How to boost your traffic through social media?

Reminder: What social networks are there?Facebook: I ate
Twitter: I need to eat
LinkedIn: I am good at eating
Youtube: Look at this meal!
Instagram: Look at this great photo of my meal!
Tik Tok: Tik Tok made me buy this.
Pinterest: I’m looking for meal inspiration
Quora: Why am I eating?
Foursquare: This is where I eat

Are “hashtag“, “share“, “post“ part of your everyday life? Do Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram take-up your time during your day?
We use social media as a way of researching information, finding out people’s opinions, keeping up-to-date on current affairs and spying on that super cute colleague. However it doesn’t stop there…social media can also boost traffic towards your website and here’s how you can achieve just this:

1. Define who you are
This is your cue to come out to the world.

Before you even embark on posting, hash tagging or tweeting, you need to establish your business’ personality i.e. how do you want to come across to your followers on social media?

Do you want to be serious?…Choose clear, simple, straight-to-the-point posts to inform your users.
How about technical?…Informative posts about systems, programs and different technologies.
Or be the joker?…The use of memes or GIFs to get your point across.

…or a mixture of all three!

You need to understand your social media audience and the best way to engage with them. You can’t expect your audience to understand you if you don’t understand yourself.

REMEMBER

• Make it clear what stance you will take (humor, informative, technical…)
• Your identity = what your followers will know you for

2. Choose the social networks that best suit your business
If the shoe fits, wear it.

Depending on who you are as a business and who you want to engage with, not all social networks will be appropriate for your company. You need to define which channels are most aligned to your business goals and therefore which channels you will get the most user engagement from. Ask yourself these questions:

• Should I share information to drive traffic to my site?…then Twitter is your answer.
• Should I showcase my skills and experiences with other professionals?…LinkedIn allows you to network well.
• Should I share my product in a visual and creative way?…Instagram and Pinterest are the best for innovative posts.
• Do I want to share information related to my company or latest news?…Facebook would be the most appropriate for this.

You need to think about what you’re offering and how you would want to see the information if you were the user. For example if you have a cake business, Instagram and Pinterest would be your go-to networks as they focus on visually displaying products. LinkedIn wouldn’t be the channel to focus on due to its main use being employment opportunities and professional networking.

REMEMBER

• Don’t use every social network in the same way
• Choose the social network that best suits your audience

3. Put in place a Social Media Strategy
War is declared.

1. Your posts must be pertinent and useful. Publish your promotional offers, latest company news etc. If you retweet information, decide what type of information you’ll retweet. If Cocolyze's Twitter account retweeted information about the extinction of dinosaurs you would probably find that weird…

2. Choose the optimal time to post depending on the time your followers are most likely to be connected to their social networks. Studies have been carried out to show the optimal times to post on Facebook or Twitter. For example for B2B, work breaks are a prime time to engage with your followers whereas for B2C, followers are more active on weekends. Fridays are also a good day for posting something upbeat as users are usually at their happiest…I wonder why?
   Think about creating a calendar for your social media posts. Here at Cocolyze, we plan all our social media posts in advance and write them down in a calendar. We also start looking into the 2 or 3 months ahead.

3. Change the amount of posts. If you post 20 times per day on social networks I’m not 100% sure that your followers will keep following you for much longer. You need to pace yourself with posts. One post per day seems to be the legal minimum as your followers get a small piece of information everyday. However, after 3 tweets engagement starts to fall. You may have more tweets but probably less likes or comments on each and every one.
   For promotional offers don’t hesitate to regularly post reminders. If your offer lasts two weeks: post to launch the offer, post a second time after 4 or 5 days to remind followers that the offer is still available, and then post 2 or 3 days before the end of the offer.

REMEMBER

• Find pertinent and useful content
• Choose the right time to post
• Create a calendar to organize your posts
• Avoid spamming your user’s newsfeed

4. Analyze your results
Statistics + analysis = guaranteed success

“Identity established, social networks chosen, posts found and scheduled…we’re out on the field“…
After all your efforts you need to first see whether your strategy has actually increased traffic towards your site. One tool I would recommend to track your results is Google Analytics (if you already use it, go to your website’s Dashboard, click Acquisition > Social > Network Referrals). From this you can see which network is referring the most traffic to your site. Analyzing your efforts gives you insights into various elements such as:

• Traffic coming in from your social media posts
• Bounce rates of social media followers that leave your site quickly after landing on it
• Pages visited on your site (number of pages they visited when they arrived onto your site)

REMEMBER

• Google Analytics is a good tool for gathering visit statistics
• Analyze your strategy to see what works well and optimize what can be optimized

Conclusion

Almost all businesses use social networks to promote their activity. This means that with all those competitors out there, your content will be diluted. Differentiate yourself, affirm your identity and scrupulously stick to your strategy to be the most effective.
For that matter, if you’ve not already done it, come and follow us on Facebook and Twitter!