Integrating your social media activities with your existing online presence is important for several reasons. Your social media profiles can bring more traffic to your website and vice versa, it will make your website more interactive so visitors are more likely to engage with you, and it can help you to build more overall brand recognition on the internet.
There are several ways you can add social media to your website:
Social media linksInclude links to your social media accounts on your home page
Add icons representing the social media portals that you are active on to your homepage and link them to the relevant profiles. Visitors will then be able to click straight through to their preferred social media networks to interact with you there. It’s also a good idea to add these details to your Contact page.
Add share links on your website
Add share links to each of the content pages on your website to make it easy for visitors to share them with their networks. This way, when they see something they think others will find interesting it’s just a matter of clicking on the icon to share it instantly.
Incorporate social media feeds directly on your website
Add a widget that allows you to include the feeds from your social media right on your website, so that they are updated automatically. This means that visitors will be able to see your latest Twitter, Facebook or blog posts, etc on your website, without you having to add or update them manually. They can usually also then click through to the relevant social media platform for more information if they want to.
Create an interactive experience with video
Interesting videos are a great way to engage your visitors. You can easily embed videos that you’ve uploaded to YouTube onto your website or blog and it will make your website more engaging and interactive, not to mention making visitors aware that you have a presence on YouTube.
Use Live Chat so visitors can contact you easily
Instant messaging has become an increasingly popular way for people to communicate online, and you can use this to your advantage by allowing your website visitors to speak with you directly. It’s great for answering questions, getting feedback, resolving problems and also monitoring visitor paths around your site.
It’s up to you the extent to which you integrate your social media with your website. Choose the ideas you think will work best for your business and you’ll find you get a lot more out of your social media marketing activities.