There’s no doubt that social media websites should play a part in any online marketing strategy. They can, after all, increase visibility, establish channels of communication between a consumer and a business, and help generate excitement about a new product or service.
Social Media Websites in your marketing strategy can furthermore foster social sharing and exponentially boost exposure, according to Quick Sprout. And, finally, they can boost SEO by driving traffic from a social media platform to the business’ website. Most of the time this occurs indirectly: a consumer comes across a business’ Facebook page or Twitter account, gets interested in something that they read, and then makes the conscious decision to check out the website for themselves.
Unfortunately, businesses often neglect to insure this connection between a social media page and a website. Sure, they highlight the same products and ideas on both platforms. And, of course, they will provide a link to the website from the Facebook page and a link to the Facebook page from the website. But they don’t actively encourage the movement of users from one place to the other. They don’t make it easy for consumers to directly and in-deliberately jump quickly between the two. This is a missed opportunity to increase traffic and SEO.
But a site manager can correct this problem by working to integrate his business’ social media platforms more directly with its website. Here are a few tips for making that happen:
1) Stress the Connection on Landing Pages
Businesses often don’t want to put blatant links to a Facebook page on their site’s homepage. At the same time, visitors that access a given Facebook page are more likely to go straight to that profile’s wall feed when they arrive, meaning that any link to a website is hidden away in the info tab. The solution? Make landing pages on both platforms that explicitly link between each other. On Facebook, this landing page can take the form of a welcome screen. You can use a service like Pagemodo to quickly create such a screen for free.
2) Keep Your Website URL Current on Social Media Platforms
Companies that correctly utilize Facebook and Twitter will be regularly posting wall updates and tweets, respectively. A visitor to the Facebook page or the Twitter account will see the most recent updates and they may scroll through the previous dozen or so, but they likely won’t look too far into the past. So integrating your website link into such posts requires following a simple two-part strategy: first, make sure that you mention your site URL in updates where it is applicable. Second, don’t forget to do this on a frequent enough basis so as to insure that the URL stays near the top of your social media feed.
3) Make Visitors Work For Desired Content
When visitors view your Facebook page, they are most likely to be intrigued by several specific sorts of content. They may be interested by a promotion or a promised discount. They may want to read a post you have written or a news story you have found, but they are even more likely to be interested in any videos you’ve uploaded. These more “desired” content types – promotions, discounts, and videos – should not be embedded or described in full on your Facebook page. Instead, give a teaser description and a link, and force visitors to travel over to your website if they want to learn more.
Hopefully these tips can help you better integrate your social media accounts with your website. While the two platforms may perform different functions for your business, making them better connected can only strengthen them from a marketing and SEO perspective.
