OK, you have a great looking website but very few people are actually visiting it, even though you’ve paid attention to search engine optimization best practices. Despite your best intentions, you are not getting a ROI (return on your investment). Sound familiar? What to do? Kick your social media efforts into gear, and start driving more traffic to your website. Here’s the how-to information you'll need to get started.
How Do I Know Which Social Media Network To Use?
With so many social media platforms out there, which one is right for your brand? Which ones can actually help generate interest in your business and bring more visitors to your website? Should you tweet, snap, insta, or post? Check out the chart below from data compiled by statista.com . Facebook has 1.87 billion active users, Instagram over 600 million, Twitter 317 million, LinkedIn 106 million. Those are tremendous potential audiences. Should you try to reach all of those active users? Yes! Maybe? No!
Social networks ranked by number of users in millions, January 2017
You don’t have to be on all social media channels, just the ones that best help you accomplish your engagement and traffic goals. Because even though setting up a profile won’t cost you anything, managing your social media presence will cost you time!
The first step is to research what social media outlets your customers are on so you can be where they already are. Example: if your customers are not on Twitter or Pinterest, you do not need to have a presence there.
How do you know where your customers hang out online? Ask your customers which social platforms they spend the most time on and have them rank them 1, 2, 3. If you are unable to ask in person, use Survey Monkey and send them a short survey via email.
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How Do I Know What To Post?
The next step is to see where your competitors’ content is getting shared and/or where your competitors are active. To do this, use Google and also search within the social network itself. You can search with hashtags of course in Twitter and Instagram, but also in Facebook and to a lesser extent on LinkedIn.
Once you have found the social networks your best customers use, this is where to put your efforts. Because building an audience is a long-term investment, it does not make sense to look for immediate results. Instead, start measuring audience engagement from the start. Look at the posts that are getting more clicks, receiving more comments, and are being shared to find out which are performing best. This way you can identify your best content and therefore better understand how to meet the needs of your audience. Be sure to reply to questions or comments in a timely fashion. The more you engage with your audience, the better.
Don’t be afraid to use video when you can. Facebook videos are shared 157% more often than YouTube videos. Shorter clips work best on social and more in-depth clips are likely better on YouTube or Vimeo.
We’ve got a great, in-depth resource to help guide you in using social media through every stage of your marketing funnel. Click the button below to download the white paper "How to Use Social Media At Every Stage of The Funnel" .
How Can Social Media Drive More Traffic To My Website?
A great way to use social media to drive traffic to your site is to promote your blog posts via social. Blog posts should be helpful and informative, not salesy. Likewise for most of your social media posts. Share your blog posts on a schedule that makes sense for the social media networks on which you are concentrating your efforts. Also, pay attention to the best times to post for maximum reach. Take a look at the infographic below -- it’s a great resource for how often to post and when. Don’t forget to include a link back to the specific blog posts every time you promote one in social media.
When you write blog posts that your audience finds highly valuable, and then promote these posts on social media, you are likely to find that some of your viewers will share the link with their own network. You are going to do better in Google search results when you have links back to your site. According to ReachForce, 44% of B2B marketers have generated links back to their website when posting on LinkedIn, 39% through Facebook posts, and 30% through Twitter.
With a bit of initial research and some determination, you can make social media your workhorse in driving more visitors to your site.
