Social media is a key driver of traffic to websites – sometimes contributing the largest portion of visitors for businesses. However, many companies rely on sponsored posts and paid ads to reach a wider audience on social media.
There are ways to boost your traffic from social media without having to pay Facebook, or any other social platform, for the extra views. You should aim to get more organic social media traffic before resorting to paid solutions.
Here are a few social media traffic boosters that you should be using more often, even if you don’t have many followers.
Promote your content on Instagram
Instagram is the third most popular social media platform after Facebook and YouTube. Recently, Instagram hit the one billion user mark. While the majority of businesses on Instagram use it to promote their products, hardly any use it to promote written content.
Sure, Instagram is an image sharing app, so how would it work for written content? The trick lies in posting a creative and eye-catching image with an informative caption that has a call-to-action (CTA). This CTA tells your followers to visit your profile and click the link in the bio for more educational content and helpful tips.
People are always curious and in search of helpful solutions that can improve their lives. This caption and CTA combination plays on their curiosity and drives them to your website via a link in your bio. Your followers are also more likely to click on a link to a useful article than a link to purchase a product.
Take advantage of Snapchat and Stories
Like the previous tip, followers are likely to click on links to helpful content in Snapchat posts and Stories on Facebook and Instagram. You can ask your followers to swipe up on your Stories to get to your content.
This strategy works best if you have over 10 000 followers. When users swipe up, it takes them to a link on your website, be it a blog post, a video or a podcast tutorial. Using Stories to engage with your audience is a quick and easy way to drive traffic from social media to your site.
Leverage live video
Most social media platforms offer live video tools for reaching your followers in real-time. Facebook and Instagram are two of the most popular platforms for live videos, but YouTube is also a good site to use for real-time engagement.
Simply posting a link to your website on Facebook, for example, won’t boost your traffic by much. It’s unlikely to get many shares, comments or likes either. However, doing a live video stream allows you to respond to your audience and get them to take action right then and there.
Facebook and Instagram notify your followers when you begin a live video so that they can open the apps and watch. Again, live videos feed curiosity more than a simple post and you can convey more information in a live video that you would be able to do in a written post.
Don’t neglect normal videos for promotion
While live videos are great for boosting traffic, normal videos work a treat too. Social media users love video content – it is the highest ranking form of content for engagement and views. Written text and plain posts are becoming boring, so take advantage of visual mediums such as video.
Videos get far more engagement of Facebook and Instagram than text-based posts or simple images. YouTube is the obvious website for sharing videos, but Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are able to drive more traffic from a smaller audience. In general, you need a large YouTube audience to really boost traffic through to your site.
You can easily create videos that directly address your audience and share a few helpful tips. In the video, you can get the audience to check out your website for more information or similar tips and content. Always provide a link to the right page in the video caption.
These short tips should allow you to activate more of your social media followers and get them to visit your website. These tips don’t take a lot of effort and result in more engagement than simple text-based social posts, so start using them to boost your website traffic.
___
Sorted Design Agency is a creative company that constantly looks for solutions to other people’s problems. These problems come mostly in the visual format, such as graphic design, logo and illustration, but we’re experts in brand development, website design, and digital SEO campaigns as well.
___
Based in Pretoria and Cape Town, Sorted has been in the content marketing industry since 2006. We assist your company with its corporate identity by communicating core values through content and articles written for your website, blog and news area. This content is supported by AdWords and social advertising, which facilitates wider reach and audience growth. Turn your website into a business tool.
___
Sorted also owns two other businesses; InkFish Print Studio – a printing company that handles a range of promotional materials for businesses and other services for individual customers, and Pampiri + Kie – a gifts and stationery store selling online and in-store. Both of these companies operate from Cape Town and Pretoria.
___
Follow us on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn for the best tips on design, marketing and web development. We also share the latest industry news and fresh content to inspire fellow designers, creatives and marketers.