Engagement in any form is valuable to your business. Be it face-to-face, through a video, or through some kind of information/blog on your website. It helps your business find new clients that may turn into your regular customers. There is one more channel that cannot be avoided owing to its accessibility, coverage, and popularity. That is social media. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, etc. are part of every life and device imaginable. It is not wrong to say that social media channels are a game-changer for a majority of businesses provided they know the potential and its utilization methods. For this reason, I will tell you how to use social media to promote your website/business in this post.
We will not talk about how to set up the social media channels as that is something that comes naturally to every user irrespective of their age and position.
The aim of this article is to help you leverage social media platforms to increase visitors to your website, learn what is social engagement, and know what are the best practices to use social media for the benefit of your website.
What is social media?
Social media is a communicative channel where a large group of people socializes sharing their thoughts, ideas, photos, videos, etc. all around the world.
The topics discussed on social media platforms are unimaginable and platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest are used by millions of people.
The popularity of social media by no means is a small feat and it provides an opportunity to both- social media platforms themselves and the users to utilize its coverage into an earning opportunity.
How does social media help your website?
The main purpose of using social media is engagement. Irrespective of the demographic location people remain engaged in many activities such as sharing news, suggestions, advice, videos, etc.
This engagement element and growing popularity paved way for introducing marketing and advertising material by social media channels.
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest all have their own advertising modules that businesses can use to promote their products that direct the social media traffic to their websites. Yes, it involves cost but running a planned marketing campaign can bring a greater return on investments.
Apart from paid ads, there are other ways and strategies that you can apply free of cost to create social engagement and increase traffic for your website. This is what we will talk about next.
Why should you use social media to promote your website?
The use of social media gives you additional options to promote your business. You can share your blog posts, create an Ad promoting the products you are affiliated with, join different groups that are relevant to your business, and tell them about the services you provide or products you use by uploading a video.
All these factors, will help you gain popularity, generate trust among the followers, and create an image or a brand for your website. This will help you create another source of traffic for your website through social media engagement.
Businesses that diversify their marketing on different channels to create engagement are more sustainable. This is because they don’t have to solely rely on search engines like Google and Bing who keep coming with new updates and algorithms related to traffic and rankings.
Many websites bear the brunt of these updates in the form of lower rankings and even face some kind of a ban by search engines.
Also, traffic sources from social media are now considered as one of the metrics to measure the performance of a website. That is why using social media is important as it helps you build another source of traffic that remains stable and consistent irrespective of your website status on search engines.
Benefits of using social media to promote your website
There are some incredible benefits of using social media for your website. Here are some of them:
Identification – Social Media following will help your website gain traction. Using these platforms constantly with information and promotions to help your audience will build trust. And with trust comes reliability that will make your website a brand.
Every blog post or product that you share will create anticipation and will be well-received and acceptable by your followers.
Maximize your reach – Not all the users on social media remain active on search engines. So, this makes it more valuable as you are reaching an audience that is new and out of your coverage. This category of the audience is something that will remain loyal to your website content.
Engagement – There is no shortage of information shared on social media by millions of users. But what stands out is how many of them actually look at it and take action. This is called engagement.
If your posts or information aims to offer a medium of help and guidance it will help your website find extensive reach due to the viral nature of social sharing. The more you engage people, the higher the chances of improving conversions.
Instant sharing – It is not just about paid ads but the information you share on social media flows outrageously with a few clicks. Unlike search engines, the capacity of promoting your content and products is very high.
This helps you grow your audience, make new customers, and keep your traffic ever-growing. Instant sharing and growth are something that will give your website social authority and improve your rankings in search engines as well.
All the above benefits are not something that will come naturally by remaining engaged on social media casually. No, you will have to separate your day-to-day social sharing and social marketing that is linked with your website. So, how do you do it? This is what you will find in the next section.
How to use social media to promote your website?
We will primarily focus on three social media platforms – Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest as these are the most used and sought-after channels for exchanging and promoting information.
To start with, make sure you have accounts on all three. If not, go ahead and create one. You can use your existing account to promote your website but I recommend you to keep your personal account and website account different.
You can use the Facebook account for Instagram setup since it is owned by Facebook. During the account creation, make sure to properly add profile description, image and start following a few people in the relevant category.
How to use Facebook to promote your website –
Facebook is a pioneer in social media marketing. The platform commands notable respect owing to its fan following and biggest audience reach. A lot of people join Facebook just thinking that they need to join Facebook spending (wasting) hours hanging around. This is called casual engagement.
From a business perspective, using Facebook should be different. If you are using your personal account then obviously you must already have a fan following who are your childhood, school, or professional friends.
Mixing your business with a casual approach hoping to make some money will not work here. After some time, your sharing abilities will lose credibility and your hardcore friends will stop paying attention to your activities thinking that you are using them for self-profits.
Unlike your personal account/page, a business account/page will have its own value and credibility. You must have seen a few of them if you are a frequent user of Facebook. The pages are typically known for paid advertisements and will have thousands of likes. Though, a very few of them are actually genuine business pages with a decent number of comments, likes, and shares.
Engagement should attract reaction which is like taking action in terms of forwarding, sharing, commenting, and buying. If your content or posts does not engage there is no point in spending time on Facebook. So, how do you create engagement?
Before you start getting engagement on your posts you have to become a factor of engagement for other people like your friends, and followers’ posts. And you can do this by liking, commenting, sharing on the following aspects:
- Visuals or images,
- Videos,
- Events and controversies,
- Sharing your own thoughts (positive or negative) reading posts.
You will be surprised to see the numbers doubling for your own content and posts in return. The more you remain engaged, the more engagement you will receive that will end in greater popularity and reputation for your website.
Like search engines, Facebook works on its own algorithm to reward its users depending on how you remain engaged, the types of content or material you are engaged with, and how popular is that content among its audience.
If you fit in the above three categories you will notice a consistent upward trend in your business page followers, leading to personal rewards from Facebook, more visitors on your website, and higher rankings on search engines.
In essence, all your posts and blogs should go to your business Facebook page. But don’t share only the image and post link. An ideal way to make your followers click the link is by supporting your post with your own experience or thought and asking for comments or ideas.
As a result, you will find lots of people getting engaged and sharing the links to their followers making your post popular.
How to use Pinterest to promote your website –
Pinterest is comparatively new but has gained momentum very quickly. In fact, the data of users for Pinterest is more than 400 million and growing. Those are overwhelming numbers to capitalize on. Pinterest is a visual delight.
The platform is used to share your thoughts, and ideas by pinning the relevant images. This is what makes it different from the marketing perspective.
Now to use Pinterest you should create a business account that is free as it will provide you insight statistics on the number of visitors, clicks, and engagement for your pins.
Pinterest works on images so make sure to add images or choose only those articles or blogs that have images. Create a board or boards relevant to your website niche and keep pinning the information from your website onto Pinterest.
To create an engagement, with every post that you pin make sure to follow at least 5 people who are into the same interest or category that you are pinning about.
To do so, search the relevant category on Pinterest, click on the Pin, it will open a Pinterest board and information associated with it. Every board will have a ‘follow’ button. Follow the person and share the Pins on your boards.
This will prompt the same user to follow you back and share your Pins on his profile. People with a higher following will give your Pins larger exposure and engagement that will create another source of traffic for your website.
Pinterest is not just about Pinning your own content and website. Keep your audience engaged by sharing Pins and boards of other people so that you look like a genuine Pinterest user that likes and care for others as well.
Whenever you Pin something make sure to add a description. Mention what you have covered into your Pin and end with asking for a comment, or sharing further. Always choose the images that stand out and highlight the topic that you want to share with others. Vibrant images have more chances of re-pinning your content.
How to use Twitter to promote your website –
Twitter is about sharing more in fewer words. And in those few words, you have to get your message across. Twitter has been around for a while and is more popular for sharing and re-sharing tweets in a conversational manner.
By being on Twitter you cannot afford to remain in-active. At the same time, you cannot be over-active. Yes, you have to find a balance between tweeting and sharing something that is relevant to the current trend and makes sense to others.
A few things to remember when you use Twitter to promote your website. Tweet all your posts and blogs and make use of #tags.
Tweet about relevant topics and make sure to use keywords in your tweets that are searched very often. Don’t be too critical, keep your tweets soft and positive, and last but most important is always remain active.
It goes without saying that when you tweet your posts always add a description that is relevant and engaging. It makes sense to relate it with something that is an ongoing trend and highly popular. Add your post link and as usual, ask for further comments.
Remain active by replying to the comments. This will create a chain of topics that will make your tweet and post trending and increase engagement.
When we say tweet all your posts that doesn’t have to be all together. Go one by one each day as posting too much in one go is not considered a good practice and may be termed spam. Research the topics before you tweet and always be active and relevant to the tweeting trends to keep the engagement growing.
Final Conclusion
A majority of people know how to use social media. But what sets aside its usage for a website or a business is when to use it and how often it should be used. Under-usage and over-usage both the aspects may not help you find desired results.
To leverage the potential of social media channels for the benefit of your website you must first learn to separate it from your daily use. A balanced approach by creating a list of social networks and analyzing when to use them is important.
I personally recommend you to spare some time maybe a couple of hours on social media from the business perspective.
The next thing is elements. Activeness, relevancy, and engagement are the elements that will keep your social profile efficient and result-oriented.
Remain active by constantly sharing blogs, posts from your website, and other relevant information, and keep commenting on other people’s posts and asking for comments on your posts for better engagement.
I am sure by following the above methods and factors you will master the social engagement that will help your website and any other online business become a brand generating rich profits.
If you are looking for a platform to socialize outside of social media channels and get involved in learning, training, chatting, etc. that helps grow your business then check out my no.1 recommendation here.