social icons on website

[mugatea]

Are they really that important for a website? Do they need to be at the top right in the menu and given such focus? I've deleted mine off the menu and just have them now in the footer. I've seen some people spend more time promoting/selling their social networks than their own services.

Just curious what people make of it.

 

[Danny Harvey]

Hi!

Yes, they are important - depending on what you need them for.

If you create regular content of high value for your audience, it's important to have the social sharing (not links to your own social platforms) buttons so that your readers can share your articles with their social communities.

As for links to your own social platforms, these can be important to but in the footer is fine. You don't have to have these plastered all over the site. As a place where people can connect with your business, links to your social platforms can be useful depending on the kind of content you are providing and how you are using the platforms. - Facebook can be a great customer service tool for example so some businesses put them in more obvious areas.

However, promoting social platforms via your site to increase followers is a little backwards (again depending on what a specific business wants to do - they might need to increase followers for some reason for a campaign). I say backwards because ideally you want traffic from social - to your site.

Some people do this for the vanity metrics on the platforms, thinking that more followers = more sales, but that's rarely the case as we all know.

Using social to promote services isn't what those platforms are either. Being all salesy is likely to turn folks off. Sales and promotion is what the website is for, social is for sharing great content, engagement, community building (among other things) and well, being social!

Hope this helps.

 

[fisicx]

Do you want more clients or do you want people to visit your Facebook page?

Sharing is overrated and rarely results in anything useful.

So have them on your site if you want but as already suggested they don't need to be prominent.

 

[mugatea]

Ok cool thanks, was thinking the same

 

[Steve Alphabet]

Set up some tracking and find out

Obviously depends on your business but if they're on your site then it seems a shame to send them away. Especially to a platform where they're likely to get distracted/diverted by posts/tweets etc!