You’ve chosen a domain name, found a great hosting provider, created accounts on Facebook and Twitter, and have told your customers all about your social media presence.  But no matter how hard you try, you’re not seeing any increase in your business.  What gives?  The likely problem is that you aren’t using social media to its full potential.  After all, in order to have success on social media, people need to be aware of your presence.  Keep reading for a few tips on how you can integrate social media into your website design, which should hopefully improve your social media following.

Social Media Buttons

One of the easiest things that you can do is incorporate social media buttons into your website.  You can place these at the top of your homepage, or in your website’s footer, for example.  Make sure that the buttons are large and easy to see, and placed in an area that is not distracting.  Link your social media buttons up to your social accounts, and ask people to follow you on social media.  Some sites, like Facebook, even have boxes that can be easily installed into a site, enabling people to follow you without even needing to visit the Facebook website.

Share Buttons

Another type of button that you should include on your website, is a ‘share button’.  These are available for all of the top social media sites, and encourage readers or customers, to share your content with their friends.  Therefore, you’ll find it’s most effective to place these at the bottom of blog posts or products that you are selling.  Again, you want to make these large and easy to see, as the more people that share links to your website, the more chance you have of gaining new customers and social media followers.

Social Based Comments

If you allow people to comment on your website, for example at the end of a blog post, or to review an item, enabling social based comments could see your traffic increase dramatically.  Social based comment plug-ins ask your commenter to sign into a social media website, such as Facebook, in order to leave a comment.  Many people are willing to do this as it eliminates the amount of time they would otherwise have to spend signing up to a website.  Then, when someone does comment on your website, the comment appears on their Facebook news feed so that their friends can see it.  Not only does it reduce the presence of trolls, but it encourages social interaction on social media websites.

Don’t Overdo It

Whilst you want to increase your social media followings, you need to be careful not to overdo it.  Before you add social buttons to a page, ask yourself whether there is information on it that is worth sharing – sometimes there won’t be, and it can look forced.  Also, remember to keep your social media buttons updated.  Rollouts are regular, and you want your site to make use of the most current versions of plugins and buttons, in order to see the largest return on your time.