Facebook wins the battle for website integration

Small business websites are no longer singular promotional platforms that stand alone from other marketing efforts. They are increasingly becoming a hub, directing visitors to email marketing newsletter sign-up pages, social media profiles, blogs, YouTube channels and other related media channels.

When it comes to this cross-platform integration, one site is clearly winning the battle. According to a new report from Pingdom, Facebook has been integrated into a significant number of websites. As many as one-quarter (24.3 percent) of the top 10,000 home pages have integrated Facebook elements, such as the "Like" button and Facebook Connect.

Clearly, this highlights the growing relevancy of Facebook, or at least its perceived value among entrepreneurs. Facebook dominates all other social networks in terms of both official integration and simple links extending from the home page, with Google+, Twitter and LinkedIn all trailing behind drastically.

"Facebook has the largest user base of any social network, so it's no surprise to see small businesses across the country have integrated the social network into their homepages," explains Erika Kerekes, social media product manager at Deluxe. "All the major social networks have a significant number of members, but clearly Facebook is the No. 1 priority."

Google+ and Twitter follow in at distant second and third

Whereas 24.3 percent of the top 10,000 websites have integrated Facebook into their homepages, the number of businesses leveraging other social networks trail behind significantly. For example, Google+ is No. 2, with 13.3 percent of the top websites integrating both the +1 button and the Share widget. Twitter is even further behind at 10 percent. LinkedIn, largely touted as the social network for business professionals, has very little website integration – as few as 0.6 percent of the top 10,000 websites incorporate LinkedIn into their homepages.

When looking beyond business' websites, social media integration jumps even further – particularly in the case of Twitter. Nearly half of all websites (49.3 percent) have some sort of Facebook integration, while 41.7 percent incorporate Twitter. Google+ remains relatively small at 21.5 percent, while LinkedIn is at 3.9 percent.

"Google+ may be a young social network compared to the other three in this survey, but with the might of Google behind it, it has still managed to secure an impressive presence in a relatively short period of time," the Pingdom blog notes. "But when it comes to sheer amount of presence on websites, Facebook is clearly leading the pack, with Twitter not far behind."

The small business takeaway

So what does this mean for small business owners? More and more, companies are incorporating Facebook into their homepages and throughout their websites. They are letting consumers Like their favorite products and services, and enabling them to log in through their Facebook accounts to leave comments on blogs. Moreover, they are tying their small business websites to their social media profiles – particularly, their Facebook accounts.

If your company has a social media profile, you should consider ways to incorporate it into your website. This can be accomplished a number of ways, ranging from simple links to advanced integration such as Facebook Connect.

How does your company integrate social media into your small business website? Do you just link to your Facebook account, or do you support the full range of your social media presence?

This entry was posted in Beginner, Social Media. Bookmark the permalink.