You know that by neglecting to market your website where you showcase your products and services using social media, you will miss out on the powerful results that an effective social media optimization marketing strategy affords.
Inbound traffic.
However, how do you use social media to increase inbound website traffic?
You can take people to your site by maximizing the potential of social media.
Any business can do this – whether it is manufacturing, construction, plumbing, dental office, software company or realtor.
In fact, we did a case study on how we help a company grow their website traffic exponentially for a software as a service (SaaS) client of ours that sells it to B2B and their B2C audience.
This is a two-part series:
- Part 1: Website Preparation. This is part is very important. You do this right; you get the second part right.
- Part 2: Tactics on how to use social media to drive traffic for a B2B and B2C startup company.
“Field of Dreams” doesn’t work
You may have heard a famous line in the “Field of Dreams” movie, “If you build it, they will come.”
So you created a website to make your business legit – and hoping that your clients and fans will come.
BUT they did not.
**Crickets**
Also, you may have thought spending hundreds of dollars to make your business website look pretty snazzy, people would come and visit and talk about your business.
But, nope, they have not.
**Crickets**
There’s ONE reality.
Internet Website Marketing Reality
Total websites: 1,295,973,827
That is the number of websites we have as of January 2020, according to a survey by Netcrafter.
Your business website is just one of the over a million websites that are live right now.
People might not know that your website exists.
People do not care about how pretty it is. *Ouch*
People will not look for your product nor service.
So what to do??!
Make them find your website?
But how?
Hustle. Share it. Once your website went live, you can’t just sit back and relax and hope that people will find you.
There are different ways of letting people know about the fact that your website exists. Sharing it on social media is one of the many ways.
Note: Social media is a selling tool that you can use without blatantly selling.
5 tips to increase website traffic using social media
Today I am thinking about our visitors that are visiting us from Europe.
They will be with us in a couple of months. And already, we are preparing our home for our guests.
Since our guests is a family that is more than the usual number of guests we host, we are already working on a checklist of things we need to prepare now to make their stay comfortable – and the entire stay stresss-free for everyone.
Our list includes making sure we have enough beddings for everyone, deep-clean the floor, spruce up the backyard and tons of other to-dos.
In fact, we are preparing our ENTIRE home for our guests.
So.
Prepare your “house” for your guests. In business, the “house” would be your website and your guests are the website visitors that you will take to your website using social media.
What to prepare
What is your reason for driving traffic to your site? | 1
Driving traffic just for the sake of driving traffic is pointless. Really.
Now, why would you invite your audience to your website from the social media platform?
- Will the visit to your website be worth THEIR time? What is worth a website visitor’s time are contents that are useful and relevant to him/her. You have to meld that with what is relevant and key for your business, as well.
- Are website visits your social media key performance indicator (KPI)?
Key what?! When I came across KPI when I first started doing social media, that was way over my head. A key performance indicator (KPI) is anything that you measure that has a direct correlation to your marketing goal.
Say, if brand awareness is your goal, you could have either of the following as your potential key performance indicators:- Unique visitors
- Views
- Brand mentions
- Mainstream media mentions
- Trackbacks and more!
In other words, it cannot just be anything. Connect it to what you are trying to achieve.
Note that a KPI may have a different content format and call to action from other ones. Also, it may have different tactics and strategy too.
I recommend that if you are a small business, just focus on one to track so you can monitor and use the information effectively.
If you like to DIY the management of manage social media, consider your time in learning and implementing it.
Time is money, right? And social media is a time-hog.
On top of that, you have to keep up with the many changes happening on social media. If that is too much for you and you have the budget, scale that hurdle by hiring an experienced social media pro.
What do you want them to SEE, KNOW, and DO? | 2
Don’t leave the call to action on social media alone.
It should continue to your website.
Social media is not the end; it is the means to an end. And by end, I mean your website or your preferred landing page.
Therefore, your website page or preferred landing page should also have a call to action.
Social media is not the end; it is the means to an end. Click To TweetYour website sub-pages should also have a call to action.
If you want people to sign up for news or updates, then you MUST have a sign-up form.
If you want people to download some freebies, then you MUST have something for them to download.
Do you want people to contact you? Then make sure your contact information should be prominent or easy to find.
Plan with intent to measure | 3
Plan with intent to measure and to identify opportunities to make smart decisions.
This goes back to what I mentioned earlier: “driving traffic for the sake of driving traffic is pointless” if you do not measure what you are doing.
Worse, you have the data that your social media data analyst gave you, but you do not use it at all.
Use social media data to refine your programs by making changes to meet your goals.
Repeat those that work and prune what does not.
Social media data analytics can tell you topics that your audience like, who it is attracting, and the posts you should create more often.
It can tell you which social media platform is driving traffic to your site. This, by itself, is a money-saver for you. That is one information you need so you know how much time to allocate for each platform, or how much money to spend.
Social media data can tell you many things but don’t get trapped by it.
Focus on the data that has a direct correlation to your goal.
Create and keep an inventory of your contents | 4
By all, I mean ALL. Create a content hub or an inventory sheet that houses or lists all of your contents.
Your contents could be any of these:
- Blogs
- Webpages
- Web subpages
- Guest posts
- Inbound links from other websites
- Images – in any formats
- Videos
- Infographics
- PDFs
- Podcasts
- Reviews
- Social media images
At Social Success Marketing, we use Excel as our inventory sheet. And for visual contents, we use a cloud drive. Use what works best for you.
Repurpose your article to social media copies | 5
Turn your article into bite-sized tips.
Keep your social media copies top quality.
- Is your social media copy really what the link is about? Oh, how I hate bait and switch, don’t you?
- Did you include a high-quality and in-context image?
- Is it well-formatted?
- Is it easy to read and understand?
- Did you spellcheck and grammar-check it? There are grammar tools out there. I use one. I have to. English is not my second language. It is my fourth language. So you bet I have to do grammar-check multiple times! A few slip through the grammar cracks still, but I try.
It’s a Wrap
What do you YOU do to increase traffic to your site?
Also, don’t forget that we have the last part of this two-part series on how to grow traffic using social media here.
