Social media has become such an interesting and diverse way to increase traffic to your website, but it is often integrated poorly. This article is to help you do a better job of just that. Don’t overlook the details when it comes to social media and you will be surprised at what it can accomplish.
1. Add Social Share and Follow Buttons
Allow your visitors to easily share your content and improve user experience with social share and follow buttons. Keep in mind the location of these buttons on your webpage, as easy-to-find and carefully placed buttons increase the chance of user shares and follows.
2. Incorporate Twitter feeds and Instagram Galleries on your Home Page
Keep your website updated with your latest news and information by integrating social media feeds on your home page. Adding a Twitter feed or Instagram Gallery can keep your website from becoming static and outdated, and can further encourage viewers to follow you on other media outlets. Be sure that you are actually active on these platforms, because displaying inactive social media channels will only weaken your online efforts. Maintain your social presence if you choose to go this route.
3. Take Advantage of Positive User Created Content
Take advantage of positive user created content, such as reviews, photos or videos related to your brand or product, and incorporate this content in your website. This will allow site visitors to become engaged and see the popularity of your brand. Olapic, Pixlee, Curalate and other platforms allow businesses to highlight and moderate content from their customers, fans, and followers through hashtags or with specific products. You can curate these hashtags and their corresponding content to display the best fan-generated content on your website.
4. Use Social Based Comment Systems
If you have a location for comments on your website, make sure you use social-based systems like Facebook Comments, Livefyre, or Digqus. These tools make the experience of commenting and conversation with others more engaging and credible through social verification, and will also bring the most liked or engaged comment to the top of the discussion. Each person that comments is required by the system to sync one of their social media accounts to the tool so there’s a genuine profile linked to their identity as a commentator. This lessens the chance of scams and trolls and encourages real human-to-human interaction.
5. Use Analytics
Google Analytics is useful in gathering general information about your site and its viewers, and you can use it to pay attention to the way individuals are using your social media buttons. To further address your social media presence, you can use software such as SproutSocial to gain other social media insights to pick up on trends and better understand your viewers and their tendencies. This software will allow users to compare web analytics and social media reporting information side by side, helping you to make goals and measure successes and areas for improvement.
6. Make your Content Tweet-able
Make it simple for users to share your content and consider using the Click to Tweet functionality. You can make it easy for your users by taking away the work of cutting and pasting and instead include Click to Tweet links and allow your user to tweet a specific quote or line of content. This function is usually added after a quote so when the user clicks it, the content automatically fills the tweet for them to send.
7. Repurpose your content
Try to circulate and reuse content throughout your social media platforms and within your website. This sharing of content between platforms is an effective way to get more use from the content and more users viewing and discovering your brand. For example, if you have a great image being used on your website, think about sharing it on Instagram or Pinterest.
8. Use Open Graph and Twitter Cards
To make your content more sharable, consider using Open Graph and Twitter Cards. When links are shared on social media platforms, Open Graph and Twitter Cards can attach rich photos, videos and media experience to viewers’ posts and tweets, which can influence the performance of these links on social media platforms.
9. Add Social Media Logins to your Site
If your website has a login system, considering linking it to Facebook or other social media outlets. Viewers will use their social media login information to log in to your website, eliminating the need to create a new username and password, thus shortening the registration process. This is likely to lead to an increase in your user registration rate. Using social login platforms, such as LoginRadius, to handle the management of these social logins and provide user profile data points to help you make more personalized content.
10. Use Social Feedback to Help with Content Strategy
Keep your users in mind and pay attention to what they are saying throughout social media platforms. Know what your audience is interested in so you can tailor your content to keep their attention and interest longer, perhaps answering their questions or reflecting on their interests. Do this by seeing what viewers are choosing to post from your site through the help of analytics data.
These ten tips should help you accomplish everything you hope to with social media. Integrating it properly on your website should drive traffic and in turn help with your conversion rates. Remember to never overlook its potential.
