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5 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Website from Social Media

The post 5 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Website from Social Media appeared first on HostGator Blog . Everyone is spending time on social media. It’s the hangout spot for people to chat with their friends and get the latest updates on their favorite TV shows. It’s also a place for you to attract new customers to your brand. It’s important for people to engage with your website. However, social networks are doing their absolute best to keep people in-platform. But you can change all that! Here are five social media tips for your brand to get people to actually visit your website. 1. Optimize Your Profile It’s very likely for potential customers to learn about your brand on social media before they even land on your website. So, you’ll want to make a good first impression. You’ll need two key people from your team: a graphic designer and a copywriter. The designer will ensure your logo and profile images represent your brand well. You may need to adjust the color schemes or image sizes to maximize your brand’s visibility. Then, work with your copywriter to draft a creative message about your business. You can use your tagline or meaningful saying that will strike an emotional chord with your followers. Here’s an example from Califia Farms . Their Instagram profile shows a clear image of their logo. Plus, the copy sparks curiosity and spotlights their plant-based mission. Lastly, you want to lead people to your site with a link. Experiment with your homepage or a specific landing page. Your goal is to increase traffic and keep your new visitors’ attention. 2. Tease Exclusive Content Consumers love the velvet rope treatment. That’s when a few people receive access to a special offering. It gives people a sense of belonging and labels them as part of the “cool kids” group. Exclusivity can encourage more people to visit your site. Julie Neidlinger , writer, artist, and pilot from North Dakota, provides her perspective: “Exclusivity works because, frankly, people like to be in on the secret. Exclusivity makes people want something. If they can’t have it, they want it all the more. Some of us take a bit of pleasure when others are excluded (though we’d rather not admit that).” Use this strategy to your advantage by only posting links to specific content on your social media channels. For instance, let’s say you did an interview with a well-known expert. You can post the link to the video only on your Facebook account for 48 hours. That exclusivity will motivate your followers to click the link to your site. Another idea is to announce product releases on social media. It’ll prompt your audience to follow you on social media and visit the official announcement page. It’s a win-win for everyone: your fans get the exclusive perk and your brand gets traffic. 3. Engage Followers Directly Social media has earned a bad reputation because businesses like to rely on too many automated processes. This dependence on automation hinders brand engagement. Your customers want personal attention, not a bot sending them a canned response every single time they reply to your social account. To truly get people to your site from social media, you must engage them directly. So, invest in hiring (or outsourcing) a part-time social media manager to craft direct responses to your followers. Whether it’s a potential customer looking for a quick answer or a long-time customer needing assistance, you want someone to provide a unique reply in a timely manner. Footwear and apparel brand Vans offers a good lesson on how to connect with your social media audience. Below the company provides a friendly reply along with a recommended site for the customer to visit. When directing followers to your site, make sure it fits their needs. Matching the right page with their current issue ensures a positive outcome. 4. Connect with Influencers When building your marketing plan, don’t forget the power of relationships. Your team shouldn’t be tackling every task in a silo. Instead, recruit influencers to help you spread your message and get people to your site. Choose influencers within your industry that align with your brand’s values and goals. David Zheng, former contributor to The Daily Egg, offers his insight: “It can be excruciatingly overwhelming to track down influencers…The key to finding the right influencers is to remember that the more you know about your target, the better you can create a pitch that will engage and sell them on your idea.” You’ll want to draw up an agreement highlighting the expectations for the influencer partnership . Will the individual retweet specific posts? Or will the person post about your business three times a week on his account? Moreover, give influencers creative control to develop new social media ideas for your brand. Maybe they can post a series of funny videos or do a takeover on your Twitter account. These innovative approaches will earn your business more traffic. 5. Promote Special Deals A good deal is hard to find. That’s why customers are happy when they find a coupon for their favorite brand. Customers will even go the extra mile to locate a promotional code before purchasing products in their online shopping carts. You brand can leverage people’s need to save money. Start by offering special discounts on your social media accounts. It can be a one-time holiday offer or monthly deals just for your followers. These incentives will get people to your site, and it gives visitors a reason to buy from you now, rather than later. Check out this example below from Letterfolk . On Facebook, the brand is showcasing a special 20% discount on all their inventory for their Mother’s Day Sale. Like any good marketing strategy, don’t overload your customers. You shouldn’t post discounts every day. Also, state any restrictions about the coupon upfront. The last thing you want is followers upset because their coupon doesn’t apply to the items in their cart. Driving Traffic From Social Media to Your Website Social media is all the craze, but you need visitors to come to your site. From profile optimization to direct engagement, there’s an opportunity for your brand to get more traffic. Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading

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4 Great Examples of Video Content that Converts on Social Media

The post 4 Great Examples of Video Content that Converts on Social Media appeared first on HostGator Blog . They say, “Content is king,” but that’s only true if you are creating the right type of content for your target audience. And when it comes to social media marketing, it’s all about video content. Text and blog content will always have a value and place of its own, but video is getting all of the attention, buzz and engagement when it comes to Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram users. When used correctly, it’s also been a huge influencer in higher site conversions as well. With this in mind, today we are going to be looking at four different ways to create video content for your social audiences, while also growing your reach, conversions, and engagement in the process. 1. Create Videos Based on Current Events and Existing Viral Content One of the many benefits to focusing your efforts on video content, is that most of the time a lot of the work is already done for you. With blogging, whall of your content has to be original, but things are completely different with video and images. Everyone is always sharing the same stuff, and making memes, and we often really never know who the original creator or uploader was. A perfect example of this can be seen here . We’ve probably all seen the video of the people in the boat, who aren’t sitting down and are going way too fast. End result, they fly all over the place and the video goes viral. But the reason why this particular example is so perfect, is because “ Rick Lax’s Favorite Videos ” (which currently has 1.6 million Facebook fans) is killing it with videos that have already gone viral. They simply add their own text and commentary to each and republish them under their own channel. This video example alone has more than 50k shares and over 17 million views. 2. Grab Attention with Whiteboard and Text Animation Videos As wonderful as video can be for social media, it’s not simply a matter of uploading a video and then seeing results. When the thought of video comes to mind, many people shy away because they either have no idea how to create them, or they don’t want to spend a lot of money on a design team. Just like anything else, you need to create content that grabs the attention of your audience and makes them want to stop scrolling through their news feed. An excellent way to accomplish this is through the use of whiteboard and text animation videos. These types of videos are also very affordable and easy to make. Using a tool like mysimpleshow makes the video creation quite simple, as you just need to grab images, add text, and then move them around to your liking. Then, once you find an idea and concept that works with an audience, you can continue to tweak and customize it until it’s perfect. If there was ever an example for how important and effective animation and explainer videos are, this video is it. I don’t know many people that actually care how deep the ocean is, or would even spend 10 second to read about it… but when it’s in visual form, it can result in millions of views and new social followers or customers. If you aren’t too familiar with the concept of whiteboard and animation video, or how you can start using them for your own brand or business, check out this article with 17 great examples . 3. Develop Brand Mentions with Industry Experts and Video Interviews How many times have you visit a top influencer blog or online marketing guru site and then started seeing their advertisements and videos on Facebook? It happens all the time, and we will actually cover this in more detail in the next point. What I want to focus on now however, is the importance of video branding and visual association with other experts and trusted brands within a given niche. These videos work well for many reasons. They improve brand awareness and build reputation points as well. It’s not just about people searching for your videos. It’s also about them searching for who you might be doing an interview with. There are a number of tools out there to help with the tracking of social media mentions, while also providing you with some valuable data on who the top experts are within your space — which could lead to more interview and partnering opportunities. The best examples of these co-branded videos are often seen with one-to-one video interviews and webinars, which are then turned into sponsored content on social media. It’s usually Q&A for the first half, then upselling for something in the second portion. If you see someone interviewing or having a chat with someone else you know and trust, you are also more likely to follow and trust them as well. Plus, think about how many people you could be reaching when the person you are interviewing also shares it with their audience. This is something Russell Brunson has been doing for a while to grow his company. Head over to his YouTube account and you can see one of his interviews with Tony Robbins. Once you have something like that in place, you can keep marketing it and milking it for all it’s worth — since Tony is such a well-known and trusted name. Also, once you start to secure bigger names for interviews and JV opportunities, it will make the process of bringing in other influencers much easier. By using social media to host and promote this content, you are also growing a community forum around the content with comments, questions, and sharing. 4. Set Up a Remarketing Video Campaign We’ve covered a bunch of different ways to create video content, but not so much on how to effectively target your audience. As with all advertising, it’s ideal to show your best advertisements and ad copies to audiences that are already familiar with your brand or what you have to offer. Once again, this is where the magic of social media advertising comes into play once again. Through the use of remarketing, one can create an ad campaign that will deliver specific advertisements to audiences that have either been to your site and left, subscribed to your mailing list, or are already a follower of your social accounts. These types of video campaigns are ideal with upselling and bringing users back to complete a process they might not have acted on. These are commonly used with webinars as well, often being reminders that a webinar offer is closing and to act soon. There are many different methods for setting these types of campaigns up, and Adespresso has an excellent guide on the different options available. Through the use of custom audiences, you can even create campaigns and retarget users based on how much of your video they watched. Another great thing about remarketing ads is that your advertising dollars are spent more efficiently. Since your ads are being seen by people that are already interested in something you offer, they are more likely to click and buy. Not only can this lead to increased conversions, but also lower ad costs as a result of a much higher click through rate. Video is Here and It’s Also the Future! After skimming through each of the video creation and marketing examples laid out above, you should have some nice ideas for implement similar concepts into your own business and brand. The concept of using video to create content and target your audience is nothing new, but the methods in which you are reach, engage and upsell your video marketing is. Be sure to start using these methods today, as video isn’t just here right now… it’s also the future of all online, offline, and social media engagement. Get started with these 7 video ideas every business should feature on their website. Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading

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20 Social Media Quick-Hits for Small Business

The post 20 Social Media Quick-Hits for Small Business appeared first on HostGator Blog . You know you’re supposed to be on social media—it seems to be recommended in every small business publication you read and event you attend. But it’s hard breaking out of the mindset that social media is a time waster (and frankly, it can be!).  However, social media can potentially open the door to a more direct connection with your customers, which can pay off not only in a higher number of customers, but in customers that are more loyal and care more about your brand. As nice as that sounds, you don’t have much time to work with. If you’re going to use social media for your small business, you need to figure out how to make sure you’re not wasting your time. You need an efficient approach that actually gets results. Here are twenty tips for making sure you don’t spend any more time on social media than you have to, and that the hours you do put in pay off. 4 Steps for Smarter Small Business Social Media Marketing While it may sound counterintuitive, to make sure the time you spend on social media is efficient and worthwhile, you first need to devote some time to studying what works so you can create a plan that makes sense.   1. Decide which channels to prioritize. First off: good news! You don’t have to be everywhere, and you don’t have to divide your time evenly between the platforms you do join. Just because you keep hearing about Snapchat or have that one friend who swears by Periscope doesn’t mean those channels are right for your business. The social media channels you want to be on are: The ones where your target audience spends the most time.   Look at the demographic breakdown of who’s hanging out on which platforms. If your business sells clothing for middle-aged women, Pinterest is more important for you than Twitter and you can ignore Snapchat altogether. The ones that are a good fit for your products and strengths. Some channels are much more image than text heavy. Some move fast and thrive on shorter messages, while others allow you some room to take your time and make longer statements. There’s a chance you’ll have to stretch a little out of your comfort zone to be where your audience is, but figure out where that comfort zone is and which channels will be a better fit for your particular strengths. And of course, think about what’s best suited to your products or services. If you sell jewelry or run a gorgeous resort, image-focused sites like Instagram are a must. If you offer IT support, Instagram won’t be as important as the more text-centered channels like Facebook and Twitter. As you research what each social media channel is and who uses it, work up a list of the ones you know you need to be on and the level of priority you should give each. The channel(s) on the top of your list will get more of your time, and you’ll increase efficiency by not stressing out too much over those lower on the list or left off altogether.   2. Analyze your competitors. One of the frustrating things about social media is that it’s hard to know what will work until you try it. And learning by trial and error eats up a lot of your valuable time. But there’s a shortcut to getting an idea of what works with your audience: spy on your competitors. Identify 4-5 main competitors in your space that are active on the social media channels you’ve decided to focus on and look at what they’re doing. Compare how well each of them is doing in terms of followers and engagement. And pay attention to which of their posts get the most engagement. Can you find any trends in what’s working and what’s falling flat?   3. Identify relevant influencers. The best way to get more out of social media while doing less: use influencer marketing . Whatever your industry, you can find people on social media who have large followings and regularly spend time sharing useful information. Follow them. Pay attention to what they share. Interact with them and their community. Following the lead of the top influencers in your industry is an efficient way to start finding the people you want to reach on the platform and connecting with them. Influencers will provide a good model of what works well with your audience. If you share their stuff and interact with them enough over time, you could develop a relationship. If that happens and they share your stuff or signal boost one of your updates, that’s a quick path to new followers and higher visibility.   4. Create a (realistic) social media plan. Your time on social media will be much more productive and effective if you’re strategic about it. Use what you learned in the first few steps to sit down and work up a social media calendar . Include: How often you intend to post on each platform – Make sure you keep this realistic. If you overextend yourself, you’re more likely to stop doing anything on social media. While posting frequently will get better results on many platforms (particularly fast-moving ones like Twitter and Pinterest), consistency is generally a better goal than frequency. The types of posts you’ll share – Think about the types of content formats to use, the mix of your content and other people’s, and how often to share questions, polls, videos, promotions, etc. A posting schedule – When do you plan to post on each platform? Create a calendar template now that provides an outline of the times you aim to share something on each platform throughout the typical week and fill in the actual updates that will go in each slot as you go.    Keep in mind the times of day your audience is most active on each platform. Your plan won’t be set in stone, you’ll likely make changes to it as you learn more about what your audience responds to. But having a plan to begin with will help you stick with updating your social media channels and make sure your overall approach is strategic and thought out.   11 Ways to Make Your Social Media Sharing Go Further While the details of what works best on social media will vary for different businesses, there are some tips that are useful to everyone.   1. Make use of your bio. Each social media site will allow you a space to describe who you are. The amount of space you have varies, but you should always use it to full effect. In your social media bio, include: Your unique value proposition – who are you and what makes your business special? Relevant details about your business – If you have a storefront, where are you located? How can people get in touch with you? A link back your website – A lot of your social media efforts will be about driving people back to your website, so get straight to the point in your bio with a link. Crafting a good social media bio is a quick but important step to take for each platform you’re on.   2. Use a social scheduling tool. If you’re intimidated by the idea of having to be on social media frequently throughout the day, don’t worry, the small businesses you see posting frequently aren’t actually on social media as often as you think. Most businesses that do social media marketing use scheduling tools like Buffer or HootSuite to schedule updates in advance. Instead of logging on multiple times each day to post updates, you can devote a couple of hours each week to planning all your updates at once. The most popular social media scheduling tools have a free version that will do as much as most small businesses will need, so you can take advantage social scheduling no matter your budget.   3. Identify relevant social communities. On different social media platforms, people with common interests find ways to gather. You want to be a part of the communities on each of the platforms that are relevant to your audience. On Twitter, research Twitter chats in your industry or in topic areas relevant to you. On Facebook and LinkedIn, go looking for relevant groups. If you own a pet store, look for communities of dog or cat lovers. If you’re an accountant, a small business Twitter chat could be a good way to connect with potential clients. Find where on the channel your audience is hanging out, join, and start participating.   4. Share your own content. If you’re doing content marketing , then social media is one of the best venues you have for promoting your content. And posting updates about the content you produce is an easy way to increase your sharing frequency. It’s win-win. Don’t be afraid to create multiple updates about the same piece of content, especially on the high-volume sites like Twitter. Research shows that instead of annoying your followers, it vastly increases the likelihood that they’ll see and interact with it.   5. Use what you have. What makes social media so intimidating from a time management perspective is the idea of having to continually find new things to say from scratch. You can probably save yourself a lot of time and trouble by doing a survey of everything you already have to work with. Much of your content can be repurposed into short social media updates. You can easily use social media to highlight your employees—who they are and what they’re up to. The conversations around the office could yield useful social media ideas. And look around you and see if there are any interesting items or moments around the office that could make good social media images or posts.   6. Share the love. Even if you’re doing content marketing, sharing your own stuff will only take you so far. And social media shouldn’t be all about you, it’s about interacting with other people. So fill your social media calendar more easily by finding content and updates from other people in your industry to share. Those influencers you followed can help with this. So can your audience—pay attention to the things they share. And anytime you read something on your own that you know would be valuable to your audience, make a habit out of sharing it. Be quick to retweet and share any social media updates you like, and respond to others on social media when you have something useful to add to the conversation. This will both get you on more people’s radars, and increase the frequency of your sharing without having to create more content.   7. Use hashtags (where relevant). Hashtags aren’t just for Twitter anymore, many of the social media platforms now have hashtag functionality. Hashtags are useful because they group your post in with other posts on the same topic. Someone searching a social media site for posts about financial advice can quickly find a lot at once by searching or clicking on the #personalfinance hashtag and could see your post, even if they never followed you. When you use hashtags, there are a few best practices to follow: Make sure you’re using hashtags others are using. If you try to make a hashtag out of a phrase that’s too long or specific, it won’t be worth much. Usually one or two word phrases that describe the category your tweet or content falls into work best. Make sure they’re relevant. Your hashtags should be directly related to the social media post they’re a part of. Otherwise you risk confusing people and creating a bad experience for them. Don’t overuse them. Stick to 1-3 hashtags. Overloading an update with hashtags makes your update look sloppy and means you risk including hashtags that are no longer relevant to your post. Be careful about how you use them, but get in the habit of always adding a hashtag or two to your posts where it’s appropriate to do so.   8. Be social. This one may seem obvious for something called “social media,” but too many small businesses start up social media accounts only to push out their own content and offers, without interacting with anyone else. You want to be a part of conversations on social media, and maybe even the one getting them started. So create polls, ask questions, and reply to other people’s posts.   In addition to the posts you schedule in advance, set aside a little time throughout the week to go onto the social media platforms and look for opportunities to interact with people. Retweet a post you really like with your own commentary, or reply to a poll with results you found surprising. People will care a lot more about you on social media if you devote just a little time to actually being social.   9. Use (good) images. You could craft a line that’s as brilliant as anything written by Mark Twain but, when people are scrolling through their social media feeds, they’ll scroll right past it if it’s nothing but text. Images are one of the most important tools you have to stand out on social media and get people’s attention. On platforms like Pinterest and Instagram, images are pretty much the entire point of the platform, so you better make them good. But even on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook, they make a big difference to how likely people are to stop and read your post and click through. Tweets with images receive 35% more retweets, and Facebook posts get 37% more engagement when they include an image. As much as possible, include images with your social media updates. And try to make sure they’re good ones. Stock photography is easy, but it doesn’t work as well as using original images if you can make it work.   10. Invest in social advertising. If you don’t have a budget to give to your social media efforts, this option will be out of reach. But if you can afford to spend a little money, you can make your social media efforts go further faster by using social advertising . Social media platforms offer valuable targeting options that help you get your account in front of the right people faster. You can use ads to grow your followers so that your unpaid social updates will begin to be seen by a much larger audience. For small businesses just starting out on social media in particular, social media advertising can give you the initial boost you need to start getting more traction and engagement on the platform.   11. Keep an eye on your analytics. Social media platforms typically provide analytics both for all your updates on the platform, and for any advertising you do. In addition, your website analytics provide valuable information on how often people are coming to your website through social media channels. At least once a month, do a review of all the analytics you have to better understand how your social media efforts are doing. Pay particular attention to the types of updates that are getting good engagement (shares, follows, replies) and driving traffic back to your website. Use this information to tweak your social media strategy as needed to improve your results.   5 Tips to Integrate Social Media with Your Overall Online Marketing Social media marketing works best if you treat it as a part of your larger small business online marketing strategy. To make sure social media supports your other efforts (and vice versa), there are a few extra steps to take.   1. Add links to your social media channels on your homepage. This is a quick and easy way to let your website visitors know where they can find you on social media. Add a few icons to the bottom of the page with links back to your social profiles.   2. Add social share buttons to your website. Your content will go a lot further if  your readers help you share it. You want to make it as easy as possible for every visitor to your website that likes your content to share it with their own networks. Install a social sharing plug-in that allows your visitors to share your stories with one simple click. 3. Promote your email list on social. Social media followers are nice, but email subscribers are even better. As you work to grow your social media following, you can accomplish two goals at once by also using your social media efforts to grow your email list .   4 . Promote your social channels to your email list. Your email subscribers are people you already know like your brand and want to hear from you, so they’re some of the best people to promote your social media profiles to. In the same way that you can use social media to build your email list, you can include links to your social profiles in your emails to help grow your social media followings.   5. Share your promotions and sales on social media. At the end of the day, all your marketing should lead back to sales. You definitely don’t want a majority of your social updates to be promotional, but any time you’re offering a good discount or an attractive sale, your followers will want to know. As long as you don’t overdo it, you can use social media to promote your deals and special offers to increase your sales.   Social Media Doesn’t Have to Be a Waste of Time As long as you’re strategic and stick with tactics that are efficient, you can start getting real results from social media without spending hours a day. And as you go, make sure to continually analyze your efforts to see what’s working best. If a channel is taking more time than it’s worth, it’s okay to cut it and focus more of your efforts on the platforms that are working for you. There aren’t clear rules for using social media for small business, it’s just what works for you. Figure out the approach that makes the most sense based on your unique audience and the time and resources you have available to you. Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading

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Grow your website

What are the best ways to promote your website hosting ? Does the social media really worth the money to advertise your site ? ( I am talkin… | Read the rest of http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1751474&goto=newpost Continue reading

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Unblockable Verizon IPs 4 Social Media | Virgin Clean IPv4 Available 4 All Uses | No IPJ Required

Verizon RDP for Social Media! We have upgraded our Verizon Wireless product offering with additional geoip locations, and functio… | Read the rest of http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1747850&goto=newpost Continue reading

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