Before even reaching out to customer support, the vast majority of current customers check the business's social media or web pages. That's why companies invest sufficient resources to have a good presence in both of those online areas.
Now imagine if the company's website and social media pages work in tight cooperation. The website encourages sharing on social media, and social media directs users to the company's website.
That's what social media integration is. It helps create a smoother customer experience and supports the traffic increase for your different communication channels. The rest of the article will give you deeper insight into the benefits of social media marketing and the social media integration strategies you can extract from them.
Rule: All roads lead to the website.
Though website social media integration generally means encouraging the traffic exchange between the website and social media, its final goal is to collect as many users as possible.
Why?
Let's bring an example from real life.
You might shop in a big mall, where there are different stores. You might go to a branded shop of your favorite company located in a separate area.
In the first case, each store of the mall has fewer chances to make you purchase something. There are too many competitors located in the same area. Therefore, your options for comparing the products of different brands increase. In other words, each store in a shopping mall should invest sufficient resources to attract the visitor's attention because of high competition.
On the contrary, your interaction with competitor brands significantly decreases if you go to a separate store of your favorite brand. Chances are high you will buy everything you need from there because it's convenient, and you have no choice to compare with.
The same works with social media and websites.
Your company social media pages are your rented space in the area. The place where your customers have instant access to numerous other brands in your niche. Within a minute, they can exit your social media page and search hundreds of your competitors. This puts conversions and customer loyalty at significant risk.
However, when you manage to bring them to your website, you fully control the content they see. There is no space for competitor's advertising pop-ups, and the users are less likely to be distracted from your offered products or services. If you also manage to tie your website visitors to your company, by offering them subscriptions, discounts, and other options, your chances to turn them into loyal customers significantly increase.
So, from this point of the article, you should understand what website social media integration are. What are the strategies helping bring traffic to your website from your social media platforms.
How to integrate social media into the website?
Make social media widgets appear at the right time, at the right place.
You see social media icons on different websites located in different places. Most probably, some of them grasp your attention and encourage you to take some action. Others leave you indifferent or even distract your user experience.
That's because social media widgets are a call to action. They should appear to website visitors when users have enough justification for taking action.
Therefore, it's a great idea to put social media icons in one of the following places.
Footer of the website. Before reaching here, users have time and the opportunity to interact with your content. Therefore, will have an idea of whether they want to share it on social media.