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As a digital marketing consultant, I spend a lot of time promoting website content on social media. But what about promoting your social presence via your website? Embedding enables you to do exactly that. I’ll often use this tactic for video content as a way to repurpose it and increase its reach.
So what’s the process for embedding external content on your site? It differs slightly between platforms depending on where you’re pulling the content from, but the basic steps are mostly the same.
Let’s take a look at how to add HTML embed codes to your site and the specific steps for different platforms.
Table of Contents
The term “embed” means to place externally hosted content onto your website or web page. You do this by placing a block of code – called an embed code – into a HTML block on your website. Once you save the page and view the live version, the media you embedded then renders on the published page.
Embedded content is referenced with HTML, one of the most basic languages used on the web to design and lay out web pages.
You often see this code when you’re in the “back end” of a blog post, for example. That’s where you’ll add your embed code. Most website editors, from WordPress themes to drag-and-drop builders, will have HTML blocks available that you can place on a blog post or website page to paste the HTML code.
An embed code is a block of HTML code that is placed in another page and renders a visual element — a video, social media post, form, or page — from another website or source. You can embed YouTube videos, X posts, GIFs, and other multimedia objects on another website.
I frequently use embed codes to embed posts from X or LinkedIn as a quick and easy way to add thought leadership dimensions to blog content, for example.
Most social and multimedia websites have an option to generate an embed code right from each individual post. Here’s an example of an embed code for a HubSpot YouTube video:
And here’s the embedded result.
Want to do the same thing on your blog posts and pages? Next, I’ll go over how to generate an embed code from the most popular social sites. I’ve found that, once you know how to do this on one platform, the steps are very easy to replicate anywhere embedding is available with small variations.
Let’s dive into each step in more detail.
Before I embed external content, I first have to generate an embed code for the post or page I want to embed on a website.
Pro tip: A lot of website builders and CMS’s allow you to simply paste the link to the post and automatically embed it without having to go get the embed code. But this varies from one platform to another.
Here’s how I generate the embed code on most of the major social and content networks.
Here’s how I embed a Facebook post:
If I want to embed an Instagram post, it’s a pretty similar process. Just remember that embedding Instagram posts is only possible from the desktop version. Here’s how I do it:
If I’ve spent a lot of time putting together video content for a YouTube channel, I want to make sure it gets seen as much as possible. So, embedding YouTube videos is one of the most frequent ways I use the embed functionality. It makes my video content accessible to website users to expand its reach.
The other reason it’s good to embed videos? It saves a ton of bandwidth for a website. Videos tend to be very large files. Uploading them directly to a website can drastically slow down page load times. So, if you want videos on your website, I recommend using a platform like YouTube or Vimeo to do so.
Back to how I embed YouTube videos:
There’s a lot of useful thought leadership on X, and I like to embed tweets throughout editorial or blog content to boost authority and social proof. It’s also a good way to quote experts without needing to contact them directly or get something custom for your post.
Here’s how I can embed X posts:
I particularly like Pinterest posts for fashion, DIY, decor, cookery and recipe sites, and hobby sites. If your website is within a niche that lends itself well to Pinterest’s format and audience, embedding your Pinterest posts is a great way to grow your following on the social platform.
Here’s the process I follow for embedding a Pinterest post:
SlideShare presentations are a little dated these days – it’s a long while since I’ve embedded one on a website. But, you never know. So it’s useful to know how, just in case.
Here’s I grab the embed code for a SlideShare presentation.
On a rare occasion, I might need to embed an external webpage. Like all embed codes, this is done using an iframe HTML tag.
Here’s an example of what iframe HTML code looks like:
I can use these same tags to embed an external webpage. Here’s how I do it:
I work with a lot of different CMSs and they all work slightly differently. But the process of using the HTML block is fairly similar across the board. Here, I’ll go over how you can do it in Content Hub and WordPress.
In Content Hub, although I could use the HTML editor if I wanted to, I actually don’t need to in order to add embed content. Here’s how it works:
There isn’t necessarily a single way to insert embed code on a WordPress site because it can depend on the template you’re using. But if I’m using the standard classic editor, here’s how I do it.
Now all I need to do is save the page, or hit Update if I’m on a WordPress blog, and refresh the live URL to see the embedded content on the front end.
There’s a lot of good content out there even if it hasn’t been created by me or the brand I’m working with, and I find using the embed option is a great way to add depth and interest to my webpages. It helps to increase visual appeal and engagement, especially if you’re embedding videos.
Plus, it’s so easy to do. Once you’ve embedded content a couple of times it quickly becomes second nature. So experiment with embedding from different social media platforms in your page or blogs and watch your user engagement grow.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in September 2013 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.
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