5 Tips On Making Your Website Social Media Friendly

We have already talked about the importance of social media in your whole marketing and SEO strategy. In the recent years there has been a lot of discussion among marketers whether social signals are part of Google’s search algorithm. But no matter if Google pays attention to the social signals from your content when it ranks your pages, the truth is being social media friendly can bring only benefits as social media platforms are a great marketing channel where you can gain good exposure with a little investment.

Firstly, let us clarify what we understand when we say “social media friendly”. Being social media friendly means letting your visitors easily share your content via different social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or LinkedIn. People like to interact with content they find interesting and that means you should make that as easy for them as possible. Furthermore, when visitors share your content with their friends, you earn a lot more exposure for your brand.

Add sharing buttons

One of the first things you need to do is add sharing buttons to your site. Different social media platforms offer different types of sharing, but they all do the same – you submit certain web pages to social networks so that your friends or followers can see them. A lot of users will not share your content by copying your link and then pasting it in the social media, even if they like it. But most of them will do it, if they have a button “Share” available.

Oxxy allows its users to easily add such buttons for the major social networks. You just put the button where you want with drag and drop and then adjust its settings. With social sharing buttons you make sure that your visitors will share your content with their friends.

Add buttons for likes, +1

Certain social media offer another feature that is slightly different from sharing, but has a similar impact on the social signals you receive. For example, Facebook has “Like” and Google+ has “+1”. When you think of how to make your website more social media friendly, do not overlook those features as different users tend to interact differently with the content they find interesting. Offering only sharing options you overlook a whole group of users and miss a lot of social signals.

Here is the place to mention that Oxxy offers the feature to add plenty of different social media buttons, except share, like or +1. You can add Twitter follow, mention or hashtag buttons, G+1, follow, share and many others.

A good thing to consider is what kind of buttons you need. Putting all possible buttons next to your content will only distract your visitors and many of them will not share or like your page. Our tip is to keep things as simple as possible and provide one or maximum two sharing options. To put it simple – too much social media friendliness is not friendly.

Add links to your social media profiles

Almost every brand is active on social media nowadays. That means that if you want to keep up with the trend, you need to be there as well. One of the most obvious ways to promote your social media profiles is by putting their links on your website.

One thing you need to consider is where exactly to put them. In general, that depends on your whole design, but there is one basic rule – do not put them in the content area of your pages. If you want the most possible exposure, you can add them in your header. That is the place where most visitors look and that is the option for you if you want to make sure that everybody will find you on social media.

Another good place is the right or left sidebar, if you want to keep your header cleaner. Many webmasters put their social bar in the footer, but that is not a very good idea if you want anybody to find it all. That is the last place visitors look in a website and if you have more content and you need to scroll a lot to reach the bottom of your pages, your social bar will be practically invisible.

No matter where you decide to put the links to your social media profiles, Oxxy offers a great social bar for the purpose. Just drag and drop it on your page and add the URLs of your profiles in the settings.

With a social bar you make sure that your visitors will be aware of your presence in social media and if they like you and are loyal to your company, will follow you there.

Add Facebook comments

Facebook offers the great opportunity to integrate their comments on your website. This way visitors can comment with their profiles in the social media without having to register in your website. Another big advantage of Facebook comments are that they boost a lot your visibility and social signals, because the comments are automatically posted on Facebook, as well.

With Oxxy you can easily add and customize your Facebook comments, letting your users share their thoughts about your website.

Have stunning content

We left that tip for the end, but we strongly advice to spend the most of your time on it. If you have great content on your pages that leaves your visitors with the desire to share and spread the word, you are good to go. In case your content is not interesting or not relevant to your visitors, no matter what sharing options you provide, nobody will care.

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