Easy Ways to Integrate Social Tools into Your Website

Making your website more interactive has myriad advantages, not the least of which is the boost in search-engine rankings your site gets when it’s shared more frequently on social-networking sites. Making your site more social also creates a positive atmosphere for your users by making them feel that their feedback is welcome and valued. This, in turn, improves the public’s perception of your brand and encourages repeat business, because people naturally want to associate with those who make them feel appreciated.

You can promote a social environment on your website in a number of ways, each of which comes with its own level of difficulty and required commitment post-installation. Let’s look at a few types of social tools you can integrate into your website, as well as determine which ones might make the most sense for your business.

Comments Sections

Although Comments sections are most often used in conjunction with a blog and blog posts, you can add one to any page on your website to give readers the opportunity to leave feedback about your business and your content. Comments sections can be particularly valuable in increasing visitor engagement, because they are a standard feature across websites. But be aware that they do require an ongoing investment, in terms of moderating readers’ notes and adding your own responses.

If you do decide to integrate Comments sections into your website, there are a few places where you’ll find them to be most effective:

• At the end of each blog post
• At the end of any news articles on your site
• At the end of any other major content pages on your site

Conversely, you wouldn’t want to put Comments sections on sales pages or promotion-specific pages, where the goal isn’t to facilitate customer interaction, but instead to drive visitors through the sales process as quickly as possible.

Depending upon the type of website you run, adding Comments sections might be as simple as turning on a standard option and specifying where on your site you’d like the sections to appear. If your web platform doesn’t include commenting as a standard feature — or if you simply want more functionality added to your Comments sections — look into solutions like DISQUS or IntenseDebate.

Social Sharing Tools

Social sharing tools are another vital component in the process of making your site more interactive. These tools typically consist of button sets that allow readers to post content on your website to their favorite social networks. These “shares” are the type that are most rewarded by the search engine ranking algorithms, which makes integrating tools that facilitate this process into your website a smart move for any webmaster.

But the best part about adding social sharing tools to your website to increase shares on social networks is that, for the most part, it is a “set it and forget it” process. Once you install the buttons on your site, the entire process of social sharing can be carried out automatically. All you have to do is to check back every so often to make sure the buttons are still working correctly.

Social sharing tools are another feature that’s often included as a standard option within most website platforms. If it isn’t an option for you, check out AddThis or ShareThis, both of which can be integrated into any type of website.

Once you’ve activated this feature or installed any necessary plug-ins, the only choice you’ll need to make is where on your site to display the buttons. As with the Comments sections described above, social sharing buttons will be most effectively used on news content or other “shareable” text that users will want to distribute to friends and family members. To facilitate maximum sharing, add buttons that appear integrated into the top of the article content, at the bottom of the text, and as part of a sliding toolbar that moves down the article as the user scrolls.

Customer Review Trackers

People love to share their opinions about products and services, so giving them the opportunity to rate your products or services will keep them on your website longer — and make them more engaged with your brand. Customer reviews can also generate market research data that will allow you to improve your offerings or decide what product lines to feature next.

Integrating customer review tools into your site can be a little more difficult if your chosen website platform doesn’t come with this feature pre-installed. However, it is possible with the use of third-party software scripts (search “review script” on Google to find different options), although you may need to hire out the installation of these scripts to a professional web developer if you aren’t technically inclined yourself.

Of course, when discussing the possible addition of customer review trackers to your website, it’s important to mention one potential caveat — the possibility that you’ll receive negative reviews. If you decide to enable reviews on your site, be sure to have a plan in place for how you’ll deal with this feedback, as yanking the tool down after a few bad reviews comes off as extremely unprofessional.

User Forums or Message Boards

Another option for creating more social interactions on your website is to create a user forum or message board. Although this option won’t make sense for many small-business owners, these tools can be incredibly powerful for “authority” sites in any industry or for those selling highly technical products (for example, software developers or financial advisers).

Essentially, user forums and message boards allow your customers to “talk amongst themselves” by posting questions and comments to the website’s community-at-large. At their best, these tools can help take the customer service burden off of you by allowing expert members of your community to answer the questions of neophytes.

At their worst, user forums and message boards can become dangerous repositories for spam, malware ads, and other nasty items. If you decide to host your own forum or message board, it’s important to choose a provider that requires all participants to register (which will discourage fraudulent postings) and to develop a good strategy for policing the forum (whether through your own efforts or those of designated moderator).

If a forum or message board sounds like it would be a useful tool for your customers — and you’re willing to commit the time that’s necessary to foster vibrant, useful discussions — there are several different tools available. SimpleMachines and phpBB offer free, open-source forum programs, although you’ll need to know how to manage PHP databases within your site’s dashboard to install them on your own.

Finally, keep in mind that the tools listed here represent only a small number of ways in which you can encourage social participation on your website. If you have other ideas or strategies for increasing customer engagement that you’ve used successfully on your site, please share your thoughts in the Comments section below!

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