There are many ways to drive traffic to your website, some of them cost money and some of them can be achieved with little or no budget at all (just your time!). In the perfect world, your website is on the first page of Google and driving naturally targeted traffic as a result from SEO, but this scenario is not as easy as some people make it out to be due to time, resource or budget constraints. So whats the best way to drive targeted traffic to your site for free? Social media marketing of course!
Mnay people talk about social media marketing these days and how great it is for businesses, but the reality of it is that many business owners are not inclined to think like a social media or online marketer. So if you find yourself in this boat, here are a few pointers that will hopefully open up some new doors for you:
1. Which social networks should I use?
Different social networks attract different types of people, so in order to find out which ones will work best for you, it’s a good idea to establish yourself across all the major ones such as Facebook, Twitter, Pintrest, Google+, YouTube and Linked In. When looking at each network more closely, you will find out that Pintrest is more visually orientated so you will have to start incorporating different mediums into your content (images) and Linked In is very business focused, so a more professional approach is needed. Its best to explore each one individually and get creative with your posts.
2. I dont have any fans or followers ![:(]()
Everyone’s fan page or profile starts out like this – you need to gradually grow your fan base and this is done by being active across your profiles. Being active does not mean just posting content, in order to get people to notice your profile or fan page, you need to visit other peoples fan pages and profiles and begin to engage! You can do this by liking other peoples posts, commenting on their posts and sharing content on their walls or on a groups wall. The best results come from popular fan pages or profiles, so search around for the most popular ones within your industry. What happens is people naturally click on your profile to see who commented or liked the post. You’d be surprised at how much this happens. Your comments should be encouraging and generally interesting or informative – its not a good idea to go around posting a link to your website at every opportunity as this will probably get your account blocked.
Another highly effective method that will drive Facebook users to your Facebook Fan page is to put an advert out. This will appear on the right hand side of your target audience’s profile and if they like what they see there’s a possibility that they click on the link and visit your fan page, which will encourage them to click Like. You only pay for clicks, and they are usually pretty cheap when compared to the likes of Google Adsense. For $5 a day you can begin driving fans to your fan page with very little effort. Without turning this into a Facebook Ad Marketing post, a quick word of advice is to make as many (5-10) minimum creatives (images used in advert) and see which ones get the most clicks and conversions. This can all be monitored through the FB Ad panel. Then once you have a winning creative, keep running it and bin the rest, but keep tweaking your ads as they will lose effect after a while. Keep it fresh and reap the results!
3. What type of content should I post?
This is where the power comes into play. The best way to drive traffic to your website is to write blog posts on your website and then publish these across your social networks. When someone clicks on your link, they get taken to your website where they can continue to read the article and explore your site further. This work really well across all networks – think outside the box a bit and dont limit yourself to posting only on your wall – find groups within each network that relate to what you do and share your interesting article there – just make sure that you post high quality content that is relevant because if it is not, you may get labeled as a spammer.
Thoughts…
Social media marketing does require your time but if you dedicate an hour a day to it you should be able to see some great results. The hardest bit is coming up with the content to post, this can easily be outsourced or written yourself if you are able to.
Upcoming posts from me will have more detail on how to work in specific networks, but if you have any questions in the meantime feel free to get in touch!
