Add a social media cloud to your website
At its most basic, social media marketing is about connecting with people on the social networks they use, engaging them with useful content, and drawing them onto your website where you can sell them stuff.
But people may also find your website through other means – such as by searching Google, or from the web address on your business card. However they arrive on your website, it's a good idea to let them know where else they can connect with you.This helps you build a closer relationship with your customers in the online social spaces they use.
If you are on sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter etc. (and you should be), it is vital to let visitors to your main website know it. People who arrive on your site who are themselves on, say, Facebook are more likely to connect with you there if you let them know where to find you. It is astonishing how often this is overlooked.
I recommend doing this by adding a social media cloud to your website. By this I just mean a collection of icons that link through to your presence on other sites where people can connect with you. Here are some ways you can do this:
1. Small icons. Include a row of small social media icons towards the top of your page – for example in the way I do on my Publishing Talk site. A row icons next to the search box link to Publishing Talk on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr, Delicious, and AudioBoo. The final two buttons are subscription by RSS feed and email.
2. Large buttons. Include a column of large buttons in your sidebar. Here are some examples from sites I've visited recently.
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You get the idea. Make your buttons prominent and clickable – which usually means at the top-right of your page.
3. Sidebar widget. If you use WordPress, install a sidebar widget called Social Homes. This is an easy way to list any other sites you're on and have them displayed as a collections of icons without you having to hard code anything. This is what I use on the homepage of this site, and on my personal blog – where it runs several rows deep!
[image error] The advantage here is that whenever I join a new site, or create one of my own, I can add it here with a few clicks without having to hand code a link. You can use this to include any website. It just uses the favicon of any site you add as the icon.
Whichever approach you take, by linking to your social media sites from your main website, you will not only increase your followers on these sites, you will build richer connections with your site visitors.
Find out more about websites in Get Up to Speed with Online Marketing, Chapter 3: "Establish a Web Presence – How to build a website with no technical knowledge".
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