There is no doubt that social media is big for all kinds of businesses at the moment. Worldwide, the trend we see is social media budgets increasing year on year, and they’re only going to get bigger. If you do an online search, you’ll find any number of articles and blog posts talking about social media strategies for your business. However, there is very little found on the website fundamentals that will take your social media efforts and turn them into revenue and profit. Ignoring your website could lessen the impact of your social media strategy. Here are some tips on website fundamentals.
Optimization
Everyone talks about website optimization. But what does that really mean? One of the things it means is tweaking your website for speed. It’s interesting that we don’t really connect website speed with social media success, but think about it this way. Just apart from the fact that, as a society, we have much shorter attention spans now, attention spans on social media are even lower. A single second delay in website loading time could result in a 7% reduction in conversions. All the tweaks and hacks out there to boost conversions from social media will not work, if your website isn’t fast enough and your users leave before even having a chance to see what you have to offer.
Responsive Design
Your website should be responsive, meaning that the design and experience respond to the size of the user’s device. In other words, mobile friendly. These days your customers are always on the go, and it makes sense for them to be able to reach your products and services via their cell phones. Responsive design is the preferred way to develop a mobile website rather than a separate one for mobile. This keeps your content at one URL. If your current site is not mobile-friendly, you can retrofit responsiveness or install a mobile-friendly plugin. An easy way to find this out is through Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test.
Analytics And Conversion Tracking
As a small business owner, you know that social media is pretty reasonably priced, and many people think that is its real value. The fact is the true value of advertising is not its cost but the return on investment. And the way to truly measure ROI is to make sure your website is set up for tracking and analytics. Most website platforms like Wix and WordPress make it easy to directly track your social media ad efforts by integrating your website and ad account—either directly or through an external plugin. Take advantage of these features.
Have A Human Element
Getting the most out of your social media marketing means more than merely adding content all the time. We’re so used to things being automated, that having a human side will show authenticity. You can do that by incorporating psychological triggers and talking about your story. It will give your social media efforts a huge boost.
Pay Attention To The Details
When it comes to your website and social media, the little things add up. Things like having good metadata can mean the difference between your content looking like just another spam link versus a well optimized social media update. That difference will either get your content ignored or shared. It can be easy to get focused on what seems more important and forget about the small stuff, but it’s the attention to detail that will make people stop at your website.
Accessibility
Your website should be accessible and inclusive for all users. An accessible website is also beneficial for your SEO. Proper use of header tags not only helps users with screen readers understand the importance of content, it also helps search engines prioritize the order of the content by boosting SEO for the header tags. A sitemap that lays out all of the pages on your site makes it easier for all users and search engines to get a complete view of your site.
Ultimately, your website should always cater to the needs of the users. How do you want your customers to interact with you? Each page of your website needs to have a clear purpose and to fulfill a specific need for your users.
Read more relevant blog post: How to Make Inbound Marketing Enhance Better Business Practices