Social Media Integration: Boost Your Website Success
August 22nd, 2024
It’s no secret that we all are undeniably hooked to social media. Whether we are buying products or skimming through a brand’s content, social media is a daily habit.
Businesses are integrating social media into their websites to drive engagement, increasing brand awareness and conversions. It helps you build a strong online presence, engage and interact with your potential target audience.
From displaying user-generated content to integrating direct login options on your website for social platforms, you can use social media to enhance your website’s functionality. In this blog post, we’ll talk about social media integration and ways you can integrate social media into your website.
What is Website Social Media Integration?
Integrating social media into your website includes using social media profiles as a part of your digital marketing strategy. It allows your followers to easily access your social media pages from your website, bringing traffic to your website from social media links, thereby boosting your brand reach and awareness.
When your website is integrated with social media, visitors can share your brand’s updates on their social network with just one click without the need to copy and paste URLs.
What are the Benefits of Website Social Media Integration?
The following are a few benefits of integrating social media into your website:
- Long-term visitor engagement: Putting social media buttons on your website allows visitors to interact with your business for longer. They can interact with Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn feed on website and check the latest posts and promotions your brand is running without leaving website. They can also share your content with others, improving reach and visibility.
- Boosts conversation: Social media integration on your website makes it simple for prospects to communicate with you and your brand. They can click on social media icons to check your profiles, like, share, and comment on your posts. They can also share their reviews and feedback to initiate conversations with potential and existing audiences.
- Increases social following: Since visitors find your social accounts on your website, they can still interact with your social profiles, even after leaving your website. You can connect with them, share important updates and offers, and address their questions and concerns. Your social media following grows naturally as your content is shared more frequently and your brand is mentioned more often.
How can you Integrate Social Media into Your Website?
You can use the below ways to integrate social media into your website and enhance user engagement and online presence.
1. Use social share buttons
The social share buttons allow readers to share content in one click. You can place them at the top, bottom, or along the following sidebars as you navigate the page. There are a lot of social plugins you can use.
Make sure to connect social media platforms that you manage actively. Include social sharing buttons for engaging content such as podcasts, infographics, and videos. However, avoid placing them near navigation menus.
Here’s how Nextflix, a popular over-the-top (OTT) media service , has placed social media buttons for different social platforms on its website.
2. Embed social media widgets on your website
Social media widgets allow you to embed social media feeds on your website using aggregator tools such as Hootsuite, TaggBox, EmbedSocial, and Curator. These tools provide automatic content filtering, styling options, and real-time feed synchronization to aggregate and display user-generated content. Additionally, you can leverage social media analytics tools to measure the performance and engagement of your integrated social feeds, ensuring you optimize your content strategy effectively.
Social media widgets work on hashtags and gather posts from different channels that include specified hashtags. You can align your social content with your website design style to create a cohesive look. For example, you can use plugins to embed and style your social media feed to match your website.
Allianz, a German financial services provider, features its Instagram Feeds on the its homepage to ensure visitors see their latest news and stay engaged with the page for long.
3. Integrate social login
Integrating social login enables visitors to log in to your website via social media platforms. Therefore they don’t need to sign up by entering a username or password. This eliminates the registration process leading to a potential increase in the count of user registrations.
Social logins help you gather relevant and accurate data such as email addresses, age, interests, and preferences of your users. When users visit your website, they are directed to a webpage that asks them to log in by creating a new account or using a social media platform.
Further, when they click on social media icon of their choice, they are redirected to authorization server of the social media platform which asks the user to grant permission for websites or apps to access specific information. The user reviews the permission and gives consent. Now, the social media platform creates an authorization code and redirects the user back to the website.
Forbes, an American business magazine, allows users to sign in with their email addresses, and use protocols like OIDC for Google or Facebook social authentication.
4. Showcase social media videos
Videos appeal to people and are a great way to share information, spread messages, and persuade viewers. Social media platforms allow you to embed videos from website. This not only helps you boost your content reach but also drive traffic to your social handles.
How to embed a YouTube video?
Click the Embed option located under the YouTube video after selecting the Share button to make it visible. Copy and paste the code into the HTML of the page.
Tip: With Webnode, just add new section with a video content and enter a link to the video.
Other options include creating a video gallery that allows visitors to watch your social media videos. You can organize them according to product showcases, tutorials, and behind-the-scenes. When embedding videos, optimize them for SEO by adding relevant keywords, alt text, title, and description.
Alcove, a platform for shared living in rental properties, has a reviews page that includes customer testimonials and reviews videos. It displays real customer experiences and satisfaction with Alcove’s co-living model and the benefits it provides.
5. Integrate social media commenting tools
Social media commenting tools help people to comment, share their opinions, ask questions, and initiate conversations. The tools highlight the most light and informative comments at the top of the discussion to ensure people get the most relevant information.
People who comment need to sync their social media accounts to ensure a genuine social media profile is linked to validate their identity. This reduces the scope of spam and encourages human-to-human interactions.
Comments include feedback about your company, products, and services. If you find out a specific product or service is a point of discussion, you can promote it extensively.
Incorporating commenting tools can be particularly beneficial for businesses in specific sectors, such as HRM systems, where user feedback and engagement can provide valuable insights into employee satisfaction and system usability. Businesses can improve HR practices by streamlining processes like generating professional paystubs and fostering trust and transparency.
Rotten Tomatoes, a popular site for movie reviews and entertainment news, uses Disqus to manage comments on their blogs. Being a trusted source in the industry, the site benefits from customer feedback and interactions on every blog post.
6. Create shoppable social media walls
A social media wall displays images, posts, and reels from your social media channels on your website. It helps to add social proof and showcase the most relevant content to strengthen your social media presence and credibility.
Visitors prefer content that shows how products and services can be applied in real life and how they benefit. By displaying new and fresh content on your social wall, you can keep visitors engaged on your website for longer.
GoPro, an American technology company, displays user-generated content (the best pictures and videos) and an influencer marketing program on the social wall of its official website.
7. Display social media reviews
Social proof comes from client testimonials and reviews. It is is a powerful tool for convincing potential shoppers, as people are often influenced by the opinions and experiences of others. Reviews help other learn about the benefits and drawbacks of products as well as what users liked and didn’t like about them.
Putting social proof up on a website increases credibility and trust. A research by OptinMonster reveals 92% of people trust a recommendation from their friends and peers. Also, 70% of people trust recommendations from people whom they don’t even know.
Embed review widgets such as Elfsight Google Reviews Widget, EmbedSocial Free Reviews Widget, and Tagembed Google Review Widget, to display reviews from platforms like Facebook, Yelp, and Google. You can also post reviews using a trending hashtag and create a live hashtag feed for your social media channels.
Elfsight, a social feed widget, displays customer testimonials and reviews on its home page highlighting the positive user experiences.
Conclusion
Website social media integration gives you great opportunities to drive traffic, improve user engagement and conversions. It also simplifies user interactions, allows people to share content, and keeps them updated with your latest offerings.
Choose the right social media platforms and strategies to integrate social media into your website and build an online presence that supports your business goals.
Explore more ways to increase user engagement on your website