At this point in the 21st century, we are far beyond the days of searching for a contact or business number in the Yellow Pages! Ever since smartphones gave us near limitless powers in our pockets, social media has risen to be one of the single most essential methods for information sharing and business promotion; it is incredibly rare these days to find an organization that does not have a significant social media presence.
The websites and apps used to serve this purpose are made by talented developers who allow this new normal to continue to exist. Without web development, there simply would be no post, video and picture sharing on ‘socials’, it is a symbiotic relationship between developer and culture that cannot be broken.
With all of this in mind, let’s take a look at some of the most important areas of consideration that need to be remembered when combining the two.
Set Clear Goals
The first thing to do is make sure that you define your objectives. What is the initial goal? Are you looking to increase the traffic to your website, boost conversion rates, improve user interaction and engagement? The more clearly you can understand your goals, the better you will be able to tailor the rest of your plan and approach.
Integrate Social Sharing Buttons
Make sure to include the full range of sharing buttons to all of the social media platforms, in order to make it much easier for your site visitors to share the content that you create. This is something that can be done via the use of social sharing plugins, or custom development if you are more advanced in your skills.
Content Strategy
It makes sense to align your web development efforts with your overall content strategy. You want to create valuable, share-worthy content that resonates with your identified target demographic. This will most often be in the form of all the traditional types like blog posts, articles, infographics, videos and photos.
Responsive Design
One of the most important things to do is make sure that your website is responsive, which means that it can adapt to different screen sizes. You need to consider the usability of your content over the range of sizes, as some people will be reading on their smartphone, some on their tablet and others on a large computer screen. It needs to be able to function well in all of these situations.
Social Media Integration
Make things as integrated as possible by embedding all of your relevant social media feeds directly onto your website. This will result in your latest tweets, Instagram posts and/or Facebook posts being easily visible for all to see without having to navigate away from your website. It will also perform the function of encouraging more people to follow your various platforms.
User Generated Content
Encourage your users to create content that is related to your services and/or products. An easy example of this is running a campaign where you use your audience as the models, displaying the best submissions on your website. This is a simple way to create more synergy between your brand and the audience, all with the help of clever web development.
Consistent Branding
Something that you will notice is present across all of the most popular and successful websites is a level of consistent branding. The accounts that are recognized as being the most valuable on Fameswap are those that feature strong logos, color schemes and messages across the board, so take this into consideration when performing your own web development.
