Hi! I'm a drawing of Catherine. She does most of the writing here, including this blurb. (Does this count as writing in the third person?) Catherine believes that websites don't really run on technology, they run on emotions. If you agree, then she wants to help you rock it out and be awesome online.We interrupt the stream of heresies for a guest post by Mike. Less controversial, but it’s funny and makes a lot of sense.
Whether you’ve paid much attention to it…err…scratch that. Whether you’ve jumped into the social media trend or not, one clear fact remains: Social media has taken over the web as we know it.
And the truth is, many are absolutely capitalizing on this massive traffic and building up their brand and websites through it. Whether you think Twitter is dumb or Facebook is this or that, you should still think about making your site more social. Good chances are, your visitors and readers use them so it would actually be a convenience for them if you made a few little changes.
1. Make it clear where else they can find you. Not all sites don’t do this but there are cases where people will forget to display their social profiles in clear view. Big mistake. Just because people visit your site or read your blog, doesn’t mean that’s all they’ll be interested in. You’d be surprised how many would like to follow you on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook. Try it and see.
2. Make your site “socially” shareable. What I mean by that is get a retweet button like on Be Awesome Online, a Facebook share button, and depending on what you want to do, social bookmark buttons or a plugin so people can share on Digg, Stumbleupon, etc.
You probably already do that but also pay attention to where these things are located. Maybe test them in different locations and see what happens. What could have been there may perform better here and so on. It’s awesome that people come to read what you have to say and comment, but it’s even cooler when those same people share your content and bring in new visitors that do the same.
3. The holy grail: Be social yourself! You’ve got the profiles created, you have the accounts setup, now get out there and start talking with people. Yeah, post links to your new content and things of that nature, but be more social yourself. You don’t have to have a novel idea or an amazing topic starter to get into the conversation…you just need to get talking and engaging with other like-minded people.
Your social media profiles are an extension of your brand and site so by being more social yourself, you’ll increase the value of your site and potentially create a very nice traffic stream.
In what ways are you using social media? Are you using it to build your brand/site or are you using it for personal use? Also, any tips to add to the discussion?
Mike Stenger is a social media consultant with a strong passion of business and all things Internet. You can find Mike at his blog where he talks about success, business and social media strategies. You can also follow Mike on Twitter.
Do you find that a comment service like Disqus makes your site more social ?
I've noticed on client sites that a lot of users are going back to the Facebook Fan Pages to comment instead of the blog. It's almost like they can't be bothered to sign in to comment whereas on Facebook they are already signed in.
I'm looking at switching their comment system to Disqus because of this but I'm not 100% convinced yet by it's social benefits.
I think it does. In all of our posts we ask a question and then say “Tell us in the comments”. It's rare we don't get at least 5 comments from people.
Mind you, we don't HAVE a Facebook fan page (because I have no time for maintaining one and it's not as useful or enjoyable to me as Twitter), so there's not any other obvious options for people to connect with us. People tend to go to where they think the party is.
I think Disqus is worth implementing either way. The threading and notification systems are really useful for helping me engage with the readers, and them engage with each other.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts about Disqus. I think I'm going to have to give it a go because of the Facebook and Twitter tie in. Lets hope it plays nicely.
Good luck with that! Be careful about making every comment update in Twitter, because it can get REALLY annoying. Still think it's a good system, though.