Almost all businesses are using social media. In fact, 91.7% of U.S. marketers use social media for marketing purposes, according to Statista and this number continues to grow. Even though social media is not the only leading promotion strategy for businesses, it is still one of the most effective ways.
All businesses use social media, but not all are leveraging the opportunities to expand reach and grow engagement within their networks through integration. Many marketers focus only on the platform itself and creating and promoting the content within the platform. There's also a huge opportunity to integrate social media efforts with your website. And you can do exactly that with a social media widget.
There are a ton of benefits to using social media. The benefits that most businesses get from using social media effectively are:
- increased brand awareness
- increased sales or leads
- community engagement
- growing the audience
- increase traffic to the website
All of these can be achieved through social media, and results can be amplified when integrating your social media content into your website through a widget or plug-in.
In this guide, we walk you through the three different types of social media widgets to help you improve your results. Plus, we include a list of the 15 best social media widgets (most of which offer free plans).
Types of social media widgets
There are three main types of social media widgets, and we've got tool recommendations for every kind.
Before we dive into our list of social media widgets, let's first take a look at the categories:
- Social media feed widget - A feed widget is essentially a social media aggregator that adds your recent content to your website. You can embed your Instagram feed, your X (Twitter) feed, your TikTok feed, etc. so that new posts automatically appear.
- Social media sharing widget - A sharing widget provides social sharing buttons to make it easy for website visitors to share your articles, products, or other site content on Facebook, X, LinkedIn, etc.
- Social media follow widget - With a follow widget, you can add a row of social media icons to encourage website visitors to follow you on all social platforms, or you can add a large button or widget to drive followers to a single account.
Now that we've got a good handle on the main types of social media widgets, let's dive into why it’s so important!
Why is having a social media widget so important
Your website is one of your most powerful digital assets. It’s the place where people learn about your brand, explore your products or services, and decide whether they want to work with you or make a purchase. By adding a social media widget to your website, you can turn passive browsing into deeper engagement.
A social media widget serves as a bridge between your website and your active social presence. It allows visitors to connect with your brand on the platforms they prefer. You’re bringing your social content directly to them—automatically and in real time.
Here are just a few reasons why a social media widget is essential:
- Showcase your best content - With a social media feed widget, your latest posts, reels, or tweets can appear right on your site. This keeps your website fresh without needing constant manual updates.
- Boost credibility - When website visitors see consistent posting and engagement on your social channels, it builds trust. It shows you're an active brand with a real community.
- Encourage interaction - Whether you're embedding a follow button, a feed, or a hashtag campaign, social widgets invite your audience to connect with you beyond your website.
- Drive conversions with UGC - Featuring user-generated content (UGC) from real customers can increase conversions. People trust content created by other users far more than brand messaging alone.
- Strengthen your branding - When your social widget is styled to match your brand’s look and feel, it blends seamlessly into your site while enriching the experience with dynamic content.
In short, a social media widget is a strategic tool that can elevate your site’s engagement, showcase your authenticity, and turn visitors into loyal followers (and customers).
Best social media feed widgets
These free and affordable social media feed widgets make it easy to embed your fresh social content on your website.
1. Curator
Curator is a free social media aggregator platform that lets you pull content from Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, TikTok, and over a dozen other sites.
Features:
- Minimal, unnoticeable branding on the free plan
- No branding on paid plans
- Aggregates content from accounts, hashtags, geolocation, and more
- Ability to add custom posts and announcements to your feed
- Ability to pin posts to the top of your feed
- Moderation rules (automated or manual post approval)
- Dozens of feed templates
- Custom CSS for advanced styling
Pricing:
The free plan works for up to three sources or feeds. To remove the "Powered by Curator" link, get up to five sources or feeds, and get 60 Minute update speed, you can sign up for the Professional plan which costs $25 per month.
2. Social Blend
With Social Blend, you can add your posts from Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and more.
Features:
- Feed style themes
- Automated or manual approval
- Analytics reports
- Text-based rules
- RSS feed embeds
Pricing:
The free plan gives you one social media feed. To remove the "Powered by Social Blend" branding, you can choose the Small plan for $25 per month. If you want more than one, as in two social media feeds, you'll need the Pro plan for $49 per month.
3. Flockler
Flockler is another great option for adding your social media feed to your website. The downside is that the free plan's branding is more noticeable than Curator and Social Blend, so this might not be the right fit for you if you are looking for a free tool.
Features:
- Embed social media feeds
- Manage and embed UGC
- Embed customer reviews
- Track content rights
- Feed themes
Pricing:
As a more advanced UGC widget solution, Flockler doesn't offer a free plan. The lowest cost option is the Lite plan which costs $51 per month and gives you up to two feed sources. Their best value plan is Flockler Basic for $110 per month, which gives you eight feeds.
4. Juicer
Juicer is a social media aggregator that works with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and other social media platforms. They do offer a free plan, but it injects very noticeable and large Juicer ads into your feed so you wouldn't want to use this option unless you plan to pay for it.
Features:
- Social media wall
- Content moderation
- Post filtering
- Feed styling
Pricing:
The free plan works for up to one feed with two sources, but does have noticeable branding. The lowest price plan is the Lite plan which costs $13.5 per month and offers up to three sources for a single feed and has no Juicer ads. For up to three feeds, opt for the Pro plan which costs $89 per month.
5. Taggbox
Similar to Flockler, Taggbox offers UGC curation and management in addition to social media feed widgets. Depending on your needs, that might be good news or unnecessarily complicated and expensive.
Features:
- UGC collection and management
- Embed social media accounts
- Embed customer reviews
- Embed from hashtags
- Social shopping links
Pricing:
Taggbox has different prices for their two target users (digital marketers and event marketers). For digital marketers, you can opt for their free plan or pay for the Starter plan which costs $19 per month and works for up to two feeds.Incorporating their UGC rights management requires their Advanced plan which costs $79 per month.
Best social media sharing widgets
With these social icon widgets, you can add sharing buttons to your website to boost the shares of your articles, products and other content.
6. ShareThis
The Share Buttons offered by ShareThis offer a 100% free solution for adding social media and text-sharing icons to your website.
Features:
- Inline share buttons
- Sticky share buttons
- Image share buttons
- Video share buttons
- Mobile optimized
- Design customizations
- WordPress plugin
- Works on any type of website (not just WordPress)
Pricing:
Free for everyone!
7. Social Warfare
Social Warfare Pro is a very affordable sharing widget solution that offers some advanced features like in-post quotes and follow buttons.
Features:
- Metadata to control how content is shared (titles, descriptions, etc.)
- Customizable design
- Accurate share counts
- WordPress plugin
- Mobile responsive
- Shareable in-post quotes
- Follow widgets
Pricing:
You'll pay a one-time fee of $29 for each site. Or, you can purchase a bulk discount if you're managing multiple websites. Licensing for up to 10 websites costs $139.
8. Monarch
Monarch is a social media sharing widget offered by Elegant Themes, which is a very popular theme provider for WordPress and the company behind the Divi Builder.
Features:
- Lots of sharing widget location options (sidebar, above and below content, on top of images, etc.)
- Provides icons for 20 different social and communication platforms
- Automatic pop-ups and fly-ins
- Time delay settings for pop-ups
- Behavioral trigger settings for pop-ups
- Design customizations
- WordPress only
Pricing:
Monarch is sold as part of the Divi Builder, which costs $89 per year, or $249 for lifetime access. Both options offer unlimited use across all of your websites.
9. Social Snap
SocialSnap is a social media widget plugin for WordPress. It's very easy to use without coding prowess.
Features:
- Social sharing buttons
- Social sharing counts
- Social followers counts
- Design customization
- Advanced analytics
- Metadata to control sharing content
- WordPress only
Pricing:
For a one-year license for one website, you'll pay $39. Or, choose the Agency plan for one year of access for 15 websites for $299 per month.
10. Novashare
Novashare is another great option for a social media widget that adds sharing buttons across your website.
Features:
- Share counts
- Works on all devices
- Click to tweet quote blocks
- Supports 24 social and communication platforms
- Design customization
- WordPress only
Pricing:
You can pay $19.95 per year for one website or $119.95 per year for unlimited websites.
Best social media follow widgets
And for our final category, we have the best widgets for adding social media links through follow buttons. These will help you grow your social media following from website traffic.
11. Facebook Page Plugin by Meta
Page Plugin is a free tool offered by the Facebook development team. You can use it to embed your Facebook page header, content, events, and a Like button.
Features:
- Embed Facebook Like button
- Include header photo or not
- Include tabs (timeline or events)
- Can be designed with custom CSS
- Works on any website builder
Pricing:
Free for everyone!
12. ShareThis Instagram Follow Button
ShareThis offers a free Instagram Follow Button that is easy to install and quick to customize.
Features:
- Works for any website builder
- WordPress plugin
- Shopify plugin
Pricing:
Free for everyone!
13. X Follow Button
The X (Twitter) Follow Button is a free tool offered by the development team at X.
Features:
- HTML code tutorial
- Customization options (small or large button size / hide or show username)
- Works on any website builder
Pricing:
Free for everyone!
14. Jotform's Social Follow Widget
Jotform is an online form solution that can be used for contact forms, surveys, order forms, and other customer communications. Their Social Widget can be embedded in any website form so you can add social follow buttons inside your online forms.
Features:
- Works on any website platform
- Can be added to any website form
- Supports all major social media networks
Pricing:
The social widget is available for all Jotform customers. Jotform's free plan offers up to five forms and 100 submissions per month. Or, you can choose the Bronze plan which costs $34 per month and gives you up to 25 forms and 1,000 monthly submissions.
15. Elfsight Social Media Icons Widget
Elfsight's Social Media Icons Widget helps you attract more social followers from your website.
Features:
- Supports 50+ social and content networks
- Easy customization options
- Can be configured in under a minute
Pricing:
The free plan works for unlimited websites and up to 200 monthly site views (with Elfsight branding). Or, choose the Pro plan for $10 a month for usage on unlimited websites and up to 50,000 monthly views.
How to use Curator as your social media widget
I work for a digital marketing training company, and we actually recommend Curator as a must have social media tool. We live demo the tool in our trainings, to show our students all of the amazing features and options available. We aim to inspire our students to use this tool on their own websites to build visibility and engagement in their audience.
The customization options in Curator are amazing and easy to implement! Within just a few minutes of using the tool, I could easily create a beautifully curated feed for my site.
This site shows how they customized the feed to fit the tone of the brand.
This example shows how you can curate a feed using a specific hashtag. I love how the brand invites its users in to create content and tag them using their branded hashtag.
To get a better picture of all the great possibilities we’ve broken down the different use cases that are easy to implement using Curator’s aggregator.
Sidebar feed widget
A sidebar is a natural place to display your latest social posts without disrupting the main content of your website. With Curator, you can easily design a feed layout that fits neatly into your sidebar and makes your sidebar dynamic and engaging.
Customize the look to match your site's branding, choose which social platforms to display, and let the feed update automatically. It’s a simple way to keep your site dynamic and drive more engagement with your social content.
Footer and header integration
Adding a social media widget to your website footer is one of the most effective and low-maintenance ways to keep your content fresh. Since footers appear on every page of your site, this placement ensures maximum visibility for your social feed—without disrupting the user experience.
The City of Riverside has taken advantage of this approach which includes a Curator-powered feed in their footer that displays real-time tweets alongside key location and contact information. It’s a smart way to highlight active engagement and public updates while encouraging visitors to follow and interact with the city’s social channels.
Multi-source content feed
One of Curator’s biggest advantages is how easily you can combine content from multiple social media platforms into a single, seamless feed. Whether you’re pulling from LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok, setting up additional sources is just as simple as the first one.
This allows your visitors to engage with the content and platform they’re most comfortable with—all in one place. It’s perfect for brands with an active presence across several channels who want to keep their site content fresh and inclusive.
In the example above, Sika pulls in posts from different platforms into a single branded feed. The result is a dynamic, content-rich experience that reflects the full scope of their online presence and makes it easy for site visitors to stay connected.
Wall of love (UGC showcase)
A “wall of love” is a curated feed that highlights the best things your customers and fans are saying about your brand. With Curator’s simple filter options, gathering the right content is easy. What's more is that you can pull in customer reviews from reddit, google reviews, slack and more.
You can approve posts manually or set rules to automatically display the most relevant and positive content. This type of feed builds trust, showcases social proof, and turns happy customers into your best marketing asset.
Hashtag campaign integration
Running a hashtag campaign is a great way to build community and collect authentic UGC. With Curator, you can automatically pull in posts that use your branded hashtag and display them beautifully on your website with no manual curation needed (but you’ll definitely want to maintain the moderation to keep everything appropriate and on brand).
In the example above, the brand invites users to share content using a campaign-specific hashtag. The result is an eye-catching, dynamic feed that updates automatically and reflects real-time interactions. This type of social widget can be embedded on your homepage, landing pages, or even product pages to create buzz and drive conversions.
We love introducing this tool to our students and showing them the possibilities of what they can create. To view our tool review of Curator, check out our Digital Marketing Tools course, which is part of our all access pass.
Ready to set up your own social media widget? Try our free forever widget.