It turns out Drupal and Social Media are a match made in heaven. Because of Drupal's system of modules, integration with external websites can be as easy as installing a module that fits your site's needs. And once these modules are installed, you will have a central place to manage profile information and plug-in modules, such as follow and share buttons.
But, before any of that, the first question to ask yourself is how do you want your website to interact with Social Media platforms? Do you want to give visitors the option to share content they find on your site, or do you want to link your website and Social Media profiles to drive visitors between the two. Do you want to increase social followers by providing links on your accounts on your Drupal site, or do you want to leverage your Social Media credentials for your website log-in?
Each of these goals demands a slightly different approach. Below are some of our favorites Social Media and Drupal integration, plus some suggestions about how they might be used for your site.
1. Social Media is a great way to give your website content an extra boost. You should definitely be sharing your blog posts to your Social accounts, but you should also make it as easy as possible for visitors to share your content. For this we recommend the Floating Sharebar: a floating bar centralizes all of your social sharing links, and keeps them available as visitors move through the page. This allows your visitors to share at any point throughout their reading experience.
2. Not only do you want your website visitors to be sharing your content, you also want them to visit your Social Media accounts. If you're looking for an easy and flexible way to link to your Social Media accounts and drive visitors from your website to your Facebook, Twitter or G+ pages, you should try the Social Media Links Block. This module is easily configurable your Social Media accounts. It adds an easy "follow us" function, with fully customizable blocks on the Drupal theming layer.
3. If your visitors are already sharing and liking, the next step is to leverage your Drupal site with more followers. We recommend the FB Likebox and the Follow Button: FB Likebox not only allows visitors to like your Facebook page, they can also see how many users have already liked your page, which of their friends have liked your page, and they can read recent posts from your page without the need to visit the page itself. The Follow Button, on the other hand, is a module that creates a configurable follow button for Twitter. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles of the FB Likebox, but it's still a solid option if you're looking to attract twitter followers from your Drupal site.
4. Another sought-after feature is the ability to log into a site using credentials from Facebook or other platforms. Open Authorization (OAuth), is the web standard for sharing server resources without compromising a user's credentials. A number of Drupal modules leverage OAuth to add this functionality such as FBOauth that links Facebook accounts to user profiles on your Drupal site, making signing into your profile an easy integrated process!
If you're considering a new site (or have an existing Drupal site) and want to build on a flexible platform with the most Social integration options, Drupal might be the platform for you. If you're interested in learning more visit www.duoconsulting.com or be old-fashioned and just pick up the phone and call me at 312.529.3010. Thanks!
Michael Silverman, CEO
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