The Internet is full of possibilities when it comes to driving traffic to your online store. One of the easiest, and often less expensive ways, is to use social media.
In this article, we’ll talk about social media tricks that drive traffic to your online store. We’ll help you guide your social media followers to your landing pages to increase your conversion rate optimization.
With 53% of the people on Twitter recommending products in their tweets, the importance of social media to your bottom line is growing daily.
What’s more, studies show that social media is a proven influencer when it comes to purchasing decisions, and more than 90% of consumers turn to social media before making the decision to buy.
So, you can see the importance of social media to your optimization efforts. Here are social media tricks that drive traffic to your online store:
Optimize Your Content
Overly promotional posts and tweets won’t drive as much traffic to your online store as content that is valuable.
You want to provide useful content that is likely to be shared – something that provides value to your customers. Interactive content, visual content and posts that share customers’ stories and testimonials and tips work best for driving traffic to your online store. Entertain and provide value for the best results.
Of course, if you’re offering a once-a-year 50% discount to your followers, your posts will likely drive traffic to your online store. Just don’t do it too often, or your customers will begin to ignore your messaging.
Share Your Content More Than Once
This trick may seem counter-intuitive, but it pays to post your content more than once.
If you’ve got great content, you want to use it to maximize your traffic. So, share it more than once to increase the chances that more people see it.
- Here are some tips for sharing your content more than once to drive traffic to your online store:
- Post at the best time of day for your followers. Use your analytics to determine this.
- Share your post a few hours later on the same day. This is especially valuable on Twitter since the average lifespan of a tweet is less than 30 minutes.
- Post again for several more days.
- Then, wait a week and post again once or twice a week for a month, linking to your online store.
- Remember to revise your copy slightly on each post so your followers don’t see you as a spammer.
Leverage Your Keywords
Certain words increase the likelihood that people will click through your social media content to your online store. Be creative when using your keywords to increase the conversions of your posts and tweets.
Use some of these words in your Facebook posts to increase conversions: tell us, when, discount, inspire, submit, deals.
On Twitter, words like re-tweet, follow, check out, help us and new blog post work well.
On LinkedIn, you’ll want to use words that inspire work-place professionals such as create, improve, develop and increase.
Additionally, do some keyword research to learn what terms your customers are searching for. This helps you find content related to your online store. Then, use these keywords in your posts and tweets.
Use high-converting keywords related to your business to increase your store’s visibility in search.
Make Your Website Social Media Friendly
There are a couple ways to organize your website so that you can increase the number of shares on social media. This again increases the number of people who see your social media posts and increases your social media followers.
It’s important to organize your website to encourage visitors to share your content and follow you on social media. How can you do this?
- Use Open Graph Meta Tags. This enables any web page to become a rich object in a social graph. In other words, when you incorporate open graph Meta tags in your blog or email marketing, you ensure that your chosen image is displayed on social media.
- Add a social media sharing widget to your website to encourage sharing.
- Use Twitter cards to display extra information about your products, blog posts or links. This also helps to increase your Tweet engagement and landing page conversions.
Use a Lead Magnet
Offer a free “lead magnet” to drive traffic to your online store. For example, let’s say you sell hair products. You could offer a free digital download that shows how to create five different hairstyles.
To get the video to see how to create the hairstyles, your social media followers would need to click a link that takes them back to your website. You can promote this video on all of your social media platforms. Once you get your social media audience to your website, you can target hair products to them on the same page as the digital download.
Plus, you now have the added bonus of their email address so you can continue marketing to them.
Promote Your Blog Posts
If you aren’t blogging, you should be. If you are blogging, you should promote your blog posts on social media.
Blog content is a great way to drive traffic to your website. Blog posts by their very nature aren’t promotional. Blog posts offer content of value and interest. They educate, and they inform. And, they work to get social media followers to your website.
To Conclude
Social media is an excellent way to get customers to your website. To be profitable, your main goal is to drive traffic to your online store, and social media is a smooth highway.
Posting fresh, valuable and entertaining content is the best way to leverage social media. Here are a few final tips for making the most of your social media to drive traffic to your online store:
- Post a weekly tip. Quick, short, and valuable is the key.
- Always use images in your posts.
- Curate content from around the web.
- Interview customers and staff.
- Post photos of your staff doing fun things around the office. For example, introduce your customer service agents to help your customers feel “in-touch” with your staff.
Lastly, to drive more traffic to your online store through social media, you can always use paid advertising methods. You can either create content from scratch or boost existing posts. This is another social media trick that drives traffic to your online store.
If you’d like more information on social media tricks that drive traffic to your online store, we can help. Lead generation and conversion rate optimization are our specialty. We can help you improve your website content to increase the likelihood your customers will share it on social media, and in turn increase your social media following to get clicks back to your website. Contact us today.
We’ll provide you with our FREE site performance analysis so we can work on your landing page conversion rates.
Image: Jason Howie