Three Must Do Social Media Strategies and Best Practices
After setting up a web hosting plan and launching a website, a common question of many webmasters is how to bring more visitors to their website. The first thing that often comes to mind is using search engine optimization (SEO) to get their site to rank in Google. While SEO is a very effective way to bring targeted traffic to a site, it is also a slow process. Getting a website to rank in Google can sometimes take several months. A quicker way to bring targeted traffic to a new website is through social media.
Here are three basic strategies that will help you get a new site discovered through popular social networks.
- Make Content Easy to Share
The first and most important step is to make sure your website content can easily be shared with others on the popular social networking sites. This is done by including social media sharing buttons on the pages of your website. I recommend including buttons for Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and other popular social networks – but don’t overwhelm them with too many options. You should place them in a prominent location on the pages of your site so that they can be found easily when someone wants to share your content with their friends and followers. You can use widgets provided by third parties like AddThis or ShareThis to help you format the buttons and code them into the pages of your site. - Create Social Profiles
The next step is to create social media profiles for your website or blog on Facebook, Twitter and Google+; give them custom design associated with your site. Once you have your profiles created, you should link to them from your website by placing the social network badges on the pages of your site. Whenever you post new content, or make any updates to content, you should be sure to share it with your followers on your social profiles. - Growing Your Social Presence
With your social profiles set up and all the buttons on your website, you can work at growing your social presence. The best and most simple way to increase your presence is by being active on your social profiles. You should post often and mix it up so that all your posts are not self-promotional. Post fun facts, contests and links to industry related news. You can also join networks like Dizzle to connect to others that have similar interests and increase the chances of getting your content shared; sign up with Dizzle here.
Social media is a great way to connect to people who have similar interests and send targeted traffic to your website. As you get more involved you will see more traffic come from the social networks that you are active on. The added bonus to this is the impact social signals have on search engine rankings. Google is using social signals to measure the quality of websites and website content. Actively promoting content on social media can help improve your search engine rankings and send you even more targeted traffic.
Check out this video of Matt Cutts, from Google, explaining how they use social media for search results.
How has social media helped you? Please share your thoughts in the comments!
About the Author: Dustin Williams is a Search Engine Marketing expert and the Global SEO Manager for MidPhase, a domain registration and website hosting services provider. He has been practicing SEM and optimizing websites since 2004. Follow Dustin on Twitter: @WebGazelle.