When building a website, one of the questions you might face is how to integrate your social media presence. This page provides guidance on UT Institute of Agriculture website standards and discusses why a simple social media icon is recommended over an integrated feed.
Reasons for using a social media icon in the footer rather than an integrated feed:
- Assures consistency and adherence in both visual content and brand:
Consistent high standards and values in the Institute’s efforts to provide Real. Life. Solutions. to Tennesseans, the nation, and the world are critical to elevating our brand and creating awareness for UTIA. Also important is consistency in written and visual form as we communicate to and educate our many diverse audiences. Because websites and social media channels have different purposes and different approaches to engagement, including social feeds on our websites can dilute the consistency of visuals and messaging created specifically for those audiences. We think of UTIA websites as Institute, unit, college, and department resumes. Their content should be primarily informative and professional. The nature of social media, on the other hand, is more conversational and personal.
- Decreases the likelihood that users leave the website:
Adding a social media feed opens opportunities for your users to leave your website, as they may become distracted by social media posts and not return. Feeds come with links to posts, and once a user clicks that link you pass control of that user’s journey back to a social media company whose only goal is to keep that user engaged on their site for as long as possible. A social media icon in the footer ensures that users have scrolled your an entire page before leaving the website. To learn how to add this to the footer, visit the WordPress Guide Social Media Block Footer page.
- Decreases accessibility issues:
There are many components of a social media post that may not be accessible for everyone. Many of the posts will have images, images with text, videos, text, emojis, or hashtags in them, which are inaccessible if not done correctly. A Verizon study found that 83 percent of US users watch content with their sound off and 77 percent of conversions happened on videos with sound off. Source: blog.hootsuite.com/inclusive-design-social-media. Additionally, the US Attorney General has signed a final rule for web accessibility that will impact social media posts going forward.
- Ensures targeted messages reach the intended audiences:
Users choose to visit your website and social media pages for different reasons. If someone searches for your website, they are likely looking for information and resources. Your social media posts should drive traffic to your site by highlighting these resources and providing links for social media users to easily access them. Including a social media feed on your website results in redundancy and potential confusion as website visitors could be distracted from the resources available on your website.
- Follows the principle that social is a driver to the site rather than the reverse:
Users don’t come to your website to look at your social media posts. Often, they are aware that you have social media pages, and if they want to look at them then they know where to go. Your website is the place where you can guide users along whatever journey you need them to take, be that conversions in the form of events, volunteering, finding resources, etc.
- Decreases workload and risk:
Social media companies face a lot of legal issues and regulations. Their data-harvesting practices cause lead to frequent policies updates on their part. This frequency of updates means that the code used to pull in content from their platform may become out of date and unsupported many times over the lifespan of your website. You will find that content will disappear from your site without frequent oversight.
- Follows UTIA’s overall social media strategy:
Social media posts often include graphics, photos and copy that differ from the UTIA brand standards used on the website. To comply with these standards, any entity wishing to include their social media feed on their website would be required to take extensive action to overhaul their social strategy and ensure all future posts meet UTIA’s visual and written standards.
- Adheres to best content practices:
Writing for the web comes with special considerations. Website visitors are distracted. They tend to skim and scan, often in an F pattern. In a study based on analysis of 45,237 page views, users only read 18 percent of what’s on the page. Source: nngroup.com/articles/howlittle-do-users-read. Website visitors typically are looking for an answer to a question or specific information. On average, they read only the first two words on each line. Source: plainlanguage.gov/guidelines/web. In contrast, writing for social is often the beginning of a conversation with followers. Information is presented with the expectation that users will interact through comments, shares, and likes, continuing the conversation.
- Lowers repercussions from social hacks:
Social media is an easy target for criminals to access and/or take control of accounts. This means if the account is hacked, there are risks involved with any information that has been maliciously added to the social media account. This would cause loss of reputation for the department, center, unit, Institute, and University. In addition, many current threats use social media posts to specifically target people for scams. Cybercriminals use information found in an organizational chart, then use posts that detail when specific people will traveling, working in another location, at a conference, etc., to send the spear phishing scams we so often see these days. Having this kind of information readily available makes the targeting even easier for the criminals because they won’t have to look it up.