Madalyn Sklar

Using Social Media to Increase Your Web Traffic

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Using Social Media to Increase Your Web Traffic - #TwitterSmarter chat with Eddie Garrison - August 8, 2019

People use Twitter for a number of things—to keep up with daily news, to catch up with friends, to follow hobbies, to share work, to make new connections… you get the idea. Many of our #TwitterSmarter community use Twitter to boost their business brand—they share their content, expertise in certain subject matters and build relationships. However, not all of us know much about how referral traffic and how it impacts our brand.

We invited Eddie Garrison, a social media strategist and the founder of Clover Media, a content and marketing consultancy, to share some insights about leveraging social media to improve website traffic.

Here’s a summary of our chat.

Topic: Using Social Media to Increase Your Web Traffic
Guest: Eddie Garrison
Format: Eight questions directed to the guest. Everyone’s welcome to share.

Q1: What is referral traffic?

Referral traffic is people who’re referred to visiting your website (or blog) by sources other than yourself. Think of it like word of mouth marketing, except it comes from other online resources like social media accounts and third-party blog posts. Every time you collaborate with another business person and they include your links in their posts, you become referred in their work. And every visitor who lands on your link from that page will be counted as referral traffic.

 

These could be potential buyers who clicked through from a recommendation website. And that’s why it’s important to track these referrals. Rachel called these “outside offerings” like listing websites—efforts you put in places other than your own website. Tracking helps identify the more efficient sources and invest more time in developing them.

What’s more, referral traffic is also a boost to your SEO. Search engines see traffic from external links as a credibility factor, placing you as a high authority website.

Q2: How can you generate referrals for your content?

Our guest’s top advice is to make use of social media wisely. Eye-catching images, videos, and enticing offers coupled with great, relevant content can help capture your audience’s interest. Identify which types of content perform well for your audience, make sure it aligns with your content strategy, and create more of that content. Then share across other social networks to widen your reach.

Some other vibrant ideas from our community:

  • Build a strong network of value.
  • Find the right CTA for the right audience.
  • Don’t underestimate the power of HARO (Help a Reporter Out) and Twitter chats.
  • Explore Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest ads—based on where your audience is.
  • Offer great, genuine, and tangible content.
  • Contribute to other websites, and invite others to guest post on your website.
  • Encourage customers to share feedback on social media.
  • Use hashtags to broaden your reach.
  • Be active on user forums and Q/A sites like Reddit, Quora, Stack Overflow.
  • Offer good customer experience on social media, and respond to your audience’s questions.
  • Spend time networking.
  • Don’t shy away from referring other websites. Like our friends from WP Business Reviews pointed out, sometimes you have to take the first step, and others will reciprocate.

Q3: What are some ways to drive traffic from Twitter to your website?

Make sure your tweet and image have a catchy and stop-worthy CTA. In in endless stream of tweets, you want to stand out and make viewers pause. Just another article with a regular title won’t help much—put real thought and effort into creating good headlines.

As CTAs, it’s also equally important, as Eddie mentioned, to check that your images and videos are correctly sized. It’s never a good sign when Twitter or another social platform crops your image because it wasn’t fitting.

 

There’re so much more you can do, too, to drive referrals from Twitter to your website. Here are a few that our tweeters suggested:

  • Pin tweets with links to your website.
  • Include links in your bio.
  • Provide valuable, non-salesy content.
  • Recycle tweets that link to evergreen posts.
  • Automate posting of older, relevant posts.
  • Be yourself; don’t try too hard to be a social media ninja and lose your authenticity in the process.
  • Engage with audience and other conversations. The more you make your profile seen and trusted, the more people will want to click links from you.

All that said, be wary of link-spamming too. Like Jack pointed out constant links can get annoying to a regular member of your audience. Sometimes it’s better to cut down your blogs into content that can live and be consumed on Twitter itself. Find the right balance for you.

Q4: Why is Twitter engagement important to growing your digital presence?

Twitter is a place for news. More often than not, people look up things and trending hashtags on Twitter before double checking with a traditional news publication. It’s just the reality of modern communication. That’s why it’s essential to engage on Twitter.

As a brand, you get to share your opinions, values, and announcements with your network in real time. Not only will you communicate your messages quickly, but you’ll also build a community that trusts your authority on a subject matter.

Aside from the instant statistical benefit of engagement, you also make a lot of good friends. Social media is about being sincerely social—it’s about making connections, catching up with them, and showing you care. And the best thing is that these relationships are long-term—they stay with you throughout and help you boost your references. Because Twitter is an open platform and anyone can see each other’s Tweets, you can even reach individuals who aren’t directly part of the network.

And remember what Derek said, unless you’re interested in others, they won’t be interested in you.

Q5: Can a blog help increase your engagement on social media?

It sure can, as most of our community members vouched. The important thing, though, as Eddie said, is finding the right angle.

There’re so many people on Twitter sharing thousands of blog posts every minute. To stand out from the noise, identify your unique point of view and answer questions and topics that your audience wants to hear from you.

 

Plus, a blog is your content arsenal. As Kelli put it, it gives you something to launch your tweets with. When you’re running out if ideas to share, your blog’s got your back with evergreen content you can always repurpose.

 

Aside from all that, though, having blog also gives you some other advantages:

  • Helps build thought leadership.
  • Establishes your brand voice.
  • Serves as a conversation starter.
  • Showcases your expertise.
  • Delivers your unique selling proposition without you having to be salesy.
  • Communicates your values and purpose to your audience.
  • Resonates with your ideal audience.
  • Works as a medium to share your knowledge, as well as other content that you found useful.
  • Affirms your expertise, and builds authority.
  • Lives on as a repository of information, like Madalyn’s weekly series of Twitter Tips.

Q6: Share some ways social media can help increase traffic to your website.

Every link you add to your tweets or other social posts is a referral back to your website. Each blog post you share increases your chance of being discovered, read, trusted, and re-shared. It builds an immense network of links that search engines seek in trustworthy websites.

Some other ways a social media presence increases traffic:

  • Add links to your profile.
  • Share your blogs.
  • Make it easy for people to like and share your content.
  • Keep visuals appealing and relevant.
  • Post when your audience is most active.
  • Respond and grow existing conversations with useful links.
  • Seek recommendations on channels like Facebook.
  • Test different calls to action texts and buttons on your images and posts.
  • Showcase your genuine personality.
  • Be committed in helping your community grow.

And most importantly, get the basics right. Fancy tactics won’t get you far unless you have the essentials set up well.

Q7: What are some social media mistakes that can harm your website’s reach?

Eddie’s top advice is to create original and useful content. Nothing beats helpful content that people can rely on and learn from. Similarly, paying for fake engagement—like followers and likes—are a big dampener on your genuine traffic. Not only do social channels discourage these false practices but the practice also throws your statistics out of balance. You might think 80k followers is a good number, but what’s the use if 70k of them are bots or fake profiles who’ll leave when you stop paying?

That’s also why it’s essential to track the effects of your activities. It helps you make well-informed decisions about your strategy.

And as always, hate speech and overly sensitive topics like politics and religion can harm your brand’s reputation. Consider your goals and strategy before you post anything.

 

Our community shared a number of other mistakes that can harm your traffic:

  • Lack of social media strategy.
  • Not utilizing your bio.
  • Not tailoring content to the platform.
  • Sharing irrelevant content.
  • Underestimating the value of relationship building in a community.
  • Failing to be natural.
  • Having broken links.
  • Boring images.
  • Non-explanatory short links.
  • Not proofreading before publishing.
  • Inconsistency in posting and engaging.
  • Being salesy or spammy.
  • Ignoring negative comments or bad feedback—acknowledge your mistakes instead, and show you care.
  • Posting negative or overly critical thoughts.
  • Not analyzing the effect of sensitive situations before sharing a post.
  • Repeating content too many times.
  • Using words captions people will skip over.
  • Forgetting calls to action.

We’ve all seen people who share the same post over and over trying to increase a page’s reach. For a regular follower, that can be annoying. Twitter may even ban such repetition. Alberto suggested a great alternative: do what Gary Vee does.

Gary Vee regularly posts videos on his channels. He then cuts each video into smaller bite-sized elements and posts them as separate videos. This is a brilliant way to repurpose content and make sure people are returning to see what you offer.

Q8: Should your social media resemble your website? How much?

And to that we respond with a resounding yes! Consistency is the soul of branding, and so like Eddie said, your digital presence across all channels should have a similar look and feel.

Keep aspects like your mission statement, logo, colours, profile photos, profile name or handle, and target audience the same.

However, it’s also true that each social platform is different. You can’t shove thirty hashtags into Twitter—that’s just spammy. You need to have different strategies for each platform. Plus, like our friends from Synthesio mentioned, social media is about being conversational. It allows you more room to be informal and friendly in your tone.

Well, folks, I hope this summary did justice to that amazing chat. Feel free to join our next #TwitterSmarter chat on Thursday at 1pm ET.

About me, Narmadhaa:

I’m a writer of all things—technical and marketing copy to fill the pocket; haiku and short stories to fill the soul. A social media enthusiast, I’m a member of the #TwitterSmarter chat crew, and always happy to take on writing gigs.

Say hello: Personal blog | LinkedIn | Twitter

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