social

By Evans Walsh

Have you recently checked your blog and website traffic sources? If you haven’t, we suggest you take a look at your website’s Google Analytics data right away. It is highly likely that most of your website traffic comes from social media channels. This is a wonderful example of the Pareto Principle. The posts you are sharing through your social media accounts on Facebook, twitter and Instagram amplify reach of your brand. This is similar to what the principle states, about 20% of the causes are necessary to elicit 80% of the effects.

Don’t spread yourself too thin

If you are befuddled with the option of too many social media channels, pick one with maximum chances of positive returns. While Facebook has led the social media parade for the last decade, now it’s time for Instagram to take the lead.

Follow these points carefully to find the right social media channel for your brand:

  • Find a social media channel that most of your target audience uses. Although Instagram is the leading social media marketing channel in 2017, the nature of your product will play a huge role in determining which channel you should go for.
  • Master the nitty-gritties of the new social media channel. If you are all geared up for using Instagram, do not skip the next part of this article.
  • Then either find reliable people who can handle the traffic, regular updates and optimization. Or find out a way to put the promotion/marketing on autopilot before you can move on to the next channel.

Social media advertising or marketing is not easy. Brands that have professional help find it a little less confusing. If you are a part of the DIY crowd, we will suggest you start with Instagram and then add more channels to your repertoire. Instagram has a number of features including #hashtags that makes it much easier for brands to attract the right kind of attention. Using the Insta features will actually help your website traffic and conversion rate.

Some Instagram stats to woo you

As per our 2017 survey, top brands have an engagement rate of 4.21% per follower on Insta. This is a whopping 120 times higher than user engagement rate on Twitter and 58 times higher than on Facebook. If your business makes and sells FMCG, it’s good news for you. FMCG products have the least representation on Instagram. If you increase your business activity, you will most definitely get Instagram followers.

Most of the Instagram users (>90%) are younger than 35 years. If you tag your post with another user or location, chances are, you will enjoy much higher engagement rates. In fact, when we tested this theory, we saw an increase of 56% engagement when we tagged a post with another user and a sharp 79% increase in engagement rate when we tagged a specific location.

This is a huge opportunity for struggling brands and budding businesses. Using services like Gramista is a smart way to get your hands on such usable tactics and updated statistics.

Where should you start?

There are many experts who will try to give you scores of channels and tools that you can use. Most of them keep forgetting that the simplest tools are the most powerful. So, let’s start with the modest ones here –

  • Google Analytics: If you have a website, we have the right to assume that you have a Google Analytics account as well. You can check the amount of traffic you are generating from your social media posts from the GA data. Now, find out which cannel is driving the most amount of traffic to your website. Focus on that channel only for the time being.
  • Tools for Analyzing Competitor Data: if you are new to social media and blogging, we can understand your confusion. There’s no harm is taking help from the big fish. See what your competitors are up to. Check the social media channels they use and the traffic they generate from each one of them. The best place to start is Alexa.

Here’s how you can get competitor traffic data in 2 easy steps:

  1. Select a competitor website.
  2. Go to click stream to find out where their social media traffic generates.

Knowing the tricks of the trade

Not all social media channels are equal and we already know that by now. So what are the ways you can get the maximum traffic and conversion possible when you move from one channel to another?

One easy way is to use high conversion keywords.

  • Facebook: tell us, inspire, inspiring, deals, discounts, warnings, warns, where, when.
  • Twitter: retweet, follow, social media, check out, top, help, new blog post
  • Google+: create, promote, discover, share, increase
  • Instagram: it is always better to use hashtagging tools and trackers to multiply the number of followers for Instagram.

Words are important for social media. The simple (key)words you use to describe your post metadata will make all the difference in the rate of website traffic and conversion.

Add some visual:

If you have already tried there without are significant change in conversion rates, you should definitely try adding visual content. The new feature of telling a story by including more than one picture or video on Instagram is a wonderful way to increase user engagement. Recent research shows, making use of the slideshow feature is getting brands 68% more user engagement already. This feature is present for all Instagram version 10.9 users on Android and iOS.

Social media is a wonderful way to promote your brand, increase website traffic, boost conversion and sales, and yet save money. Social media marketing done right will make your millions and save you millions at the same time.

Evans Walsh is a social media marketer. He has been working with brands on popular social media channels to increase traffic. Evans has all the tricks up him sleeve to increase engagement of your Instagram followers. He has been working with famed.co for quite some time to perfect the way to increase the number of followers for Instagram.