If you have a Website, you can do social media marketing. A big part of any PR — or any type of marketing for that matter — is making it easier for your audience to do their job, use your stuff, buy your products and services, etc.
Below are buttons, tools, widgets, gadgets and other neat items you can incorporate into your Website to make it sociable. You don’t have to redesign your site. It takes simple programming and a little effort to incorporate any of the below.For the specific programs and companies listed, I’m sure there are alternatives. I’m not necessarily playing favorites, just listing what I’m familiar with or found via a search.
- ShareThis: A cool tool you can add to make it easy for users to bookmark, email and post your content. (I saw a great overview during a recent Social Media Breakfast-Cincinnati event.)
- Pictures: You must have some images — products, your plant or office, people, etc. — why not load them to a Flickr account and have a badge on your site that rotates them? (Example here in the right column. One blog shows you what to do, but you don’t need to have a blog to have an image badge.)
- Video: If you have product demonstration, training, sales/advertising or other video, slap it up on YouTube and allow users the chance to view it on your site. Here’s a how-to/overview article.
- Add RSS feeds to your newsroom or other site section that is (or should be!) updated regularly.
- If you have products, considering offering a site visitor-generated rating system. Yes, there are various issues to consider before doing so, but it could be an effective way for positive, third-party review of your company’s products.
What other relatively easy tools and tricks exist to make an existing site more sociable?
-Mike
Image of Cheers (Sociables!) by Blazey.
Hi Mike-
For anyone who runs a blog in WordPress, there’s a terrific plugin called “Tweet This.” It allows your visitors to tweet a link to your post, with an automatically shortened url!