Top 4 Tips for Successful Social Media Integration on your Website

January 27, 2012 by Jill J. Vasquez  |  Leave a Comment

Social Media. By now, you are probably sick of hearing those words. The fact remains that social media can make or break your business.

One of the most important things to do when launching your website, or even if you have an existing website, is to make sure you are integrating social media appropriately. Here are a few tips to help you integrate successfully!

1. Make Sure Social Media Buttons are Visible

This might seem like common sense, but the truth is that many businesses miss the mark when placing their social media buttons. Media buttons should be displayed on the top, bottom or along the side of your home page.

Links or buttons that remain in your navigation as the user moves from page to page are important. Always offer them the opportunity to check out your social media! Be sure they are set to open in a new window so the user doesn’t exit your website.

This website clearly displays their Facebook, Twitter, and RSS Feed for viewers.

2. Don’t Overdo It

Don’t get engaged in social media that you aren’t interested in. You will be more successful if you focus on a few outlets and make them spectacular rather than having twenty outlets and nineteen of them are ignored. By this, I mean if you prefer Facebook over Twitter then just stick with the Facebook.

Overwhelming your viewers with icons for too many social media outlets will turn them off.. instead just focus on the main players such as Facebook and Twitter to start. Before you add buttons to your site, ask yourself, “Is there information here that people would be interested in?”

This website only uses Facebook and keeps that as their main focus

3. Integrate your Social Media Feed

One of the easiest ways to get your fans engaged is to have your social media feed directly displayed on your site. If you use Facebook often then add the code right into your sidebar! Show your fans that you are engaged.

Twitter also helps you display your tweets fairly easy by providing their own slew of widgets you can add to your site. You can add them to your website, blog and even add integration to your Facebook page. Click here to view all the goodies.

This website integrates their Facebook feed right onto their sidebar.

4. Include Share Buttons

If you sell a product or run a full-fledged eCommerce site and you haven’t added share buttons to your product pages, you are missing out on a whole host of potential social impressions. Share buttons should enable website-goers to seamlessly share or recommend a product. Let your fans do the advertising for you!

If you have a WordPress based site or blog, make sure you visit your plugins section and do a search for social media buttons. There are many to choose from and we’re sure you’ll find something to your liking. Take a look at how this website adds share buttons to the side of their posts.

Follow these steps and watch how your website and social media will work seamlessly!

How To Get The Most Out Of Your WordPress Blog

January 24, 2012 by Freddy X. Vasquez  |  Leave a Comment

Many of our clients have asked us to redesign their websites using the WordPress platform. It makes it easier for them to log in and make the updates they need right away as opposed to waiting for the “web guy”. Keeping websites fresh with new content keeps your Google rankings moving in the right direction and allows you to achieve better organic rankings.

So being many of my clients have asked me the same batch of questions on how to get the most out of WordPress, I figured why not write a quick little post helping you get started on the right path towards success.

Permalinks
One of the first things you should do is setup your permalinks correctly. If you’ve already went ahead and started blogging or creating pages, you’ll see the links created by WordPress look something like this:

http://www.YourAwesomeUrl.com/?page_id=35

Looking at that you can tell right away that SEO is not the main focus. In order to fix that, all you need to do is got to your Dashboard > Settings > Permalinks. Select the post name option, which should look like the following:

/%postname%/

Doing this will set your URLs to show the titles of your pages or posts, benefitting your SEO and should look like this:

http://www.YourAwesomeUrl.com/your-awesome-title

Google Sitemap Generator
This is an awesome plug-in created by Google that generates XML Sitemap of your WordPress blog. Just install the plug-in, activate, and a sitemap is auto-generated and updated with each blog post. The file wil be placed in the root directory of your site and called “sitemap.xml”. You can then submit this sitemap using Google’s Webmaster Tools. [Read More]

What Is SOPA & Why Should It Concern You

January 18, 2012 by Freddy X. Vasquez  |  1 Comment

The past couple of days you might have seen a bunch of sites talking about SOPA, PIPA, blackouts and asking you to sign petitions. But what is SOPA? Short for Stop Online Piracy Act, it is a proposed bill that aims to crack down on copyright infringement by restricting access to sites that host pirated content.

Simply put,the government is trying to crack down on sites that promote illegally downloading movies, music and media. This is definitely something that should be supported – but the way SOPA is setup, it promotes censorship and can lead to unwanted circumstances.

Here is an excerpt from a CNN Money article posted yesterday:

Let’s say a YouTube user uploads a copyrighted song. Under the current law, that song’s copyright holders could send a “takedown notice” to YouTube. YouTube is protected against liability as long as it removes the content within a reasonable timeframe.

When it gets a DMCA warning, YouTube has to notify the user who uploaded the content. That user has the right to file a counter-motion demonstrating that the content doesn’t infringe on any copyrights. If the two sides keep disagreeing, the issue can go to court.

The problem with DMCA, critics say, is that it’s useless against overseas sites.
SOPA tackles that by moving up the chain. If you can’t force overseas sites to take down copyrighted work, you can at least stop U.S. companies from providing their services to those sites. You can also make it harder for U.S. Internet users to find and access the sites.

But SOPA goes further than DMCA and potentially puts site operators on the hook for content their users upload. A site could be deemed a SOPA scofflaw if it takes “deliberate actions to avoid confirming a high probability” that its service will be used for copyright infringement. That kind of swampy language has tech companies spooked.

“YouTube would just go dark immediately,” Google public policy director Bob Boorstin said at a conference last month. “It couldn’t function.”

While there are good intentions with SOPA, the above excerpt shows you how one site many of us frequent will be affected. There needs to be another way – a better way – of putting an end to piracy without censoring the rest of the internet.

If you’re looking for more info on SOPA and its negative implications, here is a quick list of articles you can read:

SOPA Will Take Us Back to the Dark Ages – Mashable
Why Start-ups Are Scared of SOPA – Inc
SOPA Isn’t Dead, It’s Just Sleeping (Until February) – TechCrunch

If you would like your voice to be heard, please visit Google’s page to End Piracy, Not Liberty.