The Quintessential Web Guides - Ch. 1- Using Social Media in Your Website

How to use Social Media in Your Website

Why social media?

The web is growing at a speed that you can never imagine. The information being poured into this infinite space is monstrous. You will need to carefully create a marketing and social plan using effective online tools that will help you to use social media on your website.

Social Media…what is it?

As people move on the internet alone or as a community, they “like”, “share” or “comment” or even “follow” something interesting on a website. This opportunity is provided via a social media.

Social site are like the famous ‘Facebook’ and ‘Twitter’ used by the “happening” people and bookmarking social sites such as Digg and StumbleUpon, photo sharing sites such as Flickr and Pinterest, blogging sites such as Blogger and WordPress, discussion sites in the form of various online forums, video sites like You Tube, online deals sites and many more.

It is good to link social media onto your site to connect these various options with the virtual reality of your brand – your website! Thus, you can connect social media profiles from the World Wide Web to your website using these social media pins and more.

This allows your visitors/clients to connect with you instantly. This method goes around and connects people very fast and it is usually free or low cost.

Does your business need this social media?

Take a look at these facts from last year's survey

• The total effect on buyers purchase interest via Facebook is 48%.
• 66% of the worlds population use social media.
• 15% of Twitter users have purchased something based on details from Twitter.
• 51% of top companies use social sharing buttons on their websites.
• 86% of web users prefer logging in via social profiles in websites

Social media plays an important role in your website’s search optimisation, especially after search quality-based algorithmic updates like Panda and Penguin. Social signals have now become increasingly important towards improving your website’s search ranking. As a web business owner, however, you need to keep in mind that social media is also an integral part of your site’s user experience and retention. When your website provides social media buttons, your users need not leave your site to like or recommend it.

Key Social media elements for your website:

1.   Social Media Buttons

 You can use icons of popular social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Pinterest, StumbleUpon, etc. They can be placed at the top, left, right or bottom of the web page content; such as a blog, video or image.

Take a look at some sample websites and notice how these icons have been used. They can be effective in reaching out to your users and more.

2.   Social Share Buttons

These allow users to stay on the site and share the content on their social media profiles with just a click and without leaving the site. Site visitors can choose interesting content to share, click on the social share button and easily post an update to their social media profiles.

Do not make the buttons too small or too big. Ideally, they must not draw too much attention but still be easy to find. The position of the social share buttons is one of the factors that determines effective usability of your site.

The following are some helpful hints on the positioning of share buttons:

• Keep the share icons in a manner that users need not scroll to find them.
• If you have a blog on your site, you could place them at the bottom of the blog so that the reader shares the blog or keep them floating so that they are seen even when the page is scrolled.

Place the share buttons only if it makes sense to share.

For instance, if you have an e-commerce website and your users are buying a product, do not prompt them to share the product image or content because at that point they only need to complete their purchase. You could include a share button at the end of the transaction, i.e., the check-out page, where your users would be more likely to spread the word.

This increases user activity and reference marketing. It brings in social activity to your site for better search rankings.

Tools and Resources:

·       AddThis

·       ShareThis

·       Po.st

·       Gigya (Paid option)

·       Shareexy

·       Lockerz

·       Janrain

·       Sharre

·       Tweetit 

3.   Social Login

You may have noticed that many of the most popular sites on the web use social login. Having social login alongside a regular login on your website gives the user plenty of options to choose from. This is a good approach in terms of your website’s usability as some users will find it easier to use an existing social login rather than create an entirely new one.

Advantages of a Social Media Login are:

• No Spam, only real people register
• Faster sign up, no user details required
• Lesser bounce rates
• The social login user need not remember username and password

4.   Social Comments

This allows the user to give a comment or feedback. It ensures user activity on the site. It allows users to comment with their own social media profiles.

Benefits of social commenting:

• Comments will not be spam since social media profiles are owned by real people
• Increases Social activity to your site.
• Using their personal profile to comment discourages users from vulgar comments.

5.   Authorship:

If you were to look at search results for your keyword, which result really catches your eye? Generally, it would be the one with the picture of the author in it. Such search results are achieved by creating authorship markup with Google + and adding it to your blogs, articles and other content. It gives the content a human touch, which makes readers select your article over others.

Here is a step-by-step process on how to create Google+ Authorship for your content:

• Create a personal account on Google+
• Go to Google+ Profile page
• Click Edit Profile
• Scroll down on the page and Click Contributor to
• Click Add Custom Link
• Enter the name of the blog page and the blog URL
• Click Save
• Click Done Editing on the top blue bar of the page
• Copy the profile page URL to the code that links to the Author’s name below the content, for example, Sameer Ansar on Google+
• Add rel=”author” tag to it, as shown in the sample code below:
• <a rel= “author” href= https://plus.google.com/u/105520809469704184434”>Sameer Ansar on Google+</a> 

6. Activity Feed:

Its advisable to add an activity feed on your website that describes every recent action that has taken place on your website by your site visitors. There are many resources to create your own activity streams on your website, such as Gigya or Atlassian, or you can embed social activity feeds from Facebook and Twitter on your site, if you have an active Facebook and Twitter page. This embedding does not require a web developer’s expertise and is very easy to do.

Tools and Resources:

·       Facebook

·       Twitter

·       So So Social

·       Gigya (Paid option)

Additional Facebook Social Plug-ins:

• Send button can be used to send content to a specific Facebook friend or group
• Subscribe button lets users see who has subscribed to your page.
• Recommendation Box is based on popularly shared content. The users on your site are shown the content that is highly recommended for further reading and the number of people who have shared and liked the recommended content.
• Like Box longer version shows the posts liked on the page. The shorter version shows faces of Facebook users that like your page. 

Other Social Integration Tools and Resources:

•  Embedded Tweets uses a single line of code provided by Twitter developers by which you can embed your tweets on your website.
• Linkedin Insider Company Plugin lets you show off your company’s strength with staff photos and their recommendations in a little box on your website.
• Linkedin Recommendations Plugin is useful for increasing the website’s credibility.
• Pinterest RSS widget is a feature useful for sites that have a lot of images (such as a wedding photography site or online apparel store). All the images you pinned on Pinterest can be made visible to your site visitors.

With a full-fledged social media integrated website you will have higher user engagement and increased social media activity on both your website and your brand pages as a whole.

You can test this in tools used for website rankings and reviews for Free.

These social media integration tools and resources discussed can make your website the main social meeting point for user interaction. It will drive maximum traffic to your site.

Sameer Ansar

CEO – Quintessence Technologies Ltd.

Mail: sameer@qtlindia.com

Skype: qetechCEO

Web: www.qtlindia.com

The SECRET to drive people AWAY from your website!

 The SECRET to drive people

AWAY from your website!

It’s a really tough job in todays scenario to get someone to visit your website. We go to extremes to ensure finest Search Engine Optimisation and Social Media Plans to bring visitors to our site. The competition is getting tougher everyday.

Now that they are here, how do we ensure they do not run away? Making your website an enjoyable experience is most important in making sales, building a user base and getting people to recommend you and add to the line up to your website.

Here is a list of the most crucial factors that make people want to run away.

The site loads slowwwww.

Nobody has time. We live in a fast paced world and on the internet this is especially true. No one is going to wait for you as your website takes a million seconds to load.

Why would someone want to wait when in a few seconds they can go back on Google and click a link to some other website? If your website is loading slow it will cost your brand to lose clients and thereby business revenue.

Some of us think that since the internet is a lot faster than earlier times, we can now go and make websites larger and more heavier with unnecessary images, graphics and folders. This will only help to slow you down, so ensure to keep material on a minimum.

Use the various tools available online to check the loading speed of your website.

Advertisements in my face

If your website is cluttered with advertisements it puts people off. Someone is on your site for a particular source of information and he may not like ads. We agree that advertisements are the only source of income for some website owners.

In such cases, you should consider reducing the size and quantity of ads or you could plan on placing them so that they are not irritating your visitors.

Also remember that such “active and colourful moving” ads will be heavy and make the website loading very slow. Advertisements need tons of flash or java scripts. So beware.

Pop up windows

Most web browsers are now committed to block pop up windows. But its not over yet. Today, websites create modal windows requires the visitor to react to it if he wants to return to the webpage.

This is very irritating and the user will classify your website as such. People come to you for some specific information and they do not want to react to any windows to jump over.

If you want your visitor to join your subscription or newsletter you should have a link for it like a blog or newsletter section on your site. If the user wants it they will join. Don’t put it in his face which will make him leave. I would!

Sounding off a Scary start

If we land on a page that has a live music or video automatically on it, then we usually run away from there. It is a situation that makes you really angry.

I may be checking a site while I am at the office or in a quiet area. Imagine sound coming out of my computer disturbing the peace in the office or annoying others.

If we run into a website that has sound/music playing automatically, you can bet they will never go back to that website again. Maybe it was a fashion long time ago. Not now.

Sad state of design and navigation

Humans are visual creatures. They need graphic appeal. The user also needs an interaction which they can easily understand how to use and enjoy using.

However, the most graphic appealing website will be wasted if the user had no clue how to use it. They will leave and find the info somewhere else.

We wonder what makes designers think an average skilled internet user with less time is going to be able to figure it out? If someone can’t see how to use it for it’s purpose then what is the need for the site?

Crafting a website design and navigation that looks good and is easy to use is very important in keeping people on your website.

Redirecting to elsewhere

Again, the visitor came for something specific. You don’t want them to hang on to your website like the answering service of a telecom company. “If yes – click 1 or else click 4. If No click 7 or else click 100. This will take you to select the complaint…”

Having redirection route on your website is the worst irritant. Imagine sending them to another page and then yet another to get an information. It will only frustrate the user and enlighten them to avoid your website forever.

Content and layout is king.

They came for something specific. Why should they stay on your website and read about it if your content is bad?

Having spelling errors on your website and or in your articles makes people know that you didn’t take time or that you are not good enough and this information could also be wrong and not well planned.

It is important to recheck whatever you publish before it goes live to your website.

The layout is also important. You will just confuse visitors if layout is not smooth and easy to access content. Images need to be properly aligned to its written content.

Text needs to have easy readability. Limit the amount of characters per line. The web page is small and font size too. People may lose track with too much content. If content is too less also, it can cause a user to skip lines because they are reading the next line of text before finishing the current line. Proper paragraph breaks are very essential for the smooth flow.

Material is history…literally!

Outdated content will not only turn users away but it will also turn browsers away.

The world is transforming with speed and the web is evolving twice as fast. You will find that corporates are already planning the next project even before the current one is even released.

People are coming to your website for information, and keeping it latest is the most important factor. Imagine, if a visitor thought he got good info from your site and gets embarrassed when he finds it wrong.

Design and versions of software should also be upgraded constantly. People catch your site on new machines everyday and you need to be designed for that. Are you ready for tablets and smartphones, et al. The name of the design is “responsive”.

Device friendly

If you have a web design or solution that is outdated or created on older software versions, then your site is not compatible and easy to view on a mobile device. Statistics say that over 80% of smartphone users will access a site on the smartphone and in this case you may lose visitors, traffic and revenue streams.

In today’s age, users need information immediately. They get on their mobile device to get what they need quick. If your site is not ready for this, it will make the user to go to another website that is more friendly and easier for them to view.

Who are you?

Believe you me, many websites still lack essential pages like Contact us and About us, etc. How can this help them in making a decision on whether to use your business or find something else?

You need to have a very apt content and design for the about us page that gives info for a visitor in order for them to make an calculated decision.

I wonder how websites expect to generate leads or get revenue and business if the user is not shown how to get in touch with you? Ensure your name or company name, email, physical address, phone number and even a feedback form is available to lead the user to you.

Good luck.

Have fun creating an amazing web solution for you or your business. Don’t hesitate to contact us for any support or help on the way. 

Call on us at business@qtlindia.com