Do websites need a social media landing page?

Social media is all the rage. Everyone and their dog is on Twitter, even if over 50% of profiles are ghost towns. The older generation is growing on Facebook more rapidly than the teens and content sharing has become a la mode. If you're not bookmarking (AddThis, Stumbleupon, Digg etc) then you're so last year.

However, it is dangerous to assume that just because your website now has a social media angle, your customers will flock to it and engage like never before. Wrong. Why would they? Just because they use Facebook doesn't mean they automatically want to join your fan page. The world is crammed with stuff to do, networks to join, content to read, links to follow. If you want yours to get to the surface, you need to give your customers a compelling reason to join in.

With this in mind, I started thinking about how landing page optimisation could benefit social media activity. I don't mean the main page of your community section or your Twitter account background, I mean a page on your main website that communicates your social media presence and explains how customers can interact.

The logic is clear - social media is marketing, so to drive conversion (Twitter follow, Facebook fan page sign-up, YouTube views etc) you need to target customers with a relevant landing page. That landing page then needs to be optimised over time to drive click through and conversion. If you want the benefits of social media then be serious about marketing it to your customers.

What content do I think sits on this page?

• Explanation of what you are doing and why - convey your passion
• List of benefits to customers e.g. If you have a customer service query, use our Twitter account to get a faster reply
• Bio of each social media profile you manage - what, where, why, how, who etc
• Links to each profile
• Integrated into your analytics package - track links and page performance to enable benchmarking & optimisation
• Main navigation back into core pages of your main website - keep consistency

Take away thoughts:

• Get your customers excited about following you via social media
• Clearly communicate the benefits
• Ask for feedback
• Encourage people to get involved and share their thoughts/ideas/content
• Enable people to bookmark your pages and share your content easily
• Look at the stats - how does the page perform?
• Test different ways to improve the page and keep asking your customers' advice

What do you think? Is landing page optimisation missing from social media presence? Do you know a company doing this well?

Please share your comments. Thanks.