Intelligently Integrating Social Media and Website Design

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Looking for a way to generate more leads, increase brand awareness, and convert more prospects to clients? The answer just might lie in social media marketing.

This often neglected but highly active avenue can be a great tool, provided it’s managed and maintained well. Too many organizations fail to fully harness the power of these platforms, but those who do can see remarkable gains in awareness and, overtime, more effectively channel their target market. Wondering where to begin? The best place to start when adding social media to your current web strategy is with a thorough understanding of the platforms and how they influence your brand.

Social Media Statistics

Over 2.8 billion people regularly visit social media platforms, often for several hours each week. Let’s take a look at the top 6 networks:

• Facebook: Mark Zuckerberg’s juggernaut of interconnected humanity boasts 1.9 billion unique monthly users, most spending 20 or more minutes on it per day.
• Twitter: 500 million tweets are shared each day to over 300 million unique visitors- all in 140 characters or less.
• YouTube: This video sharing service reaches more 18-49 year olds than any U.S. cable network. An average of 2 million videos are viewed every minute.
• Instagram: This image sharing service allows users to carefully curate a life in pictures. Instagram is especially popular with those under 35, but they’re not just looking at friends and family- 53% of users follow brands as well.
• Pinterest: Another image-reliant platform, this online bulletin board continues to add to its 317 million unique visitors. Pins have a significantly longer half-life than posts or tweets, and users are much more likely to make an online purchase from one.
• LinkedIn: As the professional social media platform, LinkedIn appeals to high wage earners (45% make over $75k per year) and those who wouldn’t normally engage in social media. It’s reputation is of cutting the clutter found on a typical social feed and can be a great way to instantly reach key decision makers.

Some businesses choose to focus on one network, while others decide to launch actively on all of them. In some cases, an organization may be active on them all but shift its message depending on the network. A successful social media strategy understands the nuances of these and other platforms and adjusts the message accordingly.

Boost Your Brand

Even while slightly tweaking the message for the recipient, maintaining brand integrity and message consistency is key. A good web designer is able to mold social media and web pages into your unique, easily recognizable brand, creating a level of legitimacy, solidity, and trust that other forms of marketing can’t touch.

Social media is also where your brand can be humanized. By highlighting service activities, employee appreciation days, staff life events and the like, your prospects get to know your organization and what matters to you. They see the real people behind your logo, working every day for something that matters. Promoting how your law firm gives back in Bucks County, how your nonprofit says thank you to a Doylestown business, or how your school helps the underserved in Montgomery County goes a long way toward establishing positive connotations in a prospect’s mind. It also encourages their engagement through likes, shares, and comments.

Sync Site and Social

Embedding YouTube videos, allowing sign-ins with LinkedIn, and linking to reviews on Facebook will all generate more traffic and increase your social media presence. It’s also helpful to add buttons or links to social media sites on a homepage, so prospects can quickly click to see reviews and conversations or add their own. They can also see how responsive you are, which makes maintenance of the utmost importance. Having unanswered queries or comments on your page can be a huge red flag to potential clients, just as your tactful handling of client concerns establishes trust and reliability.

The Trouble with Timing

Do not mistake post quantity for quality. We’ve all unsubscribed from overzealous mailing lists and unfollowed annoyingly frequent posters, but posting too little can also be detrimental. The simple, frustrating truth is that there is no magic number of posts. Much of it is trial and error and highly dependent on the industry and number of followers. No matter how often you choose to post, it’s most important that you share information that has value to your followers and, hopefully, their followers as well. Luckily, a full service digital communications agency like time4design has the ability and experience to make this formula a success the first time.

Whether you’re a small Bucks County business or a multinational medical network, you have a story to tell. Let the Bucks County social media design experts at time4design help you tell that story and convert curious clicks into consistent clients.