When it comes to driving traffic to your site, one of the easiest, and cheapest ways to do this is through social media. If you company is not on social media, I hate to break it to you, but you are behind. Marketing is all about chasing the consumer’s attention, and with 3.4 billion social media users around the world, it’s not hard to tell where to focus is.
While it may seem easy that users who follow you on Facebook or Instagram will eventually land on your site, there has to be a quicker way to get them there right? That’s right! By utilizing the right steps, you can use your social media profiles to increase traffic to your site for new user acquisition and increased conversions.
Step 1: Optimizing Your Social Media Pages
The first step in driving more traffic using your social media is to make sure that your social accounts are fully optimized for driving traffic. There are many factors to look at here and the first thing you want to look at is your voice.
Voice
When it comes to social media, people are looking to communicate with people and businesses on the same level as them, in a relatable sense if you will. For this to work in your favor, you need to determine what kind of voice you want your brand to have on social media.
For those with a self-centered business such as an inspiration speaker or athlete, you are going to want to make sure that you are remaining personable and marketing yourself so that others get a personable connection to you.
For those with a brand or using social media as a company, you can use the same approach, but you will want to ensure your brand standards are kept. For example, if you are marketing to millennials, you will want someone with a younger, more hip dialog rather than an older marketer who does not speak the same slang as your target market.
Display
Presentation is everything, especially when it comes to first impressions with your brand or company. Since social media is one of the first places that people discover a brand, it is important that you are making a professional appearance right off the bat.
To optimize your page for a good first impression, you are going to want to include a fully built out profile with photos that represent your business, and about us section, and all of the contact details that one would need to get ahold of you.
One of the most important things to remember is a link to your site. While the link in your profile page isn’t going to be the main focus of traffic driving, it is nice to have it in case anyone is searching for your site on your page.
It is highly important to keep up with the trends on social media posting. Users are using social media profiles to be entertained and find out news updates from their friends and family. By posting ad-like updates, chances are, you are not going to get any interaction from your audience. Finding a way to interact with your audience is going to be key to keeping people interacting with your brand, ultimately helping to drive traffic to your site.
Step 2: Optimize Your Site & Content For Your Consumers
Just like social media, the first impression of your site can make or break a customers decision to stay on your site. Content is king in the internet world and with many of Google’s algorithms look at content and user experience as a ranking factor, it is important to make sure your content is what the customer is wanting.
When creating landing pages for your social media consumers to land on, you will want to make sure that each page is relevant to what they are wanting to see by clicking your link. If you have them land on a product page when they were wanting to get more information on a service you provide, chances are they are going to simply go back to browsing social media rather than trying to navigate your site to find the right service.
To make the most of your landing page, make sure that you are including everything that a consumer may need to see. If you are selling a product, include reviews, install instructions, and all of the product information to push people through the sales funnel and keep them from visiting other sites to get that information.
Step 3: Getting People From Your Social Media To Your Site
Now the fun part - getting people to from your social media profiles to your site. There are many different ways to do this, but following these steps can help ensure that you are maximizing your social media traffic to your site.
Make Sure You Post Often
People are constantly checking social media for the latest news and updates. This is why it is highly important to update often to show up in news feeds more often. While you do not want to flood your fan's timelines, posting 1-2 times a day can help to increase visibility and interactions on your posts. It is also an easy way to show potential consumers that you are active on social media, which is always a plus when someone is researching your company. Include links to your site for more information on your posts.
Switch Up Your Content
Posting simply text status updates is so 2010. In order to take up more real estate on timelines and increase user engagement (not to mention favor algorithms) it is important to use video and photo status updates. With apps like Pinterest and Instagram, more and more people are becoming accustomed to visual stimulation. Videos and photos can evoke a more personal feel about a brand or company as they can show off more than you can type. By seeing the types of photos and videos you share, a person can feel more connected to you and your brand.
Share Content Of Others
One easy way to make a post update when you are having trouble coming up with content is by sharing other company's posts. This helps to give you extra content to post and introduces your brand to another company or individual. If you are lucky, they will return the favor and share one of your posts thus introducing your brand to their network. When doing this, make sure that their content matches your brand's ultimate goal to keep uniformity of your content.
Repost Your Own Posts
Another easy way to come up with content ideas is to share old content that got good engagement in the past. You will see many companies doing this as it is quick, easy, and has been proven to work. A simple click of a button can save you time and energy coming up with a new post, and it is most likely going to do just as good as it did the first time around.
Find Unique Ways To Drive Engagement
Engagement on your posts can help others feel more comfortable about your brand, allow you to connect with your fans, and can even help get your post seen by others thanks to social media algorithms. While telling people to specifically LIKE or COMMENT can trigger some algorithms to mark your post as spammy, there are many ways to get people commenting without telling them what to do. You can ask a question, post a question as a photo, or have people tell their own personal stories that relate to your content.
Keep Up With Interactions
Now that you have people interacting with your content, it is time to go back in and reply to these comments or mentions to interact back with your fans. This goes a long way with most people as it shows the business cares about their fans. This can be done in a quick thank you, answering questions, or providing more information to those who need it. Either way you do it, showing that you are actively interacting with your consumers is a great way to build trust.
