Social media integration on your WordPress site is important for the overall growth of your online presence. Almost every successful business website you see today will have icons for their various social media platforms at the top or bottom of their site. They may also have social media feeds or reviews from their social media platforms.
Having a strong social media presence is just as important as having a functional website. If your small business website doesn’t fully integrate your social media accounts yet, we’re here to help. These tips, strategies, and recommended social media plugins will help you plan and integrate social media elements into your website to boost engagement.
Continue reading to learn more about:
- Social Media Widgets
- Social Media Feed Plugins
- Social Sharing Plugins
- Additional Social Media Integration
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Social Media Widgets
WordPress widgets allow you to add functionality to a specific area of your website. Widgets generally appear in the header, footer, and sidebar areas depending on the WordPress theme you’re using.
Social media widgets add icons and other interactive elements to your website that connect to your social media platforms. They are subtle, unobtrusive additions that will follow your user as they navigate your site — living in areas, like the header and footer, that are generally visible no matter where your visitors end up.
If you’re just starting your social media journey, or do not need full social media integration on your site, adding social media widgets is an easy way to connect your website to your social media platforms to boost engagement.
Social Media Feed Plugins
Social media feeds are dynamic elements that display your most recent social media posts on your website. Generally in a sidebar or at the bottom of your site, social media feeds are perfect for businesses that are visual or use visuals heavily for marketing(e.g. photography, wedding planning, restaurants, etc).
Though mainly used for visual businesses, you can also use a feed for less visual platforms like Twitter. This may be best for businesses that post announcements, news, or alerts frequently. A twitter feed may also be appropriate for a blogger or a commentator who consistently tweets around relevant topics and news.
No matter which social media platform you decided to add as a feed to your website, you can do so easily with our guides:
- How to add social media feeds to your WordPress site
- How to add an Instagram feed to your WordPress site
Social Sharing Plugins
If you’re taking time to create great, sharable content, it will be worth your wild to add social sharing to your website. With social share plugins, your visitors will be able to easily share your content with their social media networks.
Adding icons next to or within your content will encourage your visitors to push the content to their Pinterest page or even tweet a line from your blog post to their Twitter followers. This interaction will then put your website in front of new sets of eyes, allowing others to learn about your website and, hopefully, become regular visitors.
Encourage additional interaction on your site by adding social sharing with JetPack.
Additional Social Media Integration
Social media integration doesn’t have to stop at icons, feeds, and widgets. There are many more functionalities you can add to your website to integrate social media and boost engagement.
For example, if you rely heavily on the reviews customers add to your Facebook page, you can use a plugin to embed those reviews on to your website. Providing social proof on your website for visitors who may not have read your Facebook page yet. Or, if you post most of your events on Facebook, you can use a plugin to embed the events on to your website from your account. Slashing the time it would take to post the events in two places and encouraging website visitors to engage with you on Facebook.
There are many additional social media plugins you can use to increase engagement on your website. Here are a few of our top recommended social media plugins for you to try to promote growth.
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