Boosting website traffic using social media
According to socialmediaweek.org, by the year 2022 there will be more than six billion digitally connected citizens. To capitalise on this, more and more businesses are publishing content online as a way to build and attract audiences and increase traffic to their website. But even with effective, quality content, organisations still need to focus on building awareness of their presence on the web and often, social media is the answer.
As social media week, #SMW17, gets underway we highlight our five top tips to boost your organisation’s website traffic using social media:
- Share your content- Immediately after posting a new blog, article or news story on your company website, share the content on your organisation's social media outlets, such as Twitter and Facebook. By doing this and sharing a link onto social media, you increase the number of people that can view your content. You also make it easier for the content to be viewed. If you’re going to share the content on social media more than once, it might be wise to create a sharing schedule. This will help to avoid sending your messages one after the other and appearing as spam.
- Join any relevant social network groups and conversations- By creating or joining relevant social media networks and by getting involved in topical conversations, you can increase your profile as a credible organisation in that sector. Journalists and potential customers will often take to these networking groups and conversations to find out information. If you’re appearing regularly with valid comments and engaging in topical conversations, it’s more likely that journalists and potential customers will click through to your site to find out more about your organisation.
- Social media competitions or surveys- Creating a short competition or survey on a social media outlet includes a call to action, gives your followers a reason to interact with you and click through to your website. This is a better alternative to sales-based posts which can sometimes turn off your followers, who may unfollow your account. You can host the survey or competition from a link on your website and use social media to drive traffic here.
- Industry related hashtags- Hashtags are a great way to research what people are discussing in relation to your industry and can be used as a way to make your content easily found by the most relevant parties. It’s a great idea to use relevant hashtags that rank highly in traffic on your social media posts, particularly those that include content from your website. According to buffer, Tweets with hashtags get twice as much engagement than tweets without, so it’s a worthwhile way of increasing the chance of someone not only viewing your tweet, but engaging with it and clicking the link! But just like everything with social media, too much can have a negative effect so limit yourself to two or three relevant hashtags per post.
- Build relationships- Social media is a great tool for building relationships with customers as it allows an organisation to increase human interaction with followers. By personally responding to messages and engaging directly with them, your followers will be more inclined to interact with you back and view your website to find out more about your organisation, products or services. It also increases the chance of your social media posts being re-tweeted or shared, having a positive effect on the number of people viewing your profiles and website.
Here at Dragonfly PR we work with a number of business to business clients on improving their social media profiles and website traffic, so get in touch if you need a hand! For more details visit www.dragonflypr.co.uk or call our team on 01709 300130 or email: hello@dragonflypr.co.uk.