By optimizing your site for social interaction, you’ll find your online audience more engaged and interested in your brand all across the Web. You will also find that the major search engines will be more attentive to your website and you can expect improved rankings. Here are some tips that will help your website to get more social interaction:
Link to Your Pages on the Biggest Social Networks
You must create well-developed and personalized profiles on Facebook, Google +, Twitter and Linked In. You must have links to these social profiles on your homepage in the form of social sharing buttons like Facebook “Like” and Google + “+1”. You can even create a space on your home page to show the latest Facebook and Twitter posts if you are very active on these platforms. If you have a social network that is a direct match for your vertical (eg. Green Energy for a Solar Energy Firm), be sure to include that as well.
Blog Posting
We all know that interesting and relevant blog posts can increase website traffic, create greater social engagement, social interaction and more opportunities to display your industry expertise. Social sharing buttons in your blog posts allow visitors to share your content and increase your sphere of online influence. Google Authorship can also help to increase the online audience that will find your blog content.
Make It Easy to Login and Interact With Your Website
If you have significant website traffic, you should consider adding social login functionality, which allows users to simply sign into one of their social network profiles (usually Facebook or Twitter) and then use that identity to engage with your website. This should help to increase the number of visitors that have a social interaction with your site while they’re just stopping by.
Create Unique and Interesting Content
Some users like to read, others are visual learners, so do not be afraid to use a combination of text and video to share your website content. Use your analytics to track the most popular mediums by number of visitors over time to determine what format is most effective for your online audience.
Encourage Sharing and Interaction
Don’t be afraid to ask questions and invite comments at the end of a blog post, or asking users to share your content with others via social media. Users are going to be more willing to interact with you and other visitors on your website if you put yourself out there and let them know you’re listening. You may not always get positive feedback, but blogging is like life, anything that doesn’t kill you just makes you stronger.
Bottom Line: Blogging and Social Interaction is hard work. Most small business owners do not have the time to devote to this part of their marketing plan. It is important to find content writers/bloggers or employees who are willing to embrace this part of your marketing plan and help to move it ahead. I would love to hear from any business owners out there who have creative solutions to tackling the daunting task of keeping a blog and social media content fresh and interactive.
Eric Van Cleave is a Partner In Zenergy Works, A Santa Rosa, California, SMO, SEO and Website Development Firm.