Why it is time to get your business a Social Website.

Viral Thaker
Founder CEO | TheSocialPeople

With all the roll-drums and bugles around Social Media and Social Marketing most of the businesses have completely forgotten their most powerful and greatest tool of marketing – Websites. No matter how immensely powerful your marketing campaign is, your target audience would still go to check out your website.

This might be one of the most logical and simplest thought but I happened to get this realization during one of my client meetings where they were very keen on a unique social media strategy to increase their online presence and generate business inquiries whereas their existing website was outdated and not up to the standards of the Web2.0 world.

Yes! I write and prophesize a lot about social media and its immense scope of building your business’ brand experience and outreach but I keep emphasizing to all the people I come across that Social Media Marketing is not a separate independent initiative but goes hand in hand with your traditional marketing initiatives.

In a quick research it came to my notice that even today over 90% of the people who want to know about your business offerings visit your website to validate your products/services. The rest 10% check your social media channels to get reviews, consumer opinions and peer feedback. This undoubtedly makes your website a most powerful marketing arsenal that your business has.

Now just imagine what if you give the best of both the worlds i.e., a website that is equivalent to a social networking site. At TheSocialPeople we’re currently redesigning a beta version of our new website after a span of one year and I confess that we had to really think hard before we finalized a route. This was because we had to ensure all the below three rules of social networking:

1. The website should not be over loaded with content
2. Design a U.I and U.E that enable visitors an easy & logical navigation
3. Content creation that will enable people to populate their friends and friends-of-friends.

Once we were able to finalize route based on the above 3 thumb rules we once again had to sit and brainstorm on the rudiments of a social website. After a lot of discussions and arguments we were finally able to have a consensus on the below 6 core elements that needs to considered to create synergy and relationship between your website and social sites.

After reading this if you are considering your website makeover, below are some the check point you can consider:

1. Keep it as plain as vanilla.
2. Social Integration that enable your visitors not only to connect with you via your social sites but also to share your content to their network of friends and friends-of-friends.
3. Providing a back link for all possible content to another page or channel. I’m sure it goes without saying that content is the king but context is the emperor. Back-links would give your content that needed context.
4. Ensure you have more of visual content than textual. Visual content penetrate the sub-conscious mind of consumer as compared to textual that tends to be overseen.
5. Mobile phone compatibility and optimization. 38% of your website visitors on an average use a mobile device, specially the crowd that is enroute social media.
6. Personalized Marketing Automation to smartly automate your marketing maneuvers in a controlled manner to ensure a maximum outreach and engagement.

What in your opinion are the other check points to ensure your websites are socially engaging? Share your opinions below.