Integrating social media throughout your website and online offerings can lead to increased social media followers, activity and buzz around your brand. Having social share links and ‘follow us’ buttons are a great first step, but there is more to be done to help take your social media integration to the next level.
Here are 5 awesome social strategies that will help your social media integration stand out:
Make sharing fun!
After providing interactive content, a quiz, tool, or survey for example, it’s important to encourage users to share it or their results across their social networks. You will want to consider how you can make the content interesting enough that users will want to share it, and others will take action from the share. Simply asking them to share the link so that others can take the quiz is not enough. Your share should have a fun call to action or a unique and visually engaging take on their result. Attention grabbing copy is another strategy to make your content fun and sharable. Instead of ‘take this quiz to find out what gift you should get for the holidays’, have the share say something fun and attention grabbing – like ‘I’m getting a yacht for the holidays this year. What about you?’
Share user created content
Take advantage of positive user created content (reviews, photos, videos) related to your brand or product. Try to incorporate this content in your website or specific product pages. This can help site visitors see the popularity of your brand and is also a great way to get people engaged. Millennials specifically place a lot of value on what their online community of peers think and say about brands. User created content is the perfect way to get the largest online generation in history engaging with your company and products.
Make your content share-able
The ultimate goal is to have visitors being so moved by content from your site that they share it with their followers. This is a tough goal to achieve; to make it really simple for users, consider using click to share functionality. Take away the work by including click to share links in your online marketing and allow your user to share a specific quote or line of content, rather than the entire page or article. Add a ‘click to share’ call to action after a stat or quote so that when the user clicks it, the content automatically prefills the post or message for them.
Incorporate a social sign-in
If you are going to ask your users to sign-in, consider having a social login. This allows them to use one of their social media logins to also sign-in to your site and skip the step of filling out their information… again. Logins are meant to protect sites from ‘undesirables’ like bots, so the intent for a better experience is there, the usability should match the intent. Social sign-ins minimize the registration process, offering less work and thus, increasing the user experience and the odds that the user will continue on to the full site.
Repurpose your content
Try to reuse content from your social media platforms within your site, with online offerings or on other social networks, and vice versa. For example, if you have a great whiteboard video on your corporate YouTube page, find a relevant spot to embed the video on your website, or across other social networks. Consider making a shortened ‘teaser’ video to post on social media platforms such as Instagram or TikTok. If you have a great infographic or image that is being used on your website, consider sharing it on Instagram or Pinterest. Sharing content cross-digitally is a great way to get more usage out of your content and more users viewing and discovering your brand.
Incorporating some, or all these strategies will boost your social media integration. And don’t forget the data behind the hits – include analytics to test the effectiveness of each approach so you will discover what works best for your brand.
