Integrate with Social Media Sharing and Follow Buttons

Here we should pause to insert a point of clarification.

So far, we’ve spoken of your various social media networks (or “channels”) as if they exist independently of one another. But this isn’t the case. Or rather, best practices dictate that it shouldn’t be.

Whether you realize it or not, your marketing networks don’t exist in silos, they’re more like individual strands in an interwoven fabric of information. Understanding this becomes critical to your optimization of social media — your ability, in other words, to leverage not just the parts but the whole of your social media campaign to your company’s best advantage.

So how should you interconnect your various social media channels? Stern Inbound Marketing recommends the following basic, effective approaches:

First, make social media your watermark. What do we mean by that?

In the dark days of prehistory (when people used typewriters instead of computers and got their stock quotes from the next day’s paper,) business communications were written on company letterhead. Each company’s letterhead was unique. Generally, it bore the company’s logo at the top. Phone numbers, fax numbers, department codes, addresses, and so on were often listed in the footer.

Why are we mentioning this? Here’s the point: in days gone by, companies never failed to list all the various and specific ways by which someone could communicate them. And neither should you! Ergo: make social media your watermark. Put differently: incorporate social sharing and follow buttons into every single dispatch our company puts out electronically.

Every email you put out should list your Twitter handle, your company Facebook page, your corporate LinkedIn profile, and so on. Every page of your blog should include these buttons, as well.

You should also include them on your thank you pages, but not on your landing pages. Why? When visitors find your landing page, you really don’t want to distract them from filling out forms that allow you to capture their data and enlist them in your ranks of trusted contacts. However, once they click Submit, all of your social media links should appear on your Thank you page (once you’ve got their data, they should be rewarded by having more access to your content)!

By offering these buttons constantly and everywhere, you’re offering your expertise to potential clients by whichever channel they prefer to use. This boosts your open rates, which in turn boosts click-through-rates, and generates more leads and sales.