Social media has become a necessary tool in the online marketing toolbox. But it can get extremely confusing, and hard to manage. Your website is the center of your online business, and social media can often make you feel like you are scattered all over the place. Social media and your website can, and should, work together to build your online presence. Here’s how to simplify your social networking, and make social media support your internet marketing efforts.
Updates
If you have a blog, a Facebook account, a Twitter account and so on, posting to all of these places takes up a huge chunk of your valuable time. You can manage this in two ways. One method is to set up a free feed service, so that whenever you update your blog it automatically posts your updates to Twitter and Facebook. Another way is to use an application such as Ping.fm, where you can post once and send that post out to multiple social media sites simultaneously.
You can also make it easy for your readers to receive updates from you by installing widgets on your website. Include a one-click share button for popular sites like Facebook, Twitter, Digg and other bookmarking sites. Keep it to a few, well-chosen sites. Huge boxes filled with social media button links clutter up your site, and take away from your content.
Getting Followers on Facebook and Twitter
Make it easy for your website visitors to find and follow you by placing a badge or box on your website. This can be as simple as a small ‘Follow Me!’ Twitter widget, or as complex as a Facebook Fan Box that displays your picture and updates in your website sidebar and acts as a clickable link to your page.
YouTube
To make social media work for you, you need content that is worth sharing. Using YouTube is a great way to attract visitors, and send your marketing message viral. Create a short clip or slideshow, and post it to YouTube. Then, integrate it with your website and Facebook page using a YouTube widget.
Social media is a great way to connect with your customers on a ‘real’ level, but you can’t depend on it alone. To use it to it’s best advantage, social media and your website, along with your other marketing methods, must work together. When it does, you will be able to create relationships with your visitors, and turn them into not only buying customers but raving fans. buy youtube social shares