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How to use social media to generate traffic to your website – without spending your whole day there

Social media is a powerful marketing tool but you can waste precious time. Avoid the pitfalls with our tips.

How to use social media to generate traffic to your website – without spending your whole day there

Social media is a powerful tool to drive traffic to your business but it can also end up swallowing a huge chunk of time. Avoid the pitfalls and take a shortcut to the results with these tips.

“I create and create content but no one seems to read it!”

Many entrepreneurs can relate to this problem: while good content is a key lead generation strategy, it can be frustrating – especially in the beginning- to create new content when only a handful of people actually see it.

Social media is a great tool to guide people towards a company site or blog. Facebook alone has 2 billion users and 3,5 billion people use social media daily. So very probably your ideal client is hanging out on at least one social platform, too.

Select your channels carefully

Too good to be true? Well, of course there is the caveat of time: scrolling through social feeds and sharing content there can end up taking up hours and hours of your time.

A good social media strategy for a small business, especially early on their path, is to carefully select only one or two channels to use and focus their efforts on.

Each channel has its specific code of conduct, tone of voice and its own audience. It’s better to take time to figure out what works on that particular channel than to stretch your social media efforts too thin.

Engagement over content

Another thing to keep in mind when it comes to social media is the importance of engagement.

To encourage people to read, watch or listen to your content, engage with them first.

Ask questions, answer other people’s thread and then slip in a link to your podcast or video guide when you encounter someone who might need that information.

Often it’s wiser to spend more time interacting in different groups than feverishly spraying your links through your own page. Yes, it’s more time-consuming but it also gets better results.

Remember, you don’t want thousands of people to seeyour link – you want as many people as possible to actually clickon it and then focus on what you have to share.

Set yourself boundaries

Now that you’ve got your strategy sorted out, it’s time to talk about boundaries. It’s still way too easy to slip down the social media rabbit hole and spend hours clicking your way through friends’ engagement announcement and latest kitty videos.

Make sure you interact in social media regularly, ideally daily or at least several times a week but not hours at a time. If it helps you, set a timer to 30 minutes and after that time, head over to attend to other priorities.

Setting goals and evaluating progress regularly is crucial as well. Only what is measured can be improved.

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