Branding
Digital Marketing
IT Services
Web & App Dev4 Tips on How to Generate Social Traffic
| 17 Dec 2013
|
Social traffic explodes while organic traffic declines, according to TheNextWeb. According to their article, social traffic, or referral traffic, has increased by roughly 7% from November 2012 to November 2013 while organic traffic has declined by approximately 2.5%. Though organic traffic is still the primary traffic source for most publishers and websites, it’s evident that social traffic is gaining prominence. This shift in the digital landscape is likely due to the fact that search engine is in its mature stage while social media is still fresh and few. In fact, traffic from the top 5 social networks has doubled year-to-year. Undoubtedly, social traffic continues to flourish.
Here are 4 tips on how you can use social media to drive inbound traffic:
-
Analyze your audience’s online activity
Your consumers read your content at different times, depending on their jobs, time zones, and other influential factors. Hence, it’s important for you to use tools such as Google Analytics and Tweroid to determine when your readers are most likely online and interested in visiting your website. This will allow you to distribute content at optimal times. For instance, you can schedule tweets for 5am in the morning if a majority of your readers are from the East Coast and they’re more likely to consume digital content at 8am (their time) when they’re commuting to work. -
Listen to conversations online
In addition to monitoring your current audience’s digital activities, you should also listen to other online conversations and identify popular topics. You should use tools such as Sprout Social, Google Trends, and Radian6 to find certain topics that are current heating up. This will allow you to create content regarding popular topics to induce your consumers. This approach is crucial if you want to cut through the clutter by producing and sharing valuable, timely, and pertinent content. -
Identify which types of content attain the most traffic and retweets
Inbound marketing is as goal-driven as other marketing approaches. Thus, you have to assign specific metrics to reflect your performance. The easiest ways to assess your social marketing performance is by looking at your web traffic and retweets. This will help you determine the popularity of particular content and the possibilities of why they’re well-received. This will help you further produce content that’s interesting to your audience as well as boost your inbound traffic and shareability. -
Use various digital channels differently
Various digital channels have different purposes. In our experience, platforms such as Twitter should be used to engage in content marketing, specifically textual content. Networks such as Facebook on the other hand should be image-oriented where brands publish 90% visual content and only 10% textual content. If you've visually-driven articles such as Recap of 2014 BCAMA Vision Conference, Facebook would be optimal channel to distribute them. By customizing your content for different networks, you can heighten your engagement with your community.
With social media, companies can practically run their own advertising agency in-house. All they have to is hire a content writer who’s proficient with technology and social networks and they can produce and distribute content to hundreds or even thousands of readers daily. That said, in order to effectively share their content and grow their community, businesses have to listen to online conversations, mine digital activities, identify popular topics, and leverage various digital channels differently. This will enable companies to improve their online interactions and ultimately increase their web traffic and engagement.
To determine whether you're using social media optimally, perform a P.A.C.E Digital Marketing Audit.
