How to Drive Small Business Website Traffic: Social Media

Social media is a powerful way for your small business to drive traffic to your website, but not every social media platform is built the same. Sure, Facebook has 2 billion users, but is it actually the best platform for your business? This chapter will break down the best practices (with examples) for each of the top three social media platforms: Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. But we’ll also dive into those peripheral (but no less valuable) social platforms; Quora and Reddit. Let’s get started!

Facebook

Stats:

• 2 billion worldwide users total
• 1.18 billion daily active users
• 1.09 billion mobile daily active users
• 73% of the US adult population
• Approximately 84.9% of daily active users are outside the US and Canada
• The most evenly-distributed demographics of any social media platform

Introduction to Facebook

Nobody’s asked the question “What is Facebook?” since 2013. So I won’t pretend you don’t already know. What I will ask though, is this: What is Facebook worth to your business? Is it relevant for your industry or target market? Facebook has 1.18 billion daily active users. At least three out of every four people in the Western world (and more in some countries in Asia) sign in to post and check statuses, upload images and communicate with their social networks every single day. Think of Facebook as a trade show, with 1.18 billion people walking through every day. If you heard that was coming to town, would you see how much a booth cost? Yes, you would. Now, not every business will be able to find success on Facebook with ease, but every business needs a Page nonetheless. Your Facebook Page is likely to be the second-most-popular search result below your website. A Page will give you another avenue for potential customers to find you. It will have your address, a phone number, and a brief description. At the very least, think of Facebook as a constantly-updatable and interactive Yellow Pages. At the most, think of Facebook as potentially the greatest marketing and advertising platform out there.

Best Practices to Drive Traffic with Facebook

• Post on the weekends – 32% higher engagement
• Target your posts to your local area or the timezone (if you’re targeting multiple timezones)
• Include a Call-to-Action like “Read the full article by clicking here!” or “Check out the promotion by clicking here!”
• Use Facebook video to increase the reach of your Posts
• Offer Facebook-exclusive Discounts

Twitter

Stats:

• 230 million monthly active users
• 100+ million daily active users
• 208 followers (on average) per user
• Delivers 1 billion unique visitors to website via embedded links/month
• Fourth in usage, despite being recognized as second in popularity

Introduction to Twitter</h2 >

Twitter isn’t just a place for people to learn what Justin Bieber had for breakfast (though it’s definitely that…) It’s also a platform to reach your audience but (for many businesses), more powerfully, it’s a platform to reach individuals. Twitter is a great way for your small business to identify and reach out to your industry’s thought-leaders, influencers and big names. Don’t get me wrong,

Best Practices to Drive Traffic with Twitter

• Use hashtags to increase reach
• @Mention influencers or thought-leaders to encourage Likes and Retweets
• Use a free social media scheduling tool to give you quick access to analytics (Buffer, Hootsuite, PostPlanner, etc)
• Start with 8 posts per day and work down, measuring the whole time.
• Post multiple times for each promotion/article
  • For each promotion, write three unique tweets
  • Share each promotion once a day for three days
• If you have a national or international market, schedule posts 24 hours a day to maximize traffic.
• Test gifs (they automatically load and grab the eye of Twitter users)

Instagram

Stats:

• 500 million active users a month
• Demographically skewed towards younger demographics
• User engagement rate of 4.21% – far exceeding Facebook or Twitter
• 40 million photos shared every day
• 75% of users are outside the US

Introduction to Instagram

Instagram is (now) a subsidiary of Facebook and, with 500 million monthly users, is the second largest platform out there. It has the youngest demographic (of the larger platforms) and is the most visual-centric. Images are at the center of Instagram’s popularity and success. If your business doesn’t have an interesting-looking product, the fact of the matter is that Instagram will probably be a difficult platform to derive a solid ROI. That said, keep reading for an example of a chiropractor getting 25,000+ views on his Instagram videos…

Best Practices to Drive Traffic with Instagram

• Put more time into your images than you think you need to. Make them beautiful
• Use a plugin like Like2Buy or Have2HaveIt to monetize Instagram
• Go “behind-the-scenes” with your business
• Have a sense of humor
• Encourage user-generated content and feature it in your own feed
• Tap into holidays and current events

Driving Traffic:

• Beautifully-taken photos
• “Branded” stylistically. All the images match thematically and design-wise
• Features the person behind the brand, removing the “facelessness” aspect of many brand’s marketing
• Taps into “boomerang” and other Instagram-based tools that make the platform more powerful and add a bit of something more

Reddit

Stats:

• Averages 130 million pageviews a month
• 234 million active monthly users
• 853,000 subreddits
• 11,464 active communities
• Average visit length is more than 13 minutes

Introduction to Reddit

Reddit is a forum with some of the most engaged members out there. It runs on a platform of “sub-reddits” – themed mini-forums where members post relevant content and see it made more visible by upvoting or less visible by downvoting from other users. Some examples are “reddit.com/r/gaming” where members can post videos, images, gifs, articles and original content related to gaming. For marketing purposes, check out subreddits like “reddit.com/r/smallbusiness” or go with your industry, like /r/accounting or /r/chiropractic. With more than 850,000 subreddits, there’s something for every business.

Best Practices to Drive Traffic with Reddit

• Find a relevant subreddit and post there. Don’t post the same content on multiple subreddits.
• Don’t sell or promote obviously. If you do, subreddit moderators won’t let your post anywhere near users.
• Don’t spell anything incorrectly or have grammatical errors. Redditors will call you on it and then downvote you to oblivion.
• If posting educational content, post 75% of the value and link to the rest.
• Actively respond to comments to keep the dialogue active.

Hopefully this resource has given your small business a better idea of how you can drive traffic with different social media platforms. A few points which apply to all these networks:

• Put the time in: Social media, on all platforms, is an investment. Your posts need to be carefully created, intelligently measured, and tested. If you just throw something out there haphazardly your audience won’t grow or go anywhere near your site, and you’ll waste whatever time you spent.
• Focus on visuals: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Quora all give you a better response if your posts have visuals – images, gifs, graphs, screenshots, whatever.
• Be active in the post-posting period: After you’ve published your post to Facebook or Reddit, don’t just sit back and wait around. All these platforms need an investment of time and energy after the post has gone out. You need to actively respond to comments, ask questions, give feedback. Get the conversation going and more people will be enticed into it.