Regardless of the type of business that you run — the potential for brand awareness, engagement and growth through social media channels cannot be underestimated.
You may be telling yourself: “I don't need Facebook or Instagram...”
Yea right!!! The times have changed my friend.
The art of social media and increased traffic comes down to more than just follower count. Active engagement and valuable postings are just a few of the necessary components of a traffic driven social media strategy.
The rest revolves around a robust understanding of inbound and digital strategy.
To truly take advantage of driving traffic through social media it takes right combination of design, development and strategy.
But to get you started, here are the 4 Ways to Drive Traffic With Social Media.
1 - Create Quality Content Consistently
Not much has changed over the past few years. Content is still king. The term comes off as a buzz phrase but that's because it's fact.
A great way to remember how to best generate content, use the acronym T.R.U.E.
Timely Content should be timely. Meaning that your content should pertain to the events that occur at that given time. A bad example of this would be posting a holiday image a week late.
Relevant The content you decide to publish should pertain to your audience. This means you need to know who follows you and pay close attention to what posts get the most engagement. This will give you an indication as to what kind of content you should consistently publish.
Useful Content should be valuable to your desired or current audience. However, value comes in many forms. It can be anything from educational to entertainment. Just make sure it provides a sense of usefulness to anyone that may see your post.
Engaging Your content should also be engaging. This means that it should prompt your audience or followers to interact with a post. There are many ways to do this and even some shortcuts you can take like prompting engagement through giveaways or contests.
Once you have a handle on these four principles you can begin implementing a strategy to drive them toward content that lives on your website. This content can be anything from an article, to a video to your products or services.
2 - Understand Which Platforms To Use
There are a lot of social media platforms available but almost every business sticks to the big four.
The truth is you don’t need to be on all four. If you already have them all, it may be worth taking a deep dive into your analytics to better understand which platform is performing the best. If you find that a platform or two of yours is basically dead compared to the others — it’s probably worth abandoning so that you can better focus on better performing platforms.
If you’re just getting started it’s important to understand that all of these platforms have their own intent. For instance, Instagram is for sharing visuals, typically in a fun or informative way. While LinkedIn relies on profesional connectivity and informative content to sustain itself.
Getting to know your specific niche or follower base will help you better understand which platforms you should be on. And furthermore, even if you do have active engagement on all platforms — some content should only live on certain platforms.
Each and every platform has a specified space for a URL to your website to live so that it is easily accessible to your followers. Make sure this is up-to-date and reflects where you want your visitors to land on your website.
3 - Merge Your Message With Your Brand
Brand consistency has always been a staple of any marketing effort and social media is no different.
But even more important than visual brand representation is the connection your content has to the vision of your business. Your content should reflect what your brand stands for. If your brand or business has an influence on your community, or special organizations, embrace it! Share your love of doing good or something special with the world.
This also helps with keeping your messages consistent. I can't tell you how many times people and brands try to keep two different personalities, only to see them mesh down the line. The sooner you can combine them, the sooner you'll have a more sustainable social flow.
4 - Use Influencers
Over the years brands have found massive success partnering with social media influencers.
Influencers are people that have established a strong social media presence with engaged followers that consider them to be a trusted source.
Think about it like recommendation from a friend — channels with a strong influence have built rapport over the years and have the power to convert their followers into your leads.
The truth is, that I have not tapped into this market as well as I would like, but through some of my client work, I have seen it's power. I plan on using influencers much more in the coming weeks.