Increase Engagement & Website Visibility by Integrating Social Media
Social media is an effective tool for helping local governments communicate with residents. Many organizations use social media to make announcements, encourage resident feedback, and foster a sense of community. Although social media is a great addition to any communication strategy, a good municipal website is the best communication tool.
Many organizations make the mistake of using social media as the primary means of communication. But the reality is, social media is not a website replacement. It is a tool that is used to drive people to your website.
So, how can you keep your website at the forefront of your communication strategy, while still harnessing the power of social media? The answer is to integrate social media into your website. Social media integration involves using social media to extend your audience reach. It enables you to redirect your social media audience to your website. And also make your social media accessible to your website audience.
Below are a few of our tips for ways to seamlessly integrated social media into your website so you can better connect with your audience.
Add Social Media Links
The most basic, but perhaps the most important way to integrate social media into your website is to include links to your accounts. One popular way to do this is by using social media buttons, but don’t forget you can customize the look and placement of those buttons to fit your brand.
Keep Content Fresh By Integrating Your Feed
Incorporating live feeds of social media posts into your website helps keep your website’s content fresh (as long as you post regularly). And fresh website content is key to search engine optimization. To ensure that social media feeds integrate seamlessly into the site, make sure all of your social content fits with your brand. So be sure to use consistent colors, fonts, images, and layouts for all your posts.
Integrate Videos
Almost every major social media platform allows for some form of video sharing. This allows you to post tutorials, announcements, and “get to know our staff” videos. These videos can be integrated into the site (while still being hosted on a platform like Facebook). You just need to make sure that when you post videos, they are available for public viewing.
Encourage Content Sharing
Add like and share buttons to your blog posts, videos, and announcements. This is a great way to get people talking about things like community events. When adding these social share buttons keep things simple. Focus on the platforms that are most relevant to your audience. In other words, you don’t need to include every single social media platform, just the most important ones.
Allow for Easy Login
For websites that require users to “create an account” consider allowing users to sign in with Facebook, Twitter, or Google instead. Not only does this make things easier for users, but it also allows you to collect more complete and accurate data.
Analytics
Using analytic tools, like Google analytics, is a great way for you to better understand who your audience is and how to reach them. Other analytics tools include Facebook Pixel and LinkedIn Insights Tag. With these tools you can check the demographic of your audience to help you create content that will resonant with them.
When integrating social media into your website and your communication strategy, be sure to do some research. Look at the demographics of different platforms and how they operate to help you decide what platforms will best help you achieve your goals.
For help integrating social media into your website contact the GovUnity team today.
