How to add Digital Badges to your social media profile

Let's breakdown the steps you need to take to share a Digital Badge or Digital Certificate in your social media platform, using Virtualbadge.io's Badge Creator

Jun 28, 2021
6 min
|      by
Giovanna Pergher
digital badges education

If you are confused about how to add Digital Badges to your social media platform or share them in your posts, we built this small guide for you.

We’ll be using Virtualbadge.io software here. If you want to give it try, you can use this link for the free trial and to create your own badge.  

We’ll take you step by step, starting on campaign set-up and ending on sharing the badges.

If you have received your Virtual Badge and if you are just interested in seeing how to share it online, feel free to skip to the final part of the article.

Badge Creator Software

The place you choose to create your Digital Badges is a crucial part of the process, as it will heavily impact your clients’ experience with your brand.

Depending on the software, you’ll have different options to share them on social media.  

If you are looking into different platforms to do so, using Virtualbadge.io will be a great option. There are different prices, depending on your needs and on which features you are looking for.

To get you started, there’s a free plan that allows you to add up to 50 participants and create one free badge. Other features you can get with this plan are custom badge design, custom social sharing and data insights on the use of your badges by your participants.

How to add the Digital Badge to social media:

We'll go through the product features you get, while guiding you through all the steps of the process.

1. Access to the sharing settings of the Badge

After the badge is created, we move on to the campaign set up. This also includes social media sharing settings.

You’ll be able to add hashtags that resonate with your brand, and that you see trending on LinkedIn and Twitter. This can be particularly useful if you run a search on trending topics or keywords that you want to be associated with. It’s a great strategy to grow organic traffic and to make sure that your Badge posts will perform better.

In addition, you can add a small text that your participants will be able to share, making their life even easier.

They’ll only have to click on “share badge”, not having to worry about what to post or which hashtags to use.  

Here’s what this feature looks like inside Virtualbadge.io’s app:

Virtualbadge.io Sharing Settings

Looking at the image above, you also see that there’s the Email Editor. Although this is not related to social media sharing, it’s part of the campaign set up and it’s the official way to send the digital badge to all your participants.

Let’s see how this looks like:

badge creator software- campaign set up

Here you have access to the editor to build your email campaign design and choose your header and content to go inside your participants’ email.

The text is changeable when you click on it. The Logo can be added to your profile panel (accessed by clicking on the “ACCOUNT” drop down menu on the top right corner of your screen.  

Scrolling down, you can even add your address and other company information:

badge creator software - email campaign set up

The badge creator gives you total control over the colors, styling and even on the language used. The Software supports English, Portuguese and German.

2. Setting up the Certificate Validation and Unique Certificate Pages

The next feature you’ll see is the certificate validation. This is included in the Pro and Expert account, and also in the 30-day trial for the free account.

In this step, you’ll be able to set up the certificate and get it ready to be shared on LinkedIn.

badge creator software - email campaign set up

You also have the option to add some text to the certificate. This can be a great way to promote your company and increase visibility amongst future prospects.

The cool part about this feature, is that you can easily validate the certificate in an automated way, ensuring that it’s unique and making it impossible to be replicated or copied by others.  

When this feature is activated, all badges created are validated in their own unique webpages, where your participants can access information such as:

  • Details about the course
  • ID of the certificate  
  • Name/profile picture of the receiver of the certificate.

You can read more about this feature here.

3. Setting Up a Participants’ Landing Page

The participants’ landing page is the page participants will see when you send out the email.

Here you’ll get to choose the slug for the page’s URL, update your logo and choose which style you want to present the badge in.

badge creator software - participant landing page

To select between the 3 available styles, simply click on the black arrows.

You can also choose the theme color you prefer. We chose green as you can see, but this is completely customized to your taste.

4. Setting up your participants list

When everything is set up, you’re ready to move on to the final stage where you’ll add your participants list and send the email with the badge.

To do it, you can upload a csv file or add them manually, one by one. If you are not familiar with csv files, have a look at this article here.

Once the Badge is activated, you can send out all the emails.

badge creator software - email campaign

5. Final Overview

At last, you’ll get to activate your Digital Badge campaign and send the emails over to your participants.

To go ahead, we’ll click on “Activate”.

You can also find other settings on this page, such as duplicating the badge, deleting it, and access the full statistics (sharing rate, creation rate, emails open, and more).

badge creator software - data insights and overview of the badge

The Steps to Add the Badge on LinkedIn

The badge is created, the layout is set up, and now we move on to the sharing part.

After receiving the email, your participants will be taken to the Landing Page where they can connect with LinkedIn or Facebook to have their photo and name associated with their badges. They can also opt to upload their own photo, and not use any social media profile.

What happens in this step:

  1. Participants will be able to connect their preferred social media platform to get their own photo and name.  
  1. After connecting with a social media platform, a badge will be generated with their default name and photo of the chosen platform. If they don’t connect with any platform, they can manually add their own name to the Badge.
  1. The option to share the badge automatically on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook will appear. There’s also the download option, should the participant decide to share the Badge on other social media platforms (such as Instagram), or keep it for themselves.
  1. Participants will receive their own LinkedIn Free Certificate and the option to add it to their LinkedIn Profile.

Let’s have a look at the process:

Stage 1

After receiving the email, the participant opens the link that leads to the Landing Page. Here they will see an example of how the Badge will look like when shared, on a feed.  

The token field will be pre-filled once participants click on the email link. And they are ready to start.

Create your Virtual Badge

Stage 2

The Participant connects to LinkedIn, for example, by clicking the “Connect to LinkedIn” button and agreeing to the terms and conditions.

The name and photo from their LinkedIn profile will show up, and they are ready to download the Badge, or share it on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn.

Customize your Badge

Stage 3

The LinkedIn Certificate is generated, by clicking on “Add Certificate to LinkedIn profile”, as seen in the image above.  

Afterwards, they are taken to LinkedIn to add the Badge there. The Credential URL that validates the Badge is already pre-filled, and is associated with each certificate created, ensuring its authenticity.

Make sure that you enable pop-ups in your browser, otherwise you won’t be taken to LinkedIn.

Add licenses & certifications

Sharing your Badge as a post on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter

To share your Badge on any of Vitualbadge.io ‘s connected and supported platforms, you just need to click on “Share to _” when in the Landing Page (as we saw above).

A pop-up will appear, including the text you set up before for your participants, along with the hashtags.

Customize your Post

Share your Digital Badge on Instagram or Download them

To share your Virtual Badge on Instagram or other platforms, you can simply download it as we saw above and then upload it yourself directly.

And that’s it!

The Digital Badge is shared without your participants having to leave the Landing Page and asking your participants to go through the trouble of doing it manually.

* You can find the organisation ID in the URL when you access your LinkedIn Company page as an admin.

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