With more than 2.7 billion total users, social media is an excellent medium for businesses to reach a massive audience. When used right, it can be an effective and affordable channel to drive traffic to your site. But in spite of its effectiveness, social media is a difficult thing to master.
Businesses spend months creating social media content with no significant results. So they conclude that it isn’t as effective as it’s made out to be. However, the right tactics can get you the results that top brands and businesses brag about. This post will show you nine easy ways to generate more traffic from social media.
9 Easy Ways to Generate More Social Media Traffic
- #1: Make Your Content Easy to Share
- #2: Prepare Visuals to Accompany Your Content
- #3: Install a Customer Service Chatbot
- #4: Catch Your Audience When They’re Most Active
- #5: Interact with Your Audience
- #6: Invest in Social Advertising
- #7: Write Better Calls-to-Action
- #8: Engage with Industry Influencers
- #9: Use Hashtags to Increase Visibility
#1: Make Your Content Easy to Share
You drive more traffic to your site by reaching more people with your content and getting them to click on your links. The best way to achieve this is by getting your existing audience to share your content with their networks. So you need to make it easy for your blog readers to share your posts on social media if you want to drive more social media traffic.
This includes adding social share buttons to your blog posts so people can simply click on one to share the post. Take a look at how HubSpot adds not just one but two sets of social sharing buttons to their blog posts.
Image Source: HubSpot
You can use a plugin like AddThis to add social share buttons to your site. You can even pre-populate the share windows with compelling captions.
In addition to this, you could give your readers the option to share snippets of your post by using Click to Tweet. This way, they’ll be sharing the most intriguing parts of your post to entice their followers to visit your site to read more.
#2: Prepare Visuals to Accompany Your Content
Visuals are the key to engaging your audience on social media because people are more likely to engage with visual content. A Buffer analysis found that tweets with images get 150% more retweets, 89% more favourites, and 18% more clicks than those without images.
And these numbers aren’t just limited to Twitter. A BuzzSumo analysis of 100 million articles also found that articles with images get a lot more shares on Facebook as well. What this means is that if you want to drive more social media traffic, you need to accompany your posts with relevant images that will attract your audience and compel them to share.
Image Source: OkDork
You could create original graphics using platforms like Canva. There are tons of existing templates that you can customise with graphs and elements to create original graphics. In addition to your own social media posts, make sure that your articles have eye-catching thumbnails when people share them on social media.
#3: Install a Customer Service Chatbot
Installing a customer service chatbot on your social media pages is a great way to provide timely responses and solutions to potential customers. You could set up rules-based chatbots using Sprout Social Bot Builder, so people can get the appropriate responses to their queries. At some point, the chatbot could direct the user to a relevant guide or page on your site, helping you attract traffic.
Take a look at Sprout Social’s Twitter chatbot in action. When you select a topic, the chatbot directs you towards a relevant answer or solution.
Image Source: Twitter
#4: Catch Your Audience When They’re Most Active
The more people who engage with your social media posts, the more visible your content will be. And the more visible your content is, the better your chances of driving clicks and traffic. That’s why it’s crucial to publish your posts when your audience is most likely to engage with them.
This means finding out when your followers are most active, when you get the most engagements, etc. You’ll need to analyse your post performance at different times of the day and on different days to get an idea of this.
Start by getting a general idea of the best times to post, according to reputable studies. Sprout Social, for instance, found that Wednesday is the best day to post across all social media platforms. Sunday, on the other hand, sees the least engagement across all platforms. You could test all of these different days and times out to see what works best for your audience.
Image Source: Sprout Social
#5: Interact with Your Audience
You can increase the engagement on and visibility of your social media posts by interacting with your audience’s comments and tweets. Additionally, this will also help you establish stronger relationships with your audience and strengthen your bonds with them.
People may comment on your posts with questions that may be related or unrelated to the topic at hand. Your job is to provide them with timely and relevant answers to those questions. You could also thank them if they’re raving about your post. If they’re venting their frustrations or bringing up an issue with your products or services, be sure to apologise and offer help.
Here’s an excellent example from Buffer. The company shared an article about Facebook algorithm changes and someone commented that they were looking forward to it. Buffer did not need to respond to this, but they did. They even posed a new question to the follower to further get them to engage with the post.
#6: Invest in Social Advertising
Organic reach can only get you so much traffic. With some social media channels prioritising content from friends and family over brand content, it has become even more challenging for businesses to reach a new audience organically. So at some point, you will need to pay to promote your content to reach a bigger audience, which, in turn, will drive more traffic to your site.
Aside from regular ads, you could pay to promote your top-performing content on Facebook. Look for posts that your audience has engaged with the most. These are already well-received by your existing audience, judging from the engagement rate. So paying to promote them for better visibility will pay off.
School Year Abroad, for instance, saw a 515% increase in website sessions when they ran a social media advertising campaign.
Image Source: Finalsite
#7: Write Better Calls-to-Action
Sometimes, your audience may see your social media posts and be intrigued by them. However, they may not necessarily know what to do next, so they’ll just keep scrolling and forget all about it. You can avoid this by writing better calls-to-action in your captions when you share links from your site.
Write captions to draw in your audience and tell them exactly what they should do next – whether it’s to “learn more,” “visit our site,” or “read more.” The goal is to persuade your audience to click on the link to visit your site. You can test our different phrases to see which ones work best for you.
Here’s a post from Signable with a call-to-action inviting people to check out which tunes the team listens to while they work.
#8: Engage with Industry Influencers
Influencers on social media have a massive reach, sometimes extending to the millions. They can bring your content the exposure it deserves and help you drive traffic to your site. So engaging with them is a great way to boost your social media traffic and bring more exposure to your brand’s social media profiles.
There are tons of ways to work with industry influencers. You could ask them to share your post or pay them to promote your products. One of the best ways to organically engage influencers is by featuring them in your content by doing interviews, creating expert roundup posts, or covering their stories. You can then tag them when you share the post, so they’ll want to share it with their networks.
For example, Ted Rubin retweeted a post in which his tweet has been included as an expert marketing tip.
#9: Use Hashtags to Increase Visibility
People use hashtags on social media to discover content related to their topics of interest. They conduct hashtag searches to find new and interesting content using that tag. So using the right hashtags can bring tons of visibility to your content, helping you reach a new audience and driving more traffic to your site in the process.
You can jump in on a trending conversation by identifying trending hashtags relevant to your industry. Or you could simply use a popular industry-specific hashtag that people can use to discover your social media posts. Hashtagify.me is an excellent platform to analyse the performance and popularity of hashtags so you can understand which ones to use.
Image Source: Hashtagify.me
Final Thoughts
These are nine of the best and easiest ways to generate more social media traffic. Some of these tips may be easier than the others, and some may require a bit of financial investment. Combined, they can help you generate valuable social media traffic. Incorporate them into your existing social media strategy for the best results.
