What Is Social Media Integration? (With 3 Examples)

Updated February 3, 2023

Marketing a business online and within its community can help improve customer retention and discovery rates. Social media integration can help a company advertise new products, sales and content effectively. Learning more about how social media integration can help a business can allow you to improve marketing practices within a marketing team.

In this article, we define social media integration, share why it's important, offer examples of it, and discuss how to effectively conduct it on a company's website.

What is social media integration?

Social media integration is the use of social media in a marketing strategy. This can mean the business advertises its social media in business gatherings, meetings, webinars, on websites or during product showings. Social media integration also means the business uses social media to direct customers to business events, making the advertising move both ways. Social media can help direct customers to a company's website or inform them about company events, such as meetings or webinars. Companies can also use their websites to manage social media accounts, informing customers of them so they can follow them.

Why is social media integration important?

Social media integration is important for many reasons in a business marketing strategy and provides these benefits:

Improves business awareness

When a company promotes its social media through multiple channels, it can help improve business awareness depending on those channels. Advertisements in public areas or websites can advertise on two fronts, both to those within view and to social media users. Promoting the business where you work through social media can help reach customers who might not otherwise interact with the company's products. By integrating social media, a business could give customers more opportunities to see products and services.

Advertises products

Integrating social media into different aspects of business practices can help create awareness surrounding specific products. For example, suppose employees integrate social media during new product presentations and simultaneously post about the same products on social media. In that case, customers could view both presentations and maybe choose to buy the product. Social media can help enhance a customer's product experience, even during services or after checkout.

As another example, consider a customer who recently used a service from a business. Integrating social media into the checkout system can allow the customer to review the service, leave feedback or ask questions about the company efficiently. With proper management, social media can act as an impromptu help service when customers need to talk to business associates as soon as possible. Social media can help inform customers about products, services and when or where they may be more readily available.

Improves customer retention

Integrating social media into a business website can help improve the likelihood that a customer returns to make another purchase. For example, suppose a potential customer visits a website and discovers the company's social media. In that case, they may want to follow it so they remember to return for products later. Because social media integrates with the daily lives of some customers, having social media as available to customers as possible helps ensure customers remember and consider the products from a company.

Helps form a brand identity

Social media can help form a brand identity within the company and in product presentation. Marketers can accomplish this through advertisements and social media if company wants to present casual language as a brand identity, Social media can help form the attitude, language, imagery and response rate of your brand. Through replies, posts and likes, your social media can even go as far as forming an online persona as a representation of your brand to customers.

Contributes to company culture

While social media can help develop a brand, it can also help develop a company culture. The language used in social media, especially within your marketing team, can help form the company culture within multiple other departments. For example, if you want a casual company culture within your department or others, consider writing social media posts for the company as casually as the business allows. Casual posts may influence casual behavior among coworkers and even leaders.

Arranges advertising campaigns more effectively

Elements of an advertising campaign, such as commercials, webinars and social media advertisements, can all have improvement from social media posting. If your department wants to further use an advertisement video, posting it to social media can help it circulate even after the adperiod is over. You can also help extend the attendance for webinars by posting the links for them on social media, including reminder and after-conference links.

3 examples of effective social media integration

There are many examples of effective social media integration, including:

1. Social media links on websites

To integrate social media links in websites, a marketing department can include links at the collective bottom of each page within a site or perhaps include it near the bottom of the "About" page that many businesses have. Another way they could integrate the media within the website is by having an active feed of the media. This can help them understand the social media's language and may even encourage a purchase if the marketing team features a product or service on the new posts page.

2. Social media QR codes in presentations

During a presentation, having a quick response (QR) code that leads to a company's social media website can help improve social media retention and product sales gains. A QR code can also be more convenient than a printed hyperlink or a social media handle. QR codes can instantly lead customers to the website if their phone is compatible with the code.

3. Social media listings during webinars

During a webinar, it's helpful to integrate social media names or handles within the presentation. Marketing teams can do this by arranging live polls through social media websites if that social media platform supports poll use. They can also encourage social media interaction during the webinar to answer customer questions or to receive feedback. Social media can advertise webinars by sending links, reminders and updates as the webinar progresses.

How to integrate social media on your website

If you want to conduct social media integration for your website, consider the following steps:

1. Create unified social media profiles

To integrate social media with a website, consider creating unified social media profiles for a company. Unified social media profiles often have the same name, content and posting pattern. This means that a marketing team decides on a unified posting language and how often the social media posts update. Unifying social media activity can ensure that no matter a customer's social media preference, they can find content of equal value across websites.

2. Keep profiles consistent

The next step to creating proper social media integration is profile administration. If the marketing team wants an active social media presence, consider keeping messaging on all platforms consistent. This entails activity, responses and post content can be relatively the same across all social media sites. If your social media team responds to one posting site as much as another, it can encourage customers of all types and social media preferences to follow the company's activity.

3. Create connections

When integrating a company's social media presence into its website, create connections for each site as they become available. For example, when a new product releases, consider creating a social media post about that product on each site. Once company posts exist on each social media, consider linking these posts to the announcement page. Not only does this help keep social media unified, but it also encourages customers to look at product advertisements from different perspectives. This also helps advertise the product on multiple fronts for maximum profit potential.

4. Repeat connections consistently

To optimize a company's social media presence and connections, try making social media connections as often as possible. You can connect social media posts to your website as often as possible through updates, product releases and announcements. The more you connect your social media to business activity within the website, the more posts your customers have the potential to visit.