Social plug-ins are easy to implement and have the potential to increase reach and life span of your service/product. By adding social elements to conversations already happening around your sites and facilitating the two-way communication with the consumers and content sharing, you can both increase your brand awareness and loyalize the existing customers.
With Social Plug-ins media, entertainment and e-commerce brands with constantly changing content can quickly create buzz around their products and create a social experience for the people already visiting their page. Since the purchase decisions are influenced by Word-of-Mouth, recommendations/interests of friends in Facebook and the buying process made easy on the website can quickly push the consumer towards the purchase decision. For other type of brands, the Social Plug-ins are an effective way to build loyal database, to increase brand awareness and for example with Live streaming to create an online event that consumers think is worth spreading around.
What makes it so profitable is that the consumers who click that “like” button or use other social plug-ins on your site, show clearly their affiliations with you and that kind of engagement is gold. Targeting and reaching quality leads becomes easier, but…
Yes, there is always “the but” like in everything that has something to do with Social Media. Before adding any Social Plug-in into your site, you need to consider if you have any time in your schedule to invest on this. The risk here is that if you are not ready or do not have time to take this seriously, you can quickly lose that engagement. If you do not communicate with fans, use only hard sale or communicate too much, your fans can easily silence and block your messaging by simply “hiding” those communications in their news feed or by “unliking” you and telling their friends you are ignoring or spamming them.
How to keep the fans tuned in?
Do not spam them, do not only hard sale, do not forget about them, do not ignore them and invest time for some serious community management. Adding Social Plug-ins is a priceless opportunity to expand your database and build brand awareness, loyalty and engagement, but if you do not invest time and effort the momentum is lost.
Before adding the Like button or any other Social Plug-ins, plan carefully your strategy. Assess the frequency of communication, keep the content relevant – not for you, for your fans – and target these consumers only with truly interesting updates and offers. Simply adding a Social Button does not mean you will increase your sales without doing anything. People like and go back to the sites where there is an actual reason to come back. If your Facebook page leading from your site looks like a giant ad or exactly the same as your present site without any place for engaging conversation or comments, your fans will “dislike” you quickly.
Pay attention to your fans, let them speak, let them tell how much they love your brand and keep the content relevant and interesting. Answer their questions and read their suggestions or issues. Even a small gesture from the brand can create very positive WOM around the web and there is no better way to know what your best customers like than actually listening to them. Social Plug-ins can increase your sales, but only if you use them wisely.
Read more details on the Social Plug-ins here.
