Integrating Social Media to your Own Website

One of the most important things that you can do with your online marketing is to make sure that everywhere you are and everything that you do is linked together so that people can follow your business from one platform to the next. A solid Facebook presence may lead to engagement on Twitter, which may then lead to clicks to your Youtube videos where people are directed back to your website.

All of those things need a hub, a home base where people can land and get an idea of everything that’s happening online at a glance. The best home base is the business’ website since it already acts as the primary point of contact for your customers online. By using some simple tools you can show your visitors everywhere that they can find your band online and help them to promote your content easily.

Home Page Social Media Integration

When people land on your home page they are visiting to find out what your business is all about. One of the things that they are often looking for is what you’re up to in social media. This is the ideal time to show them the places that they can connect with you. Example:

If you have a WordPress site, getting those icons on your site couldn’t be easier. All you need to do is install a plugin from the WordPress.org directory, add your links and place the widget on your page.

There are a lot of great plugins out there, with several different looks so we’ve gone ahead and put together a few of our favorites for you:

1. Social Media Widget
2. Social Media Icon
3. Trackable Social Share Icons

If your site is not built on WordPress there are likely some easy solutions available to you as well. Try searching “Social Media Icons for ____” on Google, there are hundres of step by step instructions available.

Of course, if you happen to be a bit more technically inclined you can source the social media icons yourself, add them to your page as images and place a hyperlink over it.

Make Your Content Shareable

Once your visitors pass by your homepage and into your site, hopefully they will find the content there so compelling that they simply must share it with their friends. This is where you can allow your loyal fans to take your posts and promote them to the world.

Facebook and Twitter buttons are everywhere, and you can add Google+, Reddit, Pinterest and other social buttns to your posts even if you don’t have accounts there. All that you’re doing is allowing people to posts your content on their profiles wherever the typically share interesting things.

Again, WordPress makes share buttons incredibly easy to add to your site. Here are a few excellent examples:

1. Slick Social Share Buttons
2. Share Buttons
3. Add This

Some of those plugins will integrate with other site platforms as well – check out the Manual Installation instructions installation section of the page.

At the bottom of this post you’ll see examples of social share buttons in action. They are, in order, Like on Facebook, Tweet, Google +1, then a menu of just about any social network that you can imagine. By clicking any one of them you’ll share this post with your followers in that network.

After today’s post our Social Saturday feature will be moving to Wednesday. Be sure to check back this week for the Social Media Breakdown.