Your ‘Follow Us’ button is a Social ‘Leak’ from your site

It seems harmless enough.  A cute little blue bird.  An inviting come on: 'Follow Us on Twitter'.  Who could resist?

And, everyone's doing it, right?  Even the cool sites.  So what's the harm in putting a little 'Follow Us on Twitter' button on your site?

That innocuous little button is worse than you think. It's akin to a termite colony.  Watch.  If you click on the bird above, you will leave the site!  You will end up on Twitter.  Which is cool, unless you are the site that was just left.

If you're a publisher, it's tough enough to attract visitors.  It might have been a link in an email or a tweet that motivated your visitor to come to your site.  Whatever it was, they made it there. And if you are advertising-supported, you want them to stick around.

Of course you also want them to follow you on Twitter - if they don't already - because that means they might come back when you tweet a link.

So it seems that the button is a no-brainer. Do you have a choice? Yes. Ditch the button.  Plug the hole in your site.

• The 'Follow Us' button leads people off your site - it's a 'Social Leak'
• It only serves one twitter feed - and if you have more than one, only the one you choose will get followers
• It doesn't monetize - and once it's used for following it's wasted space

LiveIntent has developed the only real alternative to the 'Follow Us' button.  The LiveIntent Window keeps people on your site, serves up dynamically generated Twitter accounts based on your visitor, and can be sponsored.

Ditch your button, get the window

The window in this example is approximately 300 x 550 pixels, contains two branding elements, three publisher accounts, and replaces space that had previously not been either monetizable or traffic-producing.

Compare that to the lowly 'follow us' button.

If you are interested in exposing more of your site's accounts to your visitors, stopping the 'social leak' problem, and generating revenue where there was only an exit before, please contact LiveIntent!