Social media integration means linking social media marketing strategies with other digital marketing efforts, such as email marketing and website content marketing. Doing so helps to grow your audience and give them more ways to interact with your brand.
Continue reading to uncover the benefits and best methods of social media integration that can accelerate your business growth. We’ll also recommend some tools and share examples to help you implement these practices.
Why Social Media Integration Is Important
Social media integration can help you deliver more streamlined messages on different platforms. Enhancing your social media presence can also drive more traffic and boost brand awareness since over 50% of people discover new brands on social media.
This social media strategy also enables companies to cross-post content, helping them save time and effort from creating brand new content for different platforms.
In the next sections, we will share nine social media integration techniques and best practices for cross-promoting your marketing materials.
1. Embed a Social Feed to Your Website
A website is a great tool for building online presence and credibility, but keeping it up-to-date can be a hassle. On the other hand, updating photo and video content on a social media platform is much quicker and often takes just a few clicks.
Therefore, consider embedding social media content on your website to drive more engagement. If you don’t have a website yet, we recommend referring to Hostinger’s tutorial about how to make a website, as it contains actionable steps and useful checklists.
WordPress users can add a social media feed without coding by using a plugin like Smash Balloon. Other content management system (CMS) users can sign up for a social media aggregator like EmbedSocial, then copy and paste the code into the preferred section.
Using social media posts to support website content with real examples is also an excellent strategy to boost credibility. You can do this by copying and pasting the social post’s embed code into your site’s editor.
2. Showcase Social Proof
Social proof like industry awards and user-generated content (UGC) helps your company look trustworthy. Showing UGC from customers’ social media platforms can make your audience feel recognized and motivate others to share their experiences with your brand.
Sephora is an excellent example of this practice. This beauty brand features its users’ Instagram content and shares the products they are using.
We also recommend thanking customers for their reviews and asking their permission before embedding the content on your website. This is good practice in general and helps to improve your social media customer service.
3. Display Social Media Listings
Listing your social media channels on different types of posts and pages helps users find them easily. Here are some types of content to consider plugging your social media accounts:
- Webinar presentations
- eBooks
- Whitepapers
- Emails
- Website footer or sidebar
LinkedIn Talent Solutions is among the best examples of using this practice. The company includes all its social profiles at the end of reports and makes them clickable so readers can visit them directly.
4. Add Social Sharing Links to Blog Posts
Social sharing links are small, clickable social media icons generally located at the bottom of blog posts and product pages. These encourage readers to share content on their social media platforms to increase brand awareness.
A general rule of thumb is to keep the social sharing links streamlined. There’s no need to add every social media channel – pick the most popular or used platforms among your target audience.
AddThis and Easy Social Share are great WordPress plugins for setting up social share buttons. They offer many types of share buttons with styling variations to match your web design.
5. Use Social Media-Based Commenting System
Generally, most default comment systems enable users to comment with or without a website account. However, it’s possible to make the process easier for website visitors by integrating a third-party commenting system.
Facebook Comments, for example, has a comment plugin that lets people comment on your content using their Facebook account. Audiences can also choose to share their comment activity with their Facebook friends, which helps to increase your brand visibility.
6. Include Social Login Options
Enabling a social login means users can sign in to your website using social media accounts, such as Facebook or Twitter, bypassing the tedious process of creating a brand new account. Businesses benefit from this practice since it can increase consumer sign-up rates and reduce cart abandonment.
Implement this social media marketing strategy using Auth0, a no-code tool providing authentication and authorization services for websites and applications.
It lets users securely log in using a social media account. Businesses can also use it to enforce multi-factor authentication (MFA), stay on top of compliance requirements, and monitor users’ activities.
7. Integrate Social Marketing With Email Marketing
Email marketing enables businesses to send personalized messages, promote products, and incentivize customer loyalty. However, devoting time and effort to email marketing strategies can be overwhelming, so integrate them with your social media.
An excellent example comes from Urban Outfitters. This fashion brand gathered its most-liked Instagram photos and shared a recap with email subscribers.
Other methods to combine social media and email marketing tactics are:
- Adding social sharing links to the email footer.
- Embedding social media feeds in your emails.
- Announcing social media giveaways to email subscribers.
8. Connect with Social Commerce
Social commerce is the future of shopping. People can directly buy products from social platforms through live streaming, shoppable posts, or in-app catalogs. These will direct potential customers to eCommerce websites to complete their purchases.
Create a business account to start using the selling features on social media networks and connect it with your online store. Note that some social channels may have additional requirements. For example, users need to have a Facebook page before making Facebook and Instagram business accounts.
9. Leverage Social Paid Ads
Combine social and website promoting strategies using paid social ads to attract social media users to your website. The ad can be for a blog post, a product landing page, or even a free trial.
To maximize the results, stay informed about different social media trends using software like Sprout Social and Hootsuite. These social media tools help businesses conduct social listening and monitoring, so they can create relevant, trending content that prompts users to visit the website.
Conclusion
Integrating social media with other platforms like websites and emails is an excellent strategy to improve engagement and deliver consistent branding messages.
This article lists nine social media integration methods that bring various benefits.
To drive traffic to your website, add social sharing links and use social advertising. We also recommend embedding social feeds and sharing social proof to make your brand more credible.
If your goal is to increase sales or conversions, connect the online store with social commerce platforms and let users log in to your website with their social accounts.
Good luck with your social media integration strategies!