How To Use Social Media For Marketing Your Online Business

6 Comments

How To Use Social Media For Marketing Your Online BusinessLast Update 10th May, 2017.

If you've got a website you need to know how to use social media for marketing your online business.

Whether you're a blogger sick of blogging into the abyss or an online entrepreneur looking for how to use social media for marketing your online business – it's time to tap into this massive well of traffic, increase your readership and put your site on the virtual map.

And here's why:

Website => Traffic => SUCCESS ($$$)

Why Use Social Media For Marketing Your Online Business?

Maybe in the past you've relied heavily on search engine traffic for your blog or online business. There's nothing wrong with that but it's time to expand your reach and start being social!

According to a recent report by Shareaholic, social media has now overtaken search engine traffic as the biggest source of blog and website traffic.

The major tectonic plates of the online traffic world shifted in December 2014 when social media referrals overtook search engines referrals.

Taking a quick look at the graph below, you can see a steady but slowly declining trend in website traffic from the search engines (Google, Bing and Yahoo) and a gradual increase in referrals from social media platforms.search traffic versus social traffic

Social media is MASSIVE – 27% of all time spent online is on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter and YouTube.

Your potential customer base now researches products and makes purchasing decisions using social media and this will only continue to increase.

82% of small businesses owners are already using Facebook to promote their business. If you haven't already, create a social media account for your online business. (More on that below)

Here's a few more reasons to use social media marketing for your online business:

why use social media to marketing your online businessl

Knowing Your Target Audience

Not all social media platforms are the same. Depending on your online business niche, you'll want to target your social media marketing efforts where you can get the best return.

This means knowing who you audience is and where they spend the majority of their time online.

Here's a quick rundown of the average demographics for each of the social giants to help you focus your time and energy where you'll get the most benefit: social media marketing target audience5 Ways To Use Social Media To Drive Traffic To Your Website

Bloggers and online entrepreneurs – can you see the nice, crisp looking social sharing buttons on the left hand side? These ones are free from SumoMe.com. You want to make it as easy as possible for people to share your content.

Here's 5 more ways to use social media to it's fullest and drive more traffic to your website:

how to drive traffic to your website through social media marketing

Getting the Most Out Of Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is a free and powerful way to drive traffic to your website. Not to mentioned it opens up the possibility of any of your posts or videos to go viral!

Here's a video from Gary Vaynerchuk on how to create a long-term social media campaign for your online business:


They key is to be careful not just to ‘dump and run’. It’s fine to add links to your blog posts but mix it up – be creative and encourage engagement

Here's a quick rundown to help you get the most of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+ and Pinterest so you can expand the reach of your website, gain new readers and more potential customers:

Facebook

facebook drive traffic to your siteIf you haven't already, creating a Facebook page for your business is easy. You can use the popular Facebook platform to share your latest promotions, build trust with your readers and build your online brand.

Be creative with your posts and have fun with it. People are much likely to interact and engage. For example, you could run a competition where your customers post pictures of themselves using your product.

Facebook is also good as people can add their own review of your website or business which only serves to build credibility to prospective customers.

Twitter

twitter drive more traffic to your websiteSet up a a free Twitter account and tweet out attention-grabbing stats and udates about your online business. Got a testimonial? Tweet it out. Reached a million views? Tweet it out.

The more interesting and unique the better. Post helpful tips and simple how-to guides, make use of images, send a quotes or updates about your online business. You'll want to use your 140 characters wisely.

Twitter is also great at interacting with potential customers, fellow bloggers and influencers within your niche.

You can also pay for ads that appear in user's Twitter timelines to increase your reach even further.

Statistics show tweets with images and videos get over 5x the level of engagement than text only tweets.

YouTube

youtube drive more traffic to your websiteYouTube is the biggest online search engine after Google. Since Google bought out YouTube in 2006, videos have also played a more prominent role within Google search results.

It's easy to create a YouTube channel specifically for your website and can be a great traffic source. See How To: Video Marketing and encourage people to subscribe, like and share your content.

Why not run a video competition where you invite subscribers shoot a quick testimonial or a video review of your product or service? Getting your viewers to vote for their favourites is a brilliant way to build engagement and get people interacting.

Don't forget to add a link to your site in the description and use the annotations feature to drive more traffic to your website.

Google+

google plus drive traffic to your websiteGoogle+ is great for marketing your online business because it enables you to create circles for your readers.

This is great at building relationships and trust and turn casual website visitors into loyal readers who are willing to follow your recommendations.

Post interesting content, ask questions, interact and always encourage feedback and comments.

Content might include your blog posts, interesting articles, product reviews, announcements about special promotions and other exclusive offers, or news.

Pinterest

pinterest drive more traffic to your websiteI have a Pinterest account for each of my niche websites and it's proven to be a reliable and growing source of traffic.

You can create a board on Pinterest for each category on your blog.

Images are key here – create a beautiful title image for each post and people’ll be repinning before you know it.

What a lot of people don't realise is that you can Pin your YouTube videos too.

How Often Should You Post To Social Media?

The balance of getting the most out of your social media marketing campaigns and posting too often can be a delicate one.

Each social media platform varies on the accepted number of times you can post each day. To help, here's a good rough guide to follow:

how-often-to-post-on-social-media

If you're looking to drive traffic to your website through social media, there's nothing wrong with pinning or tweeting a link to the same blog post more than once in a day. But there's a right way to do it.

Let me give you an example of what I typically do for TheMakeMoneyOnlineBlog.comshare to social media more than once

So as you can see, I'm posting the same link but just mixing it up a little between asking questions, getting attention by including statistics or giving the title of my blog post.

This is a smart and effective way to engage with my followers and get more traffic to my websites without coming across as ‘spammy'.

Here are a few types of social media posts you can start adding to your social media campaigns:

  • Direct and to the point: Share your latest post with a link
  • Ask for a Response: Start an online discussion by posing thoughtful or controversial questions (not too controversial!)
  • Share a Stat: Choose an intruging or shocking stat from one of your posts and share it linking back to your original post.
  • Quote a Quote: Take a quote from a post and use free services like Canva.com to create a beautiful image.
  • Rouse curiosity: Give clues to your upcoming release, build excitement and anticipation by leaving people wanting to know more.

Using this technique within your social media campaigns is a brilliant way to experiment with spicing up your social media accounts and hopefully increase engagement and driving more traffic to your website.

Try them out, test them and measure the level of engagements through the number of likes, shares and comments.

If you'd like learn more about making money from building niche websites to get traffic and sales, check out my review of Wealthy Affiliate here. Their free training course will teach you everything you need to know.

To Your Online Success!

How do you use social media to market your website or blog? What's the one thing you can apply from this post? Share your comments below!

6 thoughts on “How To Use Social Media For Marketing Your Online Business”

  1. Simon, great post! This one has been bookmarked. I really learned a lot about how to properly use social media marketing. I don’t do it quite as often as I should.

    What do you think about platforms like Statusbrew to automate posts?

    Another question is, how many posts per day for Instagram?

    Thanks! Can’t wait to get your responses 😉 Please email me if possible.

    Reply
    • Hey! Thanks for dropping by : )

      I’ve not come across Statusbrew before but I use personally use Tailwind for Pinterest and Twitter. Buffer is another good social scheduler.

      Major brands post an average of 1.5 times per day to Instagram. There’s no drop-off in engagement for posting more, provided you can keep up the rate of posting.

      I think automating social posts can be good if done in the right way, I might have to write an article on this soon. I think keeping in mind that different content works well on different channels of social media so it’s not a one size fits all here.

      Reply
  2. Hi Simon,
    This is one detailed and very well written article. It made me think more serious about social media as you showed the power of it 🙂
    I have noticed that Facebook offers an option to promote Facebook page for $5 – have you tried this option and what do you think of it?

    Reply
    • Hi Arta,

      Social media, when used in the right way, can be your blog’s biggest traffic source.

      Right now I’m playing with sponsored posts on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest and seeing mixed and interesting results. I will be writing a full article with my findings very soon!

      Reply
  3. Hello Simon,

    I’ve had a blast going through your article and I am impressed by the amount of work you have put into creating the images with the tips.

    It looks like you have already accomplished the enterpreneur dream, there is always the next level and I will certainly keep an eye on your blog as I am only a beginner.

    Cheers,

    Ivo

    Reply

Leave a comment

WANT TO START A

SUCCESSFUL ONLINE BUSINESS?

Here's how you do it the right way.