Social media badges on your site – 6 Tips to get them right

Congratulations! You aren’t letting the world pass you by, you realize the importance of social media and you have added icons to your site. But, are you doing it right?  Here are some tips to make sure that those badges are not colorful graphics but are working for you on your site.

#1 Persistent Icons link to your presence

When you use social media icons in your header or footer they should link to your presence on other platforms.

#2 Product page icons promote the product

On a product page, you want to promote the product.  So, social media icons on product pages should follow suit.  While the persistent icons take the customer to your social media presence, on product pages, the icons allow users to promote your products through their social networks.

#3 Help your customer promote your product

When you give the customer a tool to promote your products via social media, give them help with the wording as well. You can do that by repopulating the text for the tweet or status.  You know, give them a head start by giving them suggested text like “Check out the fun shoes I found…” Is it likely that they will change it?  Yes.  But you have still helped to frame the message.

#4 Make sure your page name convention works for social promotion

With most of the plug in social promotion share services, when you have a share button on a product or service page, it will grab the page title and promote that. So for that to work, your page title needs to be specific and relevant to what you want the customer promoting.

#5 Make sure your navigation structure works for social promotion

If you have your items bunched onto one page instead of having unique product pages, you likely won’t be promoting your individual items.  Because most plug in social share services are page specific, you will be promoting a category.  That is far less effective then promoting individual items.

#6 Is what you are asking your customer to promote something they would actually promote?

Having share buttons on pages such as the about us or contact us page doesn’t help you.  Honestly, customers won’t take the suggestion to promote that content seriously and if they aren’t taking your share suggestion seriously on those pages, will they take you seriously on your promotion pages?

Now go forth and be social… just correctly.

~e