Twitter, Vine, Instagram, SlideShare, YouTube, Google+, Facebook, and other social networks allow users to embed public social media content across the web. These embeds of status updates, videos, presentations, and photos give brands, businesses, and publishers an opportunity to source, share, and curate content in new ways that incorporate audience participation and extend the reach of the social content to new platforms.
Here are seven techniques for embedding social media content across your blog or website:
1. Curate a Collection
Content curation is becoming a widely utilized tool by publications and brands alike. Use content from social media to create a story, highlight a conversation, feature a trend, or pull together a larger promotion.
In an article on Mashable, General Electric featured 16 Vines from their #6SecondScience Fair contest, including Vines from the brand as well as from the audience. The article went viral with 47K shares, mainly on StumbleUpon, due to the strong-curated collection of engaging how-to content sourced from Vine.
2. Use Social Content as a Testimonial
Companies can embed social content on their websites as testimonials or social proof to highlight their credibility. This can be a strong addition to creating a case study or featuring a quote from a customer on your website, as the testimonial content is sourced directly from the customer’s public statements on social media.
Thanks @localvox very helpful information on using Twitter even for a long time personal user.
— Rose Casanova (@rosecasanova) March 20, 2013
Embedding tweets as testimonials is the most commonly used form of social embeds to build credibility as tweets are short, to the point, and clearly indicate the individual or company making the claim.
3. Embed a Presentation to Enhance An Article
Using SlideShare to compile visual presentations is nothing new, but embedding these slide shows is an interesting way to bring new light to existing resources across your blog. Experiment with embedding SlideShare presentations in an article to bring more value to readers and more incentive to share that content.
Look to SlideShare as another source of traffic to your website by visualizing aspects of the article. For instance, this article from HubSpot highlighted a report they put together about the state of inbound marketing.
The article included a link to the report and also an embedded SlideShare presentation, which provided a simpler visual summary of the report. Add a SlideShare reel to your content to add an additional layer of value through visuals and increase the amount of time an individual spends interacting with your website.
4. Highlight Conversations
Is there a relevant conversation related to your brand or publication happening online? Then embed content from social media to help illustrate the conversation more clearly, sourcing the conversation right from its roots.
GQ is taking all threats very seriously and we’ve put two of our best detectives on the case. pic.twitter.com/E7HQDvxigY
— NATELY (@NATELY) July 30, 2013
British GQ used embedded tweets in an article to illustrate a heated conversation about its infamous cover choice. Although the tweets were outright attacks on the magazine and its staff, it was important to show the content of these tweets from their original sources. As the conversation around this topic was particularly outrageous, embedded tweets were an effective way of highlighting the exchange on Twitter.
5. Share the Results of a Contest or Promotion
Similar to the idea of curating a story around social conversations, brands can repurpose social media contest entries into new engaging content that can be shared back with your audience.
Clothing retailer Nasty Gal held a shoe contest on Instagram and announced the winners in a blog post that included their entries embedded from the photo-sharing app. The embedded Instagram photos helped to add continued value to the contest, as Nasty Gal was able to repurpose the content for use on both social media and the company blog.
6. Repurpose Social Moments
To help give your social content the extra push it needs to stand out amongst the constant chatter of the web, repurpose your content onto different channels for greater visibility. M&M’s often embeds content from other social channels onto its Tumblr blog to increase its visibility and opportunity to reach a larger audience on each network. Copy this technique by embedding your social content on your blog, in your emails, and on other social channels when possible. This helps make the most of the content your business or publication spent time, effort, and money to create.
7. Conduct a Social Poll on Your Website
Poll your audience on your website, email, blog or Tumblr by embedding a social post with a question to one of those properties. Users can join the conversation and interact directly with the post to add their input.
Ask a question on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Vine, or YouTube and then embed it across relevant content properties. This drives more engagement, more interactions, and more visibility of the content.
What are some of the best ways to embed social content across your web properties? Which social channels content does your organization find the most useful to embed and why? Share your thoughts in the comments, I’d love to see some examples of what you’ve embedded in the past.
Featured image via Shutterstock.
