User Journey Logic
Users don’t come to your website to look at your social media posts. They are aware that you have social media pages (everybody does) and if they want to look at them then they know where to go.
You have total control over the content of your own website. It should be the place you want your users to go to to guide them along whatever journey you need them to take, be that conversions in the form of sales, donations etc, sharing more long-form content or whatever else aligns with your goals.
Adding a social media feed to your site opens up opportunities for your users to leave your website, get distracted by social media and not return. Feeds will come with links to posts, once a user clicks that link you pass control of that user’s journey back to a social media company and their only goal is to keep that user engaged on their site for as long as possible.
Page load speeds
We are all used to fast loading content, you can spend hours scrolling through social media and not wait on an image or video buffering but think of how frustrating it is when something takes longer to load than expected. 60% of users will leave a web page if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.
Adding a social media feed to your website means you are loading a lot of extra content to a page that already exists (usually one click away) elsewhere online.
Your site also needs to load separate third party scripts that have an unreasonably negative effect on your page load speed. This not only has a negative effect on a user's experience on your site, but also reduces your website’s efficiency in the eyes of search engines that will reduce your visibility in search results as a consequence.
Updates from providers
Social media companies are a legal nightmare. Their data-harvesting practices and questionable ethics cause them to have to update their policies frequently. This means that the code used to pull in content from their platform may become out of date and unsupported many times over the lifespan of your website.
The unfortunate downside of this is the extra development costs that come with making sure the code that runs your social media feed stays up to date. You will find that content will disappear from your site if you don’t stay on top of this.
Content duplication
If there is one thing that search engines hate it is content duplication. Google ranks your website based on a whole range of different criteria, but if you are displaying content that is word for word the same as what is on another website with a higher authority score than yours (facebook.com, twitter.com etc), you will be marked down as a result.
Content should be unique, people should come to your site to see the content you are advertising on social media, not the other way around.
Off brand design clashes
Social media feeds scream “we didn’t know what to put here”, and it looks obvious.
Your web designer has likely spent a lot of time considering the layout, colour scheme, user journey and content structure of your website to make sure it is on brand and provides the most impressive experience to your users.
Adding content from other websites when you have no control over the design, layout & styling is going to negatively affect the perception of the website and spoil the design work that you paid for.
Conclusion
If you are adding a social media feed to your site consider why you are doing it. If it is to fill space then it is definitely a poor choice. Instead, create some content for your site that is unique and actually guides your users along the journey you want them to take.
Your site will likely have social media links in the places that users expect to find them. If they want to see your social media posts, they will go there themselves and have a look.
If your business relies heavily on social media for sales and conversions, for example a YouTuber who sells merchandise directly on the platform, it might be a good idea to have a non-live preview of the content on your social media, but having a live feed, that slows down your site and makes it look unsightly is almost always a bad idea.
The reason embedded social media feeds exist is so that social media companies can capture your audience and bring them back to their platform. Consider if that is what you want your users to do before adding one to your website.
Want to chat about this? Get in touch and we will be happy to help!
You have total control over the content of your own website. It should be the place you want your users to go to to guide them along whatever journey you need them to take, be that conversions in the form of sales, donations etc, sharing more long-form content or whatever else aligns with your goals.
Adding a social media feed to your site opens up opportunities for your users to leave your website, get distracted by social media and not return. Feeds will come with links to posts, once a user clicks that link you pass control of that user’s journey back to a social media company and their only goal is to keep that user engaged on their site for as long as possible.
Page load speeds
We are all used to fast loading content, you can spend hours scrolling through social media and not wait on an image or video buffering but think of how frustrating it is when something takes longer to load than expected. 60% of users will leave a web page if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.
Adding a social media feed to your website means you are loading a lot of extra content to a page that already exists (usually one click away) elsewhere online.
Your site also needs to load separate third party scripts that have an unreasonably negative effect on your page load speed. This not only has a negative effect on a user's experience on your site, but also reduces your website’s efficiency in the eyes of search engines that will reduce your visibility in search results as a consequence.
Updates from providers
Social media companies are a legal nightmare. Their data-harvesting practices and questionable ethics cause them to have to update their policies frequently. This means that the code used to pull in content from their platform may become out of date and unsupported many times over the lifespan of your website.
The unfortunate downside of this is the extra development costs that come with making sure the code that runs your social media feed stays up to date. You will find that content will disappear from your site if you don’t stay on top of this.
Content duplication
If there is one thing that search engines hate it is content duplication. Google ranks your website based on a whole range of different criteria, but if you are displaying content that is word for word the same as what is on another website with a higher authority score than yours (facebook.com, twitter.com etc), you will be marked down as a result.
Content should be unique, people should come to your site to see the content you are advertising on social media, not the other way around.
Off brand design clashes
Social media feeds scream “we didn’t know what to put here”, and it looks obvious.
Your web designer has likely spent a lot of time considering the layout, colour scheme, user journey and content structure of your website to make sure it is on brand and provides the most impressive experience to your users.
Adding content from other websites when you have no control over the design, layout & styling is going to negatively affect the perception of the website and spoil the design work that you paid for.
Conclusion
If you are adding a social media feed to your site consider why you are doing it. If it is to fill space then it is definitely a poor choice. Instead, create some content for your site that is unique and actually guides your users along the journey you want them to take.
Your site will likely have social media links in the places that users expect to find them. If they want to see your social media posts, they will go there themselves and have a look.
If your business relies heavily on social media for sales and conversions, for example a YouTuber who sells merchandise directly on the platform, it might be a good idea to have a non-live preview of the content on your social media, but having a live feed, that slows down your site and makes it look unsightly is almost always a bad idea.
The reason embedded social media feeds exist is so that social media companies can capture your audience and bring them back to their platform. Consider if that is what you want your users to do before adding one to your website.
Want to chat about this? Get in touch and we will be happy to help!
