According to smartinsights.com, social media is the home and breeding ground to 3.4 billion active users, and counting. It’s no wonder why businesses have leveraged their access to exposure as a way to build traffic to their online stores, converting visitors to leads.
With social media having such power, how exactly can businesses use it to engage with their audience?
Well, the process can be a little tricky but the best way to effectively drive traffic to your online store is to take the terms “social” and “media” at face value. To be social is to be engaging and conversational. Media is what you use to add to your “social” or what you use to start or add to the conversation.
It’s all about building relationships on each network. Whether your business uses Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, you need to consistently build and nurture relationships with existing and potential customers across all platforms. Of course, each platform is different so you may have to adjust the formatting of the content you post but the subject matter needs to be the same.
Because social media puts you at the forefront of a larger presence, you need to keep this motto at the forefront of your mind when using social media to drive traffic to your site:
The larger your social media following is, the more you can ensure a steady flow of traffic to your online store
In your efforts to drive more traffic to your online store, you must first grow and nurture your social media following. Here’s how.
6 Social Media Tips for Building Traffic to Your Online Store
1. Complete Your Social Profile
When your followers visit your social page, what’s the first thing they see? Your profile. Everything from your brand’s picture and bio to your mission and the direct link to your site, your social profile is your opportunity to briefly tell your followers a little more about yourself.
If your followers are visiting your profile, that’s a direct indicator that they’re not only interested in your brand but also interested in the content you’ve been providing. Adding that backlink to your site in your profile is their way to finding out how they can get more great content from you.
2. Post During Times When Your Audience is Most Active
You’ve heard people say that there is a time and a place for everything… Well, that statement proves to be true especially on social media. The best time to post on social media is when your target audience is the most active… this is called posting during their “peak” time.
Followerwonk is a great (free) tool to help you in determining your target audience’s peak time. You’ll have a better idea of when to post content that you know your audience will see with a higher chance of conversions.
3. Promote Your Blog Content
The whole point of creating blog content is for the world to consume it… if people aren’t going to read it, why create it? If you have blog content and it’s only received minimal views, it’s time to let email outreach and social media go to work for you.
One of the best ways to gain more exposure for your blog posts through social media is to create a social media schedule that allows you to promote old and new content. According to slideshare.net, brands that create 15 blog posts per month and share it through social media, average around 1200 new leads per month.
That’s not saying you have to do that many but if you’re not generating that many leads, why not? If you don’t have the time to create that many blog posts but still want to, consider hiring a Shopify expert to help you with content writing so that you can reach your goal of 15 per month and then see how much traffic comes to your site.
4. Make Your Content Easy to Share
Have you ever been on Facebook and a friend posted something that you wanted to share but you couldn’t? You then had to comment and ask them to “make this public” so you could share it.
For a business, sharing content that your followers can’t share is the equivalent of social media suicide. Every single thing you post, you basically want to make it easy for your followers to share it.
For your brand on social media, everything should be made public and ALWAYS have social share buttons on every single piece of content you have on your site
5. Engage With Your Audience Often and Consistently
Did you know that one in three people will follow your competitors when you ignore them on social media? Engaging with your audience is give and take. When you make a post and your followers comment, respond back to them.
You, of course, may not be able to respond back to every single person, but when you do respond, it shows them that their opinions matter. That then increases brand loyalty… You’d be surprised at what a smiley face or “thanks for the feedback” response on social media will do for your online store.
6. Create Viral Content
“Going viral” on social media is the ultimate goal of businesses, influencers, and users alike, but for businesses, it can prove to be a major driver of traffic to your site. However, going viral or creating viral content isn’t always that easy.
A lot of times memes and content that appeals to the senses are great ways to go viral but also, out of the ordinary tactics help businesses go viral as well. Take news anchor Nick Kosir for example. Nick Kosir is a Charlotte meteorologist, now known as “the dancing weatherman,” for his viral videos of him dancing to the latest dance trends during live broadcasts.
His videos went viral simply because it’s not every day that you see a weatherman on live TV doing dance moves that the “young people” are doing. Adding that type of “wow” factor is what’s going to help you create viral content and increase your following.
Now that you’re equipped with the social media ammo to drive more traffic to your site, all you have to do is implement these tactics and start watching your traffic numbers increase. The thing to keep in mind is that when the traffic isn’t coming to you, sometimes you just have to get out there and go find the traffic yourself, and the majority of it can be found on social media!