Social Follow Community Blog

Social Follow allows you to have all of your social networks featured in one button which can easily be implemented into your websites, blogs and/or social sites. The Social Follow Blog will keep you up-to-date on new additions to our service and give answers to questions we get on Social Follow. Feel free to write back to us through the blog as well as this really is a community development project.

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January 11th, 2011

Are Social Networking Buttons Slowing Your Potential?

Do you remember the days when you were lucky to have any internet connection at all? Back in the days of dial-up, it didn’t matter if it took an extra few minutes for a website to load completely; internet users were used to the delay. Well, connections speeds have improved; thank goodness, but the patience of the average web browsers has actually declined. If your website doesn’t load quickly, most of your online visitors and even some search engines aren’t going to wait.

Even more interesting about site load times is Google’s big announcement that they will be using page load time in its page rank algorithm. If your website is busy loading several small icons and images, while your competitors popped up, you can be sure that Google is going to give the competition the higher position. Further research conducted by Google also strengthened the position that people simply don’t want to wait when they surf the Internet when they discovered that even though a research group thought they would like 30 search results returned on a keyword search, very few of those same individuals waited for all 30 search results to load because it took longer than the traditional 10 results.

There are several ways to increase your website’s load time. Images traditionally take the largest amount of time to load. By hosting your own images and by keeping your images small, you can greatly reduce the load time of your page. Also reducing the number of plug-ins on your site can help to reduce loading speeds. Another great way to speed things up is to lose those bulky social networking icons and streamline your social networking button.

When you link to each of your social networks via separate images and links you are increasing your page clutter and your site’s load time. Especially when you make those Facebook and LinkedIn buttons dominate your page. The larger the image the larger the load time and the larger the load time the greater the impact you will see on your site exits and lost customers, ultimately affecting your bottom line.

The beauty of SocialFollow’s FollowMe buttons is that they don’t cost you valuable loading time and at the same time they allow you to add far more than the top 3 social networking buttons to every page of your website without using your entire sidebar. You can add hundreds of social networking icons and links to your one button and if you have a niche network not yet listed in the SocialFollow database, you can add it in minutes and have it on your button in no time. Even better is that the Social Follow button is totally free, a great way to save both time and money. Don’t let your social networking icons drive customers away due to slow site loading times. Add the button that won’t bog down your page.

Tags: load time, social networking icons
Posted in Social Following, Social Media Solutions | Leave Comment

December 28th, 2010

Is Your Social Media Tool a Winner?

There really is no shortage of social media tools available for web site owners and operators at all skill levels. One of the toughest jobs is picking and choosing which social media tool is going to be a benefit and which are actually going to be giant time suckers that do nothing to boost your social networking identity and social brand building efforts.

Social media, whether talking about networking or marketing, is really moving, evolving and changing fast as lightning. At one point you no sooner had you MySpace profile looking sharp and your connections on Konnects built when you are thrown into the world of Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare; each with a whole new set of rules for interacting and being social. This constant state of change is one of the reasons that finding the right social media tools is so important.

Many trusted products are beginning to mature and web savvy people are going beyond Google alerts to know what is being said about them online. This is where new tools for social monitoring have jumped onto the market. While many social media tools claim to do everything you could need and want, they may also fall short when you really need them to pull through.

With online conversations growing daily and your involvement in the social revolution unavoidable, how can you tell if your social media tool is fantastic or a flop? You can start by avoiding anything that requires you to pay for results. The real value of a quality social media tool is going to lie in its ability to cross the bridges and gaps of the different social networks with no extra effort and no extra cost. The problem with many paid for promised results type of tools is that their abilities are either keyword or social network specific.

Which brings us to yet another value added feature of quality social media tools and it is cross network compatibility. What good is a tool or button if it only works for one social network? The best tools are going to be of value to you on all social platforms, not just Facebook and Twitter. Being able to link together your social networks is going to save you time and money in the long run as long as your social media tool makes bringing them together short and easy.
The final warning is that things in shiny packages aren’t always better. It is all too easy to get caught up in the glamour and glitz of new tools. Ease of use and user-friendliness for both you and your web visitors still has to rank number one. Do your research and know what success looks like, especially before you decide to spend any money on it. Only select tools that can deliver what you need with or without shiny packaging.

When it comes to research, there are a lot of great review websites available. We invite you to check out the SocialFollow review located on the StartUpLift. This is just one of the many online locations you can figure out just what you will be getting from your social media tools. For the record too, Social Follow is your free social media button that makes it easy for your online visitors to connect with you on the social network that works for them.

Tags: social media tool, social media tools, social networking
Posted in Social Media Solutions | Leave Comment

December 12th, 2010

Web Shui for Your Social Media Buttons

As feng shui is the art of placement, web shui is the art of placement in terms of your web design; or so the Internet has unofficially coined the term as such. While the layout and usability of your website are critical to your visitor conversion success rate, the placement of your social media buttons (in particular your SocialFollow button) is going to have a direct effect on the success of your social media marketing campaign.

It is no secret that the more you spread yourself across the World Wide Web, the more exposure you will get. All this is generally to the end of getting more traffic or conversions, depending on the function and purpose of your web identity. Social networking has become the most common platform for addressing potential visitors directly and has proven to be an extraordinarily effective marketing strategy. Making yourself easily accessible on a variety of social networking platforms should then be on your web design and even your blog design must have lists.

The SocialFollow button has made putting all your social media buttons in one location a snap already, but the placement of your SocialFollow button will deliver even more exposure and show how much you value social relationships if placed properly. Hence, the web shui.

There is a theory in conversions that the bigger the button, the more action it will receive. While this is true of call to action buttons that actually create conversions and sales, the rule doesn’t always apply to your social media buttons. The truth is, your social media button is not going to take someone to your shopping cart and for this reason it should not be treated like a call to action button. Social media buttons are means for establishing lasting relationships with your visitors, beyond sales and conversions.

You don’t need gigantic banner sized social media buttons, but the placement of your social media button is important. Just like call to action buttons, you will want your social media button to stand out from the surrounding content and you want it to be recognizable. Liberal use of whitespace is going to add to the use of your button. Placing your social media button in different areas on your website or blog is going to allow people to make their decision to follow you on a social platform at any point in their visit to your website.

Great web shui for your social media button placement include putting your Follow Me button in the upper fold of your web pages, or in the upper to middle regions of your sidebar and including it at the end of your blog posts. Why at the end? Usually a reader will decide they want to stick with you AFTER they have read what you have to say. Another great spot is to include your social media button with your newsletter conversion box as people who sign up for your newsletter may find following your updates via Twitter and Facebook more appealing than emails.

Tags: button placement, Follow Me Button, social media buttons, web shui
Posted in Social Following, Social Media Solutions | 1 Comment

December 6th, 2010

A Fascination With Analytics-You Know You Love Them!

Do you find yourself visiting your Google Analytics page regularly? Do you access your website control panel to check the traffic information on a daily basis? Well, we do and for all the other number watchers out there in the world, we now offer analytics with your free SocialFollow button.

Web analytics provide invaluable information to website owners, SEO specialists, business owners and anyone else with the incurable desire to see it in numbers. Why use web analytics? Well to eliminate the guess work of course. With web analytics you can improve your advertising, learn more about your online customers or website visitors and what information they were looking for on your website and to determine the overall effectiveness of your web presence.

For instance, if you run an ecommerce store and you have dragging sales, you can easily determine from you analytics the behavior of your website visitors by tracking how they got to your site (search engine, referring site or directly), what pages they visited, how much time they spent looking on each page and when or what made them decide to leave without buying anything. You can tell if your keywords are bringing in the right kind of traffic or if you need to make some serious changes to your site. From all of the information analytics provides, you can better improve the functionality, user-friendliness and increase conversions or sales on your website.

For the analytics watcher though, watching the numbers is a passion that cannot be denied. It is for these individuals and well, anyone who wants to know how often their SocialFollow button has appeared on the web that we created analytics for our free button solution to your social media clutter. By visiting your SocialFollow account, you can click on the analytics option and view your button impressions for today, this month and to date. Double click on your graph to zoom in on a particular day and zoom back out to see the last couple of weeks. The numbers never lie and you just may be surprised. We are constantly looking at ours!

Don’t have a SocialFollow account? Haven’t gotten your free social media button for your website? Sign up today and get in on all the number watching fun while giving your online visitors an easy way to find you everywhere on the web. Be Social!

Tags: analytics, social media
Posted in Analytics, Social Media Solutions | 1 Comment

November 12th, 2010

Get Rid of Your Social Media Clutter

Web design is becoming more of a fine art. Balance and placement combined with navigation and user interface all play an important role in the success of any website. The online world however goes far beyond the website and to keep in touch with consumers worldwide, more businesses are turning to social media. Only trouble is, in order to reach the masses you have to sign up for masses of social networking and professional networking accounts.

A broad online presence does more than just get you closer to your target market. With each network that you launch an account with, you are adding more links to your website, taking advantage of more content avenues and showing more people that you are ready to be transparent about your business or service. Followers are everywhere. Down every networking path and micro-niche-networking avenue, there is the potential to get information about your business, service or industry to new people. Going social is a huge and important step in almost every industry.

This is where the clutter starts to surface. For every social media network you join, you will want to add a badge or button to your website to let visitors know on which social media forum they can find you. First is a little blue ‘F’ for Facebook, the ‘T’ for Twitter and the ageless ‘IN’ for LinkedIn, but what about Foursquare, Myspace, Plaxo and Konnects? There are well over 500 social media outlets on the web. Leaving only one question; where will you put all those little button links to your social presence?

Devoting a page on your website would be one option, but will visitors take the time to visit a page of buttons? Never fear, the answer is here. The SocialFollow button puts all your social media buttons in an attractive and convenient, single button for your website. You can add as many or as few social networking or professional networking websites to your button. Save your website space for valuable content and winning call to actions. Clean out your social media button clutter and add the sleek SocialFollow button instead!

Tags: professional networking, Social Follow Button, social media, social networking
Posted in Social Media Solutions | Leave Comment

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