Almost 60% of the world’s population now uses social media. Besides, people are now spending unprecedented amounts of time on these platforms – this is massive traffic that you can leverage to grow your business efficiently.
Marketers universally agree that boosting social media traffic is key to improving such metrics as leads, conversions, ROI, and sales.
And the good news is, attracting people to your website through increased social media traffic doesn’t have to be costly at all. In fact, forget about centering your traffic boost strategy only around paid ads.
Instead, consider these 6 ideas on how to drive up social media traffic without investing in advertising.
1. Make Your Content More Shareable
Social media is all about interaction and quick information exchange. Make sure your content fits the criteria of shareability – that is, people can easily access and share it with others, spreading it around the web and increasing the visibility of your brand.
If you want to instantly boost the shareability of your content, you can opt for a number of simple steps, including:
- Social share/ social media plugins and buttons on your web page. Place them on top of the page – people are usually too lazy to scroll all the way down, and you wouldn’t want them to miss the share buttons. You can also stylize them or highlight the buttons with the help of an unusual layout. Including social buttons in a popup of your email newsletter signup form can also work.
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More visuals added to your content. People are more likely to engage with visual content since it is easily digestible and eye-catching. That’s why if you want to drive more social media traffic to your website, you need to accompany your content with relevant images that will attract your audience and compel them to learn more about what you have to offer. Use graphics, charts, schemes, illustrations, photos (including user-generated content), etc.
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Hashtags. Hashtags are a great tool to enhance the visibility of your business across social media. Combine your unique branded hashtag with other trending hashtags on social media platforms – people will use them to find more content related to your business.
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Optimization of content for various social media. Different platforms have different content focus – Twitter is all about short text and concise images, Instagram is a place for visuals, and TikTok is home to dynamic video content. Keep these differences in mind when you create your social media messages and posts. Remember: you don’t need to increase your online presence on every social media platform out there – choose those that will benefit your business the most.
2. Share Free Educational Materials
Consumers love getting stuff for free – this is a powerful incentive that makes people want to stick around with a business. And it’s not only about strictly material rewards such as coupons, discounts, and gifts.
In fact, an effective way to incentivize people to visit your website is to offer valuable information and/or knowledge relevant to your business niche and share it via social media.
You can share multiple types of valuable information such as:
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Free consultations, test drives, demo versions of your services;
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Free reports;
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Embeddable materials (images, graphs, etc.);
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Templates;
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Tutorials.
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Short clips of a podcast you host (Joe Rogan does this very well)
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Providing educational materials to your audiences across social media does not only increase the shareability of your content but also boosts your social proof. You can post links to these materials on various social media platforms. Twitter and Facebook users are especially attentive to this type of content.
Pro-tip: make sure to emphasize that the materials are free in your posts/letters/notifications – use eye-catching buttons and links as well as a different font underlying the word “free”. People will be more likely to click on them.
3. Boost Your Engagement with Your Audience
Boosting social media traffic is not only about posting quality content and turning to platform optimization.
Social media engagement with your followers is no less important when it comes to getting the word out about your blog, business, or brand.
By actively interacting with your audiences online, you will establish a stronger bond with your potential customers/users and motivate them to engage with your content even more profoundly as well as keep coming back to your webpage and clicking on your links.
To improve engagement on social media, you can take several simple steps:
- Reply to your followers’ comments, tweets, mentions, etc. This direct communication proves valuable because people feel that you care about them and are attentive to their needs as followers or customers;
- When posting social media content, ask them questions and initiate discussions;
- Organize contests and challenges for your followers;
- Leverage UGC – repost photos, videos, and other materials users create in relation to your brand. Encourage your audiences to create content related to your business as well;
- Take advantage of such features as polls and quizzes to encourage people to participate and share their opinions about your products, services, and content;
Organize Q&As. For example, you can go live on the social media platform of your choice and answer your followers’ most burning questions. 
4. Write Better Calls to Action (CTAs)
Never underestimate the power of a quality call-to-action if you want to boost social media traffic to your webpage. Besides, CTAs are essential to sales growth.
A killer CTA will tell your audience exactly what you’ll get by clicking on a given link. If your CTA is vague or generic, users will simply keep scrolling past it, never making it to your website.
To make sure your call to action makes a real impact on the organic traffic to your page, turn to these time-tested guidelines:
- Use strong verbs and emotionally charged adjectives in your CTA;
- Keep them short – 3-6 words is optimal;
- Create a sense of urgency: use encourage your audience to click on your link “now”, shop with you “today”, and suggest they “don’t miss out on” what you have to offer;
- Get creative with your phrasing.
Boost your social media traffic without spending money on ads!
5. Consider Guest Blogging
Guest blogging is another way to increase your media traffic along with bringing extra credibility and recognition to your brand.
Guest blogging is essentially the practice of creating and publishing content on websites and social media profiles of other companies and brands. You can write guest blog posts yourself or hire a freelance writer to do it for you.
If you are an expert in your business niche or industry and you feel like you can offer valuable knowledge to various audiences out there, guest blogging is for you.
There are multiple added benefits to guest blogging/posting you will get if you choose this practice:
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- Establishing networking and connecting to other businesses, influencers, bloggers, and brands;
- Increasing search engine ranking (especially if you use backlinks);
- Growing your share rate;
- Driving up the number of your social media followers;
- Generating leads;
- Promoting brand awareness.
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Besides, guest blogging and guest posting are valuable sources of feedback that creates more engagement with your content and can help you grow your business more effectively.
6. Watch Your Key Metrics
This tip is relevant to whatever strategies to increase your social media traffic you decide to implement.
To track your progress and see how you can improve your performance further, it is crucial to pay attention to the key metrics related to your social media activity. These may include:
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- Follower number. See how many people join your social media audience;
- Follower growth rate. Even more important than the total number of your followers is the growth dynamic. Consistently losing followers or being stagnant is a sign you should change your strategy;
- The number of mentions. This metric is a good indicator of brand awareness;
- Total reach. This metric shows the number of people who see your content (even if one user sees it more than once);
- Engagement rate. This metric covers the activity on your social media pages, including likes, comments, shares, reposts, etc. Engagement rate tells a lot about your content quality;
- Click-through rate. This rate indicates the number of clicks the links to your content get divided by the number of times your people see these links. A low click-through rate may mean that you’re not hitting the right audiences, which leads to lower social media traffic.
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Monitor your performance across these key metrics to constantly adjust and improve your social media strategy that will allow you to meet your traffic goals.
Final Thoughts About 6 Tips to Get More Social Media Traffic Without Paying for Ads
As you can see, getting more social media traffic does not have to be all about paid ads. You can leverage cost-effective ways to grow your traffic by managing your content format, sharing valuable materials, actively engaging with your social media followers, and cooperating with other businesses or bloggers.
You can choose one of these strategies or combine several of them to improve your results even faster.
Don’t forget to keep monitoring your performance across the key social media metrics in order to understand what works best for your business.
And of course, stay on top of the social media trends to make the most of your activity on various platforms.
Growth Hackers is an award-winning digital marketing and growth hacking agency helping businesses from all over the world grow. There is no fluff with Growth Hackers. We help entrepreneurs and business owners get more social media traffic, increase their productivity, generate qualified leads, optimize their conversion rate, gather and analyze data analytics, acquire and retain users and increase sales. We go further than brand awareness and exposure. We make sure that the strategies we implement move the needle so your business grow, strive and succeed. If you too want your business to reach new heights, contact Growth Hackers today so we can discuss about your brand and create a custom growth plan for you. You’re just one click away to skyrocket your business.
1 Comment
Guest blogging works well David. Blog on sites aligned with your niche for the best results. Engaging on social media is easy. Talk to people lol. Drop comments on blogs. Being social makes a big difference on social media. It makes the difference.