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Is Social Media Taking Over Your Website?

With search and social integrating more and more every day, I have been witnessing a rise in overwhelming social plug-ins on websites and it got me thinking; is social media taking over our websites?

Every business has its own social media goals. Small businesses usually shout and scream in the hope that they are acknowledged whilst larger brands typically use social media as a communication tool. Whatever the goal may be, I have noticed many businesses place too much importance on social media to the extent that they flood their websites with plug-ins.

I too, was once keen about the use of social media on client websites until I thought about it logically. We are driving traffic to our websites (WIN!) only to drive them away to a social media site (FAIL!) in the hope that they come back. The fact of the matter is that even if they like or follow you on Facebook or Twitter, you will need a great social media strategy to re-reach (yes, it’s a word) them. Facebook, for example will only show your posts to 10% of your fan base unless you attain lots of engagement with fans or promote via paid methods whilst Twitter will require frequent posting activity if you hope to be recognised at all.

I found this social media traffic flow and the blog post correctly shows the order in which traffic should flow from social media. It also states that we should never go in reverse order.

 

 

 

 

 

What I Suggest

• Researching a company (prior to engagement) may take you through their social activities so place your social buttons somewhere in sight but don’t make them the centre of attention.
• Ask the user to follow or like your page after they have completed your primary objective i.e. completing a purchase.
• Emphasis should be on gaining email subscribers rather than social followers. Email marketing has the highest ROI from all online marketing activities and social media has the lowest but again, it depends on what your goals are (For most businesses, engagement on social platforms is a secondary goal).​

What Not to Take Away From This Post

• Social media marketing is useless.
• I don’t need to spend time working on my social activities.

Everything has a place, you just need to prioritise according to effectiveness. Social media will never drive the highest converting traffic but it is not supposed to. There are various other benefits that you can reap from social media.

The Bottom Line