From the simple link to the embedded feed, millions of websites integrate with social media.
Why not? It’s a perfect fit.
The goals in social media marketing are to promote content, serve clients and build relationships. Same goals as the website, right? So you should connect your site to social media in every possible way …maybe.
There are quite a few ways to connect. These are the five main types of social media integration for websites.
There are thousands of article with best practices and how-to tips for each of these options. So instead of another guide, we’re showing how NOT to connect social media to a website.
Because social media integration done badly is clunky, distracting, ineffective and slow.
There are big, colorful social icons in website headers all over the internet. And because they’re colorful, they are often at the top of the visual hierarchy, the most visually prominent element on the page.
Imagine walking into a store where the biggest sign says ‘exit.’ Would that be helpful? Probably not. Then why have big candy-colored exit signs at the top of every page on your site?
Website visitors are hard to win but easy to lose. Driving traffic takes a lot of time and energy. So don’t encourage them to go. Don’t invite them to leave your site.
Where there’s traffic, there’s hope.
Sending a visitor to a social media platform puts them in the hands of a profit-driven, billion dollar company that is totally focused on keeping and monetizing that visitor. Is that good for your marketing?
Here’s what it looks like in a header:
We did a little research into web design standards and found that in 2015, 26% of the top marketing websites had social icons in their header. In 2019, that number dropped to 20%. It’s going out of style.
We recommend moving these to the footer and grey them out. Here they can be found by people who are looking to follow, share and mention, but they won’t encourage visitors to leave.
Notice that the email signup button (a higher-value interaction for the brand) is more prominent. The social media buttons (which are lower-value clicks for the brand) are less prominent.
This may actually be a violation of the trademarks of these companies since you are modifying their logos, which are registered trademarks. It’s a design treatment used on millions of websites, I’m sure. I’ve never heard of any legal action being taken.
Twitter doesn’t want you messing with their logo. Check page 7 of their brand guidelines.
Few people ever check, but the question is answerable through Google Analytics.
By default, GA only tracks movement from page to page, not each website exit. But if you set up event tracking for exit clicks, you can see which get clicked from any page. Here are the URLs of every click for each website exit from our homepage.
To make this data look better, I’ll take it out of GA and show it on the page using the screenshot/markup wonder-tool, Snagit. (now you know how I make all of my stuff)
Your social media icons are like a poll, showing you which social networks your audience is using.
Besides the footer, here are three of the best, most effective places to suggest that your visitors follow you on social media
Websites everywhere link to social media accounts that are barely active or completely dead. It’s like a broken link or a disconnected phone.
So when should you add a social media icon and guide visitors to a social network?
When that social network is a key part of your digital marketing strategy. Before adding that facebook or twitter icon to your new website, ask yourself two questions.
The answer should be “yes” to both. If it’s not, set aside social media integration until you have a social media strategy. Far better to have no icons than buttons that go nowhere.
The next question: where to put these social icons?
Ever shared a service page? Ever seen someone else share a service page? It almost never happens.
The job of the service page is to turn visitors into leads. Social sharing buttons are just distractions, especially if they’re big and colorful. They add visual noise but not value, so they should be removed. Cut them and uninstall the WordPress plugin that added them.
Do people ever share products? Yes, but almost never. When we looked at ecommerce website and compared pageviews (Google Analytics) to social shares (Buzzsumo) and found that shares were rare.
Only when the audience is passionate about the product are where there any shares at all.
In the Vienna Beef online catalog, the top shared products are shared by about 1 in 1000 visitors. And those shares are almost all on Facebook.
Knowing this, we designed the share buttons to be much less visually prominent than the add to cart button. Because the goal is sales, not shares.
We found that getting shared by 1 in 1000 visitors (that’s 0.1%) is about as much as you should hope for. A share rate of 0.001% was more common. Ouch.
So set your expectations very low for product page shares, and be very careful not to distract visitors from the buy button.
 |
adam bianco, director of customer marketing, the beard club“If a customer shares their experience or purchase on social media then that’s a win, but because the likelihood of that happening is so small we don’t want to take away from the main call to action which is often, purchase a product or sign up for a subscription. After that, we can automate the message through email or on the order confirmation page about sharing on social. Once a customer goes to social media, they aren’t coming back. They are going to be distracted by baby pictures and puppies and forget about your brand entirely until you pay Facebook to send them back your way. Focus on your own business objectives and call to action. If they are true brand advocates, they’ll likely share on social media anyway.” |
Social proof cuts both ways. If the numbers are big, it’s positive. If they are small, it’s a negative making the content looks unpopular. Sad.
Social sharing has dropped by more than 50% in the last few years, so numbers are down for even the best blogs. It doesn’t mean visitors aren’t enjoying the content. You may be getting great word of mouth offline. Don’t be discouraged …but watch your widgets.
Pick your widgets carefully. If shares for some networks are low, you can show just one number: the aggregate number for all social shares. This is what we do. Or just use widgets with no numbers.
Simpler widgets have another advantage. They load faster.
Social icons are almost weightless. But social media widgets (share, follow, like, etc.) are built with Javascript. And to load, they need to talk to servers at Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Pinterest.
These extra requests can add a half a second or more to the page’s load time, especially for fancy widgets that show share counts.
There are a few ways to avoid the code bloat that comes with social widgets:
Worried that social widgets are slowing you down? Run your pages through an audit using Lighthouse within Chrome Dev Tools.
To see an example of how a social stream can be built into a website, check out the Orbit Culture Page. It uses a combination of hashtag (#InsideOrbit) and permissions (only showing posts from certain accounts) to keep things fresh.
Make your brand social and personable, on and off your website. And connect your site to the places where you’re social. That’s a good thing.
Did you find this helpful? If so, you are welcome to follow us on LinkedIn, where we share our highest value articles once a day.
By signing up you agree to our Privacy Policy.
I believe that a social media consultant must be attuned to the company goals and aspirations if he or she is to represent them on their social media channels. I also think that outsourcing social media marketing is a good idea for a company looking to specialize in their core business. In any case, most businesses outsource marketing and advertising and I don’t see why social media marketing should be any different. You just need to be actively involved to ensure that you are represented in the way that you want
Great content. Just something to correct -1 in 1 000 is not 0.001% 🙂
Thanks, Georgi. We corrected it. We appreciate you keeping an eye out for us!
This is a good idea thanks for sharing….
Andy, I appreciate how you’re practicing your own recommendations here. Make the social networks work for you, not the other way around…
Thanks for the great tips! It’s all about putting yourself in your audience’s shoes and considering how it all looks and feels from their perspective.
Precisely! Thanks for the comment, Alison.
Really great stuff Andy. Thanks for all the information. Really appreciate it.
Hi Andy,
This is a wonderful insight. Thank you. Social Media shares on Service and Contact pages are an “over-sight” to say the least.
We’ve actually used single or at max 2 minimal social icons on the secondary menu bar which fits above the main menu bar.
This actually works most of the time for coaches, especially if we are including the LinkedIn icon there.
Anyhow, loved the article!
I like to embed the social media platform into the footer. That way people can take a look inside the culture of the business without leaving the site. It is a good way to establish trust. They can also follow the social media right from the webpage.
Great Read! What about the effects social media links have on domain authority or SEO? Seems like there is a lot of debate on that.
The integration itself should have no affect on SEO, unless it impacts load time, assuming load time is a search ranking factor.
In general, social media can do wonders for SEO. It’s a powerful research and networking tool that can lead to the types of collaborations that drive PR, authority and search rankings. It’s a huge part of our strategy.
More info here >> https://www.orbitmedia.com/blog/how-does-social-media-affect-seo/
You make a convincing argument. Everybody copies each other mindlessly, admittedly I’m not innocent either, and don’t apply common sense.
Great article!
Glad you liked this one, David. Yes, it’s not a great idea to just do what other people do just because a lot of people do it. If you ask someone why they do something, you can quickly tell if they’re being strategic or just following others…