With just over 55% of the global population being active on platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc., social media is one of the most powerful marketing tools a business can have.
A friendly disclaimer: to get the most out of your social media strategy, consider working with a digital marketing company.
As opposed to other marketing channels, social media allows you to interact with your audience directly.
As a result, social platforms are great for increasing brand visibility and awareness, enhancing user engagement, and generating qualified leads.
What’s more, social media is great for boosting traffic to your website; if done right, that is. So, how can you use social media to boost website traffic?
Well, let’s take a look.
- Work on your biography
Your social media profile needs to be on-point. After all, first impressions are everything. The first thing a user is going to do once you’ve managed to capture their attention is to check your profile.
With that said, if your profile description happens to be vague or non-existent, users will most likely lose interest and never come back. So, make sure that your profile offers a brief description of what you do.
Also, include a link to your website so users know where to go if they want to find more information about your company.
- Focus on shareability
Boosting traffic using social media doesn’t mean that you should focus all your attention on your social accounts. You’ll have to do some work on your website as well.
You see, when a visitor stumbles upon something he finds interesting, he will likely want to share that piece of content with his friends, with social media being the platform of choice.
With that said, you need to make your content shareable. For that, it’s best to integrate social sharing buttons within your website.
If you’re using WordPress, there are plenty of plugins available, like Shared Counts or Simple Social Icons.
- Post Consistently
To gain more exposure on social media and ultimately drive traffic to your website, you’ll have to post consistently. That doesn’t mean you should spam your audience with multiple posts every day, as that will most likely get them to unfollow you. You’ll need to find the sweet spot.
However, the recommended frequency varies from platform to platform. But, as a general rule of thumb, on Facebook, you should post no more than twice a day. Otherwise, studies have shown that the levels of engagement will begin to drop off dramatically.
Things change when talking about Pinterest, as you can post five times or more each day. Businesses have experienced rapid growth by posting multiple times per day on this platform.
- Do not self-promote too often
There’s nothing bad about creating posts that show the benefits of your products from time to time. However, by doing it too often, your audience will most likely get bored of reading the same story over and over again, unfollowing you as a result.
You’ll need to come up with content that offers value to your readers, like blog posts or how-to guides, for example. That way, you will be able to retain your followers and increase the chances of getting them to convert.
Now, that doesn’t mean that you should drop self-promotion altogether. Just keep in mind that you’ll need to have more informational posts compared to the promotional ones.
As a general rule of thumb, 2/3 of your content should offer value to your readers, and the rest can be promotional.
- Share parts of your blog
Speaking of posting content that offers value to your readers, you could post it on your website first and share only parts of it on social media.
This is a great way to spark the users’ curiosity and lead them to your site. Not only that, but chances are that not many people will read an entire blog post while they are scrolling through their feeds.
It’s also important to keep your reader interested once they visit your website. If you want to find out how to write a blog that will rank on page 1 of Google, read our blog post.
- Make use of images
Images are an integral part of posting content on social media. Images are good at catching the users’ attention.
Peoples’ feeds are usually flooded with hundreds of posts at any moment. They simply don’t have the time to go through all of them, and they will keep scrolling down until they find something that catches their attention.
If your posts are only made up of texts without any images, users might miss your content altogether.
Studies have shown that posts accompanied by images typically generate twice as much engagement.
- Use hashtags effectively
Hashtags can be very useful to your social media marketing strategy.
They allow you to reach a wider audience when targeting people who share an interest in the subject you’re discussing.
In other words, hashtags are great for increasing brand awareness and driving more traffic to your website. What’s more, is that hashtags are used in pretty much every major social platform.
To be as efficient as possible, make sure to use the right hashtags, which involves doing some research. Try to find trending hashtags that relate to your industry.
After that, you can post content using those hashtags and include a link to your website. By doing that, you’ll most likely experience a surge in web traffic in no time.
- Analyze your competitors
Knowing what your competitors are up to will give you a better idea of how you should approach your audience. That doesn’t mean that you should copy your competition.
You can use your competitors’ tactics as an inspiration to create a social media strategy of your own.
Take a look at what type of content they publish, how often they respond to comments, how they manage to drive traffic to their websites, what kind of posts generate the most engagement, when they typically post, etc.
- Engage with your audience constantly
Although this point is often overlooked by small businesses and large companies alike, engaging with your audience regularly should be a key part of your social media strategy.
As we’ve said earlier, one of the biggest strengths of social media is that it allows you to interact with your followers directly. So, you’ll need to make the most out of it.
Make sure to reply to comments and mentions of your brand constantly. That way, you’ll get to show users that they actually matter, earning their loyalty as a result.
It’s also a good idea to comment on posts of other social media figures as well. By doing this, you’ll be able to attract new followers.
Furthermore, you can also encourage users to come up with their own content, like photos of them showcasing your products. Coupling this with a giveaway contest is a great way of building engagement, attracting new followers, and promoting your products.
- Use meme marketing
Memes are a powerful marketing method that will enhance your brand’s visibility, increase engagement, and ultimately encourage users to check out your site.
Memes allow you to humanize your brand and connect with your audience emotionally.
Now, when making memes, make sure to avoid sensitive or controversial topics. Otherwise, you’ll probably end up ruining the reputation of your brand.
Take a look at how your audience views your brand instead, and try to portray it in a funny way.
Final Words
All in all, social media can be great for driving traffic to your website.
Hopefully, the tips we’ve shown you in this article will prove useful when doing so.
Author bio:
Tomas is a digital marketing specialist and a freelance blogger. He is focused on new web tech trends and digital voice distribution across different channels.