When using social media marketing for your business, the first and most important element is your website.

Your website or landing page is the first contact your potential customer has with you after finding you through your social marketing campaign. To reduce your visitors clicking off the page, use these three guidelines:

First- Think simple and free of clutter

Just like your desk, if your website is packed pull of unorganized and random elements… clean it up quickly.

Most of the time visitors to your site will judge your page within 3 seconds and either decide to stay or leave. Having a cluttered site makes it hard for your visitor to find out if you have what they are looking for. Always make it easier for your web visitor to find exactly the information you are providing without having to click all over the place.

Also, make sure to guide your web visitor in the direction they need to be going. For instance if there is information about different types of information, give them a choice like “If you are looking for dental insurance, click here… for motorcycle insurance, click here.” Making it simple helps them find what they need quickly and reduces the chance of them leaving early.

Second – Avoid big filed graphics and animations

Your web visitors will be coming to your site from various different platforms, computers, and internet speeds. If you load up your site with large graphic files or processor heavy animations, you limit the amount of people that can view your site.

These days, many people use their phone and other mobile devices to quickly find information or a merchant and you don’t want to restrict their access. Flashy sites are for winning agency awards, not for doing business. Keep it simple and light.

If you need help building a site, don’t worry about having to learn HTML, CSS or Java. Use simple but powerful web building software like Weebly or WordPress and you’ll have a very a nice looking site that will do more than you need for running a business.

Third – Tell your visitor what to do

The call to action is the most important step you need to have in your website or any other marketing piece you have. It tells your reader, “Look, to get your cavity fixed, pick up your phone, call 555-1234 right now and end the pain immediately!” While that might sound simple or obvious, you would be surprised the difference having a line like that makes.

Be sure to have clear, simple directions on what to do to contact you or how to request more information at the end of every page you have online or in print. You will quickly see a jump in your response.

Having a website for your social media marketing is vital. But don’t let it overwhelm you, it can be as simple as clicking a few buttons and writing some basic descriptions if you use the resources mentioned above. If you already have a website for your small business, go through it and make sure you’re keeping it simple and clean as discussed in the first steps.

There are a lot of ways to get training in social marketing. Some are better than others. There are many factors that will aid in your success, but we would like to focus on 3 important ones here.

1) Training Style — Everyone responds to different styles of training. Some are auditory; some are tactile, while many have to do it to understand the information. The style of training you respond to is the style you should seek out. If you are an auditory learner, you will not learn well if the training is all written. Try to find a social marketing training program with a variety of styles and the opportunity to practice built in.

2) Content-You will want to know everything you can about the social marketing systems. There are a lot of things to consider. That doesn’t mean you will be doing all of them at first, but you will want to have an understanding of them when you get ready to incorporate them into your marketing campaigns. Look for a training system that covers a lot of topics well. There should be a lot of content in the training. If you run into one with just a little bit of content, keep looking.

3) Mentoring-A healthy mentoring system can make all the difference in your education. It is one thing to get hours and hours of training in a variety of styles, and an entirely different thing to be able to pick up a phone and ask a simple question to get you back on track. Mentoring can handle the little questions and guide you to the training on the big ones. Look for a training system that utilizes mentoring as part of the education.

Your training in social marketing will determine how well you do in the process. Do not skimp when it comes to this part of the planning. There are so many things you need to know before you get started. If you want to succeed in the social marketing industry you will have to get the right education.