Congratulations! Your website has launched and it looks great. Now all you have to do is wait and prepare for that flood of traffic everyone gets and watch those visitors transform into sales, right?
When you started your business or group, how many people knew about you in your earliest days? If you didn’t pin up posters, tell some loud-mouth friends to spread the word, or advertise traditionally, chances are that traffic was probably very light or even non-existent. The same holds true with your online presence. The work doesn’t stop once you launch your website. Actually, driving visitors to your website or (online marketing) and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) never stops.
The Internet is a fast-paced heartless beast that needs constant attention if you want your site to be found by your ideal customers. You need to advertise, to promote and to shout as loud as you can in order to be found among the competition. So how can you do this without seeming to be aggressive or without throwing thousands of dollars into online advertising? Many well-known websites have done wonders without ever spending a dime on traditional advertising. They simply jumped into social media sites and made their voice known there. They created content on their website that potential customers found interesting and then they (the customers) helped everyone else know where to find it.
Social media is the marketer’s friend. It does not matter what you are selling or what services you offer, there will be at least one network that you can benefit from investing your time in. The most popular networks to use for business include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest and the first step to help promote your website is to create business profiles on all of them.
How to Optimize Your Social Media Profiles
There are a few ways you can create a solid base on each network from which to grow.
1. Branding
You want to be recognised in an instant and one way to do this is to coordinate all of your social media profiles in a way that relates to your website. Most networking sites allow for customisation in the form of adding profile pictures banner and cover photos and background images. Use these opportunities to strengthen your branding and unify all of your profiles. Don’t have your logo all over Facebook and be non-existent on Twitter, for example. Take advantage of displaying what your business is and how it can help potential customers. If you’re a musical group, let everyone know right away what kind of music you play and who you’re infuenced by.
2. Inbound Link Building
Social networks provide businesses with many opportunities to place links leading to their websites in profile pages. Surprisingly, many organisations fail to make the most of this and therefore miss out on boosting their inbound links. Social media is a great place to interact with potential clients, but always link them back to your primary website to make the sale. To ensure this, make sure you complete each and every link opportunity in your bio and remember to tie in all of your other social networking locations too.
3. Let Customers Push Your Buttons
Add the social media buttons to all of your profile and blog pages directly on your website and make them easy to locate. The buttons can increase your community growth as visitors to your site are able to quickly give you a “like” or become one of your followers in seconds. If they “share” your content with others, that’s more people they will be pointing to your website so you can make the sale with them also.
4. Become a Social Media Master
Once you have your profiles, the next step is to start engaging with your target audience. Social media is not about the hard sell. Your new website was built for that. You need to be subtle, entertaining, informative and friendly in order to succeed. Hard sells look like commercials and if we have the opportunity, we’d all fast-forward past those or change the channel. I know I do.
In closing, new websites are great to tell your existing customers about with they visit. They will think you’re business is keeping up with the times, growing, etc. That’s great. However, the best reason for a new website is to create a steady stream of new customers. The new website isn’t going to pull them in unless they find it. SEO is great for people searching for you in a search engine – when they know they need your service. However, more and more people are spend their online time engaged in social media. That’s why you need to jump in where they are and raise your flag. Doing this will better ensure that they do a search for your name next time rather than the service you provide.
