Social media leads to your website
Many companies are under the impression that social media is just a fad, a job to keep the interns busy. These people are wrong. Social media can be an extremely valuable tool and help drive traffic to your website, broadening your audience, increasing advertising revenues and, depending on the purpose of your website, selling your product.
But why is social media beneficial to your website and in what ways can it help? Here is an outline of some of the key ways that social media can improve the results you are getting from your marketing
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What social media should I use?
The most used forms of social media are Twitter and Facebook. Twitter is a great way of posting short, snappy bulletins with links to your website when relevant. On the other hand, Facebook has room to write longer posts and there are many more functions such as embedded media.
DIY website builders are also known to make it easy for people to share their content and products on social media with built in sharing features. A brilliant example of an easy to use DIY website builder is Moonfruit.com. Not only do these templates allow you to share your content and products easily, but they make your website more accessible and attractive.
Alongside Facebook and Twitter, there is plenty of other social media out there to take advantage of, such as YouTube, LinkedIn and Instagram; consider the focus of your website and what could work for you.
Develop your online voice
Social media platforms, be it Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or YouTube, give you the perfect opportunity to be heard, build a reputation and ultimately develop your online voice.
Via social media, you can create a strong and consistent voice, which can be in whatever style you want your brand to project – formal, chatty, funny, inspirational, hip, topical or just about anything you want.
It is worth thinking carefully about which route you want to go down and sticking to one style. Study some of your favourite brands and look for what they are doing.
Customer relationships
Your customers make your business. Without them, you would not be doing what you do. Social media is a great way of communicating with your customer base. Whether it is via Facebook or Twitter, communicating with your customers is an easy way to improve, build and heal relationships.
You can answer questions, interact with customers who are enjoying your product or content on your website, and even launch competitions and give away prizes. Strict rules do apply to social media competitions, however, so be sure to check the medium’s terms and conditions before launching.
Increase your audience
Social media is a great way of marketing your website. You can increase traffic simply by tweeting content with links. With millions of people using Twitter every day, you have an incredibly huge audience in front of you.
One of the best ways to find your audience is to tweet hash tags alongside links to the content on your website. People can then search for hash tags, for example ‘#football’ or ‘#italianfood’, and your tweets then show up. Once you have the audience, it is important to make your site navigable and interesting to ensure they stay.
This guest blog is presented by Moonfruit, a company that enables individuals and small businesses to start a free website using their simple and intuitive DIY website builder. Visit their homepage if you’re interested in starting up a free website.
