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Software companies use an Application Programming Interface or API in order to introduce their programming instructions to third parties for better accessibility and integration of their programs to the company services. An API involves a software to software interface that allows a third party website owner to connect to the services of another company. Software developers thus can easily design products that can be interconnected to another website's services. APIs are now viewed as an important aspect of online marketing using the social media platforms where digital marketers can harness the marketing advantage value available from social media APIs for their business.
The marketing value of social media APIs to business
While an API may sound to be a technical term, it helps to know how this can be valuable to your social media marketing campaign. An API can be likened to a programmed application that is capable of communicating to another program application thereby integrating several functions and services within a single website. Each time you purchase something online for instance, your credit card payment is processed from the site where the purchase is made and the payment verification is made by sending the information from the ecommerce site to the credit card provider facility using APIs to connect the transmission of information to and from the two parties. The API programming instruction is the standard web based software application tool to connect, integrate and access one web application service to another.
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Social media APIs in particular can be a valuable source for an online business website. Without APIs it would be difficult for your website to link your Facebook page or Twitter account to your website or to integrate your Google Plus account to your blog posts in order to promote your authorship reputation. In like manner you will not be able to use Google Analytics tool in auditing and optimizing your ecommerce site for better search performance. The social media marketing tools that are used in promoting businesses are powered and supported by APIs. Whether you are using different social media platforms like YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Foursquare in promoting your businesses, the API is the working force behind the process of exchanging application features and services between your website to a particular social media network.
There are many marketing values that are derived from social media APIs which include but not limited to the following:
- Displaying ad campaigns to your site as a publisher.
- Application development to enhance the benefits of using marketing tools that connect your website to various social media platforms.
- Displaying social media buttons to optimize the social shares of your post to grow your brand's social media signals.
- Seamless launching of an email marketing campaign using APIs in managing customer subscription lists and ad campaigns.
- Tracking down your data analytics information from your website to the analytic monitoring tool or software.
Why harness the marketing force from social media APIs benefits
Every digital marketer is now enjoying the benefits of social media APIs by using third party social media marketing tools that are mostly free to use for their online business promotion campaign. Knowing how the social media can influence the purchasing habits and shopping behaviours of the consumers, using social media APIs can significantly revolutionize your online marketing opportunities. Social media applications are very powerful tools that can help boost your business performance on the search and can help in accelerating your lead conversion rate and business profitability.
Using social media applications help in amplifying a digital marketer's effort. Prior to the API development, website owners mainly rely on their website developer's ability to optimize their own site with limited features and functionality. With the API evolution a website is empowered with social media apps and widgets that improve their site's newsfeed, sharable value and the utilization of social graphs.
Useful social media APIs for business
If you aim to use social media as an online marketing tool, leveraging on the influential benefits of social media APIs can give your business marketing efforts a boost. Getting acquainted to these different social media APIs will give you good leads on which social media APIs to pursue in integrating to your business.
- Facebook APIs
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Facebook APIs are among the very popular social media platforms that can be integrated to business. Upon the release of its APIs at the disposal of web application developers, Facebook has about 1,000 attracted web developers who are creating social media apps that can work seamlessly with Facebook.com. You can increase the traction of your sales by promoting your business products, services and brand by creating your own business Facebook page that is linked to your main ecommerce website. A webmaster can even use of the Facebook widgets that are easy to use and navigate. You can use the Facebook Open Graph API in order to benefit your social media marketing campaigns such as the personalization of your Facebook page, site registration and the creation of a commenting system.
- Twitter APIs
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Twitter is a social media platform that has developed its own APIs in order to allow its users to tweet and re-tweet posts to their own profile or websites. Online marketers can easily display the Twitter widget or buttons directly on their website and encourage their visitors to share their business updates and posts in their Twitter profiles. There are also several Twitter based applications that were developed today that allow the users to easily integrate their Twitter accounts and updates
- Email marketing campaigns using social media APIs
Email marketing remains to be one of the powerful marketing tools that business marketers use in communicating to their customers and maintaining social connections with them. There are now email marketing tools such as Mail Chimp that you can use in managing your database of email subscribers and integrating its widgets to your site using its API.