Social media marketing is a powerful tool for driving business growth. It’s also a ton of work. A single Instagram post requires ideating a creative concept, capturing a high-quality photo or video, sizing it for the platform, writing a caption, selecting hashtags and mentions, scheduling the post, applying tags, and engaging with users in comments and direct messages.
If you’re going to invest in social media, you want to get as much mileage out of your efforts as possible. To do so, you can use that social content across your other channels. This is, in a nutshell, social media integration.
What is social media integration?
Social media integration is the process of connecting your brand’s social media presence to your other marketing channels. This might involve sharing social media content in your email marketing campaigns, embedding featured social media posts in your blog articles, and including clickable social media icons on your website footer. Integration allows users to interact with your social media content even off social platforms, which can increase customer engagement.
Benefits of social media integration
Social media integration offers multiple business benefits. It can amplify the value of your social presence and support your other digital and in-person marketing efforts. Here’s how it can help you:
Consistent brand experiences
Integrating social media across channels naturally ensures that your brand identity is unified. By maintaining a consistent, coherent digital presence, you can boost brand recognition while keeping your brand narrative and brand values aligned. For instance, if a clothing brand partners with an influencer to model a new summer line, they could embed a post from the influencer in a blog post rounding up ideas for styling new items.
Increased content value
Social media integration amplifies the value of your content strategy. Sharing social content on other digital channels wrings maximum value out of every high-quality photo, meticulously edited video, and tonally appropriate zinger—because the more places this content appears, the more people will see it. Let’s say you post a TikTok that goes viral; you might also embed that TikTok in your brand’s weekly newsletter, extending its reach even further.
Social proof
Many social media strategies focus on user-generated content (UGC)—content customers create and publish about your brand on their own channels. Positive UGC is a type of social proof, and it validates your brand’s quality and builds trust with new customers. Social media integrations like social feed embeds on your website (which show the latest social posts that mention your brand) can help you earn more UGC and encourage its sharing across multiple platforms. Research shows that UGC feed embeds can boost social campaign engagement by 50%.
Ideas for social media integration
- Use social share buttons
- Connect social platforms to your online store
- Enable social login
- Build social feed integrations
Here are a few social media integration strategies to improve customer experiences and reach a broader audience:
Use social share buttons
Social share buttons invite users to share relevant content on multiple social media platforms, simplifying the sharing process with auto-generated post previews and a seamless transition from one platform to another. Many companies include popular social media network share buttons on key web pages, like a new blog post, an order confirmation, and product pages.
For example, plant-based nutrition company Press includes social media buttons on its lifestyle and nutrition blog, The Squeeze, allowing users to share an article through their Facebook, Pinterest, or X accounts. Clicking an icon opens a pop-up window displaying an editable post preview for the chosen platform, complete with the article link, embedded image, and sample copy.
Connect social platforms to your online store
Ecommerce-focused social media integration lets users find and purchase products from your online store directly on social platforms. You can share individual products, sync your entire catalog, or create shoppable posts from UGC.
Women’s running brand Oiselle uses Shopify’s social selling tools to promote its items on Instagram. Product posts appear in Oiselle’s feed alongside social media marketing content like runner-friendly memes, branded posts, coverage of current topics in professional running, and sponsored content created by Oiselle’s team of professional athletes.
Enable social login
Cross-platform solutions like social login tools provide a seamless user experience across marketing channels. Social login makes signing up on your site quick and easy, allowing users to skip your account registration process and log in to your online store with their existing social media credentials. This builds trust with potential customers who might otherwise be hesitant to create an account on a new platform.
Build social feed integrations
Social media feed integrations embed your posts into other digital channels, like your website or marketing emails. Feed integrations can boost engagement on social channels and help you earn more social media followers. They’re also a cost-efficient way to refresh site content and add elements from visual platforms like Instagram to enhance text-heavy pages.
You can also use feed integrations for social proof by resharing user-generated content or configuring your feed to display posts that tag your brand. Sustainable apparel company Everlane embeds Instagram photos on product pages under the headline “Everlane On You” and includes a link that lets users easily add photos from Facebook or Instagram.
Tips for social media integration
An effective social media integration strategy enhances user experiences and supports your other marketing efforts. Here are four tips to help you integrate social media across your digital channels:
Engage with users
Engaging with users on social media channels can help you build your social following and boost customer loyalty. Encourage user interaction by replying to comments, liking or sharing reviews and other UGC posts, and responding to customer inquiries by DM. When you happen across UGC content you want to share across your other platforms, reach out to the creator to ask if you can feature their post.
Monitor social conversations
Social listening tools analyze mentions of your business on social channels, helping you monitor your reputation, track conversations about your brand, and provide proactive customer support. Identify and respond to unhappy customers, join conversations with tips and advice, and thank satisfied users for promoting your company.
Track performance
Monitoring marketing performance can provide valuable insights into customer behavior and preferences, helping you measure success across digital channels and optimize your integration strategy. Key integration metrics include social media data like follower growth rate, mentions, and brand sentiment, as well as broader performance metrics like conversion rate and customer satisfaction.
Your specific indicators depend on your overall marketing goals and integration techniques. You might monitor satisfaction and loyalty to evaluate UGC efforts, and you might monitor website visitor behavior to track the effects of social sharing buttons.
Most social platforms offer built-in social media analytics, and third-party analytics tools or social media management software can provide advanced analytics and automated reporting features. Use customer feedback tools to measure customer satisfaction, site analytics tools to monitor site traffic, and your ecommerce dashboard to track sales.
Social media integration FAQ
Are there tools to help with social media integration?
Yes. You can use social login tools to integrate a customer’s social media accounts with your website, embed tools to display social content on your website or in marketing emails, and social media analytics tools to monitor your performance.
What is an example of social media integration?
A popular example of social media integration is providing a one-click social media link that invites users to share an article from your blog on their X account or Facebook page
How do you integrate social media in a marketing strategy?
You can use social media to support a range of marketing goals, including building brand awareness, improving audience trust in your business, boosting sales, and increasing traffic to your site. You can also use social media integration—the practices of connecting your social media presence to your other marketing channels—to maximize the value of your social media efforts and provide a consistent digital brand experience.
