Drive traffic to your website with socials

Sahail Ashraf posted on 21 March 2022

Social media marketing can be used to drive traffic to your website. To do this effectively you need to keep a few principles in focus. In this post we look at how to use social media for traffic purposes.

When used with other strategies, such as SEO, social media marketing is an incredibly effective way of bringing large amounts of traffic to your website. In this post we will look at how to optimize your approach, and ensure that all of your social media work is focused on getting the most ‘juice’ out of the platforms you use.

Your social bio

Whatever platform you are looking at, you will have to create a profile for the brand. Having a top quality bio is one way to ensure your social media brings in traffic. 

Rather than throw everything but the kitchen sink at the job, focus on making sure that your bio is short and effective. Too many brands create long bios that go into excessive detail about the company.

Concentrate on making sure that you get your tone of voice across, as well as your brand message. If the audience knows who you are and what you do for customers in as few words as possible, you’re onto a winner.

Time your content

Ever since social media marketing became relevant, people realized that the timing of posts was a major factor in engagement.

However, the old advice was to use a generalised timetable, based on time zones, so that you would post at times when ‘America was awake’ for example. And this could, of course, all be done via scheduling platforms, of which there are many.

Things have changed. People who consume social media will do so at all hours of the day. So the answer here is to look at your own data and work out from that when your audience is online. There is no ‘one size fits all’, and a big part of a marketer’s job is knowing the audience. Use the data to find out when to post, and base it entirely on what you know about your audience.

Share buttons

It is easy to overlook share buttons as a social media marketer. But using them properly can bring a whole new world of benefits.

When your post is shared it helps to boost your presence on social media. So shares of your post should be an easy part of the whole process. That means making sure that your social media share buttons are visible everywhere, and that they actually do the job.

There is one key way to make sure this is done. Ensure that the content you want to share has social share buttons right next to it. This will encourage readers of your blog posts to share immediately. A simple ‘click to tweet’ button, for example, ensures that no copying or pasting is required, and it means a share can take place within a couple of seconds.

With your high-value content, if you find you aren’t getting any shares, this could be the reason why. Make your share buttons highly visible and quick to use.

Make it relevant

Your social media content has to be something that offers immense value to your audience. And we haven’t used the word ‘immense’ lightly.

Your audience has to leave your content feeling that they have learned something new, or gained something really useful to them.

One of the best ways to do this is to create content that asks questions that create engagement among your audience. This is why so much successful social media content consists of multiple choice questions. It creates a response and therefore builds engagement. Obviously, you must make sure questions you ask are relevant to your audience. They have to resonate.

Essentially, the more relevant your content is, the more likely you will receive engagement.

Respond to your audience

With your website content, traffic can be generated through your social media channels. But there is one aspect of your practice on social media that will almost certainly mean your audience will consider visiting your site.

When your audience comments on a social media post, make a quick and detailed response that helps to answer the question or comment. Then, if you include a link inside your comment, you can increase the chances of receiving website traffic. 

Engage with your audience and you’ll soon see your traffic increasing.

A picture is worth…

Images are incredibly powerful on social media. It’s such a fast-paced environment, it makes sense to include lots of visual content that can have an immediate impact on the audience.

But how do images build website traffic? Well, the first thing you have to remember is that they are easy to consume. This can mean that audiences then feel more compelled to click on your links to spend more time with your easy-going content. 

Another key aspect is that they can develop an emotional connection. It can be very impactful to have a single image and nothing else as your post, for example. Play around with images that are original and you’ll soon see an upsurge in traffic numbers. 

The simplest way to get started is to make your own. Some photos of your team are useful, because they create an instant connection with your audience. Have fun with it, and use images to develop impact and connection. And if you’re not using original images, maybe it’s time to invest.

Are you a social media manager? Try Locowise. It’s one of the most powerful online tools for people in social media marketing, with tons of data and metrics at your fingertips.