“It’s all about social media these days.” “You need to have a social media presence to remain relevant.” “How are you utilizing social media for your business?” Website owners have heard it all, and many have gotten caught up in the social media whirlwind. While it’s certainly true that social media is important these days, some businesses have lost sight of what’s really important, and that is their actual website. A business website should still be your “hub”. The goal of social media is to gain brand recognition and get people to visit your website, not the other way around.
Think about it. What is a bigger goal: getting friends, fans, and followers or sales, leads, and conversions? Social goals should always be secondary. Social media pages should be promoted, but not overly so by overshadowing the website. One example of how this is done all too often is by including large social media icons on a prominent place on a website. Web developers for some reason have decided that big Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn icons need to be located in the top right hand corner of a website. As we know, that’s prime website real estate. The thing is, web developers aren’t marketers. It might look impressive that you have a social presence but promoting these pages isn’t the main goal of a website. You don’t want to immediately lose website visitors to your social pages because the actual conversions happen on your website.
This doesn’t mean that social icons shouldn’t be located anywhere on the homepage. A good place for them is at the bottom. That way, if visitors find them and decide to click on them it’s likely that they at least browsed through the homepage to see what you have to offer before clicking away. Another good place to promote social pages is on a company blog. Blogs are social media tools too, so it makes more sense since it’s all part of a longer term social initiative.
The order of importance for company website goals should be lead forms filled out or products purchased, contact information received, and social followers. Followers are great, but it’s important to keep in mind that many of them don’t actually interact with you and will never affect your bottom line. Look at it this way, getting social followers won’t pay the bills, but getting visitors to your site to convert will.
This article has been republished to www.ixlstudios.com from www.brickmarketing.com