Optimal social media integration for business web site

[PliSsKen]

I am wondering what people’s thoughts are regarding social media plugins such as like/+1 buttons and share buttons, and also links to one’s social media pages/profiles, and where it is appropriate to place them on a business web site. I want to try to get a grip on what is best practice for the home page, product pages and article-type pages. I assume this is best suited to the Social Media forum rather than the Marketing or Web Design forums.

I have viewed a number of competitor and other business web sites (not blog sites) and have observed that few if any business web sites seem to do anything on the home page (with regards social media integration) beyond some links to their social media pages, in the form of small square icons or graphics, usually at the top or bottom of the page.

A few sites I’ve seen have share buttons on the article previews on the home page but perhaps this is a little over the top as a person is unlikely to share an article or page if he hasn’t actually read it yet? Share buttons I am assuming are best suited for individual pages like product pages and articles or blog pages, and poorly suited for the home page?

Are ‘+1’ and ‘like’ buttons still relevant in your opinion - in general (compared with share buttons)? And for individual pages like product pages and articles or blog pages? +1 buttons with G+ are more meaningful than facebook ‘like’ buttons because of the G+ page integration in the counter, but still…For the home page I’m guessing most business tend to stick with just links to their social media pages in order to get people interacting on them rather than simply clicking +1 and never visiting the social media page? I presume you could try to offer both links and like buttons on the home page but perhaps it creates too much clutter and confuses the user?

Twitter does not have a ‘like’ button but only a ‘share’ button, and I’m assuming if you want 3 or 4 social media buttons at the bottom or top of an article page, then it is better to use a facebook, G+ and linkedin ‘share’ button? Rather than having a Twitter share button and facebook and G+ like/+1 buttons, which might send out a confusing message I’m guessing?

Any input would be greatly appreciated!

[LaurenH]

I would look into Addthis and SumoMe.

[PliSsKen]

Thanks very much for your input Lauren. For share buttons, I think it’s quite tidy on the page, although I might have to consider the page formatting overall to optimise it. My business web sites are very niche have quite few visitors so it’s unlikely that visitors would need such a wide array of possible share options - less is more and is probably more likely to result in a share. So ideally I’d like to be able to customise the number of options or implement something more streamlined, but I’ll certainly give one of these a try. Do you notice any performance issues in terms of loading pages or executing a share? At the moment I have business pages on fb, twitter, G+ and linkedin, but I guess share buttons on web pages are something separate. Cheers.

[PliSsKen]

I’m assuming that most people are familiar with this style of share button because of their prevalence on the net now, and can differentiate between them and links to social media pages because of positioning on the screen (i.e. vertical bar vs horizontal spaced icons)?

I also assume people are familiar with the ‘more’ icon to bring up the pop up window containing all the icons for the different social media and blogging platforms? I would have thought the click through rate would be lower if a user has to go through a menu of choices rather than being able to click on the featured button in the vertical bar. I know a few years back some bloggers used to have share buttons for every platform all in a row at the bottom of their blog pages, and it looked awful, cluttered and confusing IMO.

BTW Do you have an opinion on using the same colour for all one’s social media link icons please? I see some sites do that to avoid the tutti frutti effect but they stand out less (perhaps this is the idea).