Is Your Website Social?
While you may have a blog on your website and separate Facebook and Twitter accounts, is your website as social as it could be? Do visitors to your site know how to find you on other social networks? Are your blog posts easy to comment on and share? Use these tips to make your website more social.
Enable comments on your blog – Blogs are a form of social media, but many business website don’t take advantage of this. By enabling comments on your blog posts, readers have the opportunity to share their thoughts, ideas, and feedback on your blog posts. Enabling comments in a blog is usually easy to do, though the exact steps will depend on the platform that you use. For example, in WordPress, you would go to your dashboard and click on Settings > Discussions > Allow people to post comments on new articles. You can also bypass built-in comments tools and use third party plugins such as Disqus. If you would like to use Facebook for comments, you’ll need to go to developers.facebook.com and go to the Social Plugins section. Find the Comments plugin and follow the prompts.
Include social sharing buttons – While it’s certainly possible for readers to like a post so much that they’d willingly copy and paste its URL and share it with their friends, the easier you can make sharing, the better. You’ve likely seen social sharing buttons at the bottom of blog posts. All you need to do is click on the social network of your choice and share with your friends. There’s no need to copy and paste URLs or compose your own message. Simply click and share. If you use WordPress, your theme might have a social sharing option built into it but it may not be on by default. If there’s no social sharing option available, go to Plugins > Add New and search for a social sharing plugin.
Add a Pinterest Pin It button – Pinterest has become increasingly popular. Adding a Pin It button to your website encourages Pinterest users to share your images along with links back to your website on Pinterest. According to Pinterest, AllRecipes.com added a Pinterest Pin It button to its site and experienced 139 million impressions from Pinterest in just three months. To make a Pin It button, go to http://business.pinterest.com/pin-it-button, click the Make a Pin It Button button, and follow the prompts. While you’re in the Pinterest Widget Builder, you might also want to make a Pin, Profile, or Board Widget to add to your website.
 Add Follow Me buttons – Again, your website’s theme may have built-in social “follow me” buttons that you can configure for your website and favorite social networks. If so, make sure to enable them and enter your social URLs. If not, you can add your own by going to each network and finding their “follow” tools. For Facebook, you’ll go back to the Developers page and find both the Follow and Like buttons in the Social Plugins section.
Enabling comments and adding social sharing tools, Pin It buttons, and “follow me” buttons can transform a static website into an engaging, social website that visitors return to and share. Start socializing today!
Watch out elephants! This slayer of business challenges comes with 30 years of record breaking sales, marketing, operations, training and leadership experience . He has worked face-to-face with 100’s of small business owners as well as large firms. His love of creating, communicating, developing and executing results for clients shines with each project, publication and training event. His entrepreneurial spirit, passion, industry experience, education, problem-solving prowess, charismatic personality and been-there-done that attitude leads his client focused approach.
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