B2B Website Marketing Tip: Add Social Icons to Top of Pages

I’ve spent a lot of time of late adding followers to clients’ Twitter accounts and RSS feeds to Google Reader. (Be sure to read my post about why Google Reader should be your BFF in terms of managing the content tsunami we’re all dealing with.)

Here’s what I’ve learned from doing this somewhat tedious but important work: For companies actively participating on social media platforms and who want to help people follow their brands, social icon placement needs to be standardized much the same way Website navigation is now standard.

(I’m purposely not covering those companies who lack a social presence but place icons in the hope that people will tweet / Like their content. That’s a whole other article.)

In short, social media icons need to be part of a site’s universal navigational structure AND they need to be placed at the top of each page on the site.

Why?

1. Due to search, people don’t always come to a site via the home page. If your icons are placed only on the home page (or worse, on your PR page or “Contact Us” page or some other obscure place), no one will find them.

2. If I’m a prospect, I may want to learn more about a company by passively following via Facebook or Twitter. Making it so that social icons are easily found makes it easier for people to follow you and begin the engagement process.

3. For people like me who are helping clients build their online brand / presence, following industry influencers, players, journalists, etc. is important. I want to be able to go to a site, find those icons and get back out. I don’t want to have to scroll up and down a page hunting for tiny icons.

Once I realized the importance of where social icons are placed on a page, I moved mine from the middle of my site’s sidebar to the header.

(Also note that my phone number is at the top of every page. This makes it easy for people using smart phones to call me — all they have to do is touch my phone number, which appears as a link on a smart phone. No searching around my site for a “Contact Me” page. It’s little things like this that make your brand / Website “people friendly.” Trust me.)

You can also do a “Social” tab the way Food Processing does. I like how this organization created a drop down menu that shows links to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Click on each link and you get taken directly to the social page. Easy!

What do you think? Take my Twtpoll or leave your comments below.