Facebook is fun, but your website is the real engine room for your marketing.

These days it seems like every industry panel is focused on social media. While it is encouraging to see jewelers using these sites to their benefit, I am shocked how rarely the conversation focuses on what all of this means for a company’s website.

Anyone who follows me online, knows that I believe in the power of social media, yet I am always thinking about one goal: How does it ultimately drive traffic to my site?

Before worrying about your social media presence, here are some essential steps that you should take for your own website first.

GOOGLE ANALYTICS: Google offers a free piece of code for your site that gives you a range of information on how consumers are using your website  and how they are finding out about you. They also provide you with Web-based software to consolidate this data. Measuring your traffic, and the results from social media will go a long way toward helping you optimize your marketing efforts.

E-MAIL CAPTURE: E-mail has been around for a while but is still usually the most powerful way to drive qualified traffic to your site. Almost all e-mail service providers (ESPs) offer tools for putting a data capture form on your website. This will help you begin to pull together a list of customers who want to hear from you.

WEBSITE GRADER: I am a big fan of Hubspot and learned the basics on search engine optimization and social media optimization from its founders’ wonderful book, Inbound Marketing. In addition to an astounding amount of content on Hubspot .com that will help you improve your site and your social media efforts, they also offer a helpful free tool at WebsiteGrader.com that reviews the fundamentals of your own website.

A COMPANY BLOG: Adding fresh and keyword-relevant content to your website on a regular basis, is something search engines like Google really care about.

Step back from the social media craze and work on your website to get more from your marketing efforts. Ensuring your website can measure results, capture leads, perform well in search engines and offer customers fresh and valuable content will help you to make the most of social media and improve the overall experience when   customer visits your site.

Michael Schechter is the director of digital marketing for Honora.

This story is from the September 2010 edition of INSTORE

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