How to Turn Visitors into Supporters of Your Website

Social media websites like Digg, Netscape and del.icio.us are bridges which connect your website with a large audience beyond your site’s normal reach. These websites will send visitors that can become future supporters of your site or brand.

Social media communities also expose your site to other webmasters or bloggers, the source of editorial links that will get you referral traffic and better search engine ranks.

Social websites are reliable sources of defensible traffic and should be cultivated as a means to increase your site reach and audience size.

The best way to achieve this is simply to consistently promote usage of a specific social website that is highly relevant to your site theme. This article will examine the methods which will allow you to do so.
Setting Your Social Media Objectives

First of all, determine what you want to gain from a social website. Are traffic or links your priority? Are you intent on getting more customers or subscribers?

The ideal scenario occurs when your audience promotes your content to social websites regularly on their own accord. You also want your site to be well received on these social platforms, in order to get the greatest exposure possible.

How to Make Your Site Social Media Friendly

There are several ways to develop a close relationship between your web site and the specific social community in question. Done correctly, these methods will encourage users to promote your site through social media communities.

• Pick the Right Social Platform. Choosing the right social websites is important because your website might not mesh well with every social media site out there. A tech-oriented website will do better on sites like Digg while politics is more strongly emphasized on Netscape. Experiment and find out which social communities are ideal for your content.
• Build a Power Social Profile. This involves participating actively in the specific website in order to build a respected social profile to promote specific content that are beneficial to your interests. This is a powerful method, although it is time consuming and requires much effort.

  Rand from SEOMoz on the influence of a prominent social profile:

  Once you’ve built up a profile that people recognize as a valuable source for information, you become more powerful in that community. Your bookmarks/articles/submissions/etc take on a greater value than the anonymous contributions of newbies.

  This mirrors the social structure of many web forums - big voices carry greater weight. The ultimate goal of this visibility is to have the power to influence - once you have a voice, marketing becomes a soft-sell, rather than a hard one.

• Social Optimize Your Webpages. This involves including voting, subscribing or bookmarking badges on your website, thereby allowing your users to take action on your content or support its ongoing presence on a social website.
• Create Targeted Content. The best way for your content to be well received in any social community is to know what sort of content the community likes. Spend time studying which type of content gets the most bookmarks, user comments or page views. Targeting one social website instead of many might be a good idea as well.
• Start Your Own Social Network. This method mainly pertains to larger sites that are able to leverage their strong audience base or reputation. Search Engine Land recently started Sphinn, a search marketing social news platform that successfully attracts new visitors while promoting their overall brand.

  Another example is Mashable, which has a social network that encourages readers to interact with each other or share photos and videos with the whole community.

Social Media Evangelism: Converting Visitors into Supporters

Not all of your readers know about these social websites so generating awareness of their existence or purpose should be a priority. While all the methods listed above do work, the best ways to encourage specific behavior is to evangelize or promote a specific social community on your site.

Singling out and writing about a social community adds value to your audience, particularly if the community in question focus on topics that are highly relevant to your site. Choose a social media channel that offers the greatest returns on investment, in terms of exposure generated for your website.

Here are the steps to take when encouraging greater usage or cohesion with a specific social website.

1. Pick one or two social media platforms that best fit your website.
2. Write about these social websites. This can be a long article or a short paragraph which introduces the purpose or theme of the social website. Focus on the benefits to your user and not the benefits for your website.
3. Place a link to the article prominently on your website. You can situate this on the sidebars of your blog. If you’re simply writing a brief introductory paragraph, you can locate this in the ‘About‘ section of your page.
4. Generate repeat awareness of the website by linking to your main article within other webpages. Optimize your site by encouraging/reminding users to use the website through buttons, badges or text links etc.

New visitors will arrive at your website and come across your specific article, which may convert them into new users of the social website. End result: A potential visitor that will act upon your content through the recommended social website.

It’s really that simple. Don’t assume that every new visitor to your site is aware of auxiliary social communities. By evangelizing a specific service, you are converting visitors into potential voters and bookmarkers who allow you to reach beyond your current demographic and audience base.