According to a statistic cited in a recent HubSpot article, 1/3 of the world uses social networks regularly. This is a staggering figure if you consider that the global population currently stands at roughly 7.5 billion. Within these numbers are many of your target audience that simply aren’t being reached with your social media marketing.
The question then is, how do you reach these people? What tactics do you employ? A good place to start is with the basics. Focus on boosting your Squarespace website’s social media presence and this will improve your visibility in search engines, and boost your online presence. Here are 7 simple ways for you to achieve this.
#1 Connect Your Socia Media Accounts: Reach a Larger Audience
The most basic thing you need to do is to connect all your applicable social media accounts. Naturally, you won’t be on all of them. And this makes sense because every business is different. The step by step process is detailed in Squarespace Support. It’s really simple and intuitive, but just take note there are two ways to do this depending on your plan:
- In Home Menu click Setting and then Connected Accounts
- In Home Menu click Social Icons and then Connected Accounts
#2 Include a Social Sharing Logo: Improve Brand Recognition When Sharing
Whenever you share your Squarespace website on your social media channels, it’s a good idea to include your logo as this will bolster your brand recognition. To do this go to Design and click Logo and Title. You’ll see a section for Social Sharing Logo. Take note that blog posts will display the thumbnail image you’ve chosen.
#3 Add Thumbnail Images to Blog Posts For Improve Click-through Rates
We highly recommend that you choose a suitable thumbnail for each and every image. An image grabs your readers attention, encourages click-throughs, and improves the shareability of your articles.
It would be a shame if potential readers didn’t click through or share your articles because of this, especially seeing as you’re offering immense value with your articles. Check out our post 7 Quick Tips For Blogging With Squarespace with further details on how to add a thumbnail.
#4 Leverage the Power of Pinterest
In a statistic cited in an article on Jess Creatives, Pinterest referrals spend 70% more money than visitors from other referrals, so let’s leverage the power of Pinterest. Make sure to add a Pin it Button to your images. Simply go to Settings, click Marketing, and then click Pin it Button.
#5 Add Social Icons and Buttons to Your Website: Encourage sharing
You want to add social icons on your site so that visitors can connect with your business page on social media, and follow you. You also want to include social share buttons under all your blog posts so that if readers enjoyed an article, resonated with it on some level, found it useful, or just believe that a friend could benefit from it, they’re able to do share your content.
The Squarespace sharing icons are rather small at the end of blog posts. This is why we recommend integrating with a third party tool that offers this and much more. While there are many online tools on the market that can help you with this, we recommend SumoMe.
SumoMe provides all the tools to grow your website traffic, from social sharing icons, pop-ups, welcome mats, e-mail sign-up forms, to heatmaps and analytics, where you can assess how your visitors are interacting with your site. Based on this you can see where you need to make improvements. The free version gives you everything you need when starting out your social media journey. Below is a step-by-step instructional video on how to install SumoMe on your Squarespace website:
#6 Add Twitter Cards
You may or may not have heard of a Twitter card. This is what Twitter says about Twitter Cards:
“With Twitter Cards, you can attach rich photos, videos and media experience to Tweets that drive traffic to your website. Simply add a few lines of HTML to your webpage, and users who Tweet links to your content will have a “Card” added to the Tweet that’s visible to all of their followers.”
There are different types of cards such as a Summary Card, Summary Card with Large Image, App Card, and a Player Card. Here is an example of a summary card, which works well for blog posts, news articles and products.
To test the power of Twitter Cards in boosting your Squarespace website’s social media presence, follow the step-by-step process to install it.
#7 Automatically Push Your Posts to Social Media Channels
Each time you publish a post you want to share it to your social media channels.The time it takes to publish each and every post individually to all your channels is time that could be spent on other more profitable activities. We then recommend simplifying this process by using automation.
To do this with Squarespace is simple. Remember when we connected our accounts? Well, simply go back there and check the tab that says Show Push Option. Enable this for each of your social media channels once you’ve connected them. If you’re looking for more advanced tools, consider using the likes of Hootsuite and Buffer.
#8 Use Analytics to Measure Traffic
Now, while doing all of the above will set the foundations for boosting your social media presence, and help you gain more followers and shares across social media channels, failing to monitor analytics and how users navigate your site will, over the long term, be detrimental.
You need to know where traffic is coming from. What social media channels are proving the most beneficial? Which channels aren’t bringing you much traffic? Why is this the case? What do I need to improve, if anything? Do I need to improve my social media strategy? What articles are getting the most shares? Why?
These are just some of the questions that analytics help you to answer. Squarespace has a tool for this called Traffic Source Analytics. It measures the source of the traffic and which referrers are the most valuable. The step-by-step process to setting it up is explained in Squarespace support.
If you want to take things further consider integrating with SumoMe and Google Analytics. Together they provide more rich metrics on which to base your social media decisions. If you don’t have a Google Analytics account, read our article on quick tips for blogging with Squarespace, where we explain how to set it up.
What simple techniques do you use to boost your Squarespace website’s social media presence? Let us know in the comments below.