In the modern era, many individuals, businesses and organisations have social media accounts, to share exciting information and updates. In fact, some operate purely on those platforms. For those who want to expand their reach to all internet users, not just the ones with social media accounts, then it is very important that a website is also created. The problem is, most will forget to link their social media accounts to their website, even if they have links to their website on the various accounts or profiles. That’s why, in this instalment, I’ll be explaining to you why it is important to add links to all your social media accounts on your website.
Here’s Why it is Important
At a really simple level, linking your social media accounts to your website, no matter what its purpose is, will help to grow the number of followers you have. However, here are three very important, more detailed reasons why this is key.
Nurturing Website Visitors
Your website conversion rate is how many of your visitors become paying customers (or engaged visitors, depending on the purpose of the website). This rate is typically around 2.35% on average. That means that if on a given day you get 100 visitors to your website, you will likely only have 2 of them engage with your website or become paying customers. That’s really bad, isn’t it? You spend all that time and/or money building a website and 98% of your visitors just disappear.
Social media links are a really great way to remedy this issue. If someone visits your website alone, there’s not often a way that you can keep them permanently engaged, unless you have a sign-up link (for newsletters etc.) somewhere on your site. When you have your social media accounts linked to your website, they can click through to them and follow those accounts, so they can keep up to date with all the exciting content you are posting. From this point, you will always be in their thoughts. Of course, I am presuming that you are regularly updating your accounts with exciting new information.
Right now, you may be asking, but why can’t I just use a newsletter sign-up button on my website? Well, there’s one major reason why you shouldn’t, although there is nothing stopping you still doing it. That reason is spam. Unless you have given your visitors an excellent reason to sign up, like you’re dangling a carrot, they will be loathed to sign up for yet another marketing email. Most end up in the junk folder and instantly deleted anyway, so even if you have visitors signed up to them, the chances of you reaping any benefits from them are minimal.
It all boils down to this: including social media links on your website, as opposed to mailing list sign-up forms, are the best, most frictionless way of keeping your website visitors regularly engaged with what you’re doing.
Building Trust and Demonstrating Authenticity
I’m sure you’re aware that in this day and age, authenticity really is everything. With markets left, right and centre becoming saturated, you really need to stand out to your visitors and potential clients. Up to 90% of young people (including millennials and Gen X) have suggested that authenticity plays a key role in influencing which brands they choose to support. In addition, the more authentic a brand appears to its viewers, the more it will attract those ‘high value’ customers.
Most websites these days have an ‘About Me/Us’ page, which often talks about the CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) and other similar initiatives that the person or organisation is involved with, to try and gain your trust. You might be asking, why isn’t this enough?
Well, the reason why is actually quite simple. Whilst these brands/organisations come across as ‘well-polished’ consumers could still believe they’re not transparent. After all, the information on that page isn’t always regularly updated and could even be quite old. How is the average visitor to know any different? They really want to get to know you, to trust you and choose you above your competition. By guiding your visitors away from a relatively static website to your engaging social media profiles, you can connect with them in a more meaningful way and show them who you truly are.
A good example of the sort of honest, engaging content I am talking about is something like the following. Imagine you make bespoke beauty products (it could literally be any type of product or service though) right here in the UK. To show your visitors and potential clients what you’re all about, you could post regular ‘behind-the-scenes’ type updates, videos and images, as well as interesting content about where your products are being used. This will make you so much more convincing and trustworthy to those potential clients, which is exactly what they are looking for.
Improving your Search Rankings
I have talked quite a lot in the past about how to optimise your website to improve its search rankings. Including social media links on your website is a simple, yet great way to do this. Whilst there is no causal link to suggest that including links to social media profiles on your website directly improves your search engine performance, there is still a strong correlation. That’s key.
Google’s algorithm values many aspects, although two are particularly relevant here: links to other websites and regular updates. Linking to other live (and relevant) websites helps the Google algorithm to trust your own site. The more you have, the more you are seen as popular and relevant, which consequently will give you a higher search ranking score. In addition, when your website is linked to regularly-updated and trusted content on the internet, that is another tick in the box to help Google place your website higher in search rankings.
That’s why it is important to make sure that, whatever the purpose of your website, you have a strong social media presence and that you link your website to those accounts. In such a highly-competitive online world, you need to do everything you can to stand out.
How will Digital Lychee Help You?
At Digital Lychee, I don’t just design a nice looking website for you. I understand that you need to have a website that performs well, to attract the right visitors and help your business or organisation thrive. Whether you are looking for me to build a website from scratch, update a current one, or even to help you improve the search ranking performance of a website you already have, then I will always go that extra mile, talking you through what can be done and helping you get the recognition you deserve. Get in touch with me now to find out more.
Manual 5.0
