Effectively Incorporating Social Media into Your Website

social media marketing

Earlier we gave you tips for using social media to grow your blog. It's essential to utilize social media properly to promote yourself, but once you start to pick up momentum and gain a following, how do you best integrate social media on your website to maximize its effect? After all, it's one thing to have a solid social media presence, but it's pointless if you can't get those followers absorbing your web content. This is one of the most critical errors that many business and marketing experts make – weaving social media into everything except their website. To most effectively market whatever it is that you're doing, social media has to work together smoothly with your website in unfettered harmony.

The most vital integration method, one that you'll see on top of just about any well-constructed list on the topic, is including social media buttons on your site. You know those small icons featuring popular social media logos you'll see after a piece of internet content or sometimes on a website's homepage? These are social media buttons, and they enable a user to share the content on your site instantly via their preferred social media platform. The benefit here should be immediately obvious. Social media buttons allow you to gain a bit of free press from every user that visits and shares the content that they like. Friends and followers of theirs who also see and enjoy this content are then encouraged to head back to your site to read it, and potentially other things that you have featured on your site. A kind of “cycle of promotion”, if you will. They are particularly useful for anyone running an online store, as it turns out that most consumers like to share their purchases using at least one form of social media, and social media buttons provide the most convenient method of doing so. Social media buttons, along with other social widgets one can integrate on their site, also provide a bit of “social proof” that you are who you say you are. It increases your credibility and standing among potential users, making them more inclined to trust you as a legitimate entity (key when you're doing anything online!).

It is, of course, most beneficial when these tools are used correctly. The general guidelines are to display the buttons at the side, top, or bottom of the page. Having the links remain visible from page to page, or even as the user scrolls (as in the case of buttons displayed on the side) can be useful as a reminder for users to share your content. You should only link to social sites that you are also on and actively using – if you're big on Twitter and Facebook, capitalize by pushing the Twitter and Facebook buttons, don't waste your time with Tumblr! Make sure those buttons are up-to-date (if you're still rocking last year's logos it makes you look a bit out of touch). You'll also want to avoid posting your exact social media numbers unless they are substantial/growing.

Obviously, this is but one method of incorporating social media on your website. There are a few other popular methods, one of the most effective practices (that seems tailor-made for social media sharing) is including engaging video content. People love to share quick videos on their platforms, especially if they are snappy and easy to understand. So in addition to spicing up your page, they can get you a few extra eyeballs. You should also consider adding a social login to your page. Instead of using their email address and creating a whole new account (a sometimes lengthy and annoying process), they can sign in almost instantly using their social media login of choice. This shortens their registration process immensely and makes users more likely to want to use your site. If you're the type that updates their social media page often, adding your Twitter/Facebook feeds directly to your website is also a strategy that has been shown to get people more engaged in your content.

When crafting your site, it's important to keep these details in mind to maximize user engagement. If you're not a designer and not the most web-savvy, it might be a bit daunting, but luckily, there are atonof great tools out there that can help you build and maintain a free website that is just as slick as a professionally constructed one. You'd be well off using just about any of them to create your page and integrate all of that important social media stuff to keep it hip.

 

Blogtrepreneur
 

Blogtrepreneur is a website where busy entrepreneurs learn to strategically use blogging as a way to exponentially grow our business and make more money.