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How to Best Integrate Social Media in Web Design

Integrating elements of social media into your web design prospects is always tricky, but you have to remember that it is necessary in making your platform relevant. Literally billions of people are on various social networks right now, which makes using them not only common sense but insanely profitable. You just need to know how to do it to get traffic without the need to buy traffic to your website.

Through the points discussed below, it will be a lot easier for you to grasp the importance of social media to the whole web building industry, especially for those who want to get a considerable level of exposure. Without incorporating social media elements into the websites that you build, you basically risk alienating a huge swath of potential users who would have been interested in what you have to offer and to share it with those who share their interests.

Shares, Likes, Comments

Social media buttons will naturally be first on the list because they are the most obvious. These are basically those commands that allow visitors to share their impressions about the contents or the page itself, as well as announce to their followers or friends what it is they are up to. They are a fairly straightforward method of marketing to the billions of users out there.

On that note, you do need to make sure that your decision to include these buttons is prescient. That is to say, you need to make sure that when you do include those buttons that they make sense for your site. Not all platforms require all social networks. If you are not featuring images, why would you include Pinterest, for example? It would not make any sense.

Branding Everywhere

If you already have a brand built on social networks, you will obviously need to integrate that into your website through the relevant pages that include exactly those brands. If you don’t, then you will need to start working on that and either rely on the website to give you further exposure or just allow both of them to buoy each other up.

The main point that you need to keep in mind is that there needs to be a consistency in what you are doing. This goes for images, fonts, styles, and so on. You are basically building familiarity with your users through this method, so it helps if they have something to latch onto if they are scrolling through your pages and they see your brand.

This is one of the most effective methods of bringing in traffic with the use of social media. Some websites decide to spend their marketing budget partially to buy social traffic to boost their targeted audience specifically through social channels.

Campaigns, Posts, Imagery

If you are running a social media campaign for a particular product, cause, or marketing scheme, you can also get results by integrating that into your website. This can be done in a multitude of ways, including creating an entire page dedicated to it, a category, or just a series of sales funnels that are centered around this enterprise. Just make sure to give it plenty of interesting copy around it since not a lot of folks like reading short snippets that don’t really provide a lot of context. Even if you are just sharing campaigns that you are currently running, it would go a lot smoother if your users actually know what it is you are sharing.

Feeds

Feeds are basically powerful marketing tools where you take a tool used in a particular social network like Instagram and then start flooding those with specific imagery or copy for promoting products. This is not just exclusive to products either since it can also serve to provide insights into processes, causes, entertainment, and so much more.

You can think of feeds are a narrower, more targeted approach that your users can keep coming back to in order to get a lot of excellent information that are specific to their interests. Do this right and you are pretty much guaranteed to keep getting the kind of traction and traffic that you are looking for, both to your social media accounts and your site.

Hashtags

Even after years of being in the mainstream consciousness, the hashtag phenomenon is still going strong. It is basically behind of today’s most successful marketing trends, movements, and viral awareness. To that end, you might want to make use of hashtags whenever you are creating new content, pages, or products.

Of course, you need to remember to do this sparingly. You don’t want to go overboard with the whole coopting a popular practice thing. You want to do it in a natural and organic manner without forcing it by adding a hashtag on every single thing that you do. That will only result in your users no longer taking what you have to offer seriously.

Groups, Pages, LiveStream, Group Chat

When you are already running a group or a page, it would be a lot easier to find them when you put a splash to announce such things on your site. You can do a limited run for an entry pop-up on your homepage, for example, or just create a huge banner overhead. On top of that, it would also help if you have a page dedicated for such announcements.

This goes for live streaming sessions or group chat, as well. If your users want to engage with you in any useful manner, you want to make sure that you are as accommodating as you possibly can. When they know where to go to your site to find announcements like these, it will be much easier for them to join up, watch, discover more, or participate in any way.

Naturally, you do have to provide them with incentives if you are doing this kind of thing, especially if part of what you want to achieve is to bring in more traffic.

Invitations

Finally, you’ve got invitations, which is basically where you ask users and visitors to join your various social media enterprises for prizes, rewards, and the like. Ask them to follow you, to give you likes, or to watch videos that you put up online. Asking them to share these campaigns would help you achieve a considerable level of exposure if enough of them do it, as well.

You could even ask your visitors to sign up to various social networks that you are hoping to become a major player in such as emerging entertainment video content sites. Of course, the same goes for social media campaigns that you are running to promote the products that you yourself are selling.

Conclusion

Social media has become one of the biggest digital infrastructures of the modern world with literal billions of dollars on the line in terms of advertising and e-commerce profits. When you are building a website, it would be to your utmost detriment not to include elements of social networks into the whole thing. At the very least, you need to give your users a bridge to connect their various interests.

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