5 Tips for Integrating Social Media into Your Website

If you’re using social media to promote your products or services, it’s important that those channels work seamlessly with your website. Here are a few tips to ensure your business website and social networking platforms are working together to maximize your online exposure.

1. Include Visible Social Media Icons

Display icons for your social networking accounts in prominent and relevant places on your website. The best practice is to feature them on the top, along the side or the bottom of your home page. If you don’t want users to leave your web page after clicking on an icon, you’ll need to format the link so that your social media page opens in a new window.

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking you have to display every social networking icon that you have a profile for. If you’re only active on Facebook or Twitter, those are the only icons you need to display. Linking to any inactive channels may cause more harm than good.

2. Integrate Social Media Sensibly

If you use social media to keep your customers or clients aware of company events, and actively manage your outlets on a day to day basis, it might be wise to showcase your Twitter feed or Facebook page on your website. Both services provide widgets that you can install on your site.

3. Include Up-to-date Icons

One thing you can rely on about social media is that it’s constantly changing! Keep tabs on your social icons to make sure you’re using the right terminology. Facebook fans have morphed into likes. Google’s +1 is the newest trend. Who knows what will be next? Do your research, update where necessary, but don’t feel that you have to jump into every new platform that comes along.

4. Display Share Icons

Share icons are particularly useful for websites that sell products. These icons give you a golden opportunity to elicit recommendations from customers. If you don’t have a web designer available to help you set these up, check out the solutions from Add This and ShareThis. Both tools provide easy-to-use methods for social sharing across eCommerce sites, with the added benefit of analytics that details how your content is shared.

5. Use Analytics

Google Analytics can help you track social media engagement, by displaying how many people actually click on your outbound social media links. If you find that few individuals are visiting your social media outlets after landing on your web page, it may be that the social media icons aren’t in a convenient place.