05 Jul Best Social Media Widgets for Websites

The popularity of social media has changed and reinvented the marketing landscape and the way we promote our content and brand to just about anyone. As you know, the success of any online website highly depends on how you connect and engage with your users, from using the basic Facebook poll to generate more leads, to more sophisticated widgets to increase visibility and traffic.

Social Media in a Nutshell

Number of global social network users from 2017-2025 (Source: Statista)

It is without a doubt that social media usage is one of the most popular online activities. In 2020, over 3.6 billion people were using social media across the globe. That number is projected to hit almost 4.41 billion by 2025, and the upward trend does not look like it is slowing down.

Moreover, social media is the central hub of all that is trending and happening. After all, it is where most people hang out, learn more, and get influenced. It serves as a valuable platform that allows us to connect with like-minded people. We get to consume content that resonates with what we like, our personalities, and our aspirations in life. So, it is no wonder that just about anyone would want to optimize their social media to get visible results.

As social media is all about sharing valuable and engaging content dynamically, promoting it across all channels globally, it has evolved tremendously and is changing into a complete web powerhouse that can be used for other things; fulfill online shopping, perform more customer service tasks and engage more with your followers too.

As you look to leverage these capabilities and engage more deeply with your audience, buy TikTok followers to help amplify your reach and presence on one of the fastest-growing platforms.

Irrespective of how much your website costs to develop, social media can help boost your site performance.

Best Social Media Widgets for Websites

Benefits of using social media for marketing worldwide 2020 (Source: Statista)

A survey done by Statista in January 2020 among 5,243 respondents revealed that increased exposure is the most commonly cited advantage of using social media for marketing purposes among global industry professionals. This is followed by increased traffic and lead generation, which are further reasons why marketers see value in employing social networks in their campaigns.

To tap into the many benefits that social media can bring to your website, you need to look into using social media widgets; they play a unique and crucial role in the whole marketing ecosystem. Furthermore, websites use such widgets to increase reach, engage users more profoundly, or even event conversions.

So, here are the recommended social media widgets that you can use for your website to help improve its overall business performance and brand.

1. Pixlee Social Feed

Based in San Francisco, California, Pixlee was founded in 2012. It is a cloud-based marketing suite of products that helps companies leverage user-generated content (UGC) from social media profiles to improve their marketing performance.

Pixlee allows users to collect, curate, and manage the UGC from various social media streams such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Linkedin, all through a single platform. Users can then select the best and most appropriate social media content and publish the information directly onto a webpage.

Let’s look into Pixlee’s free Social Feed. If you peruse through some of the most successful emerging eCommerce sites, you’ll notice that they all have an Instagram feed that displays a number of their latest posts. Instafeeds are typically widgets placed on a website that extend the benefits of your Instagram account onto your site.

Presenting your feed is important for your website as your Instagram feed represents your brand, appeals to new/existing users, creates brand awareness and recognition, and, last but not least, drives both engagement and sales. So, since your Instagram tells your brand story, it makes perfect sense to increase the visibility of your Instagram feed by placing it on your site.

To do so, use Pixlee Social Feed by entering your email address a password, and sync your account with your Instagram profile. Then you’ll be given a code script that you can place anywhere on your site, and you’re good to go.

Unlike most others, Pixlee Social Feed is not recommended for smaller companies; best for 200 users and above.

2. TurnTo Ratings and Reviews

Founded in 2008 and based in New York, TurnTo is one of the fastest-growing providers of UGC solutions to top merchants and brands. Armed with a unique suite of products, TurnTo delivers more content of differing types, giving a more personalized user experience lead to higher conversion lift.

It’s no wonder that eCommerce leaders like Saks Fifth Avenue, Newegg, Sur La Table, and GNC, and brands like Cole Haan, Nine West, and Carhartt turn to them for their customer-voice programs.

As you know, one of the determining factors that influence your E-A-T is ratings and reviews. With TurnTo Ratings and Reviews, you get to collate more verified reviews and faster. Also, you can have fully indexable reviews for best Search Engine Optimization (SEO) practice.

In addition, this widget is flexible in that it can easily be integrated. It thus can be used in other platforms, mobile apps, and social media via TurnTo’s advanced Application Programming Interface (API). What makes TurnTo unique is that its suite of products is well-diversified to help online retailers boost conversions by making it easy for retail brands to connect individually with each customer and then identify trends relevant to their business.

Also, it can personalize the buyer’s experience to the extent that each customer would feel like they were the only person you care to serve. Won’t this make the customer feel special? After all, it’s always about the customer.

3. Taggbox

Based in Walnut, California, Taggbox is deemed one of the best UGC platforms that helps marketers increase user engagement, build trust, and grow conversions. It can help to discover, curate, and display user-generated content across all marketing touchpoints.

Taggbox Social Media Aggregator is a fantastic widget for websites that allows you to curate and embed content from over 15 social media platforms. You can showcase such content creatively with customizations like different feed themes, various design elements, post styles, banners, stickers, colors, fonts, and many more. It also integrates well with multiple website-building platforms.

You can add customized posts, announcements, etc., along with a more responsive design for a better and more seamless user browsing experience. Also, it allows automatic real-time content updates to your social media feed widget to ensure fresh and unique content is always available on your website.

Furthermore, with reports on insights into your social media feed performance with built-in advanced analytics features, you can be assured that you’re always on top of things. People who have used this product raved about how stellar their customer service was and how Taggbox allows for a great deal of flexibility in all areas.

That said, unlike others, Taggbox does not have mobile platform support. However, this is still a solid widget that can help you build trust with UGC, pushing for more conversions for your brand, thus generating higher revenue and improved sales.

4. GetSocial

GetSocial’s HQ is located in Lisbon, Portugal. Founded in 2013, it is a social tool and content analytics platform for marketers interested in measuring and increasing social traffic, automating publishing on social networks.

GetSocial can identify natural virality by measuring dark social channels. Dark social refers to the ‘invisible’ shares via other media such as messengers, email, and text messages. If you share an article plucked from ‘website A’ via Facebook Messenger, you’ve shared it through dark social.

Studies have shown that more than 80% of all shares are actually ‘dark.’ however, for website A’s team, this share is deemed as ‘direct’ even though you didn’t type the whole link into your browser. So, because they don’t know where you got the article from, dark social becomes a form of referral traffic attributed to the wrong channel.

GetSocial gets cracking on this by showing all data via an intuitive interface with a detailed breakdown of all sharing activities (including ‘dark’ ones) and social traffic for more than 30 social networks and channels. Compared with others, GetSocial is meant more for smaller companies with 1-50 users.

Suppose you wish to get complete visibility into your accurate social behavior analytics and uncover how your audience shares your content to improve your marketing strategy. In that case, GetSocial could be it for you.

5. AddThis

AddThis is one of the pioneer companies that has been around since 1977. Located at Redwood Shores, California, AddThis is another famous social sharing solution that provides many options for marketing your content using a simple standalone widget.

This social media feed widget not only allows users to set their social media icons anywhere on the page it also features Social Follow buttons. Additionally, you can customize popups to display tailored content to readers who visit specific pages of your site. Another feature is the content recommendation.

You can also display the widget at the bottom of the page, recommending your readers to other related and relevant content pages on your site. There’s also a complex data analysis feature that teaches you all there is to know about your serving audience, which helps you understand your visitors better.

You’d be glad to know that AddThis has also gone to extra lengths to secure its scripts and widgets. And unlike most others, AddThis is free. It is no wonder it is already used by more than 15 million sites.

Conclusion

As a marketing specialist yourself, it’s only natural that you’d want to reap the synergy from both your website and social media; the benefits are aplenty. If you have a blog or already have one running, you can leverage the social media widgets above to expand, market, and improve your website traffic.

Whether you’re looking to enable only social sharing or wish to go beyond that to integrate more social media content and capabilities into your website, you can go through them one by one and choose what you believe would work best for your website’s social media integration.