Social media can either be your best friend or worst enemy. When running a business that has online social presence the main goal is being seen and furthering success. However, with that comes the possibility of people raving about your services or complaining. It’s important to realize that social media plays into driving traffic to your website. Taking advantage of its wide range of audience is a great way to acquire new customers. Specifically if your company runs a blog, social media allows your posts to be seen. The lovely world of the Internet has given people the power to retweet and share posts, which has the potential to reach an enormous audience. Now there seems to be people who are skeptical to the effectiveness of social media driving traffic. However, the amount of traffic you actually gain from social media depends largely on how you structure your social media posts and whom you generally target. To fully understand how to get the most out of social media here are some things to keep in mind when wanting to drive traffic and conversions.

Hashtags for the win

This helpful tool allows you to expand the reach of your posts beyond the followers you already have and reach new audiences. Hashtags also help with conversations and discussions to be sparked. Studies have been conducted with the use of hashtags on popular social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. Results concluded the following:

Twitter

  • Tweets that include hashtags showed 2x more engagement. *
  • There is 21% more engagement with Tweets that include 1 to 2 hashtags. *
  • On average almost 40% of Tweets with hashtags get retweeted. *

Facebook

  • Initially, hashtags on Facebook were not that effective, but gradually has become more effective over the years. *
  • Including 1-2 hashtags per post can acquire on average 593 interactions. *

Visuals help engagement

Social media is inevitably designed for visual content. Therefore, it shouldn’t be a surprise knowing how much more engagement is received with the use of images, as opposed to plain text. Pictures help to illustrate details, points and draw attention to certain things. When including graphics such as charts and histograms, this helps to illustrate various points. Including images has many purposes:

  • Add life to story
  • Break up large amount of text
  • Give visual representation of idea

Studies have found that on average including images on Facebook posts attract 395 more interactions among users, which include comments, shares and likes. On LinkedIn, posts with images get about 98% more comments. * *Overall, the use of images has positive factors when contributing to gaining engagement.

Share your blog posts

Simply sharing your blog post can drive quite a bit of traffic to your blog posts from your social media handles. Including sharing buttons on your website can substantially drive large amounts of traffic. Social sharing buttons provide the convenience to your viewer without seeming too pushy and encourages them to share your posts.

Consistency is key

When using social media, you need to be consistent. Engagement is imperative. Keep your audience intrigued and informed about the success of your business. Using Sprout Social, a social media management tool, helps to coordinate all of your social media accounts and allows you to schedule posts. Being active online gives your viewers a more interpersonal connection with your company. Delegating social media posts needs to be thought out. You need someone that is social-savvy and knows all the ins and outs of your business. Consistency and reliability is everything.

The overall goal of your social media activity must be gaged towards gaining and retaining customers. Be strategic with your posts. Don’t go idle on social media and make sure all communication via handles isn’t casual. Just because the messages are communicated informally doesn’t mean you can let your professional guard down. Keep track of your social media interactions. See what’s working and fix what isn’t. Experimentation is a vital component when dealing with social media marketing.

*Source of statistics: Click here

**Source of statistic: Click here

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