Is Your Website at Odds With Your Social Media Presence?

If you are actively participating on social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook and yet your website telegraphs the opposite of transparent and interactive, you and your brand or business may be suffering from a split personality complex.

What do I mean?

Imagine that on Twitter and a Facebook page (business page separate from your profile page) under your own name and photo you share information, engage in tweetchats on Twitter and exchange Facebook messages, and participate in other transparent and interactive activities connected to your brand or business.

Then in both these places you link back to a website that says the opposite:  The home page gives no clue as to the person behind the site, the “About” page only talks about “we,” the contact page has an email address of info@domainname and, yes, there are tiny icons for Twitter and Facebook buried somewhere on the site.

This is a total disconnect between the brand or business you are portraying on social media sites and the brand or business you present at your website.

What to do if you can’t afford a new website?

Since you only have a few seconds to convince a newcomer to your website to stay on your site, it’s a good idea to focus your social media compatibility changes on your home page.

Put the same headshot you use on social media on the home page.  Put your Twitter and Facebook icons (and LinkedIn and YouTube if you have these) prominently on that page.  Better yet than the Facebook icon, put your Facebook page’s widget on your website home page.

If you have a blog on your website, make sure that the “button” for the blog is prominently displayed above the fold (without people having to scroll down to see it).  Do NOT put the word BLOG in tiny letters at the very top of your home page separate from your main nav buttons.

It’s even a good idea to put an email contact – one more personal than info@domainname – on the home page.

Now, if you currently have a big picture filling up most of the top of your home page, remove that photo so that you can use this prime home page real estate more effectively.  And this does NOT mean wasting that space with a big “WELCOME.”

Use that prime website real estate on the home page to demonstrate to your Twitter followers, your Facebook connections and others that you are the same engaging person on your own website that you are on the social media sites on which you participate.