It is a given that if you are going to be successful in the contemporary world of business, you must have an affinity with technology. This is particularly true when it comes to social media, which has evolved from a niche novelty into a pivotal marketing tool.
In an age of integrated marketing strategies, social media has become the glue that binds individual elements together within a seamless campaign. By incorporating social graphics and elements into your website design, you can also drive higher engagement levels and leverage the power of an associated blog.
3 Ways to integrate social Media with your Business Website
While this may be a sensible theory, executing it requires knowledge and a keen attention to detail. So, here are three ways through which you can integrate social media with your website for a powerful, online presence: –
1.Use actionable icons to connect your website and social platforms
Historically, social media channels, websites and blogging platforms were considered as entirely separate entities. When you consider that social media drove an estimated 31.24% of traffic to websites at the beginning of 2015, however, there is a clear and pressing need for you to create an active connection between your sites and channels such as Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest.
This is relatively easy to achieve, as you look to add actionable social icons that connect directly to your various profiles. Ideally, these will be placed strategically across specific landing pages and your blog, while you should ensure that your chosen icons (relating to your most prolific and popular accounts) are large, located above the fold and functional.
You should also look to host a Twitter feed on your home page, highlighting the latest brand news and upcoming events in real-time.
The key is to create a seamless consumer experience, while these steps also allow you to leverage the power, influence and emotive nature of numerous social channels in real-time.
2.Leverage the Power of YouTube
Under the stewardship of Google, YouTube has become a powerful social tool that can embellish the ranking of your website. In excess of six billion videos are watched on a monthly basis through the YouTube platform, and leveraging the popularity of this network can help to market your brand to a global audience.
Google’s most recent algorithms have prioritised websites that embed high quality YouTube videos on their landing pages (alongside those that are optimised for mobile usage). These videos not only reduce bounce rates and increase the time spent by each visitor on a specific page, but they also drive higher levels of engagement and help with the creation of diverse content.
Interestingly, YouTube is also renowned as the second largest search engine platform and one that processes a staggering three billion searches each month. In this respect, integrating a YouTube channel with your website and featuring high quality videos on key landing pages can create a sales funnel that ultimately drives conversions.
Just a word of warning; it is important that you embed videos that are hosted on YouTube rather than uploading them directly to your website. This ensures that you can harness the power of a huge social network and optimise the loading time of your pages!
3.Empower visitors to share your content
We have already discussed how the use of actionable social icons enables visitors to engage with your business, but it is also important to empower them as brand ambassadors. This means that social sharing icons must be featured prominently at the top and bottom of relevant landing pages, particularly those that include products and high quality blog content.
Ultimately, landing pages with a defined value proposition can be easily leveraged across multiple social networks. Regardless of whether this takes the form of a discounted offer or an insightful blog post, the key is to offer value to your audience and compel them to share the content within their own network.
On a final note, it is important to optimise the range of sharing options available on your site without compromising page loading times. This not only allows you to include social media staples such as Facebook and Twitter, for example, but also enables you to target specific demographics through alternative channels.
Take the predominantly female user base of Pinterest, for example, or the professional audience of LinkedIn, each of which has a large but relatively niche following that can be targeted with specific products or content.
In terms of execution, you can embed the ‘Share This’ feature and include it alongside your primary social icons. Clicking on this produces a drop-down menu with a huge range of options, enabling you to access a targeted audience in a matter of moments.
If you would like to share your own thoughts or ideas on how to integrate social media with your website, please feel free to leave your comments below!