Your web design should always include a place for social media. Social media is important for fostering interaction between your company and your customers. It’s also important for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Google have placed a new level of emphasis on social media in terms of how it ranks your site. Get it wrong and you’ll also lose a portion of your organic search engine traffic.
Here are a few ways in which you can successfully integrate social media into your web design.
Tell People About It
Your customers should visit your website and immediately know which social media websites you’re present on. A set of icons in a sidebar can work wonders. You should also implement a call to action. The call to action doesn’t necessarily tell people to do something. People tend to ignore these things. The benefit of a call to action is the effect it has on the subconscious. This is what encourages them to interact with you via social media.
Integrated Logins
A popular trend steadily replacing the traditional site-based signup form is a social media login form. The way this works is you can sign up to a website using your Facebook or Twitter account. Simply enter your account name and password and it will sign you up in a matter of seconds.
As a website owner, this encourages more people to make an account on your website. You’re removing the number of barriers to entry. The less effort it takes for visitors the higher the chance of them signing up.
Static Content
Static content is any page where you’ve typed the content into the page and it never changes unless you make the changes. More websites are converting their pages into feeds from various social media websites. If you’re someone who regularly keeps up with the news, you can set your feed to record certain types of news and put it on your website.
If you’re linked to another website, or you think the information they’re supplying is useful, create a feed specifically for them. Not only does it put the emphasis on social media, it ensures your content remains fresh and updated, which is good for SEO.
Sharing is Caring
Your web design should enable people to share every piece of content across multiple social media platforms. You obviously want the main social media sites, such as Facebook and LinkedIn, but for pictures you should consider adding icons for Tumblr and Pinterest. It largely depends on the type of business you’re running, though.
See Social Media
Whilst social media brings SEO advantages, you need to look at social media as a separate entity. You need to plan separate approaches for the two as both fields are constantly changing. What works now won’t necessarily work in six months. Look to the future and avoid trying to predict where SEO and social media are going.
Keep them separate from each other. Tell your designer in separate sections about your SEO and social media needs. Never encourage them to combine the two or you could see yourself being stung by the ‘Google dance’ later.