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Web traffic is widely believed to be a vanity metric, but without it, your business is like an isolated, lonely island. As a traffic generation tool, social media can give your brand the exposure it needs to win leads, bag sales, and boost revenue. Read on to discover four amazing social media tactics that can turn a trickle of traffic into a steady stream.

#1 : Make your posts stand out by leveraging the strengths of different social networks

A tweet that includes an image draws more attention than a text-only tweet. In fact, photos can boost retweets by up to 35 per cent. The aesthetic quality of images encourages engagement and shares.

Aristotle said ‘there can be no words without images’; the shift to visual social media has occurred, and unless you’re communicating using images, you could be missing out on engagement and reach. The use of photo tweets to position your product, service or event compellingly before your target audience is perhaps the simplest way to increase clicks and traffic.

On Google+, you can include a longer copy and markdown text to give readers a good glimpse into the posts on your blog. You can highlight the important points of your post and motivate readers to read the full post. The ability to provide short snippets of your long-form content will encourage serious readers to build a lasting connection with your brand.

Everyone, from fashion bloggers to Fortune 500 companies on Facebook are using videos to capture and retain fans. Videos are a more engaging format on Facebook, receiving billions of views each day. Video posts have a higher organic reach than photos, link posts and text-only statuses. Mark Zuckerberg expects video to make up most of the content on the social network in the near future.

Videos can be used in a number of ways : show how to use your product/service/new feature, tell your brand story, entertain, embedded to play in blog posts, and more.

#2 : Get traffic from your LinkedIn page

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The whole point of a LinkedIn presence is to network with clients, peers and prospects. As a professional network, LinkedIn is all business and practically no entertainment, which may very well be its USP. If you’re on LinkedIn, you’re actively trying to identify business opportunities and increase brand exposure. As is everyone else on the site, a reason why LinkedIn accounts for 64 per cent of all referral traffic to businesses from social networks.

A basic tactic is to use relevant customized link text that motivates readers to explore your business a bit more. You need to give them enough incentive to visit your site. That means replacing link text such as ‘my website’ or ‘my blog’ with ‘see a 10x increase in website traffic’ or ‘transform your kitchen design’.

You may be already publishing posts on LinkedIn to earn new followers and boost traffic to your website. Your followers get notified after you publish a post, but not all of them may be active or choose to read your post. To improve click-through and drive more traffic to your website, aim to get featured in LinkedIn Pulse.

Pulse is LinkedIn’s self-publishing platform, a business news digest, a library of commentary and insights, with 50,000 articles added every week. Posts on Pulse average 9,700 views, 30 comments and 230 likes. Pulse stories are also sent to millions of users through the email digest.

Only posts with a large number of likes, shares, comments and views – as determined by LinkedIn’s algorithms – are featured on Pulse. Try to put out quality long-form posts on a consistent basis and drive a ton of traffic to your website.

#3 : Get some help from influencers

It doesn’t hurt to draw on some of the clout and trust enjoyed by influencers in your niche to get your brand noticed online. Depending on your industry, an influencer can be an analyst, expert, critic, decision-maker or even a celebrity.

You may already be following a few industry influencers or be aware of some. If not, you can search for influencers on social networks. On Facebook, for instance, add a relevant keyword or phrase to see who has a large following and an authoritative voice in your industry.

Once you’ve identified the top ten or fifteen influencers, start engaging actively with them. This will involve liking their content, and sharing and commenting on their posts; and joining the Facebook group they’re on and interacting with them. Also explore the possibility of giving them a positive review without coming off as promotional or needy.

Follow the same tactics for Twitter, making sure that you regularly post your own content, get noticed by influencers and stay on their radar. On LinkedIn, you can start by sending influencers a connection request and sharing their posts.

Neil Patel recommends interviewing influencers to grow your blog audience. You can then publish a long-form post with a wealth of information that serious readers will appreciate and share. Patel suggests identifying a question to ask your top five, ten or fifteen experts, and letting them know that you will be linking back to their website. Once you’ve received positive responses from a few experts, email the remaining, and – to hasten response – state the names of those who’ve agreed to share their guidance.

After publishing your post, email all the participants and request them to share your post on social networks. You can even give them a custom message to share.

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Get more tips on leveraging influencers on social media here. Also check out Refuel’s award-winning influencer campaign ‘Got Chocolate Milk?’ here.

#4 : Include high conversion keywords

Can some words perform better than others in generating more social media traffic? Studies suggest that words used in social media content and blog post titles can influence the perceived value of the content being shared. Some words can encourage readers to participate or take action while others can have a deterrent effect.

For instance, words like ‘sweepstakes’, ‘coupon’ and ‘contest’ on Facebook can be off-putting for some people who may view them as being aggressively promotional. Their replacement words ‘winning’, ‘win’, and ‘events’ can be more successful in attracting fans to your contest. Other high conversion keywords on Facebook include ‘where’, ‘discounts’, ‘submit’ and ‘inspire’. The words that stand out on LinkedIn include ‘increased’, ‘created’, ‘improved’, ‘reduced’ and ‘under budget’.

Try these Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook marketing tips, and share your feedback with us.

Image Credit : Pixabay