Improve Conversion With These Social Media Tactics

The concept of using social media outlets to market a business or a brand is no longer “new”. In fact social media marketing is now simply just “marketing”. Social media is where the people clearly are, since millions sign in to one or more accounts on a daily basis. Of course, social media for business use and social media for personal use are two completely different things. While it may be OK to figure things out as you go for personal use, social media for business requires organization in order to generate conversions and improve the bottom line.

To improve social media conversion rates, it’s necessary to do the following:

Develop a strategy with goals in mind
Think about all of the other marketing activities that you participate in. You wouldn’t run an ad in a publication without researching the demographic that it caters to, right? And you wouldn’t pay for a booth at a trade show without proper planning, correct? Social media for business requires the same careful planning and execution. Just jumping in blindly and trying to figure things out as you go is a recipe for disaster and wasted time and resources.

Create campaigns that have a timeframe
Think about the seasonality of your business or what people are looking for during certain times. If you’ve just released a topical white paper, that should be the focus of your social media efforts in the short term. Once that campaign is over, evaluate the results and then move on to the next one.

Add call to actions
You never want to assume that your social followers will know what steps to take next so make a point of telling them. Don’t just post a link to your most recent blog post without any commentary. Tell followers why they should click on it and what the benefit is to them. What will they get out of reading it? Why should they share it? Prove that each of your posts has a specific purpose.

Incorporate social sharing buttons
Obviously you will be sharing and promoting your own content in social media. But not everybody that lands on your blog post came from social media. Maybe they found it in the search engines or maybe another blogger linked over to it. In order to really build up your social signals you want others to share your content in social media. Adding social sharing buttons to all content makes it easy for people to do so.

Optimize social profiles
Each social network is slightly different and allows you to provide different information about your business. Be sure to include as much information as possible including links back to your website. The social handle should be recognizable and obvious that it is, in fact, an account owned by your business. In order for a social campaign to be successful, your accounts need to be found and followed.

Measure
In order to improve upon your social strategy you need to know what’s working and what isn’t. Check your analytics to see what social activity is bringing visitors to the pages of your site. This will tell you what kind of content is the most successful and which networks drive the most traffic and will help you narrow your focus.