In this article:
- Introduction
- Setting up the social media strip
- Group properties
- Social media icon properties
- Can I use my own social media icons?
Introduction
If you're not promoting your social nature through your email signatures, you are missing out on a great opportunity to get loads of new fans for free and introduce your customers to your Twitter feed, Facebook page, LinkedIn profile, Google+ account and RSS feeds.
By having social media links on all email signatures, you're offering your target market another avenue to continue your business relationship outside of traditional communication channels.
The Social Media Strip element is used to add multiple social media channels (icons and associated links) to a signature:
Having dropped this element into your design, setup options are displayed so you can customize social media channels.
Note: If you prefer to add a single social media channel, you can use the Social Media Icon element instead of the strip (the Social Media Strip is actually a group of Social Media icon fields).
Setting up the social media strip
Having dropped this element into your design, placeholder settings are displayed for some of the most popular social media channels:
Each social media channel is presented with three pieces of information:
| Icon | A range of professional icons are provided - just use the drop-down list to select one. |
| Link | Placeholder links are provided. If the required URL is the same for everyone in your organization, you can just update placeholder links with the required link. However, if these accounts vary by user and account details are stored in a user details field in Office 365, you can add this field to the URL. To do this, position the cursor at the end of the URL (after the forward slash) and type an open curly bracket. For example: https://www.facebook.com/{. This displays a list of available attribute fields, from which you can make a selection:
For further information about working with user attributes and social media icons, please see our Setting up social media icons with attributes article. |
| Alt | Default 'alternate' text is provided for each entry - you can update this if required. |
From here, you can:
Note: You define properties for these fields once you've confirmed these settings and added the strip to your design.
Removing a social media channel from the strip
To remove a social media channel from the strip, simply click the cross icon associated with that item:
Note: It doesn't matter if you change your mind later about which channels to include. Once you've added a social media strip to a signature design, you can still remove individual fields at any time.
Adding a social media channel to the strip
To add more social media channels, click the Add {Field} button:
This adds another row to the list, so you can choose an icon, add Link and Alt details, then click OK to confirm:
Selecting a layout
By default, the social media strip is displayed with a Horizontal layout:
If required, you can change this to a Vertical layout:
Group properties
Once you've confirmed the setup of your social media strip and added this element to your design, properties for the strip (i.e. the group of social media icons) are displayed:
These properties define how all social media icons within the strip will look and behave. By default, all icons within this group will inherit these properties, but you can always select an individual field later, to define specific properties. Common group properties are detailed in our Groups and group properties article, but specific Social media icon properties are summarized below.
Social media icon properties
Social media icon properties determine the appearance of icons within the strip:
| Background | Use this option to change the background color of icons. For example:
Default:
Background set to black:
|
| Foreground | Use this option to change the foreground color of icons. For example:
Default:
Foreground set to red:  |
| Width / Height | Use this option to change the size of icons. For example:
Default:
Width set to 40px:
|
| Corner radius | Increase or decrease the curve on icon corners. If the slider is set to the minimum setting, the icon is square:
If the slider is set to the maximum setting, the icon is round:
If the slider is somewhere in between (as per the default), the icon has rounded corners. |
| Show glass | If this option is selected, icons are displayed with a glassy finish; if it is switched off, icons have a flat appearance. For example:
Show glass switched on:
Show glass switched off:
|
Can I use my own social media icons?
A range of social media icons are available when you set up a social media strip. If you wish to use your own icons, you can do so by adding a series of images - using this method, you can add or link to your own icons.