Boost Your Web Traffic with These Social Media Strategies	2.0/5.0 (1 votes total) Rate: Select 1 - Terrible 2 - Poor 3 - Average 4 - Good 5 - Outstanding
James Cummings November 14, 2017

There are still a significant number of people who believe that the effect of social media is minimal to their business growth. No business should downplay the power of social media- not even the healthcare sector!

I have had a few dentists ask me how they can win more patients via social media. Clearly, some people are still looking at social in a one-sided way. If you see social media as a platform for merely engagement and banter, it will appear challenging. Especially for more professional establishments.

Other common questions include:

“How do I build more followership?”

“Is there any way I can generate web traffic through social?”

“How can I manage my social analytics, I am too busy focusing on client needs”

Fret not. There is a suitable answer to every question. I admit, the last one is a bit tricky, particularly for certain services, but it is not impossible anyhow. In this post, we shall discuss how you can manage social to direct an enviable amount of organic traffic to your website. The more the traffic you have on your site, the higher your potential for conversion.

Creating your social media strategy

One of the first things to do is create a social media strategy. The business social platform is not just about posting funny content and latching onto trending hashtags as Di Giorno Pizza discovered some years back. It requires more careful deliberation and planning.

Take time to do a bit of research, it will shape the direction for your social media strategy.

• What is your brand voice?

• How do you want your social media followers to perceive your brand?

• How often do you intend to post on social media?

• Have you ever conducted a social media audit to read people’s perception of your online presence?

• What is your social media (mission) statement?

• Have you prepared a social media content calendar yet?

These are a few things you want to get done before you start seeing some spikes in your web traffic caused by social media.

In a study conducted by the Pew Research Centre on the usage of social media between 2005 – 2015, there was a marked increase in the percentage of social media users from 7% to 65%. Today, there are over 3 billion social media users in the world. That is almost half of the world’s population! If that doesn’t convince you of the relevance of social media to your business, I don’t know what will.

A social media audit is not exactly a straightforward affair, and it may consume a good amount of time. If you are in a specialised service like the dental industry, there are agencies like Orthosynetics that conduct such marketing services in the sector.

After an audit, use the following strategies will impact web traffic numbers:

1. Choose the appropriate channel for your business

This is perhaps the most important early decision you will ever make. Do a bit of research to find out where the majority of your audiences “hang out” online. It will be a total waste of time to be working on Twitter when your core customers are on Facebook.

As a tip, Facebook is for more family-oriented brands, while Instagram is for fashion and beauty products for older millennials. Twitter has no specific designation. Pinterest slightly biased towards women aged 27 – 40 years, and Snapchat is for younger millennials.

2. Set a goal for your social media campaign

Define what you hope to achieve on your website by using social media. Of course, the idea is to boost traffic, but it could be more. Your goal should also be SMART.  That is Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-Oriented

You can decide that you want to use Facebook to increase the number of twenty-something year olds registering for newsletters on your site by 5% before the end of the next quarter. With this goal, your strategies will be focused on crafting content that attracts that demographic.

3. What content should you post?

After deciding upon a channel and setting your goal(s), the next step is to create engaging content. This is tricky because if it is not well-thought out, you could miss the mark. One easy way to begin is to find out what your competitors are doing. You don’t have to copy them, but it will give you a general idea of how to start.

Be mindful of your audience’s persona and your business’ tone of voice. The two should be cohesive. You can post announcements for your brand, an inspirational advice or a summarised “How to” material. Photos, videos and other rich media formats are highly recommended. Don’t forget to look out for hashtags too!

4. Place backlinks to your website

When you post content on social media, don’t underuse by not inserting a functional link pointing to your website. For instance, you can lure your customers with the details of how to get a free movie ticket by posting the announcement on Twitter, and referring them to your website (via a link) for the full details.

Linked tweets account for 92% of interaction with tweets. They increase the chances of like, shares and followership. More importantly, they pull traffic to your website. However, ensure all links are working. Few things are more annoying than clicking a link and seeing a 301 error.

5. Study your analytics

The best ways to monitor your progress (or not) is to study the analytics results. If you don’t do so, you may as well be throwing darts in the dark. Most social media platforms have an inbuilt analytics tool for analysing their metrics. But the easiest, most common tool for web metrics is Google Analytics.

It is cheap and simple to understand. It provides a tabular performance for each social network metric. When you are aware of each social media performance, you can fine-tune or change the entire strategy for better results.

Each step plays a significant part in growing your business via the web. Whether you want higher sales, increased subscriptions or more downloads, these strategies are guaranteed to give your brand that much needed push.