Ever wondered how you could use social media (SM) to benefit your website? Here are some of our simple tips for things you could focus on first:
Research
Look at what your competition or similar sites are doing:
- Which channels are they active on?
- How does SM link with their website(s)?
- What’s their tone-of-voice on SM?
- How often do they use SM?
- What action are they pushing for?
Plan
Identify the user personas of the people you want to connect with:
- Groups/communities they belong to
- Age
- Location
- Interests
- Are there key users or customers you want to speak to?
Which SM sites are your users most likely to be on?
How much time will you allocate for this: can you afford the time to be on active on many sites, or is it better to be more focused on one or a few?
Think about what the successful or negative outcomes could come from activity.
Decide if you’re comfortable using these sites for marketing, it might not be for you and that’s ok.
Content
Think about what you would like to share and make sure it fits the personas you have identified.
Think about where you will link to and tailor it for these potential visitors. If necessary, organise your site to have landing pages from the different segments or SM channels.
Do you have enough content to share or do you need to create more. Will your content funnel visitors towards a desired action or result?
Analyse and improve
Google Analytics is useful and means you can review the results of any activity, but the numbers aren’t everything. Being present on SM helps you establish your brand and make important connections. If it feels positive then it can still bring long-term results.
Even if direct referrals from your activity are low, it can also be helping your SEO traffic.
You need to build an audience and momentum, so be patient.
Be consistent where possible, plan your activity ahead for a week or month, then review and plan again. Avoid peaks of activity and then silence for months as this can be hard to build on.
Create a checklist of things to focus on. Over time you can tweak this as you experiment and refine your workflow.
To save time, see if you can reuse or automate responses to certain steps.
Watch out for steps that can be carried out with an app or program. Perhaps check out the Buffer App to see if it can help.
Personas database
At some point you may want to invest some of your advertising budget in SM marketing to attract the right people to your organisation/business.
If this is something you might want to try in the future, start by organising the contacts you already have.
Create an emailing list of users you want to target – this can be from customers or people that have signed up to get email updates.
Later you can use those contact details to target your marketing to return visits or attract new similar visitors.
Overall strategy
Combine your Social Media activity, SEO strategy, and email marketing to get the best overall results for your site.