Missouri Website Builders

Building an online community is a common goal for many brands. In order to do this successfully, visitors need to be able to do a few things when they visit your website in order to get involved in the process. One great way to enhance user experience is to integrate your social media feeds with your website. Social media integration keeps your website fresh, and allows for more visitor interaction.

Displaying your Twitter feed on your website is a wonderful way to show visitors real-time news and events. An attractive Twitter widget can encourage your website’s audience to follow you on Twitter, serving as an additional method for expanding your network. Furthermore, when designed right, a Twitter feed can improve the aesthetics of a website’s layout.

The Twitter Feed module in the Auctori content management system allows users to display their Tweets anywhere on their website. This module takes your most recent Tweets and displays them automatically within an easy to read list for your visiting users. Users have full control over their avatar, how many Tweets to display and even specific grammar settings.

• Display a customized number of Tweets
• Choose whether or not to show your Avatar
• Customizable your Avatar size
• Ability to specify a personalized title
• Styled to match your website for a seamless integration
• Control over past, present and link grammar

learn more about the Auctori web content management system at: www.auctori.com

“A successful website in today’s society is defined as a site receiving as much traffic from social media as from search engines.” Does this shocking announcement from the Search Engine Strategies December 2009 Conference surprise you? Well, it shouldn’t.  After all Mr. and Ms. Average Web User, the explosion of social media is your fault! 

You are one of the 400 million people on Facebook who spend spend 500 billion minutes per month on Facebook.  You are one of the 105 million plus people out there tweeting away.You are among the 2 billion visitors to YouTube daily. As a matter of fact … you spend almost as much time on social media as watching television!  You are even using social media while watching television!  Entertainment multitasking, is that “multi-taining?”

We are in the age of user-generated content.  Companies are quickly realizing they cannot avoid online consumers interacting with their brands online, yet this exchange is only minimally occurring through their company website.  Let’s face it; no one goes to your international B2B website to hang out with friends and share product opinions.  Your website visitors are not your pals.  With social media, however, they can be your “fans.”   If you want that to happen, go where your customers already choose to meet and develop ways to involve yourself appropriately.  Listen first; then engage them in conversation.  Remember that if you don’t listen to these voices and consider them your fans, you run the risk of making them foes.

So, if social media is here to stay (do you doubt that it is?), and if Facebook and Twitter can be relatively inexpensive, what does this mean for your firm’s very prestigious, costly and carefully managed website? Corporate websites represent legally required information, a powerbase for your brand andmarketing approach that social media sites usually cannot equal.  So, while the website is still the fundamental aspect of online branding, many businesses have greatly benefited by investing time (yes, it takes time) into using social media networks to go directly to where their consumers “meet by choice” each point of interaction having a unique “face” to the public.   Successful online marketers tend to think “one brand – many faces.” 

In conclusion, social media is important, very important, but without the anchor of your corporate website, your brand would be floating adrift on each new conversation current.  Social media continues to expand rapidly to new audiences by new applications.  The growth is driving online interactions everywhere at once.   But your brand, represented by your website, shouldn’t be going everywhere at once.  Remember that every photo you put up on Facebook, every message mashed into 140 characters on Twitter and every storytelling video posted on YouTube needs to be purposeful and must still reflect your company’s image and message.  Who knows?  The next link that drives the next big business deal to your website might just arise from a response to “What are you up to?”

Overlooking social media design is a tempting prospect. After all, why should anyone pay a web design company to develop a layout for a free service? Nurturing consumer loyalty is the rudimentary objective of social media. Without a visually magnificent fan wall or follower’s page, it’s just one bland social media page among a throng of millions.

It’s no secret that social media design requires more than selecting the templates, available in Facebook and Twitter web applications. Just as the company Web site, stationary and traditional advertising collateral sport the company’s insignia, the social media site is not any different.

Did you know... that social media doubles as a market research platform. Moreover, corporations with social media pages on Facebook and Twitter bolster better page rankings and search engine visibility than those that do not subscribe to social media.

Since, social media remains an enigma to small to large sizes businesses, companies should approach the marketing catalyst with a strategy in mind. Use the following list to refine a social media design strategy:

• How does your firm plan to use social media to heighten brand awareness? 

• Does your firm plan to leverage social media to enhance the company reputation?

• Is your business introducing a new product line or service(s)? Whether social media design is for new or existing products, remember to include the products, logo and other distinctive brand traits on the Twitter and Facebook site layouts. Also, make sure that your company’s Web site has a link to the Facebook  and Twitter sites.

Social media design tip: Compile a list, creating a profile of the specific target segments

Once the social media design is complete, be sure to assign a member of the team the responsibility of keeping the page fresh and current.

 Please click “social media design” for more information.

Frequently, when companies strategize website design and search engine optimization, there is an underlying misconception about building the online presence. Many tend to think of search engine marketing as a singular element: Website design. In the sense that web development has evolved into a congruence of Internet marketing tools, Web site design consists of other mediums: 

• Blog
• Social media networking and/or micro-blogging sites
• Newsletter

The blog, social media networking and the newsletter are extensions of the company Web site and brand identity.

Overwhelmed by the time and commitment necessary to maintain a blog, entities are prone to steer clear of the blog design. It’s tantamount to placing a concrete barricade between the advertiser and the target audience. Blogs are misconstrued and undervalued, economical, marketing vehicles. 

Social media networking is an intelligent medium for initiating dialogue with prospective clients. These micro-blogging sites establish the company site as a personality versus an unknown entity.

Twitter redefines the meaning of instantaneous, single-lined communications. In terms of an interactive friendly platform,

Twitter allows for just the right dosage of dialogue.

Organizations are using Twitter and Facebook to host drawings, announce promotions and discounts, and engage the consumer in an exchange of communications.

Finally, newsletters represent another affordable medium for extending your products and services’ reach.   Disseminated via email, a monthly newsletter allows companies to provide consumers with useful information. Actually, a newsletter may include some of the same contents as the blog and social media networking site.

In the interim, website design is only one component of the online presence. Whether it’s a blog, social media networking or a newsletter, make sure each matches your website design.

Click on Internet marketing for  a no-obligation website design consultation.

Creating continuity across the entire Internet presence includes the Facebook wall and Twitter page. Since these social mediums nurture the client / customer relationship and experience, the presentation is just as important as a company’s Web site.

Anyone, familiar with the lackluster templates on Twitter, is well acquainted with the 20 or so options, with custom color programming.

The proud retailer of high quality Crosley record players, Retrowonders.com, was in a need of an innovative marketing concept to establish its online brand presence. To interact with the target market, the St. Louis SEO company, the Net Impact designed a Twitter and Facebook page to fortify the brand’s online exposure and image.  Today, the company’s social media pages reflect Retrowonder’s nostalgic brand persona, stimulating interaction with their target market.

The King and Prince Beach and Golf Resort wanted to improve their guest experience by developing an active online community to share, and exchange photos and tweets. A Missouri-based web design company designed a Facebook and Twitter page, emblematic of the King and Prince’s resort Web site.  Each medium engages the target audience into an engaging dialogue. The outcome  affords an interactive enterprise, where past guests post vacation videos and photos, and future resort visitors participate in drawings, and online polls. 

A high end children’s furniture and accessory boutique needed to improve its exposure to targeted traffic, and simultaneously bolster its brand loyalty. The Net Impact developed a Facebook page, functioning as an informative decorating and design  portal, where the store plans to roll out how-to videos in 2010.

About your social media marketing pages:

• Is your company using social media networking to expose your brand to new business opportunities?

• Does your company have a distinctively designed Facebook and / or Twitter page? If so, share your link with us – add it to our comments area (below).

• Does your Facebook and Twitter page reflect the image of your company brand?

Click social media design, to read more…