Balancing Website Content with Social Media Presence

I must apologise for my recent silence on the blog. My focus has shifted to building content for the @OurEcoJourney YouTube channel and my Instagram presence at @KennsImages.

There’s an interesting dynamic when it comes to social media and websites. I strongly advise my clients to avoid using direct links to their social platforms in their website’s header or footer.

Here’s why:
Once you direct your audience to social platforms, the likelihood of them returning to your website diminishes significantly.

The Social Media Paradox

This doesn’t mean you should avoid social media entirely. In fact, maintaining a strong social presence is crucial – that’s where most people spend their online time.

The key is in the direction of traffic flow. Rather than sending website visitors to social platforms, engage your social audience and guide them back to your website.

Embedding Social Content Strategically

If you must showcase social content, embedding is the way forward. However, use this sparingly, as embedded content can impact your website’s performance.

Instagram embeds, in particular, are very resource-intensive. It’s best to limit your use of them, and if needed only use one per page and position them below the fold.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Kenn Jordan (@kennsimages)

This Instagram embed uses almost seven thousand characters and adds an external link to the Instagram JavaScript embed, what a lot of bloat 😱

Recent Success on YouTube

Speaking of social content, I’m rather happy about the performance of two recent videos:

These videos have garnered over 14,000 and 11,000 views respectively in just a few days – not bad, even if I say so myself 😇

YouTube Embedding Without Performance Impact

You might wonder about the multiple YouTube embeds on our homepage. Thanks to DIYthemes Focus and their YouTube add-on, we can embed videos without compromising website performance.