Last Updated: April 2024
Do you know that 77% of customers will pick a brand that offers a positive experience on social media?
In fact, integrating social media gives you more ways to engage and interact with your customers. Additionally, you will be creating more opportunities for your audience to share your content and promote your brand.
So, without wasting any more time, let’s dive in to learn more about social media integration.
What is Social Media Integration?
Social media integration is defined as the act of using social accounts as part of your marketing strategy. Typically, it can be done in two ways:
- Driving your social media audience to your brand’s website, and
- Allowing your social media accounts to be accessible on your website.
Think about the social media buttons on web pages and blog posts. They allow you to easily share interesting content without any need to copy and paste the URL. This is the perfect example of integrated social media in action.
Actually, it’s all about having a lively presence on social media such as Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and so on while encouraging prospects to interact with your brand.
Note that there is no need to integrate with all the social media platforms. Being active in at least two of them is enough to connect with your audience.
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Top Benefits of Integrating Social Media
Social media integration assists in achieving a few key goals including trust, credibility, reputation, and awareness.
Now, let’s see all the five major benefits of social media integration.
1) Advertising
Facebook and Instagram are some of the popular social media channels that provide online advertising tools.
They enable you to reach more audiences with a wide range of marketing content. You can create interactive content with images, videos, polls, etc.
More importantly, it is cost-effective to use the channels and they allow you to create hyper-targeted marketing ads based on your user preferences.
When you are introducing new products and promoting existing items, channels such as Instagram are default places where you can reach your target audience and showcase your products and services.
2) Brand Building
Building a brand is not only about engaging with your audience but also about generating trust, authenticity, and receptiveness. These help you to gain customer loyalty.
Now, you need to know the following three important points.
Humanizing Your Brand
With social media, you can build and maintain human connections.
Moonpie’s tweet is one way to visualize the interaction.
Creating a human-like persona for the brand allows people to connect with it on another level.
Thought Leadership
Forums and social media channels are great ways to develop trust as a thought leader.
That means, your social media account and website become a reliable source of information for your customers when they want to know more about your product or service.
Constant Interaction
Even when your customers are not purchasing any products, they need to interact with you. Because, when they do not interact with you constantly, there is a pretty good chance of consumers forgetting your brand.
Given today’s competitive environment, constant engagement with relevant information is vital for staying in business.
3) Using Social Media For Growth
The main reason you are integrating your social media is to grow your business. Through brand building and advertising, you can hope to generate new customers.
So, the social media campaign’s goal is to –
Increase Website Traffic
Social media ads, campaigns, and sound strategies such as giveaways, viral content, thought leadership, etc. lead to your business traffic growth.
Generate Leads
Social media acts as an entry point for potential new customers. Through it, they can learn and try a new brand’s products/ services.
Increase Conversions
Obviously, with increased interaction, engagement, and traffic, your business can see growth in sales.
In fact, more than 50% of merchants who implemented social media marketing for 2 years reported that their sales have increased.
4) Gaining Consumer and Market Insights
Data is crucial for making effective marketing decisions for your business.
Social media is a rich source for gathering data ranging from demographics & consumer preferences to competitors’ information.
According to Sprouts Social, 85% of executives reported that social data will be the primary source of business intelligence that can support their company to move forward.
So, based on your account following, platforms such as Instagram and Facebook provide analytics. They have advanced tools that can –
- Guage customer sentiment,
- Learn how people are perceiving your brand online,
- Help you to keep up with new trends,
- Research your competitor’s marketing intelligence,
- Reveal unaddressed gaps and pain points.
Therefore, practicing social listening helps you to understand new and upcoming changes in the industry. Based on all such data you can create your marketing strategy and improve your business performance.
5) Communication
The main functionality of social media is communication.
Along with marketing, some brands use it for answering customer queries and resolving their complaints.
In the end, social media is also useful for dealing with negative feedback and managing your brand’s reputation.
But how to achieve social media integration? Find the answer to this question in the below section.
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Ways to Integrate Social Media
There is no pre-defined way that you can follow exactly to achieve social media integration. It is usually based on the needs of your business and your marketing strategy. However, we can give you some pointers that can help you with that.
1) Insert Prominent Social Links
Generally, people include their socials in the form of tiny buttons on their websites. To make it more prominent you can add them as widgets and pop-ups.
The key here is to keep things simple. Hence, only add 2-3 major platforms.
Don’t overdo it and add all of them.
2) Include Social Media Posts
This is a great way to liven up your website. Here, you can use software to set up and automatically add your social media feed to your website.
For instance, you can include fans’ content who use your brand’s hashtag in their posts.
3) Allow a Social Login
It is easier for your customers to log in by using Facebook or Google than going through the registration process to create a new account.
4) Incentivize Users To Join Your Community
One tactic is to email your subscribers showcasing your social media content and encourage them to join your community.
Also, you can run promotions and giveaways to inspire users to share your content on social media.
In this way, pave your way so you can interact more with your users in the future.
5) Create Blog Content and Add Sharing Option
Content is everything for blogs and social media.
Generate valuable and insightful blog content and allow your visitors to share them seamlessly. It creates interest and grows your traffic.
6) Display Social Media Videos
Displaying user-generated content (UGC) such as videos and images builds trust in your website. Also, videos are a great way to increase Google ranking by directing users to and from your site.
7) Have a Commenting System
Usually, websites have a separate commenting system. You can also have one based on social media so your consumers can post and share their views about your brand.
It boosts customer engagement and establishes authenticity with other users.
8) Social Proof
You can let your visitors know what your buyers think about your brand through social proof and testimonials.
Another advantage is that it motivates your users to give their feedback and become loyal customers.
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Integrate Social Media With Saufter
A customer support software, Saufter is also a social media integrator that seamlessly connects with popular social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and so on.
Plus, you can integrate with eCommerce, messaging, and collaboration applications such as Shopify, WooCommerce, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, etc.
Additionally, Saufter provides –
- AI chatbot,
- Automated workflows ranging from order management to returns/ exchanges,
- Influencer identification,
- Marketing automation that includes gathering social proofs & testimonials,
- Automatical display of UGC content,
- Basic customer support services such as live chat, SMS, phone, and email,
- Knowledge base, where you can create blogs and various content for your website,
- Key performance reports.
Wrapping Up!
Social media integration encourages more engagement with your store and helps to get a bigger audience on your social media platform. You can utilize it in your marketing strategies to increase your sales and generate loyal customers.
You can bring your site and socials together with minimal effort by using software like Saufter. Also, you may perform marketing operations, automate workflows, and integrate with eCommerce and messaging platforms. Plus, you can utilize all the basic customer support services to resolve user issues.
So, what are you waiting for?
