Whether you’re an influencer, a non-profit founder, or a business owner, your organization has a social media strategy and a website. These two assets should work in tandem, not as separate entities. Far too many companies and brands make the mistake of siloing off their website and social media marketing strategy from one another.
In fact, your website should become the center of all your marketing efforts, serving as the main brand experience for customers. As such, your goal should be to drive as many new and returning customers to it as possible. Think of your website as an investment and social media marketing as a tool to amplify your return on investment.
With this analogy in mind, you can begin to understand how your website is a fundamental part of your social media efforts and vice versa. Let’s explore how you can use your WordPress website as a key element of a social media marketing strategy.
Drive Visitors to Your Social Channels
With several marketing tools and strategies at your disposals, visitors will reach your website in a number of ways. This means they might not be fully aware of your social media presence. As a result, your website should actively work to inform visitors of your profiles on social media networks such as:
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram
YouTube
Vimeo
Snapchat
Tumblr
Any Other Relevant Platform
The most common way brands drive visitors to their social channels is by strategically placing social media icons on their website. Most brands position the icons in either the header or footer sections of the website so as to not detract a user’s attention from the main website content.
While many WordPress themes already include this feature in their templates or even widgets, plenty of plugins also offer this capability. Social Icons and Jetpack are two top plugin options. In addition, you can custom create a social icon menu using this tutorial from WPBeginner.
Another tactic is to embed your social media feeds into your website. Some brands embed their company social media feeds while others incorporate a feed from a specific or branded hashtag.
For example, the Magnolia Market website includes their latest Instagram posts on their homepage. Under Armour’s website also displays their Instagram posts, allowing users to shop through their social media content. REI aggregates social media content onto their website from branded and popular hashtags, such as #OptOutside.
Top tools to incorporate this social media function into your website include:
Social Media Content Distribution
No matter whether your website contains online products or news articles, you want visitors to share your content with the world. Make it easy for them to do so by incorporating social media sharing functionalities into your WordPress website. Several plugins are available for this capability, such as:
When you add these plugins to your WordPress website, users will have the ability to share your content with a few quick clicks. These social media sharing tools help to further your content distribution efforts and improve brand recognition for your company.
In addition, you can remind users to share your content by leveraging your voice! At the end of a blog article, remind users to share. Or, if producing video content, include a reminder at the ending, as well.
Your Social Media Content Lives on Your Website
As you create content to share on social media, the majority of it needs a place to “live.” While photos and videos can be directly uploaded to social media platforms, blog posts, news updates, and other forms of content need their own place on the Internet. This is one of the many purposes of your website.
In addition, when you create and share blogs or other content as part of a social media or inbound marketing strategy, the primary goal is to drive users back to your website. Once on your website, you can then serve visitors other engaging content or opportunities such as recommended articles or non-intrusive pop-up offers.
To track these social media content efforts, experts either use UTM parameters within Google Analytics or specific tracking links such as bitly. These data points tell marketing teams which social media tactics and blog content are working well to generate traffic to the content.
Achieve Social Media Goals with a Website
While social media is just one notch in the ever-evolving digital marketing toolbelt, a website can help marketers achieve various social media goals. With the flexible and versatile nature of WordPress websites, you can alter your web content and appearance to aid in social media objectives.
Let’s say you’re running a social media contest. Add a quick section to your homepage reminding visitors to sign up. Or, if you’re trying to promote a branded hashtag, include it in your website design using the feeds discussed earlier. This will increase the number of “eyes” that see this hashtag and consider using it. You can also subtly implement this hashtag throughout the website copy.
Plus, all major social media campaigns rely on well-designed and executed landing pages. Where do these landing pages live? Your website! You can launch and hide campaign-specific landing pages as needed to meet and exceed your social media marketing goals.
Also, rely on your website’s analytics to help inform your social media marketing strategy. For instance, look at the website traffic derived from social media for a particular blog post. Is it lower than desired? This could be due to a number of social factors you may need to adjust such as:
When did you post the article on social media?
Did you promote the article using Facebook or Twitter ads?
Was the article content relevant to your audience?
Where did you distribute the article on social media?
Was the social media post copy engaging?
You can analyze everything from the traffic to your website to the demographics of website visitors with analytics data. Use this information to influence your social media strategy, as well.
Websites and Social Media: A Unified Force
It’s clear that websites and social media marketing efforts must work collaboratively, not as siloed off assets. Instead of separating these entities, combine them to your advantage.
How have you incorporated social media marketing into your website efforts? Or, how have you used your website to improve your social media strategy? Let us know your thoughts below or learn more about Bluehost WordPress hosting here.
Comments