13 best social media icon sets for your blog or website
Social media integration, whether with sharing buttons, feeds or buttons to send more people to your social platforms, provides ways for you to connect with your users on a different level. Not everyone wants to open up your website everyday, so it makes sense to distribute your articles and other content through the mediums that people check on a daily basis: social media sites.
As stated on the Social Media Examiner, it’s not enough to place social media icons on your website, because they must also stand out, allowing users to notice them and want to click through. That’s why it’s essential to find and use a social media icon set for WordPress.
Why do you need a social media icon set?
Technically, while designing your website, you could go to Facebook, Twitter, or any of the many other social media platforms, and grab the code they offer for social sharing and icon buttons. This is just fine, but then you are tasked with placing them on your site, making them look nice, and not to mention, you’re stuck with the branding they give you.
Wouldn’t it be nice to implement social sharing icons that have a creative twist to similar to the designs on your site? If you have a rustic, wooden background, why not have something similar for your social links? If your site has a flat design, your social icons should look the same.
That’s where the social media icon sets come in, because they generally offer dozens of icon designs for you to sift through and choose based on your own branding requirements. They are particularly helpful for webmasters who run quite a few sites or developers who manage client sites, since you would most likely need varying social icons for every single one of those sites.
Another reason social media icons sets prove desirable is because they don’t require any coding on your end. They are already designed, so that’s been done for you, and many of them even come packaged as plugins with widgets, or you can just drop the icons in your own custom widgets for easy configuration.
1. Circle Flat Icons Retina-ready
This icon set comes packed with 24 options to choose from. It’s from the LandoftheWeb site, and it combines two colors on each of the buttons for a vibrant variation for your buttons to stand out on your sites.
Included in the set are Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+ icons, and they all come in four different sizes for you to decide on how you want them to be displayed. The best part? The entire icon set is completely free, and they come in PNG format for easy modifications.
2. Free Flat Social Media Icon Set
The Free Flat Social Media Icon Set is designed by Allan McAvoy, and it incorporates some nifty, and free, buttons for sites like Blogger, Evernote, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. The square and flat designs are ideal for a modern look, and the EPS file formats work wonders for customizing however you want.
Allan McAvoy also gives out various other icon sets, so feel free to visit the site to see what else he has to offer.
3. Publicons
The Publicons website provides a growing collection of social media icons, allowing you to check back in on occasion to see which new ones have been added. Download the icons in PNG or SVG formats, and don’t pay a dime, since the entire set is free to download and use on your sites.
4. Genericons
The Genericons may look a little bland at first, but they are some of the more simple, and minimalist, icons you can find online. The icons are designed to remain clean and simple, since they are embedded in a webfont and perfectly structured for any business website. The vector icons have the option to change colors, so feel free to play around with them for your own branding purposes.
5. Hex Icons Pack
The Hex Icons Pack is one of the more unique designs, with hexagonal shapes and all the social platforms you could dream of. Receive over 170 icons, and an additional 45 games icons. You will find icons for everything from Digg to Google+, Chrome to Tumblr.
6. Font Awesome
Font Awesome provides more than just a bunch of social icons, so it’s wise to consider looking through the collection to see if any of the font solutions suit your sites. For example, you may require some icons for your web application or for form controls. Regardless, the Font Awesome set still offers various social media icons for you to test out on your sites. They aren’t the fanciest at first glance, but you can customize them with your own coding.
7. 20 Social Media Icons
This icon set has a unique approach on the standard icon world, since it provides colorful and circular icons, with options like Facebook, Evernote, Pinterest, and WordPress. As the name states, you get 20 social media icons to choose from, and they are ready for placements on your sites. Keep in mind that the only format the icons come in is PNG.
8. Icons
Although flat design is rather popular now, it’s not a bad idea to stray from the trends and stick with an icon set that provides shadows and interesting details. This set comes as PSD files, meaning you can place them in Photoshop and edit them if needed. The set is completely free, cutting costs on your end, and it includes a few unique icons from websites like TechCrunch, kik and Vimeo.
9. Free Colorful Icons
The Free Colorful Icons set is interesting, because some of the options are “cut out,” so something like the Dropbox icon wouldn’t have a background, allowing it to stand out a bit. The designer’s name is Michael Dolejs, and he provides a wonderful combination of icons, including Pocket, Gmail, Google Play and Skype. All the fun logos come as PSD downloads, letting you customize them and change them if you’d like.
10. Flat Social Media Icons
If you’re into following trends, go with the Flat Social Media Icons set, since it provides multiple colors and flat designs for your favorite social media brands. The set comes from the folks at Enfuzed, and it consists of 45 buttons for you to play around with and implement on your sites.
The file download formats are .ei and .eps, meaning you can go in there and change them around if needed. Some of the more unique icons that come along with this set are PayPal, Reddit, StumbleUpon and Foursquare.
11. Long Shadow Social Media Icons
The Long Shadow Social Media Icons set offers a nice effect on each of the icons. As you can see in the screenshot above, every icon has a cool shadow to the bottom right, bringing attention to the buttons and straying away from the usual designs you may find on social media buttons throughout the internet.
They are considered flat icons, so you still get that modern look, but the colors and shadows are truly what make this set one of a kind. The icon set is free, but the website does prompt you to donate if you’d like. Choose from four different icon sizes, and download the set in layered PSD format. Overall, it’s an elegant group of social media icons, with everything from Amazon to Skype, Yahoo to YouTube.
12. Flat Social Icons
Here’s a social media icon set for the minimalist who also craves a stylish and fun look. This set provides both square and circular designs, with .eps download formats for you to customize them for your own site. These are some of the cooler icons you will find on the list, but keep in mind that they give off a fun and playful vibe, so they may not work for a more professionally-toned company.
13. 24 Free Flat Social Icons
For another flat social icon set, look no further than this solution, with a wonderful design that provides a mashed-together, grid-based format. Basically, the buttons don’t leave any space between each other, which is nice for standing out and offering a colorful myriad of buttons and links. Some of the buttons include designs for Evernote, Blogger, PayPal, Pinterest and Facebook, along with many more.
You receive 24 social icons, and you don’t have to pay anything for them. The downloads come in three formats: .ai, .eps and .png. It’s nice, because you can re-size all the icons and even change their colors.
Over to you…
As stated above, the best social media icon sets allow users to follow you on your social networks. They prove helpful for those who run multiple sites, and make it a little easier on those who don’t know how to design their own icons or implement them on their sites.
That said, leave us a comment in the section below if you have any questions about these social media icon sets. Have you tried any of them out in the past? Which social icon sets would you recommend to others?
Dev Sharma is the marketing director of Design Bombs. He also runs a fairly popular WordPress resource site called WPKube, where he publishes in-depth guides like how to choose the right WordPress hosting, what is WordPress, and more.