Frank Schulte-Ladbeck

You probably know the old adage that word of mouth advertising is the best, and I wonder if we can equate social media to simply being a new form of this method. How can our websites be structured to function in this social network?

I do not think that any social networking site provides the best option for any small business when it comes to marketing. These networking sites are only a piece in the puzzle. When you step back a moment, you will readily know that fact, but we seem to become overly enticed (excited) by the idea of finding or expanding our customer base on these sites.  Somehow we believe that the internet is different. We can make connections easily, which in turn we feel may lead to new opportunities. We know if we walk into a room of five hundred people and we begin to deliver our elevator pitch that few of those people will become customers. It takes more work than that, yet we seem to feel that this will happen on Facebook or Twitter.  I am being slightly negative here, because I do not want you to think that this post is a secrets of social networking revealed. Anyway, those posts never tell you anything that you do not know already. What I would like to do is discuss how you might connect your business site into this network.

    There are many different plugins which can help your WordPress site connect to these social networks. I do not think that there is anyone in particular that is far superior to the others. I have been trying different ones out on different sites, and I am happy enough with all of them. The basic function of these plugins is to let people who are connected to you find out about changes to your site. For bloggers, these are great, since each new post will be advertised to your networks. However, if your site only contains a few pages, you would still want people to know that new information has been added to the site. Will you obtain a massive amount of traffic by tweeting or updating your status? Probably not. I could count on a pretty good flow of visitors to my sites last year, but the flow of visitors reaching me through an update has decreased for me, and others are reporting that this is happening on their sites. For me, the real benefit of posting these updates comes from the slow building of authority as my connections see that a post has been created, and from having the individual post marketed. I have people contact me not because they are going to my site to read a post, but because my post reminds them of what I do. The individual post marketing helps search engines find those pages faster, which means that there will be a better chance of that post obtaining visitors who could be potential clients.
    Do you use the “connect with us” on buttons? I do not mean do you have it on your site; I mean when you are reading a post on a given website, do you click on that button to connect with that business? I cannot think of one instance when I have used those buttons. I do connect with others. I connect with people who I interact with on different sites, including their own blogs, but I cannot remember using a button to do that. Do users connect with those buttons? Yes, so you should have them on your site, but my point is that these may not be as important for your small business as you think. Load your site into different browsers. Is the connect with us button predominately displayed? You may only have five seconds to keep that visitor on your site, so would something else besides that button be better suited to attract a visitor? If we do have the button as the attractive item to click, we are encouraging them to move away from our site.
    Changing perspective, what if people are coming to the site from a social network. Is our site encouraging interaction? Here I am coming to the main point of this exploration. Communities like to gather at a central location to interact, then they move away from there. These locations are the street corners, corner markets, or well placed coffee house. Once we have a specific interest, for example collecting art, we go to the specific hangout for that interest, the art gallery. On the internet, we have twitter, Facebook, or other sites as the corner markets. We have to make an appearance there to let others know that we are around. Our site may be the art gallery for art collectors, but we are not the corner market in most instances. What does this mean for our websites? We are going to have the main meeting places, and it is good to let people know that we are involved, but do we have to make that presence the main objective of our site? Having the means to connect on those sites is beneficial. We want our visitors to engage with us more, because that activity will make them loyal consumers. When they are on our site, the goal should be to focus them on our service or product. Advertising Facebook or Twitter should be placed in a position that makes sense.
    Where should we place this engagement?  Having the social information above the fold may be appropriate for your site, but advertising yourself on the site should be first. Placing a connect with us button at the end of the post makes sense. If a visitor is engaged enough to read or scan an entire post, they are more likely to connect. Maybe having other social features in the middle or bottom of the sidebar would be better. I see too many sites that are focusing on social networking, but I wonder would you do this in your store or office? If you think about the situation in terms of physical scenarios, you do not overly advertise/promote your involvement with a chamber of commerce. You probably mention this connection somewhere in your building where customers can see the sign. This is how you should handle this on the website. Find a place that makes sense.
   I feel that we are heading towards a social media crash. Not that social media sites will become irrelevant. There has been a push to connect with a massive amount of people to get the word out. I am finding that many users of these sites are no longer interested in having all of these connections made. I have companies follow me, only to unfollow me when I return the favor. This leaves me with a low opinion of them. The other trend that I noticed is that there are many people concerned with creating connections, but they do not post on these sites. Others seem to have stopped all activity. The excitement has worn off a bit.  

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