A Surefire way for a Great Social Media Strategy to Fail.

You’ve done the Ppc Keyword research to supercharge your social media strategy, developed a brand character, have even had success building a community that buzzes about your business.

Yet whenever you try to get people to make the sale, the whole reason you developed your social media strategy in the first place, it just isn’t happening, and you don’t know how this could possibly be.

Where is the disconnect? How could your social media strategy be successful, driving more to your website, but not have more people converting?

Many times, the sale is lost within seconds after a person comes to your landing page.

If your landing page is poorly designed, or is difficult to use, you run the risk of quickly letting people who trust you down.

And if in that moment, they’re trusting you less, it significantly hinders their ability to subscribe, sign up for more information, or buy now.

Here are some steps to build landing pages people trust

Take a step back.

Try and divorce yourself from your brand for a moment to see why people like you in the social space. Which posts get the most feedback? What tone drives the best interaction? Get into people’s minds and see things from their perspective.

Look at landing pages from their perspective. 

With your mind separated from your brand’s, ask yourself these questions: Does the layout, color scheme, and placement of objects on the landing page seem consistent with the togetherness of the tone you take on social networks? Does the tone of the landing page copy reflect the tone that is used when you’re updating posts?

Use your site analytics to determine what they’re looking for.

Using site overlay tools, see where people are clicking the most. If the highest percentage of clicks are going to a “more information” page or “how it works” page, it’s probably safe to assume that most people are looking for more information before they’re willing to subscribe to your service.

Give them what they want.

If they’re looking for “more information” as soon as they land on your page, give it to them up front. Spell it out. Make it easy to see “If I do X, than I’ll get Y” Use your layout and your copy to make it very clear as to why they’ve come to your landing page, Include pictures if you must. Do whatever it takes to make the next logical step to click the button that asks them to fill out the form.

Remember most people read left to right top to bottom.

There is no need for blinking text and arrows pointing to the “SIGN UP NOW” button. You can do what it takes subtly. Place words and images on the page to attract users eyes to where you want them to go. Tell the story through your headlines, images and placement of buttons, but also within the copy of the page.

By focusing on making your landing page easy to use for people who scan and people who read detailed information, you’re essentially doubling the overall impact of your landing page. At this point, the goal is to build a level of comfort for the person reading to take action.

Build a mock-up of your new page.

Actually you’ll want to build several.

There are plenty of mock up tools available on the web, one of my favorites is Balsamiq. Place pictures, copy and other design elements in a way that if you were to look at the landing page just out of range for you to read the body copy, you’d still know what the landing page was about.

Have clear calls to action.

Throughout the page there should be several subtle calls to action in addition to very clear ones.

Be it in the side bars, underneath the main copy with a button, and sometimes even throughout the copy. If the intention of your landing page is for people to somehow subscribe to your service, you want to lightly pepper your design elements to reflect that intention.

What if the conversions don’t come?

And sometimes this happens. Remember how I said you’d want to build several mock-ups of your landing pages? Once you’ve decided which two you think your visitors would find the most useful, you’ll want to test them both out to see which one works best.

Run a small Ppc campaign to target a smaller group and analyze the data given in your analytics reports.

Or if you’re comfortable, offer an incentive for good feedback and simply ask a smaller group of people within your community to test out the landing pages. Asking your community how you can make it’s experience better is a sure way to build their trust and show that your value for them goes well beyond how much money they give you.

Remember though, it’s not the user’s job to speak in a developer’s language, it’s only their job to tell you which page encourages them more to take action.

Don’t get lazy.

If you incorporate this into your process, over time you might feel like you have a handle on how to design landing pages for the people in your community. Don’t make this mistake!

People’s taste in aesthetics change over time and because of that you should always be getting feedback early in the design process.

You may end up making a landing page that converts well as a fluke. But flukes are not sustainable. Use these steps outlined and use them as often as you make new landing pages.

And watch the hard work you put into your great social media strategy finally pay off.