How to use Social Media in Your Website
Why social media?
The
web is growing at a speed that you can never imagine. The information being
poured into this infinite space is monstrous. You will need to carefully create
a marketing and social plan using effective online tools that will help you to use
social media on your website.
Social Media…what is it?
As
people move on the internet alone or as a community, they “like”, “share” or
“comment” or even “follow” something interesting on a website. This opportunity
is provided via a social media.
Social
site are like the famous ‘Facebook’ and ‘Twitter’ used by the “happening”
people and bookmarking social sites such as Digg and StumbleUpon, photo sharing
sites such as Flickr and Pinterest, blogging sites such as Blogger and
WordPress, discussion sites in the form of various online forums, video sites
like You Tube, online deals sites and many more.
It
is good to link social media onto your site to connect these various options with
the virtual reality of your brand – your website! Thus, you can connect social
media profiles from the World Wide Web to your website using these social media
pins and more.
This
allows your visitors/clients to connect with you instantly. This method goes
around and connects people very fast and it is usually free or low cost.
Does your business need this social media?
Take a look
at these facts from last year's survey
- The
total effect on buyers purchase interest via Facebook is 48%.
- 66%
of the worlds population use social media.
- 15%
of Twitter users have purchased
something based on details from Twitter.
- 51%
of top companies use social sharing buttons on their
websites.
- 86%
of web users prefer logging in via social profiles in
websites
Social
media plays an important role in your website’s search optimisation, especially
after search quality-based algorithmic updates like Panda and Penguin. Social
signals have now become increasingly important towards improving your website’s
search ranking. As a web business owner, however, you need to keep in mind that
social media is also an integral part of your site’s user experience and
retention. When your website provides social media buttons, your
users need not leave your site to like or recommend it.
Key Social media elements
for your website:
1. Social
Media Buttons
You can use icons of popular social media sites such as
Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Pinterest, StumbleUpon, etc. They
can be placed at the top, left, right or bottom of the web page content; such
as a blog, video or image.
Take
a look at some sample websites and notice how these icons have been used. They
can be effective in reaching out to your users and more.
2.
Social Share Buttons
These
allow users to stay on the site and share the content on their social media
profiles with just a click and without leaving the site. Site visitors can
choose interesting content to share, click on the social share button and
easily post an update to their social media profiles.
Do
not make the buttons too small or too big. Ideally, they must not draw too much
attention but still be easy to find. The position of the social share buttons
is one of the factors that determines effective usability of your site.
The
following are some helpful hints on the positioning of share
buttons:
- Keep
the share icons in a manner that users need not scroll to find them.
- If
you have a blog on your site, you could place them at the bottom of the
blog so that the reader shares the blog or keep them floating so that they
are seen even when the page is scrolled.
Place the share buttons
only if it makes sense to share.
For instance, if you have
an e-commerce website and your users are buying a product, do not prompt them
to share the product image or content because at that point they only need to
complete their purchase. You could include a share button at the end of
the transaction, i.e., the check-out page, where your users would be more
likely to spread the word.
This
increases user activity and reference marketing. It brings in social activity to
your site for better search rankings.
Tools and Resources:
·
AddThis
·
ShareThis
·
Po.st
· Gigya (Paid option)
· Shareexy
· Lockerz
· Janrain
· Sharre
· Tweetit
3. Social
Login
You
may have noticed that many of the most popular sites on the web use social
login. Having
social login alongside a regular login on your website gives the user plenty of
options to choose from. This is a good approach in terms of your website’s
usability as some users will find it easier to use an existing social login
rather than create an entirely new one.
Advantages
of a Social Media Login are:
- No
Spam, only real people register
- Faster
sign up, no user details required
- Lesser
bounce rates
- The
social login user need not remember username and password
4. Social Comments
This
allows the user to give a comment or feedback. It ensures user activity on the
site. It allows users to comment with their own social media profiles.
Benefits
of social commenting:
- Comments
will not be spam since social media profiles are owned by real people
- Increases
Social activity to your site.
- Using
their personal profile to comment discourages users from vulgar comments.
5.
Authorship:
If
you were to look at search results for your keyword, which result really
catches your eye? Generally, it would be the one with the picture of the author
in it. Such search results are achieved by creating authorship markup with Google + and adding it to your blogs, articles and other content. It
gives the content a human touch, which makes readers select your article over
others.
Here
is a step-by-step process on how to create Google+ Authorship for your content:
- Create
a personal account on Google+
- Go
to Google+ Profile page
- Click Edit
Profile
- Scroll
down on the page and Click Contributor to
- Click Add
Custom Link
- Enter
the name of the blog page and the blog URL
- Click Save
- Click Done
Editing on the top blue bar of the page
- Copy
the profile page URL to the code that links to the Author’s name below the
content, for example, Sameer Ansar on Google+
- Add
rel=”author” tag to it, as shown in the sample code below:
- <a
rel= “author” href= https://plus.google.com/u/105520809469704184434”>Sameer
Ansar on Google+</a>
6. Activity Feed:
Its
advisable to add an activity feed on your website that describes every recent
action that has taken place on your website by your site visitors. There are
many resources to create your own activity streams on your website, such as
Gigya or Atlassian, or you can embed social activity feeds from Facebook and
Twitter on your site, if you have an active Facebook and Twitter page. This
embedding does not require a web developer’s expertise and is very easy to do.
Tools and Resources:
·
Facebook
·
Twitter
· So So Social
· Gigya (Paid option)
Additional Facebook
Social Plug-ins:
- Send button can be
used to send content to a specific Facebook friend or group
- Subscribe
button lets
users see who has subscribed to your page.
- Recommendation Box is based on popularly
shared content. The users on your site are shown the content that is
highly recommended for further reading and the number of people who have
shared and liked the recommended content.
- Like Box longer version shows
the posts liked on the page. The shorter version shows faces of Facebook
users that like your page.
Other Social Integration
Tools and Resources:
- Embedded
Tweets
uses a single line of code provided by Twitter developers by which you can
embed your tweets on your website.
- Linkedin Insider Company Plugin
lets you show
off your company’s strength with staff photos and their recommendations in
a little box on your website.
- Linkedin Recommendations Plugin
is useful for
increasing the website’s credibility.
- Pinterest RSS widget
is a feature
useful for sites that have a lot of images (such as a wedding photography
site or online apparel store). All the images you pinned on Pinterest can
be made visible to your site visitors.
With
a full-fledged social media integrated website you will have higher user
engagement and increased social media activity on both your website and your
brand pages as a whole.
You
can test this in tools
used for website rankings and reviews for
Free.
These
social media integration tools and resources discussed can make your
website the main social meeting point for user interaction. It will drive maximum
traffic to your site.
Sameer Ansar
CEO
– Quintessence Technologies Ltd.
Skype:
qetechCEO
