In today’s social media-driven world, utilizing social media is essential for any online business. Social media is the lifeblood of any company’s online community. While managing your social media accounts, it’s also important to make sure you integrate social media on your website. There are however, some do’s and don’ts to how you go about this.
Social Media Share and Follow Buttons
This is a basic setup and strategy that every website should have. Make sure your site has links to your social media somewhere on each page. You want to make it easy for the user to access your company’s social media from your site. However, you do not want to encourage the user to leave your site, as that defeats the purpose of having a website and lowers your SEO performance. Also, make sure to add share buttons on all of the content that you publish so that users can share what you have.
Social Login and Social Identity
Registration = Retention. Social media is the perfect login system that your site needs. Users’ trust it, and they will most likely click the “push to login” button. 73% of people say they would rather log in with their social media than create an account on a website. By making the registration process easier, your conversion rate increases as more and more people will register to your site. Having a login for social media also makes your site look more trustworthy to users. When users can see that their friends like your brand it sends the user the message of credibility.
Don’t Overuse Social and Learn from Analytics
While using Social Media links are a great tool, however, be sure to not overuse them. They are a tool. Not the features your website has to offer. Place social media links where they need to be and let the user decide if they want to use them. Using social media plugins also gives you incredibly helpful analytical tools to see how your community engages with both your website and social media content. Be sure to utilize these tools when publishing content on your site and social media pages.
You could even try to create a website where users can open their social media accounts directly in the site, allowing them to use them at the same time. While this might not always be useful, for some types of online business it could be a very attractive part of your experience.
These are some really helpful tips on incorporating social media in a small business. Social media is extremely important today as it is the most impactful way to market a small online business.
Interesting points Ryan. I had never thought of how there is a balance of promoting social media… in that you don’t want to drive users off your website, yet want to make it easy for them to connect and engage with social media. With the recent news surrounding Facebook, I wonder how this will effect social logins and if any other platforms will rise as primary logins in the future.