How Small Businesses Can Drive Traffic to Their Site Using Social Media

​By Rachel Durkan, Paradigm Marketing and Design
In this time of crisis as COVID-19 continues to unleash its wrath of financial, emotional and social disruption across the globe, businesses are looking for ways to remain relevant with customers on a reduced budget.  Today, more than ever, social media plays a crucial role in a business’s ability to connect with customers, as it offers an affordable path to engagement and lead-gen—if done right! 

Today, I will highlight tried-and-true (tried by me, in fact) low-cost strategies for increasing website traffic using social media.  

But before you dive in, head-first, take a moment and ask yourself a few questions:

1. What are your brand assets, and are they clearly defined?
2. What are the goals of your social media strategy? For example, do you want to drive traffic to increase hits for SEO? Are you looking to capture email addresses to draw prospects into your funnel?

With your assets in place and your goals defined, consider these three low-cost tips for driving traffic to your site:

1. Host a contest with giveaways
Sponsoring a social media contest is one of the best ways for a business to boost its online presence, increase awareness and engage with customers. Let’s face it: everyone loves a freebie. This is not a new concept. Contests, sweepstakes and raffle drawings have been integral to traditional marketing strategies for years—and for good reason: it gets people excited. The same concept applies in the digital world.

Post the contest with the giveaway across your social media channels, asking users to visit your site to enter. When they do, they’ll be prompted to input their email, which you can use to increase your subscriber list. Then announce the winner across the same social platforms.

The key here is to align your contest to your business strategy. Whether you’re in the professional services industry or consumer goods, it needs to make sense for your business. For example, a business that offers accounting advisory services might give away one free hour of consulting or a free audit, while a shop that sells yoga mats could consider giving away—you guessed it—a free yoga mat.

2. Offer thought leadership and free resources
People go to social media to be enriched in some way. Maybe they want to see what’s new with friends and colleagues or share something of their own. Or perhaps they want to learn something new. Every business has the ability to offer thought leadership—without selling—that helps their audience do something better.  Consider writing a blog post or an article once or twice a week with evergreen content that offers helpful advice, insider insights or emerging trends. Post a teaser, promote it to relevant audience segments and direct them to the blog on your site.  

You might also use social media to promote your most valuable downloadable tools, such as an on-demand webinar, an eBook or a “how to” list. Also known as lead magnets, these tools give your audience deep, robust content in an instantly downloadable format in exchange for their email address (or any other information you deem relevant).  For example, our accounting advisory services firm from above might offer a downloadable step-by-step tutorial on how to apply for PPP loan forgiveness, while the business that sells yoga accessories might tease a how-to video on five poses to boost your immune system.

3. Post about people
In my experience, the social posts that revolve around people are the ones that perform the best, statistically. In other words, humanize your social interactions to drive engagement. These “human” posts can refer to your business, such as a “meet our team” or an employee-feature post, or outside business partners and customers where you can give a shout-out (with a tag) to someone with whom you do business. You could even showcase a case study that both highlights your expertise while showing the featured customer some social media love. You can then link these posts back to the team section or a case study library on your website.
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The beauty here is that not only are you connecting with people on a more meaningful and human level, but you’re also exponentially expanding your social reach by way of your tags, which will result in more users to your site.
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As the small business community continues to wade through the crisis and prepare for its post-COVID emergence, social media will remain one of the most powerful arrows in the marketing quiver. Low-cost with the potential for broad audience reach, social media marketing offers near-limitless opportunities to connect in a fun, unique and creative way.