Your brand has most likely spent a considerable amount of time and money building your Facebook presence, but noticed none of these “likes” was converted into “pageviews”.

If you are running an online business, it’s all about attracting the right customers to your website and converting these traffic (readers or email subscribers) to buyers.

Lack of website traffic is one of the most common challenges I hear from business owners. Being able to stand out and get noticed by customers are essential in this ever-growing market with dozens of other similar websites competing for the same audience.

Marketers are continuously looking for new ways to drive relevant traffic to their website. One of the most effective ways to drive traffic is to leverage on social media. You need to know where your audiences are and prioritize your social media marketing effort accordingly. This statistic from Statista gives information on the leading sources of internet referral traffic, based on Shareaholic’s global publisher network.

Here are some actionable tips for getting traffic to your website or blog through social media. While some of these strategies won’t be a quick fix, you may be surprised at how quickly many of them start to generate results.

#1 Create or Participate in Community: Google+ Community, Facebook Group and LinkedIn Group

One of the most effective ways to attract website traffic is to become an information hub for your industry. Connect with your peers, commenters, bloggers and thought-leaders in your field, and form a virtual online community.

Become an active member of the online community – offer valuable advice and info to build relationships. Join relevant groups and check them regularly for questions that you’ve answered in one of your previous posts, respond to those questions succinctly, and provide a link to the particular blog post for more information. Be helpful/genuine and less sales-oriented. Be careful not to spam when sharing your articles to drive traffic to your website.

#2 Build Meaningful Connections

Connect with your peers, power users and brand advocates. Build connections with others in your niche – I know this sounds cliché, but building personal relationships with other thought leaders/influencers/bloggers in your niche will often result in organic inbound links and referral traffic to your website.

One way to form long-lasting connections is by reciprocating – give before you take. Drive traffic to other websites that offer valuable insights, and stay active in conversations in groups or on social media community to establish yourself and your website as a dynamic community member.

#3 Involve Influencer

One of the best ways to land a mention (or maybe even a feature!) of your business in the media is to start by connecting with the journalists, reporters, bloggers, and influencers who cover topics in your industry. You can also interview influencers in your niche –they will be very likely to promote the interview to their audience. This will open the floodgate of traffic to your website.

When you write a groundbreaking or newsworthy post, notify influencers in your field. You may be surprised at how many inbound links will be generated to your post. Don’t just broadcast on social media. Take a more active approach of engaging your users on a frequent basis, which would help to build relationships and possibly more shares and retweets of your posts.

#4 Blog and Promote on Social Media

Staying active on your blog is the easiest way to maintain a dynamic website. Social media is a great vehicle to spread your messages and share your blog. Before you know it, you’ll start reaping the SEO benefits of being consistent on generating valuable content and active on social media.

#5 Add Social Sharing Buttons

Add social sharing buttons to all of your articles and website pages. Make it as easy as possible for people to share. Whenever someone shares one of your articles or resources on social media, make sure you take the time to thank them – not only are they helping you drive more traffic, but they may also decide to share your other resources in future.

#6 Run Social Media Contests

Social media is a great place to get people excited about your products. The fastest way to get people talking is to give things away. Social contests not only spread the reach of your brand, but they are also a very cool way to collect emails. Whether you are a start-up or a large brand, you can drive new mailing lists signups by rewarding your users with discount coupons, downloads and freebies. Run these contest directly on your website to increase direct traffic.

#7 Analyze your Social Profiles

Use analytical tools to find out which social network gets you the most traffic, so that you know where to focus most of your energy.

#8 Schedule for Optimum Reach

Use scheduling tools to post updates to your website when you’re not available or want to reach out to other time zones whilst you’re sleeping.

#9 Social Media Advertising

When using Facebook ads or a promoted Tweet be sure to link back to a dedicated landing page for conversion. You can also create ads on LinkedIn that links to a lead generation form on your site. Leverage social media advertising to promote your account or a specific update, if you’re looking for faster results. This will help you get more fans/followers, and increase your engagement and traffic.

Conclusion

All of these traffic strategies are proven, but I can’t promise you overnight results. Stick to them and you will eventually get fresh visitors to your website.

Did I leave out any social media traffic strategies that have worked well for you? Give us a shout out and leave a comment below!