Whether or not you fully understand their functionality or effectiveness, you know the heavy-hitters of social media: Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn. How do organizations use these platforms to elevate brand awareness?
Through an integrated online presence, of course!
But what does that even mean? The answer is much simpler than that high and mighty sentence above, but it requires an understanding of your limits and preferences before you can reveal it. What social media channels do you currently use or want to use? Can you commit to actively using one or more of these channels? Do you have in mind what you’d like to make available on these channels?
Ideally, social media and your website should work harmoniously to promote your brand, but it takes more than a Facebook icon slapped onto your homepage to achieve that end. Here are some good entry-level pointers for effectively harnessing the power of social media from your website.
Let Everyone Know
Use current icons to make your social media outlets visible on your webpage. How bold or subtle their appearance depends on you. Are you using one outlet only, such as Facebook? Then make sure that bad boy is large enough to be apparent. If you’re linking to several outlets, you may be better off having the icons small and neatly aligned in a row somewhere. Remember, it’s best practice to have your social media icons placed at the top, bottom, or side of your webpage.
Display Wisely
If you’re not actively using a social media platform, don’t display it on your site. Even if everyone else has a Facebook page that they actively manage, don’t try to relate if your most recent Facebook post is five months old and you have only 32 fans comprised of friends and relatives. Instead, showcase your strengths. Do you actively tweet relevant content about your business? Then it makes sense to integrate a Twitter button or a feed of your recent Twitter posts.
Share and Share a “Like”
Any eCommerce site that doesn’t feature social media icons on each page of its inventory is greatly missing out on clicks, Likes, shares, and – ultimately – sales. The simplest way to fix this problem is to visit AddThis or ShareThis. Both provide easy-to-install tool kits that allow users to expose your products to the world (wide web).
But Don’t Go Overboard
Not everything is worth sharing. If you have “Like This”, “Email to a Friend”, and “+1″ buttons on, say, your Contact page, you’re either terribly proud of your email address or entirely missing the point.
Remember How They Work
Tweets are for Twitter, Likes are for Facebook, and Trix are for kids. It’s important to realize that having a Like button on a page offers a different functionality than a Facebook icon would (the former is for sharing information while the latter directs users to your fan page). Learn the lingo of each platform and stay informed of its uses.
