the current page or post. Be sure to change the words “quotable tweet” in the shortcode to whatever message you want users to share.
If you don’t want to tag an account, then you can use the following instead:[bctt tweet="Quotable Tweet" via="no"]
Want to include a different URL in the tweet? Here’s the shortcode:[bctt tweet="Quotable Tweet." url="http://example.com"]
To remove the link completely, just set it to url="no.†You can also mark the link as nofollow by adding the following to the shortcode: nofollow="yes.â€
Bonus: How to Add a Twitter Feed in WordPress
A click to tweet box is a quick and easy way to get engagement on Twitter. However, there are other ways to promote your social media accounts including adding a feed that shows your recent tweets and updates automatically as you make new posts.
You can quote your own tweets, or even tweets from a third party. For example, you might embed posts from an industry influencer, an advertising partner, or a happy customer.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
Note: YouTube Feed also has a free version. However, it does not support the Live Stream feature.
Once the plugin has been activated, you need to visit the Youtube Feed » Settings page from the admin sidebar. Here, you need to enter the license key and click on the ‘Activate’ button.
You can get the license key from your Accounts page on the Smash Balloon website.
Next, you need to visit the YouTube Feeds » All Feeds page from the WordPress admin sidebar.
From here, simply click on the ‘Add New’ button at the top.
This will open up the ‘Select Feed Type’ prompt.
Now, you need to choose the ‘Live Streams’ option and then click on the ‘Next’ button to continue.
On the next step, you need to connect YouTube Feed Pro with your Youtube account. You will be asked to provide your YouTube API key.
If you already have an API key, simply copy and paste it into the ‘Enter API Key’ box and click on the ‘Add’ button.
Create a YouTube API Key
If you don’t have an API key yet, then you need to go to the Google Cloud Console and sign in using your Google account.
Once you are logged in, click on the ‘Select a project’ button at the top.
This will open a popup window that will display all the projects that you have created.
Next, simply click on the ‘New Project’ button at the top.
This will take you to the ‘New Project’ page, where you can start by typing in a name for your project. This can be anything that will help you easily identify it.
Next, you must also select an ‘Organization’ and its location from the dropdown menu. You can select ‘No Organization’ and click the ‘Create’ button to continue.
Once the project has been created, you will be taken to the project dashboard.
From here, you need to click on the ‘+ Enable APIs And Services’ button in the top menu.
This will take you to the API Library page. It shows the different Google services that you can create APIs for and use in your projects.
Now go ahead and search for ‘YouTube Data API v3’ in the search box.
Once the ‘YouTube Data API v3’ result shows up, just click on it.
This will take you to a new page where you need to click on the ‘Enable’ button to activate the YouTube API key.
You’ll now be taken to the ‘API/Service Details’ page.
From here, simply click on the ‘Create Credentials’ button at the top.
Next, you’ll be directed to a new page where you must check the box next to the ‘Public Data’ option.
After that, click on the ‘Next’ button to create your API.
Your API Key will now be created and displayed on the page.
Simply copy the API key and click on the ‘Done’ button.
Next, it is time to head back to the WordPress dashboard.
Go ahead and paste the API key into the API Key Required box. Then, click on the ‘Add’ button to continue.
Add the YouTube Live Stream to Your WordPress Website
Once you’ve added your YouTube API key, you will be redirected to the ‘Select Feed Type’ page.
From here, you need to click on the ‘Live Stream’ option again, followed by the ‘Next’ button.
This will open the ‘Add Channel ID For Live Stream’ page.
Now, you need to visit the YouTube channel that contains your live-stream videos.
From here, go ahead and copy the text that comes after ‘/channel/’ or ‘/user/’ in the URL at the top.
Next, switch back to the WordPress dashboard and paste the code into the ‘Add Channel ID for Livestream’ box.
After that, click on the ‘Connect’ button to connect your YouTube channel with WordPress.
Once the channel is connected, you need to click on the ‘Next’ button to continue.
Customize Your YouTube Feed
Now that your YouTube live stream feed has been created, you can customize it. Smash Balloon’s YouTube Feed Pro offers many different display options.
First, you will need to choose a template on the ‘Start with a template’ page. You can choose from Default, Carousel, Cards, List, Gallery, and Grid layouts.
Once you have made your choice, simply click on the ‘Next’ button.
After you have chosen a template, an editing screen will open up that displays a preview of your YouTube feed to the right and customization settings in the left menu column.
Here, you can start by expanding the ‘Feed Layout’ panel.
On this screen, you can switch between the layouts.
You may also be able to configure additional settings depending on your chosen layout.
Next, you need to click on the ‘Color Scheme’ panel.
By default, YouTube Feed Pro uses the same color scheme as your WordPress theme. However, you can also use a ‘Light’ or ‘Dark’ color scheme for the video feed.
You can also design your own color scheme by clicking on the ‘Custom’ option and then using controls to change the background, text, and link colors.
To add a header to your YouTube feed, you need to visit the ‘Header’ panel. From here, simply toggle the ‘Enable’ switch to activate the header.
You can also use the controls to switch between standard and text header styles. Choosing the ‘Text’ option will allow you to change the text size and color.
You can also customize the appearance of the video player by going to the ‘Videos’ panel.
Here, you will see a list of options.
To customize the video layout and individual properties, you need to visit the ‘Video Style’ settings panel.
Here, you can select the video layout, background color, and border.
After that, open the ‘Edit Individual Elements’ panel. Here, simply check the boxes next to the elements you want to display along with the YouTube live stream videos.
You can show or hide the Play icon, video title, live stream countdown, descriptions, and more.
Next, you need to head over to the ‘Hover State’ setting. Here, you can choose the individual elements that will display when the user hovers their mouse over the YouTube video.
You can pick many elements, including video title, description, date, views, and more.
After that, you need to visit the ‘Video Player Experience’ panel.
From here, you can change the video player’s aspect ratio. You can also choose whether the video will start playing automatically or wait until the visitor clicks the play button.
After customizing the individual video elements, switch to the ‘Load More Button’ panel.
Here, under the ‘Load More Button’ setting, you can switch the toggle to ‘Enable.’ This will display more video suggestions after the live stream.
You can also choose the background color, hover state, and text from the settings in the left panel.
After that, switch to the ‘Subscribe Button’ panel and toggle the switch to ‘Enable’ if you want to activate the YouTube subscribe button.
You can also change the button’s color, text, and hover state in the settings.
Once you have customized the YouTube live feed, you can preview how it will look on desktop computers, tablets, and smartphones. Simply click on the different buttons in the upper-right corner to preview the feed on different devices.
Finally, don’t forget to click the ‘Save’ button at the top to save your changes.
Embed the YouTube Live Stream on a WordPress Page
The next step is to embed your YouTube live feed on a WordPress page. To do this, you must first click on the ‘Embed’ button at the top.
This will open up the ‘Embed Feed’ prompt. Here, click on the ‘Add to a Page’ button to continue.
The popup will now show a list of all the WordPress pages on your website.
Simply choose the page where you want to embed the YouTube live stream and click the ‘Add’ button.
The page you selected will now open up in the block editor.
From here, you need to click the ‘Add Block’ (+) button in the top left corner and search for the ‘Feeds for YouTube’ block.
Once you have found it, add the block to your page by clicking on it.
Don’t forget to click on the ‘Update’ or ‘Publish’ button to save your changes or make them live.
This is how the YouTube live feed looks on our demo website.
Add a YouTube Live Feed as a Widget
You can also add a YouTube live feed to the WordPress sidebar as a widget.
First, you will need to visit the Appearance » Widgets page from the admin sidebar.
From here, click on the ‘Add Block’ (+) button in the top left corner of the screen and locate the ‘Feeds for YouTube’ block.
Next, click on the block to add it to the widget area.
Don’t forget to click on the ‘Update’ button to save your changes.
This is how the YouTube live feed looks in the sidebar on our demo website.
First, go to the Appearance » Editor page from the admin sidebar to launch the site editor.
From here, click on the ‘Add Block (+)’ button at the top and look for the ‘Feeds for YouTube’ block.
Next, you can drag and drop the block to wherever you want to display the YouTube feed on your page.
Once you are done, don’t forget to click on the ‘Save’ button to apply the changes.
Here is a preview of the live streams on our demo website.
We hope this article helped you learn how to embed YouTube live streams in WordPress. You may also want to read our ultimate WordPress SEO guide or check out our top picks for the best social media plugins to grow your site.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
Do you want to start a successful YouTube channel for your business?
YouTube is one of the biggest video-sharing and social media platforms in the world. It can help you bring more customers and sales to your business.
In this article, we’ll show you how to easily start a successful YouTube channel for your business with practical tips to promote and grow it.
Why Start a YouTube Channel for Your Business
YouTube is one of the biggest video-sharing and social media platforms in the world. With more than 2 Billion active users, it is also the second most popular search engine on the market after Google.
With such a huge user base, YouTube is the perfect place to promote your business and acquire new customers and followers.
Following are some of the top benefits of creating a YouTube channel.
Increased brand recognition – A YouTube channel helps you promote your brand and strengthen brand recognition among your audiences.
Increased sales – Videos are the most engaging content for any marketing strategy and engaged audiences are more likely to make a buying decision. This means more sales for your business.
Increased website traffic – YouTube videos can help promote your website on one of the biggest social platforms and search engines. You can add links to your products, services, landing pages, or blog posts in your video descriptions with a direct call to action.
Promote products/services – YouTube videos provide more opportunities to educate customers about your products or services. These videos can be embedded on your support docs which can reduce support requests while making sure that your customers make the most out of your products.
Build a loyal following – A YouTube channel helps you build a more engaging community around your brand and products.
Adds an extra source of revenue – YouTube Monetization options can add an extra source of revenue for your business. Your video content can also unlock many potential partnership opportunities with other businesses.
Starting a YouTube channel requires commitment. You’ll need to create a consistent content strategy and stick to it in order to make a successful YouTube channel.
That being said, let’s take a look at how to easily start a YouTube channel step by step.
Here is an overview of all the steps we’ll walk you through to create a YouTube channel.
YouTube makes it super easy to create a channel. You can make a channel by simply visiting the YouTube website and signing in with a Google Account.
Once signed in, you can click on your profile icon in the top-right corner of the screen and then select the “Create a Channel” option.
This will bring up a popup to fill out basic information for your channel.
You’ll need to choose a channel name and handle, and upload a profile photo.
Now, we want you to take a few minutes before choosing a channel name and handle.
Tips on Choosing The Perfect YouTube Channel Name
Your channel name and handle may help it appear in YouTube and Google Search results.
That’s why you need to use keywords in your channel name and handle. Keywords are the search terms that users would enter when looking for videos.
You may also want to consider what kind of videos you’ll be uploading when choosing a channel name.
For instance, will you be uploading tips & advice, general entertainment, infotainment, interviews, podcasts, documentary-style videos, and more?
Let’s say you want to create a YouTube channel for your gardening business. In that case, using gardening in the channel name and handle will increase the chances of YouTube algorithm displaying your channel in search results.
You can also use the existing brand name that you use on your business website. This helps strengthen your brand identity and keeps things consistent across different platforms (your website and social profiles).
For instance, we use our brand name for our YouTube channel with keywords that explain what our channel is all about (i.e. ‘WPBeginner – WordPress Tutorials‘).
Tips on Making YouTube Profile Photo
Your YouTube profile photo appears across the YouTube platform next to your channel name. This includes your channel homepage, below each video, and in the search results.
Many small businesses use their logo as their YouTube channel profile photo.
If you don’t already have a business logo that you can use, then you can create a YouTube channel photo using Canva.
This free online image editor comes with ready-to-use templates for different social networks including YouTube.
If you want to use any other image editing software or your own logo, then make sure that your channel photo is a square image with at least 800×800 pixels in size.
Once you have entered the channel name, handle, and photo, simply click on the Create Channel button to continue.
Youtube will now create the channel and redirect you to your new YouTube channel’s page.
2. Securing Your Brand Name
Before you upload your first video and start promoting your YouTube channel, it is important to secure your brand name.
This includes purchasing a domain name that matches your YouTube Channel name, making a WordPress website, and creating social media accounts for your channel.
Doing this protects your business from copyright infringement and blocks scammers from impersonating your brand on social media platforms.
Let’s start with a domain name and a website.
1. Making a Website for YouTube Channel
To make a website for your YouTube channel, you’ll need the following items.
A domain name. This is what users will type in their browsers to visit your website (e.g. wpbeginner.com)
Web hosting account. This is where all your website files will be stored.
Normally, a domain costs $14.99 per year and web hosting plans start at $7.99 per month (usually paid for a full year).
This is a significant amount and if you are just starting out then this may look a bit excessive.
Luckily, the folks over at Bluehost have agreed to offer WPBeginner users a free domain name with a generous discount on hosting.
Basically, you can get started for $2.75 per month.
Once you have chosen the domain name, click on the Next button to continue and finalize your purchase.
From here, you’ll first provide your personal information. After that, you can choose a plan duration (the 12-month plan gives you the best value).
Below that, don’t forget to uncheck all the options under Package Extras to further reduce the costs. Don’t worry you can always add them later when needed.
Finally, fill in your payment information to complete the purchase.
Bluehost will now register your domain name and set up your web hosting account. It will also automatically install WordPress, which is the best website builder on the market.
You’ll receive an email with instructions on how to log in to your hosting account.
For more details, see our step-by-step tutorial on how to make a website for beginners.
Remember, the goal here is to just get started with a basic website at first. You can work on your website later on as needed.
2. Securing Your Social Media Profiles
If your business doesn’t already have social media profiles, then it is time to create those and protect your brand.
Depending on your target audience you can choose which platforms would work best for your social media marketing strategy.
For instance, you would definitely want to create a profile on Facebook and Twitter. Optionally, you can choose to sign up for other platforms that may be useful for your businesses.
For instance, a business organization may want to sign up for LinkedIn, a lifestyle business may find Pinterest and Instagram more useful, and an educational website may want to build a community on Redditt as well.
It is important to choose the same brand name that you use for your business and your YouTube channel.
3. Making Artwork for YouTube Channel
Now let’s get back to your newly created YouTube channel which would be empty at the moment.
You can start working on your YouTube channel by creating channel art like a banner or cover image. This image appears at the top of your YouTube channel.
Once again, you can use Canva to create a very professional-looking cover art for your YouTube channel.
Canva comes with hundreds of built-in templates for YouTube channel covers to choose from.
Once you have found a template that matches your channel thumbnail and logo colors you can edit it using Canva’s built-in editor.
More advanced users can create their own cover images using image editing software like Photoshop, Illustrator, or Affinity.
Make sure that your YouTube banner image is 2048 x 1152 pixels in dimensions and no more than 6MB in file size.
Once your image is ready you can go to your YouTube channel page and click on the Customize Channel button.
This will bring you to the Channel Customization page. From here, you need to switch to the Branding tab.
You’ll notice that the channel profile photo you created earlier is already there. Next, click on the Upload button next to the banner image option.
Optionally, you can also add a watermark to your YouTube videos. It appears on your videos in the right-hand corner of the video player.
You can upload the watermark image from the Branding tab. Most channels typically use their channel profile photo or their business logo. Some also use watermarks as a reminder for viewers to subscribe.
You’ll need a square image with dimensions of at least 150×150 pixels. We recommend using a transparent image so that it doesn’t take up much on-screen space.
4. Creating a Featured Video and YouTube Channel Trailer
A YouTube channel trailer is an impactful way to introduce new users to your channel. A good channel trailer provides users with a glimpse into what kind of content your channel offers.
When enabled, this trailer appears at the top of your channel page and automatically plays for new users.
Similarly, you can also create a separate featured video for users who have already subscribed to your channel.
The downside is that they will not see this video at the top of your channel if they have already watched it.
These videos can be uploaded by visiting the YouTube Studio page.
From here, you can switch to the Customization tab and then upload your trailer or a featured video.
Not ready to make a video yet? Don’t worry we’ll talk more about making videos later in this article.
5. What Do You Need to Make Great YouTube Videos
You may have noticed the very high quality of videos uploaded by the most popular YouTube channels such as Mr. Beast, Lemmino, Veritasium, and more.
These videos are made using top-of-the-line cameras, professional lighting, custom-made graphics, and really good editing.
However, the vast majority of videos uploaded on YouTube are not as high-quality as you may think.
You can basically just shoot a YouTube video using your phone camera. Most modern phones are equipped with very capable cameras.
With a little effort and some inexpensive equipment, you can easily make very polished YouTube videos all by yourself.
Here is a list of equipment that you can use to get started.
1. A Good Camera
Digital cameras are becoming quite inexpensive and can shoot high-resolution 4k videos. If you are looking to spend some money then we recommend these starter digital cameras:
However, if you cannot afford a separate camera, then most modern phones come with very capable built-in cameras.
With an inexpensive tripod, some basic lighting, and an inexpensive microphone, you can easily use your own phone to shoot high-quality YouTube videos.
This brings us to other equipment that you may want to look into.
2. An Affordable Tripod or Camera Stand
A tripod or camera stand allows you to firmly place your camera or phone in one place to shoot videos.
There are hundreds of tripods, gimbal stabilizers, and selfie sticks available on Amazon.
Ideally, you would want to buy one that works with your camera or mobile phone and offers different heights and adjustments to shoot a variety of video styles.
For mobile users, Rode Vlogging Kit can be a good starting point. It comes with a 3.5mm audio jack to capture better sound quality and has a separate version for iOS devices.
3. A basic lighting setup
If you are planning to shoot most of your videos indoors, then adding some extra lighting can make a huge difference in video quality.
However, professional-grade lighting equipment can be very expensive. Luckily, there are a ton of inexpensive options that can do the trick.
For beginners, we recommend starting out with ring lights. These portable LED lights come in different shapes and sizes and include adjustments like tripods and extendable heights.
4. A Video Editing Software
Once you have shot your video, you’ll need to edit it to add graphics, background music, credits, and more. You may also want to cut out some parts or merge multiple video files.
Now you may have heard popular YouTubers talking about Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premiere Pro. These are very powerful video editing software but they are also quite expensive and come with a learning curve.
Luckily, your computer may already have basic and easy-to-use video editing software installed on it.
Mac computers come with the iMovie app which is a very capable video editing software. It also has a trimmed-down version available for iOS devices.
iMovie includes some basic transition effects, the ability to add sounds and music overlays, trim clips, adjust the screen size, and more.
Similarly, Windows users can use Clipchamp which is a great free video editor and comes with dozens of ready-to-use templates for different video platforms including YouTube.
Alternately, the popular design tool Canva also comes with a built-in video editor. It includes a huge library of images, videos, transitions, and other elements that you can use in your videos.
Plus, it works on Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android devices as well. It is extremely easy to use and a good option for absolute beginners.
All these video editing software options are beginner friendly and will allow you to create professional-looking videos for your YouTube channel.
6. How to Edit YouTube Videos
As we mentioned earlier that the vast majority of YouTube videos don’t have the production levels of the most popular YouTubers.
As a YouTube beginner, you just need to learn some video editing basics to polish your YouTube videos before uploading.
Let’s start with the shooting first.
Shooting Videos with Editing in Mind
When you are shooting your videos always record them in the highest quality settings available on your camera.
Use a tripod or gimbal to avoid shaky footage.
Use manual focus whenever possible to make sure that the subject of your video is always in focus.
Record in a quiet space or use a microphone to avoid background noise.
Editing Videos for Your YouTube Channel
Now that you have your video ready let’s bring it into your video editing software.
First, you would want to cut and trim the portions that you don’t want to include in the video.
Add background music when you need it.
Use transition effects to merge two video footage
Add text, images, and graphics to provide more context if needed.
Your video editing software will show you a live preview of your changes as you make them. Once you are satisfied with the changes you have made it is time to export your video.
Finding Media to Use in Your YouTube Videos
YouTube takes copyright violations seriously and can take down your videos or entire channel for any violations.
Make sure that all the media (images, video clips, sounds, and music) that you use in your video are royalty free or that you have written permission to use them in your video.
Luckily there are many open-source and royalty-free sources that you can use in your videos. Most video editing software choices we mentioned above include royalty-free media that you can add to your videos.
YouTube also has its own audio library with thousands of music and audio files that you can use in your videos.
You can find the audio library under YouTube Studio. From here, you can search or browse the audio files and download them to your computer.
After that, you can add them to your video using your video editing software.
Saving Video to Upload on YouTube
By default, YouTube allows you to upload videos of 15 minutes duration. Verified users can upload longer videos.
The video file size limit for YouTube is 256 GB or 12 hours duration, whichever is less.
Make sure that you export your video from your video editor software using the highest quality settings. Using H.264 (mp4 file format) for compression produces higher-quality results with a smaller file size.
Depending on your video duration and file size, it may take a while for your video editing software to process the video.
7. Video Editing Best Practices to Follow
As you edit more videos for your YouTube channel, you’ll be able to pick up new tips and tricks on the way to produce better results.
Following are just some of the very basic tips that you should keep in mind.
Always save your videos in the highest quality. This allows YouTube to display your video in the best possible quality to your users.
Longer videos take more time to process on your computer. Make sure that your computer is connected to a power source to avoid any interruption.
Similarly, video files are massive and may take some time to upload. Make sure you have a faster and more stable internet connection before you begin uploading the video to YouTube.
8. Making Thumbnails for YouTube Videos
A YouTube video thumbnail is the image used as a placeholder for your video across the YouTube platform.
They play the most significant role in boosting a video’s click-through rate.
Most experienced users spend a lot of their time creating and experimenting with different YouTube video thumbnail styles.
YouTube allows you to pick a thumbnail from your video after you upload the video. However, it is not recommended to use a video still as your thumbnail.
You’ll need to use an image editing tool like Photoshop or Canva to create your YouTube thumbnail. It needs to be at least 1280×720 in dimensions.
Here are some of the tips you can use when making a thumbnail for YouTube videos.
1. Use Hi-res Images – It is important to use high-quality images in your video thumbnail so that they look good in all sizes on all devices.
2. Grab user attention – You’ll need to make your images eye catchy by using bold colors, strong contrast, or emotional reactions. That’s why so many popular YouTubers have an image showing their surprised, amazed, disappointed, and other reactions.
3. Showcase Key Event – Show the main subject or event of your video in the thumbnail to build anticipation and provide users with a preview of the video.
4. Use Text Cleverly – Use text whenever needed to provide more context or insert an engagement hook for your audiences.
5. Keep it Simple – Avoid adding too many elements to your thumbnail to keep it clean and easy on the eyes. Cluttered elements in thumbnails can make it look unpolished to your users.
Once you have created a thumbnail for your video, you can add it after your video upload is complete.
You can also change the thumbnail for a video by editing it in YouTube Studio.
9. Uploading Your First YouTube Video
You can upload your video by visiting the YouTube Studio page.
Then, you just need to click on the Upload Videos button.
This will bring up a popup where you need to select the video file(s) you have saved on your computer.
Simply click on the Select Files button to continue. You can upload more than one video at a time if you want.
However, it is better to upload one video at a time to avoid any interruptions during the upload.
YouTube will now start uploading your video in the background. Meanwhile, you can fill in the video details such as the video title, description, thumbnail, and tags.
Once you are satisfied with the settings click on the Next button to continue.
Now, you’ll be asked to provide additional information about your video. For instance, you can add subtitles, choose an end screen, and add video cards to promote other content during your video playback.
All these video elements help you promote your videos and grow your channel.
After that, you need to click on the Next button to continue. YouTube will now check your video for common issues such as copyright infringements or inappropriate content.
If everything looks good, click on the next button to continue.
Now, you can choose how you want to publish your YouTube video. You can make a video private, unlisted, or public so that everyone on the internet can view it.
You can also schedule the video to become public at a specific time. This helps you schedule videos for the future and get ahead on your video calendar.
Finally, click on the Publish button to save your video. You can now preview your video on YouTube.
10. Mastering YouTube SEO
As we mentioned earlier, YouTube is not only a video-sharing platform but also the second most popular search engine.
It receives more searches than any other search engine on the market except for Google itself.
This is why you need to pay attention to YouTube SEO from day one.
This helps your videos and channel appear in YouTube searches more often.
YouTube SEO best practices will also help your channel appear in Google video results and you may even appear in featured snippets.
Following are some of the basic YouTube SEO tips that will help you optimize your videos for higher search rankings.
Use keywords in Title & Description – Keywords are search terms that users type to search for something. Using them in your video’s title and description increases its potential to appear for those search terms. You can also use your keywords in channel description, about page, and other areas to improve your YouTube SEO.
Add a custom YouTube Video Thumbnail – A good custom video thumbnail can provide search engines with more context about your video. It boosts your click-through rate which helps you rank even higher.
Add closed captions and subtitles – Subtitles and closed captions help you provide a video transcript for your video. This provides YouTube with plenty of context to match with the search terms.
Add Tags to Your Videos – Tags help you organize your videos into topics using them strategically has the potential to appear higher for relevant search terms.
Use Given Character Limit – YouTube has character limits for titles, descriptions, tags, and other fields. Make sure that you utilize these fields to provide more detailed information about your video. Here is a quick breakdown of character limits:
Video Title – 100, make sure that you use all of them and try to replicate the style of other popular YouTubers in your industry.
Description – 5000, use the description field to write a catchy but more detailed description of your video. You can also include links here to your website, relevant blog posts, products, affiliate links, and more.
Tags – 500, tags can help users find your content by categorizing it and letting YouTube know who to promote it to.
YouTube SEO is a highly sought-after skill and as you work on growing your YouTube channel you’ll pick up more tips and tricks along the way.
11. Growing Your YouTube Channel
Growing a successful YouTube channel takes time, some effort, and patience. In most cases success will not come overnight, rather your channel will grow bit by bit slowly and steadily.
Following are a few tips that will help you keep up the momentum and grow your YouTube channel.
1. Create High-Quality Videos
This goes without saying that users will abandon your YouTube videos if they don’t find your content useful or entertaining.
Producing higher quality content that answers users’ questions, provides them value (information, education, or entertainment), and keeps them hooked is the key to keep gaining subscribers for your YouTube channel.
2. Upload Regularly
Publishing regularly is one of the most common traits of almost all successful YouTube channels.
For beginners, this may seem hard at first. We recommend committing to at least one video per week. As you work regularly on your videos you will be able to pick up more tricks to produce higher-quality videos more quickly.
Whatever frequency you choose, you need to stick to it. This helps you keep your existing subscribers engaged which leads to acquiring new subscribers and more views.
3. Engage with Your Audience
YouTube is a social media platform as well. In the US alone, 62% of internet users access YouTube daily and the majority of them access it several times a day.
The easiest way to keep your audience engaged is through YouTube comments. Asking users questions in your videos or replying to them via comments helps you bring back those users. They are also more likely to view more of your content in the future.
4. Curate Your Content in Playlists
As your videos increase it will become harder for users to find all your videos on a similar topic.
For instance, let’s say you run a gardening channel with several videos about budget landscaping. You can help your users find them all by creating a playlist.
Creating playlists also helps with YouTube SEO as these playlists often appear in search engines.
5. Dig Down the Analytics
YouTube offers built-in analytics tools to track the performance of your videos. This helps you gain insights into your audience.
From here, you can analyze important data such as views, watch time, and demographics to improve your content and reach more viewers.
6. Promote Your Videos
To grow your YouTube channel you cannot just upload videos and wait for viewers to come.
You need to proactively promote your videos across all your digital marketing channels, email marketing, and through your website.
This brings us to our next section.
12. Using Your Website to Promote YouTube Videos
All popular YouTube channels have a website.
This helps them to continuously bring traffic to their business website from their Youtube channel which leads to more sales and growth for their business.
It also helps them send more users to their YouTube channel by promoting videos and helping new users discover their YouTube channel.
Here is a step-by-step playbook that you can apply to your website to grow your YouTube channel.
1. Start a Blog To Promote Your YouTube Channel
For many businesses, starting a blog allows them to consistently cover topics that their potential customers will be looking for in search.
This helps them gain free organic search traffic to their website which they can then convert into customers and subscribers.
Adding a blog to your website helps you repurpose content you have used in your videos and make them into articles. This increases your potential to rank for those particular keywords and get traffic to both your video and blog content.
Upon activation, the plugin will launch a setup wizard which will walk you through the basic setup.
Need more help? We have a step-by-step WordPress SEO guide for beginners, which will help you properly optimize your website for SEO.
3. Embed Your Videos in Blog Posts to Get More Subscribers
An easy way to get more views and subscribers for your YouTube channel is by embedding videos in your blog posts.
WordPress makes it super easy. Simply copy the URL of your video and edit the post or page where you want to embed the video.
On the post editor screen, paste the URL on the line where you want to display the video.
WordPress will automatically fetch the required embed code and display your video.
4. Submit Video Sitemaps for Better Rankings
Video Sitemaps are like regular XML sitemaps but only for your video posts. The include links to your WordPress posts or pages containing YouTube video embeds.
You can then submit this sitemap using Google Search Console. Google could then display your article with an enhanced snippet with a video preview.
Now adding YouTube videos to your blog posts and pages is quite simple. However, it is quite boring and doesn’t add any social sharing features to your video embeds.
SmashBalloon offers separate plugins for different social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. You can also buy the all-access plan to get all plugins.
First, you need to install and activate the SmashBalloon YouTube Feed Pro plugin. Upon activation, head over to YouTube Feed » Settings page and provide your plugin license key. You can find this information under your account on the Smash Balloon website.
After that, you need to click on the ‘Add Source’ button to connect your WordPress website to your YouTube account.
Smash Balloon will ask for your permission to access your channel information under your Google Account.
Simply follow the on-screen instructions to complete the setup and get your channel name added as the source.
Next, you need to visit YouTube Feed » All Feeds page and click on the ‘Add New’ button to add a YouTube feed that you want to display.
Follow the on-screen instructions to select a source, template, and style for your feed.
Once finished, Smash Balloon will show you a live preview of your YouTube feed.
If everything looks good, then you can click on the Embed button to continue.
The plugin will now show you a shortcode that you can add to any post or page to display your YouTube feed. Optionally, you can also add it directly to a widget or a page.
Here is how it looked on our test website.
We changed the video template color scheme from light to dark and used the carousel-style gallery.
Smash Balloon allows you to fetch video feeds for your own channel, any other public channel, search term, or favorite videos.
It also works great on mobile devices and will automatically adjust your Gallery width for your smaller screens.
You’ll need to consistently upload new videos in order to make a successful YouTube channel.
You can choose your own frequency which gives you plenty of time to make a video. Many beginners start with one or two videos each month and increase it gradually to one video per week.
You can choose a day and time to publish your videos. This way your users would know when to expect a new video from your channel.
Now the real challenge for most beginners is to come up with ideas for new videos.
Following are a few easy tips to generate video ideas for your YouTube channel.
1. View YouTube Analytics – You can see what kind of content your users like by viewing your YouTube Channel Analytics. Then branch out your most viewed videos into deeper and related topics.
2. Get Hints by YouTube Search – As you type a keyword in YouTube search it would start suggesting popular search terms. These are the search terms that users are already looking for and they can be immensely helpful in generating new video ideas.
3. YouTube Comments – Your users would often post questions in the comments section below your YouTube videos. You can convert the most common questions into separate videos.
4. Your WordPress Blog – You can repurpose your most popular blog content into YouTube videos.
5. Ask Your Users – You can ask your users on social media profiles about what topics they would like you to cover next. Similarly, you can run surveys and polls on your website to gather user feedback.
6. Online Communities – Forums such as Reddit, Facebook Groups, LinkedIn, and Twitter are the discussion hubs of the internet. You can join the communities covering similar topics as your YouTube channel and see which topics come up more frequently under discussion.
Advanced users can use third-party tools to perform deeper keyword research. Following are some of the most popular keyword research tools for YouTubers.
Semrush – It offers a keyword magic tool where you can sort ideas by SERP features and select Video to explore video ideas.
2. vidIQ – A keyword research and video ideas generator platform made specifically for video content creators.
3. TubeBuddy – Offers YouTube SEO, video optimization, and keyword research tools as a browser extension.
14. Experiment with Different Video Styles and Formats
A YouTube channel doesn’t become successful overnight. It will take some time and effort until you find out what kind of content strategy works for your audience.
Meanwhile, we recommend trying different video formats to see which one of them brings you more user engagement, views, or likes.
You can try YouTube shorts to experiment with shorter video formats.
You can also try how-tos, interviews, video podcasts, essays, commentaries, and more.
Switching styles will help you figure out what your audience finds more engaging and then you can create more such videos.
Similarly, you can experiment by changing thumbnails for your older videos that are not getting any views.
You can also try different video titles and descriptions to see if they help you grab user attention.
15. Frequently Asked Questions About Creating a YouTube Channel
Now that your YouTube channel is up and running following are some of the most commonly asked questions asked by beginner YouTube creators.
1. How many views do I need to get paid on YouTube?
You’ll need at least 4000 public watch hours or 1000 subscribers in 12 months period to be eligible for the YouTube partner program, which gives you access to YouTube monetization tools including ad revenue sharing. For Shorts, you’ll need at least 10 million views in the last 90 days.
2. Can I start a YouTube Channel with my phone?
Yes, you can start a YouTube channel using your mobile phone. YouTube app for smartphones makes it super easy to create a channel, record live videos, or upload videos from your phone.
3. How to make money online using YouTube?
The easiest way to make money online using YouTube is by joining the YouTube partner program. Once you are approved, you become eligible to get paid for revenue sharing on ads displayed during your videos.
4. Can I start a YouTube channel without showing my face?
Yes, you can start a YouTube channel and upload videos without showing your face.
5. Do I need an LLC to start a YouTube channel for my business?
No, you don’t need an LLC to start a YouTube channel for your business. You’ll automatically be considered a sole proprietor for the YouTube channel and all your earnings from YouTube will be subjected to local taxes like income tax. However, some YouTube channels may register as a limited liability company (LLC) to protect their business from potential liabilities, insurance reasons, and other legal and financial reasons.
We hope this article helped you learn how to easily start a successful YouTube channel for your business. You may also want to see our list of other popular online business ideas or learn how to create and sell online courses to generate passive income.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
Vlogging is a powerful way to connect with people and build a personal brand. However, if you simply upload vlogs to third-party platforms like YouTube, then you may struggle to grow your audience, make money, and become a successful vlogger.
In this article, we will show you how you can start a vlog and make money.
Which Is the Best Website Builder for Your Video Blog?
There are many website builders that can help you create a vlog site, but we recommend using WordPress and a separate video hosting platform.
To learn more about why WordPress is such a good choice, please see our complete WordPress review with pros and cons.
There are two types of WordPress software: WordPress.com and WordPress.org. We recommend using WordPress.org, also called ‘self-hosted WordPress.’ This will give you full ownership and control of your site.
Using WordPress.org allows you to install third-party plugins and themes, including plenty that are designed specifically for vloggers.
Also, while you can upload videos to WordPress, it’s far better to use a separate video hosting platform such as YouTube or Vimeo.
Videos take up a lot of your hosting resources, which will slow down your website. Instead, we recommend uploading your vlogs to a separate hosting platform such as YouTube or Vimeo, which has all the server resources you need.
After uploading your vlogs to one of these sites, you can then embed your vlog in a WordPress page or post by simply copying and pasting a link. WordPress has built-in support for most major video hosting platforms.
If you really want to save time and impress your viewers, then you can use a plugin like Smash Balloon to create a video feed that will update automatically every time you post a new vlog.
If you don’t already have a video hosting platform in mind, then don’t worry. Later in this guide, we’ll help you find the perfect platform for your vlogs.
Step 1. Setting Up Your Video Blog Website
To create a video vlog, you’ll need a domain name and web hosting.
Although the WordPress software is free, hosting and domain names are where the costs can really start to add up.
A domain name typically costs $14.99/year and hosting costs start from $7.99/month. This is a lot for hobby vloggers, new creators, or anyone who is working with a tighter budget.
Thankfully, Bluehost has agreed to offer our users over 60% off on web hosting and a free SSL certificate as part of this deal. This is absolutely essential if you plan to sell premium videos and make money from your vlogs. You will also get a free domain name when you sign up!
Simply click the link below to create a vlogging website for as little as $2.75 per month.
Because you get a free domain when you sign up with Bluehost, you’ll need to be sure it’s the right fit for your video blog. For expert tips, check out our guide on how to choose the best domain name.
Once you’ve completed the purchase, you’ll get an email with instructions on how to log in to your web hosting control panel. This is your hosting account dashboard where you can manage your vlog, including setting up email notifications and asking for WordPress support if you need it.
It’s also where you’ll install the WordPress software, so let’s do that now.
Step 2. Install WordPress on Your Video Blog
When you sign up with Bluehost using our link, you’ll get access to a one-click WordPress installer. Simply log into your Bluehost account and click on ‘One Click Install.’
You can now follow the onscreen instructions to set up WordPress.
Once WordPress is set up, you’re ready to start customizing your vlog site.
Step 3. Select a Video Theme
WordPress themes are professionally designed templates that change how your vlog looks and acts.
There are lots of different premium and free WordPress business themes to choose from. You can generally categorize these as multipurpose WordPress themes, or niche industry themes. However, most WordPress themes are designed to show text.
Since we’re starting a vlog, we need a theme that’s designed specifically for videos.
Even if you’re using a separate video hosting platform, embedded videos still take time to load. With that in mind, it’s important to find a lightweight theme that won’t slow down your website. Wherever possible, we also recommend using a theme that has built-in lazy loading.
On top of that, vlogs often need special features such as parallax scrolling, lightbox popups, and fullscreen video backgrounds.
That’s a lot to keep in mind, so you may want to look at our expert pick of the best WordPress video themes.
After installing a theme, you may want to customize it by going to Appearance » Customize in the WordPress dashboard. This will launch the theme customizer where you can fine-tune the theme settings and see your changes in the live preview.
If you’re using one of the newer full-site editing themes, then you’ll need to go to Appearance » Editor instead.
Here, you can fine-tune the theme using blocks.
Just remember that you can customize your theme at any point. You can even completely change your WordPress theme, if you realize it doesn’t quite meet your needs.
This means you don’t need to finalize your site design now. In fact, it may be easier to fine-tune your vlog once you’ve added some content.
Step 4. Create a Custom Homepage
WordPress comes with two content types called posts and pages.
You’ll typically use posts to create articles and blogs, while pages are static “one-off†types of content. For example, you might publish an about page, a privacy policy, or a custom archive page.
There are a few different ways to show videos in WordPress. However, since we’re creating a video vlog you’ll typically embed one or more videos in a blog post.
By default, the WordPress homepage shows your posts in reverse chronological order, so your latest vlog appears at the top of the homepage.
However, you may want to move this blog list to another page, and use a custom homepage instead. This custom homepage can introduce your vlog to visitors and let them know what you have to offer.
You might even create a YouTube gallery of all your best videos, which is a great way to catch a visitor’s attention and make them want to watch more of your content.
Smash Balloon allows you to create all kinds of galleries, including showing a specific YouTube playlist or favorites feed, a single video, or even your latest live stream.
Once you’re happy with the design, it’s time to set it as your homepage. To do this, go to Settings » Reading in the WordPress dashboard.
Here, scroll to ‘Your homepage settings’ and select ‘A static page.’
Next, open the ‘Homepage’ dropdown and choose the page that you want to use.
After that, simply scroll to the bottom of the screen and click on ‘Save Changes.’ Now, if you visit your website you’ll see the new homepage in action.
With that done, make sure you create a separate blog page to display your vlogs.
Step 5. Set Up Your Video Hosting Platform
Before you can start adding videos to your WordPress website, you’ll need to upload them to a separate video hosting platform. In this way, you can show countless high-resolution videos on your website without affecting its performance.
There are lots of different video hosting platforms that you can use, but we recommend YouTube as it’s the most popular choice.
It’s free to create a YouTube account and you can upload as many videos as you want.
YouTube even has a Partners Program that you can join to make money from your videos. This program also offers more benefits like analytics, longer videos, and editing tools.
If you don’t want to use YouTube, then there are many other popular platforms including Vidyard, Wistia, and SproutVideo. For a closer look at all the top video sites, please see our expert pick of the best video hosting sites for bloggers.
After choosing a platform, you’ll need to create an account and upload all the vlogs that you want to show on your WordPress website.
For instructions on how to do this, check out the online documentation for your chosen video hosting platform.
Step 6. Create Your First Vlog
To create your first vlog, simply go to Posts » Add New in your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress has a block-based editor that allows you to create beautiful content layouts for your vlogs. Here, you can add text, images, audio clips, and more.
The easiest way to add vlogs to WordPress is by using the built-in auto-embed feature. If you’re using one of the big video hosting platforms, then you can simply paste the video’s URL into the WordPress content editor, and WordPress will handle the rest.
Just head over to your chosen video hosting platform and find the vlog that you want to show on your WordPress blog. You can then simply copy the video’s URL.
After that, switch back to the WordPress dashboard and paste the URL in the content area. If you paste it into a standard Paragraph block, WordPress will automatically try to place it in the correct block, such as the YouTube block.
Even if you don’t see the platform-specific block, it will use the Embed block and display the video inside the content editor.
As you’re working on the vlog, you can see how it’ll look to visitors by clicking on ‘Preview.’
This will open the page in a new tab.
The WordPress post editor also has sections for Categories and Tags. You can use these to organize your vlogs so it’s easier for visitors to find interesting content. To learn more, please see our guide on how to add categories and tags in WordPress.
When you’re happy with how the vlog looks, go ahead and click on the ‘Publish’ button in the top-right corner of the screen.
To add more vlogs to your website, simply follow the same process described above.
Step 7. Add a Contact Form to Your Vlog
Some viewers might want to contact you directly. This may include affiliate marketers, sponsors, advertisers, and other brands who are looking to build relationships with creators, or other vloggers who want to collaborate.
These people could ring your phone number or send a message to your business email address, but we always recommend adding a contact form to your website.
This makes it easier for potential partners to contact you, so you don’t miss out on any opportunities to grow your brand and make money from your vlogs.
The easiest way to add a contact form to your WordPress website is by using the free WPForms plugin. WPForms comes with a built-in Simple Contact Form template that you can customize using the drag-and-drop editor.
You can then add the form to any page, post, or widget-ready area using the ready-made WPForms block.
Once you’ve added some content to your vlog, it’s a good idea to add a navigation menu so visitors can find their way around the different videos.
The exact location of your menu will depend on your WordPress theme. Most themes have several options, so you can create multiple menus and then show them on different areas of your vlog.
Whether you create a single menu or multiple menus, it’s easy to add navigation to your vlog. For a complete guide, please see our post on how to add a navigation menu.
Menus encourage people to explore your site, but sometimes visitors may want to search for a specific vlog. WordPress comes with a built-in search feature, but it’s quite basic and not very good at finding relevant content.
It is very easy to use and gives much more accurate search results. It allows visitors to search for a keyword in the post or page title, content, URL slug, categories, tags, taxonomies, WordPress excerpts, and even comments.
All of this can help visitors find interesting vlogs, fast.
If you want to get more viewers, then you’ll need to optimize your vlog for SEO. This will help search engines understand your content and show it to people who are looking for videos just like yours.
AIOSEO is the best WordPress SEO plugin on the market and has everything you need to get your vlogs onto the first page of Google, without having to learn any complicated SEO jargon.
AIOSEO comes with the easiest setup wizard that helps you choose the best SEO settings for your business. AIOSEO will even scan your vlogs and show an actionable checklist on how you can optimize that specific vlog.
Additionally, AIOSEO has a video sitemap feature that you can use to show search engines what’s the most important content to index.
Did you know that 70% of people who leave your site will never come back? Thankfully there are lots of ways to turn abandoning visitors into loyal viewers.
To start, it’s smart to create an email newsletter so people who enjoy your vlogs can subscribe. After that, you can email these subscribers every time you post a new vlog.
You can also keep them engaged with your brand by sending them fun surveys and polls, notifying them about any giveaways and contests you’re running, or even simply asking them for feedback on your latest vlog.
All of this can help you create a sense of community and build a stronger relationship with your viewers.
If you do build an email list, then you’ll want to make sure your messages arrive safely in the subscriber’s inbox and not in their spam folder. With that in mind, we recommend using an SMTP service provider to improve your email deliverability rates.
Another option is to use push notifications with software like PushEngage to send targeted, personalized messages to viewers after they leave your vlog.
Push notifications are short, clickable notifications that appear as a popup on the user’s desktop or mobile devices. Some of the biggest websites in the world use push notifications to keep users engaged, including Facebook.
These notifications go directly to the user’s web browser or mobile device so they have a high chance of getting the person’s attention, which makes them perfect for notifying viewers when you post a new vlog.
Creating lots of quality, engaging vlogs takes a lot of time and effort, so you may want to make money from your videos.
If you’ve created a contact form, then potential sponsors and partners already have a way to contact you, which is a great start. However, there are lots more ways to make money online with WordPress.
Here are some of the best ways to make money from your vlog.
Google AdSense
There are many reasons why it’s smart to embed videos on your own website, rather than simply uploading them to platforms like YouTube.
One major benefit is that you can show Google AdSense ads next to your videos.
When you sign up for Google AdSense, Google acts as a middleman between you and the advertiser. Instead of you having to find the right partners for your vlog, Google allows advertisers to bid for keywords matching your content. This allows you to get the best possible rates for the ads on your vlogging website.
Many vloggers make money by recommending products and services to their viewers. For example, many lifestyle vloggers film daily routine videos showing off their favorite skincare or fitness products.
By using affiliate links, you can earn money every time a viewer buys a product or service based on your recommendation.
For the best results, it’s a good idea to only recommend quality items that you already use and trust. If you encourage viewers to buy poor-quality or scammy products, then you’ll damage your band and almost certainly lose viewers.
If you build a strong, positive relationship with your viewers then they may want to support your work as a vlogger. This is particularly true if you’re a hobby vlogger or someone who is just starting out.
Although they’re mostly used by non-profits, some vloggers use donation forms so that viewers can support their work. These forms are often presented as ‘buy me a coffee’ or ‘buy me a beer.’
Most of the time, you’ll want your vlogs to be publicly available so you can get as many views as possible and build your audience.
However, some vloggers may want to create a video membership site in WordPress. This allows people to pay for different perks, such as early access to the latest vlogs, exclusive live streams, or premium members-only videos.
You can also offer perks that don’t involve videos, such as a members-only forum, blog posts, or the ability to chat with you directly on channels like Discord.
The easiest way to create a membership site is by using MemberPress. It is the best WordPress membership plugin on the market and allows you to accept payments, create unlimited subscription levels, restrict access to video pages based on levels, and more.
Sell Your Videos as Digital Downloads
Depending on the kind of vlogs you create, you may decide to sell some of your premium videos as digital downloads. For example, if you’re a health and fitness vlogger then you might create videos teaching your followers different exercise routines.
For some niches, this can be a way to monetize the audience you’ve built from your vlogs.
With Easy Digital Downloads, you have complete control over how you distribute your videos. You can allow customers to download files as many times as they want or restrict file downloads by time or attempt.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
