Search engine optimization is a great way to bring traffic to your website. However, it also relies on people actively searching for the content that you have written. In order to really drive traffic you also have to promote your site. The idea here is to get more people coming to your website, and ultimately more people sticking around to read multiple pages. This not only improves the chances of a conversion, but also helps bring you up in the search engines.
Promoting With Social Media: Facebook
There are actually two ways you can use Facebook to drive traffic to your site. You can just publish a link to your latest content on your personal page, or you can set up a “business” page to engage your visitors more deeply.
There are perks to both forms of Facebook marketing, and since the platform is free you might as well test them both out. When using your personal page, it is important not to flood people’s news feeds with nothing but your work. Most people are using Facebook to keep in touch with their friends. They might occasionally find what you wrote interesting, but for the most part they don’t want to see only links to the written content on your website.
Starting a business style page requires a little more work, but it attracts only those that are thoroughly interested the subject matter. Here you can interact with those interested in your website. You can post small snippets of information, and post nofollow links to your site.
Promoting with Social Media: Twitter
Twitter is a great piece of social media that you can use to promote your site. In fact, many social media experts prefer to use twitter over other sources.
Twitter, unlike other social medias, is limited to just 140 characters. This means that you can only say so much before you have to put a link back to your website. The trick is to write a teasing tweet that encourages people to click back to your page to learn more.
While Facebook and LinkedIn also use hashtags, Twitter is the king of tags. By using the appropriate hashtags you can capture an audience that is outside of your realm of followers. Just don’t overdo it, and don’t put hashtags where they don’t belong #thisisnotanappropriatehashtag.
Twitter lets you build your network larger than other platforms. Instead of limiting the number of friends you can have, Twitter is essentially without a ceiling. If you tweet regularly, and you tweet useful information, you will be able to watch your list of followers grow rapidly.
Promoting with Social Media: LinkedIn
I hear a lot of people say that they don’t like LinkedIn, or that it is the worst of the social medias. I thoroughly disagree. The truth is that those people don’t quite understand how to use LinkedIn.
Compared to Facebook and Twitter, LinkedIn is actually a little difficult to use. That is until you get the hang of it. When you have figured it out, this social media is a great tool with a number of different aspects.
During one of the more recent updates, LinkedIn now lets you post content for all to read. This ability helps you in two ways. You can post an entire block of content on the site, and start earning your reputation as an expert. Or you can post a portion, with a link back to your website to bring in more traffic. If you choose the second route, make sure the beginning of your content is intriguing enough that people want to come visit.
More importantly than pushing your website, however, is the networking available with LinkedIn. For instance, if you are planning a meeting with someone, you can hop onto LinkedIn and search their contacts. Scrolling through all of their 2nd connections, that is those with whom you are not already connected, you can develop a feed name list. Then during, or after, your meeting you can ask for a referral.
Externally Optimizing Your Website
Making sure you have great content, and then maximizing the internal aspects of your site are important. But the easiest way to grow your reader base is to actively promote your website through social media. Every hour of every day there are millions of people on these sites. By making the right connections, and writing eye catching teasers, you can bring in a lot of traffic for your site, and that means more conversions and more sales for you.
If you don’t have the time or desire, you can hire out this part of your marketing strategy. While I am a writer in Billings, Montana, I also deal heavily with SEO and social media marketing. Email me or call me and learn more about how I can help you with this side of your website promotion and optimization.