Posted by There is no doubt that the internet is a tool used for social interaction; there are hundreds, if not thousands of social networks and social media sites. Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Myspace; the list is endless.
As an entrepreneur or small business owner, you can cash in on this social media boom and use these sites to help drive traffic to your website. In some cases the traffic can be very targeted and in others not so much; it all depends on the social media sites you focus your efforts on. Here are five ideas you might want to take action on to get potential clients or customers to your business website.
1) Use Social Bookmarking Sites to get your site noticed – Sign up to services such as Digg, Reddit or Delicious and bookmark your site. These sites are hugely popular and can provide a steady stream of traffic if you feed them good content. You have to be careful not to submit just your own site as this could get you banned. Use these services to submit your content as well as other useful and interesting content you find on your internet travels.
2) Create Social Networking accounts – Most people nowadays have some sort of presence on social networking sites; Facebook probably being the most popular. It’s all very well having your account on Facebook but do you actually use it? If the answer is no, then what are you waiting for? Update your profile and also think about setting up a fan page for your business. Invite your friends to take a look at your page and sign up to it. Slowly but surely you will start to get more traffic to your fan page and from there you can direct them to your website or blog.
3) Contribute to Forums – Join specific forums which are related to your industry or niche and make contributions by answering other people’s queries or providing relevant comments to posts. Whatever you do, don’t Spam! All that will do is get you thrown off the Forum! Just be natural and provide interesting thoughts and viewpoints. If someone likes what you are writing, they will most probably click on the link to your website- more traffic for your site.
4) Add a “tell a friend” or “Share this” button to your website or blog – These are basic buttons strategically placed on your site that allow visitors to either send the page they are reading – it could be an article – to someone they know might be interested in it or they could “Bookmark” the page on their preferred social bookmarking site. (You can see that I use the Share This button at the end of all the posts on my blog).
5) Tweet your way to more Traffic – As is the case with Facebook, use of micro blogging platform Twitter has gone mad! It seems everyone is using this popular service in some shape or form! Used correctly it could provide you with some targeted traffic; you must be careful how you use it though. I would personally refrain from telling everyone who follows you on Twitter about what you had for breakfast. Chances are they are not interested; just keep your Tweets relevant and provide links to useful information that your readers will be grateful for.
There you have it, 5 quick ideas to help you generate traffic through social media. As with everything, this stuff only works if you implement it. It can all get a little overwhelming but if you take it a step at a time, you will start driving traffic to your site. I’d love to hear about how you use Social Media for generating traffic; feel free to let me know in the comments section below.