Social media is the newest way to increase traffic to your website, and thus something that every smart online business should utilize to the fullest. That said, there is many different ways to integrate social media with you website to make consumer interaction more pleasant and easier. If the goal of you social media efforts is to attract repeat customers back to your website you may want to read up on how you can use various social media resources to your advantage. Here are a few steps that you can attack gradually to help optimize your website’s use of social media.
First of all, you need to get your name and presence out there on the internet. People like talking to others who have a name and identity; it is what makes individuals such as the ever infamous Perez Hilton stand out. While you may not want to be quite as controversial as Hilton; a great place to start when building an online reputation is by simply providing an about me page on your website.
Next, you can spring from the ‘about me’ page on your website to building a few profiles on facebook and Myspace for yourself. Myspace in particular will allow you to link the ‘about me’ page to you profile and you can always simply provide the link as well. Your link will draw people over to your website which is of course your main goal.
Next, you need to consider adding a blog to your website or linking a blog to your profiles that also links to your website. Adding on bookmarking features to social networks such as Delicious, Digg, or others will help draw readers to your blog.
While adding on buttons at the bottom of you blog, you will want to follow the same directions for your website and blog to add to its social networking abilities. Adding links to RSS Feeds, Google Videos, YouTube videos, Flickr and SmugMug will also help rank your website and draw attention through social media outlets. Also, at the bottom of the page you should add a ‘send to friend’ link for all the content and products that you feature as you may have a browser who is not interested, but has a friend that they think will be.
Next, consumers enjoy the chance to voice their opinion, and many people will return repeatedly to a website just to do so. Thus, to encourage their repeat visits open a forum area on your website nad encourage comments on you blogs. You may even consider allowing them to rank your products. This not only gives you true consumer feedback for the most part, but it also will allow your users to feel that you are appreciative of their opinions. However, resist the urge to censor negative comments because sometimes they incite the most discussion. Thus, unless the comments are banter or filled with hateful obscenities, leave them go.
Finally, take advantage of feeds to get your news blurbs published around the net and to your feed subscribers. This process is as easy as signing up with Feedburner to distribute feeds and potentially even getting some extra revenue from advertising! You want to make sure that you format your feeds as RSS feeds since these are the most effective at attracting attention.