Social media marketing is a great way to increase your customer base. By integrating it into your website your customers can show their appreciation for what you provide by sharing it with their friends. Using social media properly means that your visitors enjoy the experience, while you gain the benefit of increased visibility.
The simplest way to integrate your site with social media is to add buttons on your page that allow people to share your site with their friends. This is a matter of adding a little bit of code to a side bar, so anyone can add this code to their page for an instant increase in potential customers. Of course, this won’t do you any good if your site isn’t good, but it is a great bonus if you have a site that shows your customer a good value.
If you have a blog or forum linked to your site then these are great places to add social media links. People may not want to link to a product page but will very likely link a blog post that they found meaningful. Make sure that your blog or forum is clearly linked to your commerce site so that new visitors can find both aspects of your site right away. Of course if you are a blogger then getting your articles linked in the social media is an important aspect, as visitors often directly correlate into advertising revenue.
Facebook in particular has great integration options for bloggers. You can have your comments added by them specifically, which means that when someone comments on your blog it automatically posts to their social page. This also removes the option of someone making many degrading comments to your blog- once blocked they will need to make an entirely new Facebook account to continue commenting to your blog. Discussion should be encouraged, so save this feature for people who are posting offensive comments, instead of people who simply disagree with you.
Regardless of what kind of business you are running, you can use social media to create a second home page for your business. Every business should at least have a Facebook page, although you should also consider Twitter and Google+ as well. Use these pages to discuss new products you are offering, and reward customers for adding these pages by offering them exclusive offers once in awhile. By becoming part of their everyday lives like this you can increase the likelihood that they will return to your business the next time they need something.
Businesses everywhere have discovered the magic of social media in their business. These sites allow your message to travel even further than you could have dreamed with minimal effort on your part. By adding social media to your page you are opening your business to a whole range of customers that you never could have imagined otherwise. Beyond that, your current customers that engage in social media are more likely to return to your business time and again.