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Everybody knows that social media is a great way for businesses to interact with their customers and help to add a ‘human’ dimension to their online operations. Done successfully, social media could even boost your business. However, get it wrong and you might end up doing more harm than good.

One important consideration is integrating your social media into your web design. Essentially, this means making it a part of your online operations and linking it in to your main website in a joined up, rather than fragmented, approach. Read on for five ideas for integrating social media into your website design.

Blog teasers on your home page

There are two main approaches to having a company blog. One is to include as part of your main website, such as by having a specific ‘blog’ tab alongside all your other website categories. Another approach is to have a separate blog with a separate domain. Generally speaking, the former approach is better from a search engine optimisation perspective.

But, whatever you decide to do, it can be a good idea to ‘tease’ your blog posts on the homepage of your website. For instance, if you have a ‘news’ section on your homepage, posting a small snippet of your latest blog post followed by a link to the main post so people can continue reading helps to make your site more interactive.

Also, some sites include a ‘latest updates’ section on the homepage of their web design: posting your latest blog titles and links there could be a good way of persuading people to read more.

Consider adding videos to your site

Another idea for integrating social media into your site is to add video content to certain pages. After all, it’s all very well having a company YouTube account, but if people can’t find your videos on your business’s website, it’s unlikely to have much of an impact.

For example, if you have a webpage dedicated to a certain product that you sell, an accompanying video demonstrating how that product works or videos including testimonies on that product could be useful. If you are interested in including videos on your website, you might like to talk to professional website developers to find out more about the best ways of doing this on your website, as the same solution won’t work for everyone.

Include social media buttons

As you might already have guessed, one of the main ways of integrating social media with your web design is to include social media buttons on your website. These are the buttons that allow people to visit your social media pages (such as on Facebook, Twitter or Google+) and also to share content that you have posted on your site. You can download a basic code sample to do this from www.addthis.com.

One thing to consider is the look of these social media buttons. The social networking sites themselves provide standard buttons that can be used on websites, but if you are trying to convey a particular image or sense of your brand, it can be a good idea to change how the buttons look so they fit in better with your web design. This is something a web design company will be able to help you with (such as by changing the colour of the buttons so they go with the rest of your design).

Consider additional content

As well as integrating your social networking content with your web design, there are other aspects you could consider. One example is the QR code. This is a relatively recent development that works a little bit like a barcode. These can be placed on websites and other forms of advertising, and they can be scanned by smartphones with cameras (and the right app).

These codes then take the person using the smartphone to a particular webpage on their phone: this could be a page offering more information about a product, a special offer, your social media page or a mobile version of your site. As more and more people start to use smartphones to browse the internet, it makes sense to start considering developments that could help you access the mobile internet market.

Keep it fresh

Finally, if you are serious about integrating your social media with your web design, you need to make sure you keep your social media fresh. Update your Twitter and Facebook accounts on a regular basis and make sure they’re full of appropriate, useful content that is relevant to your business. If your Twitter feed then updates on your website’s homepage as well, this helps to keep the content of your main site fresh, which in turn can help with your SEO strategy. This makes social media a useful tool for building your presence and engaging with customers, so it is definitely something worth thinking about.

By Chelsey Evans

Follow @AmpheonLtd