When you realize that the entire point of social media is to drive traffic to your website, which should be the center of your online marketing world, you start to use social media correctly. Social media is not supposed to be the destination of your followers. No, social media should only be the beginning of a long relationship that involves sharing, interacting, learning, and engaging.

Use social media to remind followers to visit your website for more information, products and services. Use social media as a way to listen to what your audience wants. Use social media as the method by which you become an important industry expert from whom your audience seeks information. The following tips are used by industry experts, large organizations and businesses alike to drive traffic from social media to their websites. No need to reinvent the wheel, these ten tips work.

1) Become a Thought Leader

It may seem strange that the more popular you can become off the Internet, the more popular you will be on the Internet and the more people will connect with you, follow you, and then go to your website. Spread yourself around, write for other popular blogs, magazines, and newsletters then cross promote. Accept speaking engagements outside of the Internet but record them, and put them on YouTube.com, embed the recordings or links on your site, and share via social media. Write a book, and use that as your calling card.

2) Create an Interactive Community

People love to talk to each other about issues that affect them. If you really want to offer a huge benefit to your customers and potential customers, form a community around them. Create a message board that is interactive and generates a lot of visitor activity and participation. Promote the board, which will promote your website – thus gathering not only more traffic the first time you promote the forum, but if it’s active people will also come back again and again.

3) Don’t Forget SEO

Search engine optimization is a very important component in any online marketing strategy. Optimize for social media by including the right keywords, the right metadata, and including information about images, content, and more, so that you can be found. Remember to focus on both on-page and off-page SEO for best results.

4) Engage on Social Media

You can’t just open a social media account, fill out a profile, start blasting updates and expect any results unless maybe you already have celebrity status. You need to start with a plan, understand your goals, choose your tactics, and then seek to engage with others on social media to ensure that your plans happen and your goals are met.

5) Listen to the Buzz

A really great way to use social media is to use it to listen to the buzz about your business. But don’t just listen. When you find something about your industry or product in general, or your business in particular you want to ensure that you respond with the right answers, links, and information so that you can get your message out to participants. If you don’t find any buzz, create it. Make your own groups, start your own discussions, and share, share, share.

6) Track, Measure & Adjust

Find out which types of content get more shares, more comments and more action. Know what your customers want to read. Ask them what they need to know. The more you can track the success of your campaigns the more you can improve. You can actually adjust and improve any campaign in progress if you have the right information.

7) Use Strategic Paid Advertisements

Paid advertisements can be very expensive if you aren’t sure why you’re doing it. When it comes to social media, run an advertisement to get more signups for your newsletter or more likes on your Facebook Page. Then market your products and services to them that way, rather than using the ads as a way to market your product directly. While at first you may not notice much of a change in traffic, you will over time because you’ll have them in your marketing funnel.

8) Use Varied Content on Social Media

Mix up what type of content you share and add to your social media updates. Use newsworthy content, evergreen content and content in different forms like video, infographics, and text. You want to write a blurb before each share in order to pique the reader’s attention and share high-quality, relevant content on a regular basis.

9) Work with Influencers

There are always going to be “rock stars” in every industry that are well known and who can highly influence your audience. Researches who these people are, connect with them, and find ways to engage with them in a way that helps you leverage their audience to spread your message. If you can get an influencer to recommend your products and/or services to others, your traffic will explode.

10) Present Content with Strong “Call to Actions”

Never send out any content on social media without a call to action (“CTA”). Your CTA must be varied, and to the point. Don’t beat around the bush. If you want your audience to share your infographic, ask them to. If you want your audience to “like” your post, ask them to. If you want your audience to click through to read the rest of something on a website, ask them to. Finally, if you want them to buy something, ask them to buy it. Tell them the benefits of doing so, and ask them to do it.

It’s clear that social media can be an important avenue to gain more traffic to your website or blog. But, it’s not going to happen automatically. You are going to have to work a little bit more to get the ball rolling. Fortunately, these tried and true tips really do work. By using them you will drive more traffic to your website from social media. Not only that, if you’re clear on your message you’ll drive targeted traffic that is ready to answer your calls to action.

Read more