Integrating social media accounts into your business website design has never been simpler or more important. Here are four basic tools for connecting your site with your social media pages:
Social Media Share Buttons
Make it easy for site visitors to share your content with their own social media connections to greatly increase your online exposure. Adding Share buttons from the major sites does just that. You don’t even need your own account to allow others to share your stuff via their accounts.
Social Media Follow Buttons
These are for social networking sites you have active accounts with. They provide a quick way for site visitors to connect with you on those accounts. One click takes them to your page, and if they like what they see there, they’ll often click one more time to follow you. Most buttons come in a few different styles, the most popular being the site’s logo or icon. Once you build up your following, you can often opt for an icon that displays your number of connections.
Social Media Feeds
These are basically social media Follow buttons on steroids. They display a live snippet of your most recent social media posts on your website, providing the ability to follow you. Only use this in conjunction with an active account. If you’re sharing good content, this entices your site visitors to connect with you, develop more interest in you, and possibly share your posts via their own social media pages.
SM-Friendly Content
Valuable content, whether articles, blog posts, videos, podcasts, infographics, or other types, give your website visitors something to share on their own social media pages. “Valuable” is the key word, here. People only share content that informs, amuses, entertains, or otherwise engages them in ways they appreciate and believe others will appreciate. To facilitate sharing, make sure all content has a direct URL address people can link to. Great content is a great tool for increasing social media exposure (and sometimes, the right content seen and shared by the right people can take you viral).
