How do you promote your social profiles on your website?
I was thinking about this recently while looking at some business websites.
Every few months I look at my own business website to see if improvements can be made. As part of that I look at other websites for comparison. While doing that I saw that some businesses are very upfront on their website when sharing their social profile badges or images.
I wrote about a similar topic previously on this blog in this post.
That post was about social sharing buttons. For this one we’re going to look at how to promote your social profiles (or the follow buttons) on your website.
The Purpose Of Social Profile Buttons
The reason to promote your social profiles is to get more followers. Many businesses get traffic to their websites and so it makes sense to put the social profile buttons in front of those visitors so they can find them and if they’re interested click to view the profile and follow the business.
Another reason to promote the buttons is that some people, customers and potential customers, know that they can sometimes gather information about companies by looking at their social profiles. Some businesses share information on their social profiles like company updates, customer service information and more.
And social media is a great way to interact with people just like in real life.
So there is reason to promote your social profiles.
The Purpose Of Your Website
When I think of a business website I like to think of the purpose of the website overall and each page on the site.
A business website is really an online salesperson for the business. The website has or should have all the tools and answers required to take someone that is interested in buying what the business is selling to the point of the sale or to the point where they can contact a person that can close the deal.
With that in mind we can look at how to potentially promote your social profiles on your website.
In most cases it’s not the salesperson’s job to promote social profiles. They want to keep the potential customer keyed in on gaining the information they need to make a purchase. Information that distracts from that will lead to the potential of a lost sale.
It’s ridiculous and I know, but I can’t imagine too many salespeople interrupting a sales interaction to say, “Hey, have you see our Twitter account?”.
How To Promote Social Profile Buttons On A Website
In that sales situation, though, a potential customer might ask the salesperson about the social profiles. I could see someone asking, “Is your company on Facebook?”. That’s a reasonable questions. Having a social profile can be a way to legitimize the business in a way. Or the person might just be curious.
In that case it’s good to make it possible for the customer to find your profiles.
That’s why the websites I like are the ones that put the profile in the header or in the footer. The buttons usually aren’t very big. Usually they’ll have colors changed to kind of match the website’s look and feel.
The buttons don’t distract from the purpose of the website, but they are easily found when a person wants to find them. And it seems that people look first at the header and footer to find those buttons.
On a blog it seems the sidebar is a good place for the social profile buttons along with the words: Follow us on… or something like that.
Conclusion
One final thought I have to bring this all together is that I would only promote the profiles where you are active. If you have a Google+ page, for example, but haven’t updated it in years then I wouldn’t recommend promoting the Google+ button your website.
So if you have active profiles then add the buttons on your website in the header or in the footer. The footer is probably the best place if you want to promote your profiles at all. It’s a way for a visitor to find them if they want to, but it won’t distract them from your sales process.
