5.5 Tips to Get Traffic to Your Website Using Social Media

If you’ve been in one of my group programs, you may have heard me talk about this very important formula before:

Traffic + Conversion = Profits

The good news is there are only two things you need to focus on when building your business, whether it’s online or offline. Traffic and conversion, that’s it. The bad news is getting lots of traffic and high conversions is challenging for most people. They’ll put up a website or blog and then sit back waiting for the money to roll in. Does that sound familiar?

Fortunately, there are lots of ways to get traffic and increase your conversions. For today, let’s focus on getting you lots of traffic to your website. Now, there are lots of traffic generation models out there, including search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click, local search and more. But for right now, let’s focus on social media. It’s free and it’s easy once you get the hang of it.

1) Make sure you know who you’re talking to. You don’t want just any old traffic, you want targeted traffic that’s likely to be interested in buying what you’re selling. So, if you’re a local teacher–your audience is the general public in your local area. If you’re a workshop teacher–your audience is other belly dancers. If you’re a performer looking for wedding gigs–your audience is brides-to-be. Make sure your content speaks directly to your audience.

2) Write blog posts at least once a week. These don’t have to be long. And they don’t even have to be your content. If you find a great video on YouTube, post a paragraph description and embed the video. If you find a great post written by someone else, write a teaser and post a link. It’s nice to mix it up with your own writing and links to other people’s stuff. Remember, you don’t have to write if you don’t want to. Video or audio blog posts are fun too.

3) Post links to your blog post on your Facebook page. This give you fresh content on Facebook and moves people from there to your website (where the sales happen.) You can even schedule it to appear whenever you like with HootSuite or SocialOomph.

4) Post links to your blog post on your Twitter account. Again, fresh content and moves people to your website. People get into a routine with Twitter. If you’re posting at 9 am every day, you’re missing all the people who log in at noon or in the evening. So be sure you’re posting that link at different times during the day.

5) Start a YouTube channel and invite people to be friends there. Did you know you can use YouTube just like Facebook? When someone subscribes to your channel, or becomes your friend, they’ll be notified when you post a new video. That brings people back and helps them remember you. Be sure to have a link to your website prominently placed on your channel.

5.5) Here’s a bonus step: hang out where your target audience hangs out. If you’re a local teacher and want to attract traffic from the general public in your town, find other local business pages on Facebook and “Like” them. Then make it a habit to comment on their posts. People visiting the page will see you and check out your page.

Focus on building traffic to your page first, and then shift over to improving your conversion rate. And don’t get discouraged. It takes time to prime the pump before you get steady streams of traffic coming in.