One common website goal for marketing teams is to drive traffic to websites, because if your website isn’t attracting visitors then you won’t be generating sales or achieving your business goals. With that said, driving traffic to your website is often the easy part, the challenge is increasing your ROI by ensuring that visitors arriving on your site are within your target group as these visitors have a higher probability of conversion and have the potential to become brand advocates and ambassadors.
Brands with large social media followings have a treasure trove of fans that have the potential to be converted to customers and brand advocates; the trick is being able to direct them from your social media channels to your website.
Why Increase Website Traffic Using Social Media?
The internet can be likened to one giant mall, with your website being your store in the mall and social media channels acting as the different entrances to your store. By using social media to increase website traffic, marketers can:
- Expand and diversify their traffic sources by reaching new and targeted pools of audiences
- Create continued connections with their customers across multiple channels
- Boost their website SEO by linking to it from their social media pages
To increase website traffic using social media, marketers must:
- Understand customers’ behaviours on each social media channel
- Find a way to bridge the customer’s journey from social to website
- Optimise social content for converting followers to website visitors
- Leverage influencers
1. Understand Customer's’ Use of Social Media Channels
Understanding the unique dynamics of each social media channel is critical in creating and optimising your content and calls to action (CTA). Observe how users interact with their personal networks - not just brands - on each channel and adapt your social media strategy to these behavioural trends.
Additionally, identify the channels where customers are engaging most actively with your brand. Promoting your website on the “right” channel can help you reach more people to increase website traffic. To do this, create a competitive benchmark on the size of your brand’s following across each channel, as well as the reach and engagement rates of your social postings.
2. Find a Way to Bridge the Customer’s Journey from Social to Website
Next, give your followers a compelling reason to visit your website by presenting something exclusive and beneficial. This can be:
- A “sneak preview” or abridged version of new or upcoming content from your blog
- An exclusive discount code that can be used on your e-commerce site
- A social post announcing a new product launch or sale
- A sweepstakes hosted on your website
Using a link shortener such as Rebrandly, TinyURL, or Bitly can help make branded links shorter and easier to share. Furthermore, most link shortener tools are equipped with tracking abilities that allow you to analyze the performance of your social posts in this aspect.
3. Optimise Social Content for Converting Followers to Website Visitors
Using social media to increase website traffic is akin to lead generation; you want to target your content at the right audiences, who will eventually be nurtured into loyal customers. Marketers can use social media monitoring to determine their audience demographics and profiles, from which they can create custom audiences for better targeted sponsored content. Additionally, understanding top trends amongst your target audience will help create content that is relevant and engaging.
Besides having that coveted “thumb stopping power”, your social content should entice your followers into leaving their social feed to visit your website. Words like “now” or “find out more” instil a sense of urgency and curiosity in readers.
More importantly, ensure that:
- Copy and visuals are clear and concise, so that your followers are not visually overwhelmed
- Link to your landing page is shortened, clickable, and prominently placed your copy and/or visual
- Link to your website or campaign landing page is prominently placed on your brand’s social media page
4. Leverage Influencers
Brands need not limit themselves to their own social media pages, as influencers can also be used to promote a website or landing page to their followers.
After identifying the right influencer for your brand, provide him or her with a unique tracked link or promo code to share on their social posts. This will help you benchmark your influencers in terms of the type of audience reached, as well as the conversion rate.
What’s Next?
Using social media to increase website traffic should not just be a means to an end. Ideally, this should be part of your omni-channel customer journey that encourages not just visits but also revisits to your website, so that you can nurture them into customers and brand advocates.
If you are promoting your website across multiple channels:
- Benchmark the number of visits for the same page on all the social media channels that you posted it on
- Benchmark the number of visits for different content pages
This will help you determine which social media channel is the most optimal for promoting your website, as well as the type of content for each platform.
Bonus: Master your social media ROI with our free and exclusive guide. 
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