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Before the rise of social media, the best way to drive traffic to your website was to use SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and to build your email list and notify people that you have new content on your site. Today, it’s common to find that most people have more connections on social media than they do on their email or that they can get through SEO.
The best way to use social media to drive traffic to your site is to:
Yes, social media is all about building relationships and engagement. But you can also use social media to drive traffic to your website. Here are a few tips.
- Optimize your Facebook Business Page: Be sure to clearly describe what you’re about, use keywords and engaging photos and CTA’s
- Supercharge your Instagram: Treat the descriptions like short blog posts, add links and calls-to-action to your site.
- Engage on Twitter using hashtags to spread your tweets to a wider audience
- Use Pinterests traffic-driving power by joining group boards
- Leverage LinkedIns connection power by posting videos, joining groups and writing articles
When Facebook became available to the public in 2006, the only users concerned with followers and ‘likes’ were part of its sole audience, which was anyone over 13 with a valid email address. It didn’t take long for businesses to catch up, though: by late 2007, 100,000 business pages had joined all those personal profiles, resulting in the creation of Facebook tools uniquely for businesses.
Thirteen years later, it’s near-universal knowledge that social media has the ability to send tons of traffic to your business site. As your brand recognition grows on sites like Facebook and Instagram, so can your visitor count—IF you know how to leverage each platform. In this article, we’ll review the most popular social media sites and how to maximize traffic from each one.
With over 2.45 billion monthly active users, Facebook is definitely the place to be. Regardless of whether you sell B2B or B2C, it has tons of resources and capabilities to attract traffic to your business site. Below are some tips for getting the most mileage out of your Facebook presence.
Optimize Your Facebook Business Page
Treat your Facebook page like a portal to your site. For example:
- Use engaging and high-quality photos.
- In the ‘About’ section, tell visitors a compelling story about your brand and include all relevant information, including the URL of your website.
- Add appropriate call-to-action buttons, such as ‘See Offers,’ ‘Shop Now,’ or ‘Watch Video.’
Think of it as a storefront and make it impossible for visitors to simply pass you by.
Analyze Post Popularity
To learn which posts are the most popular, check the ‘Post Types’ section of Facebook Insights. You’ll receive detailed analytics that show you what works and how visitors interact with your content so that you can focus on creating more relevant posts.
While we’re on the subject of posts, make sure that your visitors can share your posts on their timeline. It increases your exposure and serves as social proof of your company’s value to their friends and followers.
Run Facebook Ads
With Facebook Ads, you can use highly advanced targeting and placement tools to get your ads in front of your audience. When you’re setting up your campaign, you are given a list of objectives to choose from, one of which is traffic. This option is designed to help you create ads that send people to your site.
A picture can be worth a hundred thousand followers on Instagram, but with over 80 million photos and videos being shared every day, you have to be extra creative to stand out. It’s worth the effort, as Instagram is full of useful tools that can lead to more click-throughs and conversions.
Add Links in Video Descriptions
Unlike feed posts, you can add clickable links to your IGTV posts, making it super-simple for visitors to click through to your site. Video is a potent advertising medium, and when used right, it can drive high volumes of traffic to your site.
Put CTAs In Post Captions
Another way to boost traffic is to add call-to-actions in your image captions that direct people to your bio page, where linking is allowed. They can be as simple as “Love this sweater? Head over to the link in our bio to see our store” or “Our spring sale has started! Click our link in bio to get our best summer styles at 30% off.”
Create Actionable Instagram Stories
An estimated 500 million people use Instagram Stories every day, and one in four millennials actively look for Stories of the services or products they are interested in buying.
When you use this powerful IG feature, you have prime opportunity to raise brand awareness, increase engagement, and build trust. If you have over 10,000 followers or are a verified account holder, you can add links that direct Story followers to your site.
Try Instagram Ads
Instagram ads are an effective way to reach more visitors, and if you use the right strategy, they can be a major source of traffic for your website. Although they are technically part of the Facebook Ads platform, they inspire stronger engagement than Facebook Ads do.
To make your ad campaign as successful as possible, you need to identify your target audience, end goals, and budget. According to Influencer Marketing Hub, you can expect to pay between 20 cents and $2 per click. If you opt for a cost per mille payment structure, you’re looking at an average of $5 per 1,000 visitors.
At last count, Twitter had an estimated 330 million monthly active users and 145 million daily active users. If you can divert even a small percentage of them to your site, you’re doing great.
With a maximum of 280 characters per tweet, you have to master the ‘less is more’ concept. Create headline-style content that inspires click throughs, and supplement them with the following:
Hashtags
Apply the hashtag symbol (#) before a relevant keyword or phrase in your Tweet to make it show up more easily in a Twitter search. Hashtag use can increase engagement by up to 200%, so don’t overlook them! Great resources for tag selection include Hashtags.org and TagDef.
Include Visuals
In general, tweets with images receive 18% more clicks, 89% more favouriting, and 150% more retweets. Professional photos of your products, staff, satisfied customers, and other assets can increase your click rate.
Try Twitter Ads
Although not as well-known as the FB and IG ad platforms, Twitter ads can be well worth the investment when you want exposure. Multi-image tweets, the ability to share live and recorded content, and the ability to follow events are all features that prompt businesses like the New York Times to use Twitter ads regularly.
Pinterest has become known as a forum for women to share their DIY projects, recipes, and fashion must-haves. While it’s true that most users are female, mega-brands like Apple and Walmart are finding that Pinterest is a valuable addition to their marketing arsenals.
Sign Up for a Business Account
When you sign up for a business account, you’ll have access to Pinterest Analytics, which provides valuable insights about the behavior of your pins. If you already have a personal account, you have the option of adding a business profile or converting it to a business account.
Use Rich Pins
Rich Pins feature valuable add-ons like real-time pricing, stock availability, and links to product pages. Using an embedded code, they pull metadata from your site to ensure that all information displayed is current. Since 93% of Pinterest users use the platform to plan purchases, rich pins can inspire immediate click-throughs. This page shows you how to modify your site to support them.
Join a Pinterest Group Board
Pinterest group boards are an excellent opportunity to increase site traffic. They are community boards that allow members to add their own pins. If you participate regularly, you can come to the attention of other followers and create interest in your Pinterest board, which contains links to your site.
If you’re in the B2B market, LinkedIn is full of potential clients who are all decision-makers. With over 500 million users worldwide, it’s the ultimate business networking platform.
To make the most of your LinkedIn company profile, ensure that all content is professional and complete. The better it looks, the more qualified you’ll appear to potential clients, and the more inclined they will be to visit your site and do business with you.
Below is an overview of other ways that you can gain more traffic from your LinkedIn profile.
Join A Group
Groups related to your brand or industry are ideal places for sharing links and content. With some groups having over 500,000 members, you have a potentially huge audience to engage with, so be sure to share relevant content that can inspire clicks.
Use Customized Profile Links
Instead of sticking to generic link text like ‘My Products’ or “My Site,’ use link text that doubles as a call to action. For example:
- Improve Your SEO
- See Our Latest Collection
- Chocolate Lovers Click Here
Use the Blog Feature
When you add the blog app to your profile, it will display the most recent articles from your site blog. Not only does this keep your LinkedIn page active, but it also encourages viewers to go to your site to see what else you may have posted.
Conclusion
Even if you weren’t one of the first businesses to harness the power of social media, there’s no ‘you snooze, you lose’ consequence.’ It’s more a case of ‘may the most creative marketer win.’ With all the great tools out there for creating engaging social media content, the one who snags all that profitable web traffic could be you.