Does Social Media really drive traffic to your site or blog? How can it help me increase my traffic? Is this a good marketing strategy?
For starters? these are the questions that you might ask when you are planning to use social media as a way to drive traffic for your website. Other blogs will directly say YES! It does help you increase blog traffic but the question is... HOW? and HOW GOOD IS IT?
To be honest, social media campaigns is really hard to do especially when you are not that POPULAR IN SOCIAL MEDIA OR, you don't have any friends who shares the same ideas with you. THIS IS REALITY MY FRIEND! You can't drive traffic to your site, through social media without any CONNECTIONS at first place.
Most bloggers will be frustrated and they will come to a conclusion that they have wasted their effort in doing a social media campaign. However, it's not the fault of Social Media. Instead, it's you fault. The reason why this strategy is not doing you any good is the fact that you are doing it wrong.
Most common mistakes in social media marketing
Starting at ZERO
Scenario: No friends, no connections, no Nothing! If you're like this, then you are 100% gonna fail.
Course of Action: Before starting any social media campaigns, meet people first who shares the same interest with you.
Don't invite random people
Scenario: We are really dumb at first expecting something big from a big crowd of Likers in our facebook fanpage. Boy it was a very wrong move!
We are so dumb enough just to invite random people to Like our page without taking to consideration their interes in our blog. Fewer crowd which are loyal and really interested in your blog is much better than thousand of likes/followers that has no interest at all.
Course of action: Just like we said earlier, instead of inviting random people to join your community, hunt down people who shares the same interest with you. Build a community that likes, shares and follow the same topic.
Paid campaign
Scenario: Don't invest yet in paid social media campaigns when you are at the very beginning of your marketing ventures. It's a waste of money!
Course of action: Instead of paying for a couple of bucks just to let people know that you have a site which caters a certain topic, focus on what we said earlier- Hunting down people or friends you already know to join your community and be a loyal member. TRY TO BE ORGANIC AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE.
So basically, if you start your social media campaign right, then you will end up driving lots of traffic in your website. Not just traffic, but you will gain avid followers/readers on your blog. In this case, you don't have to wait for your post to be index in search engine to gain traffic as you already have your community to read the post. AND THIS IS THE BIGGEST ADVANTAGE OF SOCIAL MEDIA BEING INTEGRATED TO YOUR BLOG/SITE!
Next thing to do is how to convert social media post to traffic.
Common mistake of a blogger is doing things broadly. This means that they focus on keywords instead of making a crowd curious. What are we talking about? We are talking about constructing the right titles to your social media post so you can attract your community to read what is written on your blog.
Here's an example on how to do this right:
Instead of just saying Look at this Hendo Hoverboard then link, we say:
In this way, our loyal community members will be curious to take a peek on the full story of the post.
And the result....
912 people saw the post. Almost all our readers go to the blog page and take a peek on the post.
Is Social Media traffic is 100% good?
Yes, you can say that it's good in terms of driving traffic to your site but not really that good when it comes to your earnings, especially when you are using Adsense. When you drive traffic mainly on social media, then you will lost Ad relevancy. For example: Imagine if you have a site/blog that talks about cooking. When most of your traffic comes from Facebook then basically, the ads that will appear on the landing page are more likely Facebook ads. But this scenario is only applicable to sites which are using Adsense or other PPC advertising.
When you are using BuySellAds or affiliate programs, then it's totally a different story. When you have a community which both are loyal and willing to buy products you have suggested on them, then expect some big cash going to your account.
Now you know how powerful social media can be when used properly in marketing your blog/site. The question now is, what are those social medias that can give you a good source of Traffic.
There's Facebook of course and then Google Plus. Next to them is Twitter and you can also add in the list LinkedIn and Pinterest. And also, you can just send your buddies some emails.
Yes, you heard it right. Drive traffic through sending them emails. Most of our loyal readers communicate with us via Emails. They give us tips that we don't know yet and include it on our blog and in exchange, we send them updates through emails. Also, you can insert a Follow by Email widget on your site so your readers can subscribe on your website and get updated through their emails.
Overall, Social Networking sites and other social media can really be a good source a traffic to your blog. In fact, it can boost the number of people viewing your blog. The only thing you need to do is invest time on how to do it right and make some extra effort everyday in sharing quality content to your valued readers.
Hope that you have learned something from this page bloggers!