Social media is one of the best community building tools available in marketing today. Especially important is how you are incorporating social media organically into your brand website to make it more engaging. Below you’ll find some great best practices to lead you along the way.
photo credit: JefferyTurner via photopin cc
1. Place social media logos on your site for instant identification
Here are a couple of plugins that make this very easy to accomplish:
Social Profiles Widget
http://www.studiopress.com/plugins/social-profiles-widget
This plugin enables you to display social media icons in your sidebar or any other location on your site that allows widgets.
Tweet, Like, Google +1 and Share Plugin
http://wordpress.org/plugins/only-tweet-like-share-and-google-1/
This is a very simple social share plugin with just 5 social icons. 99% of posts shared use these 5 social icons (i.e Twitter, FB Like, Google +1, Linkedin and FB Share). Lesser social icons means your pages will load much faster.
2. Build social media sharing links into your posts
When visitors find your posts valuable they want to share it with their friends. Make it easy to share the content by including social sharing links or buttons at the end of your post by installing the Shareholic plugin.
3. Consider using Facebook as your commenting system
Facebook is the second most popular site on the Net so begin using it to connect with like minded people in your niche.
Here are 3 ways to do this:
- Create a Facebook Page
http://www.squidoo.com/facebookpage - 2. Create a Facebook Group
http://www.wikihow.com/Create-a-New-Facebook-Group - 3. Interact with others by commenting
on their facebook pages or groups.
The beauty of Facebook is that you can connect and build relationships with others in your field of interest no matter where they are in the world (so long as they can read and understand English).
There are many enterpreneurs working solo from their homes that want to bounce off their ideas and thoughts with someone else in their field. Get social by interacting interacting with the people visiting your own Facebook page by answering their questions and replying to their comments.
4. Use Twitter and Facebook website plugins to show recent posts and tweets on your blog.
When people visit they can instantly see what current topics your fans are talking about then participate in the conversation.
Twitter Feed Plugin
http://wordpress.org/plugins/mini-twitter-feed/
Facebook Feed Plugin
http://wordpress.org/plugins/fbf-facebook-page-feed-widget/
When you incorporate social media deeply into your website, your website receives an instant sense of community that it may never have otherwise. It’s that type of community that builds brand loyalty and sets brand preference, so get that social media placed in your site today!
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