Social Media Link Updates

Social Media Link Updates

This tutorial is relatively straight forward. Muenster Milling is our example client for the purposes of this tutorial. We build websites all the time, and in the  content phase things either go very well, or very poorly. Some things fall through the cracks.

Social media link updates are part of the process. If we don’t get it done, we look silly. Next thing you know, we have a website that goes live with its social media icons not working. This is very important, because things like this have happened.

Let’s get started

The first thing we are going to do here is to tour the website and look for social media references. Typically, these are in the form of social media icons.

Normally, they are located in one of the 4 far corners of the website. For Muenster’s new website, they are in the bottom left hand corner.

The technique to use is:

  1. With your mouse, hover over the icon.
  2. Check and see what pops up there.

In this particular case, if you hover over the Twitter icon you will see “twitter.com/muenster”. It will then take you to a Twitter link that will try to encourage you to share Muenster’s website with your followers on Twitter.

If you click on a social media icon, it better do something. It really doesn’t matter what the button wants you to do, just that the button works. This can mean that the button takes you to that company’s page on that social medium, or an encouragement to share the page or piece of content that you are viewing. Not all social media icons are the same. The layouts of the website is what dictates what functionality is behind them. Sometimes, the icons are hard coded.

Important

The social media icons are not an after thought. They are a piece of the puzzle. How do we resolve issues like this? It’s a two step process:

  1. We test the social media icons to ensure that they work.
  2. If they don’t, we need to go out and work with the development team on what these icons should be and what they should do.

9 times out of 10, they should link to their actual social media page. An example would look something like “Facebook.com/ClientName”. While this tutorial may seem like a stepping stone, it is important these get done.

Final Recap

  1. Locate all locations of social media icons on the website.
  2. Test to make sure that they work.
  3. In the event that they do not, find the proper social media page that they should go to.
  4. If possible, update that link inside of the CMS.
  5. If you’re not able to update it inside of the CMS, send the actual social media link to the development team. They will go ahead and implement that link for you.