Does social media have a place in corporate web design? This question is one we get asked often and we have put together not only this post but a great special report that you can find here: Social Media and Corporate Web Design.

So does social media have a place in a company’s website or is just for blogs? The short answer is yes. Social media has worked it’s way into every element of the web. Twitter itself was recently inducted into the library of congress and Facebook is working on taking over the internet with Like buttons. If this reason wasn’t enough then we move onto the generational issue.

The younger generation really does expect a corporation to be participating in some form of social media. Social media into corporate web designs should be completely embraced. The one thing it shows above all else is that the organization can be reached, cares, and wants to engage with their customers.

Expectations

When the web first hit mainstream it became obvious that if you didn’t have a website you weren’t considered “in business”. Many consumers simply didn’t trust companies that did not have a website.

This same paradigm of thought is starting to come to social media. Increasingly the younger generations are expecting that a responsible organization will engage within social media.

Social Elements of Corporate Web Design

Social Media and Corp Web Design (PDF)

I’ll summarize here what we have put in our report. These are the top elements that you should have within your corporate web design. I should mention that each industry and vertical market will have it’s own networks and interaction points but we can generalize on the concepts:

• Follow Us Buttons. These are the buttons or icons that link to your social presence, these should be prominent and be on 95% of your web pages.
  Share Buttons. These allow your users to easily share your content within their own social circle. We also suggest these show up on the majority of your web pages.
• Widgets. Widgets allow you to pull content from the social networks themselves. These can be powerful as well. These create a element of social proof but also allow for another interaction point for your user.
• The About Us Page. Studies have shown that one of the most visited page of a website is the about us page. We recommend that you make the about us page a business accelerator page–think about copy, headlines, and calls to action.
• The Team Page. If your company embraces social media include these connections on the team page.
• Social Media Page. We also suggest that you put together a roundup page of all your social media efforts. The users that care about social media will find this page helpful.

In Conclusion

Social media has a seat at the table of corporate web design. It’s an important element of any modern corporate website. Generally the more that you participate within social media the more that the ROI becomes apparent. The key is just to make sure that you are not just putting in social connections just to check off a box– you have to mean it and spend the time and effort with the engagement.

This is part 3 of a 4 part series from WebBizIdeas on the core steps you need to take to engage social media.

We also have a great report that you can download with each step and examples of these steps in action. You can find that report here Social Media Engagement.

Engagement – the things you do once you have an audience.

This is actually the step where you get permission to move to the next step. First and foremost you must ensure that you deliver on what you promised in your acquisition strategy. If once someone has started to engage with you and they do not get what they expected they will leave or worse yet tune out. Just as the advent of timeshifted TV has allowed consumers to skip commercials if you don’t deliver value your audience will abandon you as well.

Key Questions for Engagement

• How can I add value to people that follow me or the audience that I gain in the permission marketing space? (email in addition to social is permission based)
• What are the acceptable forms of engagement in this channel?
• What is my engagement schedule?
• Who is responsible for engagement items?
• What are the unique ways I can engagement this channel that will set me or my company apart?
• What does my target market expect from me?
• What are my competitors doing?

Engagement Examples

Engagement can arguably be the most important step. Without proper engagement you simply would not be effective when moving onto the next element—monetization. The people and companies that successfully engage can then prime their audience towards offers, purchasing, and other elements of the sales funnel. Below I’ve included a few great examples of companies that are engaging within social media.

Steel Buildings are Social?

SteelMaster a manufacturer of prefabricated steel buildings engages Facebook in an unusual way. You wouldn’t guess that there would be much affinity to a steel building. First they found that Facebook is a great place to post pictures of customer’s buildings.

These pictures not only engage existing customers—they also tell a story to potential customers what is possible. Since the backbone of Facebook is pictures this plays well in this platform.

They also use Twitter to get exposure and create demand in vertical markets they had little traction in, such as chicken farmers and woodworkers.

Watch a Video Get a Free Night

Rogers Smith Hotel uses twitter to give away free nights of stay (click to see tweet below).

Even Paint Can Engage?

IdeaPaint does a great job with their blog. This is the launching pad of their engagement plan. IdeaPaint turns virtually anything you can paint into a high-performance dry-erase surface—every 3 year olds fantasy.

Their outreach typically starts with a great video post that shows the product in action. Telling a story each time it also gives potential customers what is possible with their unique product.  From there they engage within YouTube, Twitter and Facebook connecting with their core market.

Wait a Refrigerator?

Subzero (maker of appliances and high end refrigerators) whose core customer is a woman age 45 or older focuses on the essential element of adding value to its affluent customers’ busy lives. They do this by sharing seasonal recipes, wine pairings, and cooking tips. They also spotlight hot kitchen designers. Facebook is the third-top-referring site to SubZero.com.

Sub-Zero then engages their audience rewarding their affluent followers with exclusive news, discounts, videos, and pictures. This gave the follower the feeling of being on the inside. One recent question posed by SubZero has garnered over 200 responses or close to a hundred for the simply question what’s for dinner tonight?

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Social Media Principals special report [pdf

Social media is going to rule the Web until at least 2012 – according to a post by Justin Kistner, a Social Evangelist at web analytics company Webtrends. Kistner also claims that Facebook has become the king of social media. In a panel at a Portland event today called Lunch 2.0, Kistner said that the current era of the Web “is Facebook’s game to lose.” More here from Justin also a roundup at ReadWriteWeb.

On the heels of its Promoted Tweets ad product, Tweeter has introduced another type of advertising: Promoted Trending Topics, where brands pay to appear below the “trending topics” on the site. The first company to try out the concept is Disney/Pixar with the trend, not surprisingly, of Toy Story 3. It is, writes Mashable’s Pete Cashmore in a guest post at CNN, an ingenious idea: “the perfect way to generate revenue from the popular social network without infuriating users…Brands long to be a part of the conversation, and Promoted Trends create buzz around a product or service without vexing the user.” More Here >>

Bing is not giving in even though Google–the king of the hill–continues to knock them down. With Google’s recent announcement that Caffeine is in full release it’s Bing’s turn to talk about it’s future releases.

Bing Webmaster

First from Bing is a no cost toolset for websites and webmasters. It’s built on Microsoft Silverlight 4 and with feedback from webmasters and others with SEO knowledge. Part of this release is the “Index Explorer”, think tree view for webmasters to see how Bing is crawling their site.

There could potentially be huge news here. First this looks like it will allow webmasters to access specific items and management controls. URL blocking, cache blocking, and even possible re-crawl requests. If this is something that catches on I’d expect Google Webmaster Tools to follow suit.

Real Time and Social Search Results

Bing released in May real time results. This new search is called Bing Social and can be found here. Social and real time results is really the next frontier for both Google and Bing and I would anticipate we will see tremendous growth in these spaces.

What Does This Mean?

Now more than ever does it matter that you have a social strategy. A strategy that focuses on trusted accounts and connecting with your target market. It used to be just a nice extra to be on Twitter but now if you want want a total digital solution it’s a must. There’s also the advent of searching within Facebook. We’ve mentioned before this is the true power of the platform.

In closing keep Bing on your radar and check to see what you opportunities make be as they continue to keep relevant.

When all you have is an email address, Flowtown can give you a name, age, gender, occupation, location and all the social networks that person is on. Check out FlowTown.com >>

How often do you communicate with the people you should? etacts tracks that for you (for free). Visit Etacts >>

SWIX is like Google Analytics for social media. You wouldn’t run an important web-site without tracking your traffic patterns, nor should you invest in social media without understanding how it’s working for you. Visit swix >>

Gist helps you build stronger relationships by connecting the inbox to the web to provide buisiness-critical information about the people and companies that matter most. Visit gist >>

Threadsy pulls together your email and social accounts into a simple, enjoyable experience. Visit threadsy >>

How do you build credibility online? You do it with lots of hard work, cultivating quality relationships with the press, bloggers, thought leaders, webmasters, microbloggers, and other influencers. But until now, that process has been time-consuming and resource-intensive. BuzzStream is a new platform for building more effective and more human relationships online, without all the overhead and bandwidth. BuzzStream will help you. Visit Buzzstream.com >>

How many friend and friend details can we possibly track? With how many friends – or brands – can we sustain meaningful engagement? Using a loose definition of “friend” including those whose updates or status we follow on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Foursquare, and other social networks or communities, the attention required to manage all those updates has grown in multiple and exponential ways.

So what does this mean for you if you are trying to a build a meaningful relationship with your target market? Here’s a few tips to keep focused on what is important as more people start using social as a channel and more consumers start tuning it out.

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I recently saw a story that illustrates the power of social media. Instead of doing some Monday morning quarterbacking–which to me is never a fair type of interaction let’s discuss this objectively.

The first is from At&T wireless and Giorgio G. He had a few complaints about his iPhone wireless service. Most of us would complain to our friends, maybe on Facebook or Twitter but he went to the top. He sent an email to CEO Randall Stephenson, not once but twice. After the second email he received a phone call from AT&T thanking him but also offering if he contacts the CEO again that they would issue a cease and desist letter.

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