Starting an online store requires you to learn a lot of new things, but one of the most important aspects of an online store is the marketing strategy. Without proper marketing goals, and a strategy to reach those goals you’ll quickly find that you struggle to grow as a brand. You’ll also struggle to find your audience, build a community and make sales. This is where social media can come in and shine.
Social media platforms can provide you with some really great paid and free traffic opportunities to help you accomplish all your marketing goals. With that being said, here are some tips to increase your social media presence while driving traffic to your online business.
Post Consistently on Social Media
There’s a saying, that consistency is the key to success and that’s definitely true when it comes to social media. If you want to increase your engagement and ultimately traffic than it’s important to be consistent in both posting and engaging with others.
Don’t worry, constantly posting doesn’t necessarily mean posting every day. It just means making a commitment to post regularly. Here are some common guidelines for posting on various platforms:
Blog: 1-7 times a week
Facebook: 3-10 times per week
Twitter: 5+ times a day
LinkedIn: 2-5 times per week
Instagram: 1-3 times a day
Google+: 3-10 times per week
Pinterest: 5-10 times per day
Youtube: 1-7 times a week
Obviously posting on all of these platforms is a lot, so don’t sabotage yourself by trying to do it all. Instead, strategically pick the platforms that you believe will work best for your brand, and also repurpose content across a variety of platforms.
For instance, if you make a blog post, also create a picture, video, infographic, and podcast using the same information. This will save you time and energy.
In addition, you can always curate content from others to share with your audience as well. A good way to figure what you need to curate is to create an editorial calendar.
Share Value
Constant sales pitches and self-promotion might scare potential clients away. So instead, focus on producing, sharing, and curating content that adds value to your audience. Sharing things of interest will help increase engagement, user experience and brand awareness which will ultimately result in more traffic and more sales. The three types of content you should consider using in your brand strategy include content that will educate, entertain, and inform your clients.
Encourage Reviews
Since most customers will read a review before making a purchase it’s important to have those reviews easily accessible on social media. The best way to get these reviews is to have incentives for your current customers or to monitor your brand and repost what your customers are saying. This is a type of social proof that will help build customer trust and ultimately will drive more traffic and sales.
Use Visual Content
Earlier we talked about posting consistently and using various types of content to meet your posting goals. One thing we didn’t talk about, however, is how visual content, in particular, can create higher engagement. Remember that engagement directly correlates to traffic to your website, so if you want to stand out to your followers, make your content visually appealing.
Use Hashtags
Although hashtags have been incorrectly utilized for several years now, proper hashtag use can still be beneficial to your brand.
In brief, hashtags work by allowing you to connect your content to a particular interest. So for instance, if you’re a food company, then you would use food-related hashtags such as #food, #foodie and #veganlife. Using hashtags properly is a great way to expand the reach of your posts to a new audience. It’s also a great way to find people to collaborate with.
Create Relationships with Influencers
Another way to drive traffic from social media is to use someone else’s following. Influencers are those who have a strong connection to their audience and they’re perfect for this. Focus on finding one or two influencers to build a genuine relationship with. After all, having an influencer on your side is like having a really devoted customer with hundreds of thousands or millions of friends.
So, there you have it! These are some core social media marketing strategies designed to help you drive social media traffic onto your online store and ultimately increase your engagement, brand awareness and conversions.