Actionable Tips for Promoting Your WordPress Website on Social Media
Setting up a website is by no means an easy task. Promoting it? Even less so.
Your WordPress website can be the best-designed, most informative, engaging and exciting thing since Google, but you have to let the world know it exists. Sure, that’s what SEO is for, but in this day and age, social media presence decides your fate, for better or for worse.
That’s why today we want to talk about promoting your website on social media. What we’re interested in here is not just how to get people to engage with your social media posts, to follow your profiles and interact, but also how to bring them from your social profiles to your website. We’ll cover all the essentials for getting started and we’ll talk about each of the major social networks individually, too.
You can jump to specific tips here:
So, pour yourself a big cup of coffee and let’s get started.
Social media is all about building a presence. Only after people start hearing about you, and after you have established a brand identity for your website, only then can you tell yourself you’re on the right track, social-wise.
Pick the Social Networks to Focus On
There are simply too many major social networks today. You can’t possibly focus on all of them. In life, you have to pick your battles, and in online marketing, you have to pick your networks. The question is, how to decide?
Let’s put it like this:
Facebook is, hands down, the most popular network. With more than 2.32 million active monthly users, it’s a network you simply have to be on, regardless of the kind of website you run.
The same goes for Twitter. From mom blogs to B2B companies and international organizations, every serious website maintains some level of presence on the microblogging platform. So Facebook and Twitter are pretty much a must for all websites.
As for image-based websites (portfolio sites, ecommerce, art and design magazines…), Instagram is the platform that can offer the most in terms of showcasing the visual content. As of recently, the network also offers shopping functionalities and its popularity as a vehicle for e-Commerce on a steady rise.
Pinterest and Tumblr are trying to follow suit, and while they most likely won’t surpass Instagram in popularity any time soon, they still represent important platforms for visually oriented websites.
LinkedIn, faithful to its “serious social network” reputation, remains the number one platform for businesses (small, medium, startups, B2B companies, corporations, conglomerates, institutions).
YouTube and Vimeo are essential for websites that post a lot of video content (duh!) and Foursquare and Yelp are a must for location-based websites (especially those in the food, hospitality and entertainment industries).
Even though Google+ is somehow still a thing, we never heard of anyone actually gaining traffic or, god forbid, conversions from that network. And as for Reddit, it’s a rabbit hole that deserves a research paper of its own so we won’t go into that right now.
Join Groups and Communities
On social networks, you can’t rely solely on your own posts for interactions with your audience. In order to build a following, you first need to interact with others in the same or related niche, and to connect with your prospective audience. The fastest way to do so is to join as many relevant groups and communities as possible, especially on Facebook and LinkedIn.
Once you join a group, be active. Answer the questions that fall into your competence, and ask the questions yourself. Engage with other users and feel the pulse of the audience, in order to learn what it is they want and which of their needs you can meet with your website.
Use Logo for Profile, Cover and Hero Images
The benefit of this approach is twofold. First of all, you’re being consistent, making sure your brand identity is uniform across all your channels, and also across the social platform in question. Your overall presence appears more professional and that’s always a plus.
Second, by repeating your logo in the strategic places – your profile and hero images and your cover photo – you’re making sure your brand gets “stamped” into your visitors’ minds. The more familiar you are to them, the more likely they’ll be to interact.
Use the Same Username Consistently
The same applies to your username. This may fall into the “stating the obvious” category, but it won’t hurt to underscore: your username should be the same across all your social media profiles, and it should be the name of your brand or your website.
The benefits are the same as for using the logo as the profile picture: you perpetuate your professionalism and you’re making sure everyone gets well-acquainted with your business.
Now that you’re all set up, let’s see how you can leverage the social media to draw visitors to your website.
We can’t stress this hard enough – good content is absolutely crucial for the success of your website, no matter what kind.
By content, we mean both textual and visual. If your website is a blog or a magazine, obviously your main focus will be on text. If, on the other hand, it’s more of a portfolio site, your visual content (images, video, animations, etc.) should be optimized to the max.
Quality content is:
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Long-form (if textual)
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Exceptionally well-written
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Informative
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Competent
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Relevant to the topic and to your niche
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Engaging
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Shareable.
Now, you may wonder what content has to do with social media. It’s simple – write a long, informative piece on a topic relevant to your niche. Share the link to the post on your social profiles, along with a captivating image, a catchy headline and a caption that both describes the post and tickles the users to read the rest.
By keeping your content always fresh and unique, you can keep your social media contacts coming back for more, resulting in much-improved website traffic.
Videos are all the rage these days. Regardless of your niche, you can definitely benefit from posting videos on your social channels. This sort of content is highly compelling and proven to improve both the site traffic and conversions.
Ideal platforms for this purpose are YouTube and Vimeo (obviously) but also Instagram and Facebook, as they have prominent video features, as well as stories.
As for what sort of video content to make, it depends on the nature of your website and your business. Try behind-the-scenes, product showcases, client testimonials, how-tos, and so on.
The important thing here is to make use of all the options the platform you’re using has to offer. In case of YouTube, which we recommend using for hosting the videos, you should make sure to create a full-featured channel, complete with images, descriptions, links, tags and so on.
Note that YouTube is very powerful in itself, being equal parts a video hosting service, a search engine and a social network. Small business owners should realize that making money on YouTube isn’t as complicated as you may think and it can be quite lucrative. In addition, you should always link your YouTube videos to your other social profiles, including LinkedIn. Embedding or simply posting videos has been made super-easy on all platforms so there’s no excuse for not making use of that.
It’s important to understand that there are some distinctions between Google Ads and social ads. We won’t get into details right now but let’s just say that social ads are essentially simpler and often cheaper than Google ads, and they also serve a slightly different purpose.
With Google, you pay to have your content displayed in search results. Your content is served to users who are already searching for the kind of content you have to offer.
With social ads, your content is displayed to those who may not yet know they need your content (services, products). You can tweak this so that it gets displayed to those who are more likely to be interested in what you have to offer. This is based on demographic data, user interests and so on. You can also use the information you already have, like your email subscription list, to target customers, resulting in qualified traffic back to your website.
When it comes to the budget, you can set criteria as to how much you want to spend. It really doesn’t have to be a lot – sometimes even as little as $50 can make a difference, and you can time these spendings for when it fits your budget the best.
As for how to actually go about paid ads, it’s different for every social platform, but almost all networks have some sort of mechanism for paid ads. Facebook has the “Boost Post” option, Pinterest has promoted pins while LinkedIn and Twitter have website click ads.
The best thing about paid social ads is that they still have a lot of potential and are not yet as saturated as other forms of paid advertising, meaning you can still get decent traffic, provided you set everything up correctly.
We all love getting free stuff, right? Why not use this simple psychological fact to bring your social media followers to your website?
For example, you can create a contest, with prizes and all, but keep it exclusive to your social media profiles (or just one of them – for instance, Facebook). Create a landing page for the contest or the giveaway and have a social media post link to it. People will click on the link like crazy (because – free stuff) and from your landing page you can easily direct them to the rest of your website.
Another smart thing to do here is to offer additional chances for contest entry (or additional giveaway items) to those who share (promote) your contest (and therefore your website) on their own social pages. This will greatly expand your reach and get you heaps of new traffic.
Webinars are also a good idea. If it makes sense for your website to offer a webinar, you can promote that too on your Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn, bringing the interested users back to your site. And to actually get people to sign up, make sure to make it crystal-clear the webinar is free and that it will provide some valuable, actionable and potentially profitable insights. Use a bit of teasing in your social media copy, showing the users what it is you have for them.
Another great piece of content you can post on your social media pages to boost traffic to your site are client testimonials. This is particularly useful for e-Commerce websites, but it’s great for any sort of business that offers services, too.
Customer testimonials do wonders for brand trust and loyalty. They basically tell people that your business is for real, that you’re not a scammer and that you really have something of value to offer.
The best way to go about this is to create a page or part of the page where you’ll collect all your client testimonials. Then, you can use an image with text (quote) on your social media pages, linking back to your website. This is the kind of quick, easy but substantial content that is just perfect for sharing on your profiles.
You can be as squeamish as you want about people earning money by being pretty and doing cool things in fancy places, but influencer marketing is as real as it gets.
The thing about influencers is they come with a huge following – that’s what makes them influencers, after all. In this sort of marketing, you rely on their clout to promote your cause (website, product, service). Influencers do it for money, so this may not be something that can actually work for brand new websites and businesses that are only just starting. However, if you can find an influencer who is willing to trade for something, it might work.
Note that influencer marketing is particularly suitable for Instagram. Come up with some Instagrammable content, hook up with a willing influencer and have them link back directly to your website, and that’s it.
Social listening refers to the practice of looking out for mentions of your brand or service throughout social networks, as well as to discussions on keywords, topics and competitors in your industry or niche.
In simpler terms, it means using search functionality on, say, Twitter or Instagram, to see who is searching for your terms and keywords. If you run, for example, a pastry shop, you will use terms like “pumpkin pie in San Diego” and then reach out to them, directing them to your site.
It’s also important to regularly research hashtags, on both Instagram and Twitter. It’s a good idea to search for similar terms and keywords and to follow the competition to hear what the people are talking about and, again, reach out and win them to your side.
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Here are a few ideas as to how to use particular social media networks to promote your website.
The first thing to do here is to set up a Business Page. Go to Facebook Pages, select your category and fill in the details. Make sure the page has the same name as your website and that your site URL is in the About section. Upload the profile and cover photos (at least one of those should be your logo) and, finally, take care of your CTA button, which is customizable, so it can say anything from more traditional Learn More, Sign Up, Call Us or Shop Now to anything else you want.
After this, just go through the methods listed above – join related groups and communities and be active in them. Promote contests and giveaways, post captivating content and consider boosting your posts (as a paid feature).
Bear in mind one harsh fact here: it’s very hard to get decent organic traffic on Facebook. Even if you have thousands of people that “liked” or “followed” your page, most likely only a two-digit number will actually see one of your posts. That’s why you’ll probably have to resort to paid ads.
Also, don’t forget to be active in various related communities. Users in those groups are generally more prone to interaction and will be more likely to actually follow you back to your site.
On Twitter, you don’t have to create a separate page for your business profile – all the promotion can go from your regular account. However, you’ll definitely want to create a special profile that you will use for business purposes only, i.e. for promoting your WordPress website.
Again, upload the logo as your profile picture, pick an appropriate, illustrative cover image and don’t forget to write a compelling bio. This is particularly important since that’s how people will find you – using your bio keywords as search terms. Also, that’s where you’ll place the link to your site, too.
Note that, unlike Facebook, it’s perfectly okay to post a lot on Twitter. The platform’s unique nature encourages this sort of dynamics, so use it to share content, both original, linked to your site, as well as shared content from other sources, such as relevant industry news, opinions, photos, even jokes, memes and other funny content (as long as your brand identity allows for it).
And don’t forget to always include hashtags to expand your reach.
If you want, you can use paid advertising to promote your posts. This is something you can do occasionally, for instance when you’re having a sale. Twitter is very good at letting you target the specific audience for a specific post, so try to make the best out of that feature.
Again, it’s recommended to open a business profile on Instagram, in order to reap the benefits that come with it (certain analytics data) and, of course, to appear more professional.
As for using Instagram to get people to your website, note that you can’t link directly from your posts – that’s where the famous “link in bio” phrase comes from. Post some original, eye-catching content and offer something of value, otherwise people won’t go through the trouble of navigating to your profile, finding your bio and clicking on the link from there. For instance, you can offer a discount or promote a contest of some sort. If you have created a landing page for that purpose, make sure the link in the bio leads to it, and not to your homepage.
Paid options on Instagram are also worth exploring. Photo and video ads usually work the best, although the story ads are gaining momentum too, thanks to the recently introduced “Swipe Up” functionality.
One important thing to keep in mind when it comes to Instagram is to make sure your followers are real people. There are too many bots and fake accounts out there and the “follow for follow” economy is thriving to ridiculous levels. Fake followers give you absolutely nothing, because they won’t go to your website. The only thing they do is increase your follower count, but even that is temporary, as they usually unfollow after a few days.
Instagram being a visual platform, your main goal will be to post visually appealing, high-quality images and videos. If you don’t have enough original images related to your website/business, you can use other sorts of quality imagery, such as well-designed infographics, quotes and so on. Try to post no less than five times per week, and no more than once, perhaps twice per day.
Finally, try not to sound too sales-y in your Instagram posts – it puts people off.
If your website is not a strictly “business” one, you can skip LinkedIn altogether. If, however, you feel like your business should be part of this network, there are a few strategies to try in order to boost traffic back to your site using LinkedIn.
Even if you already have a personal profile, we suggest you create a separate one for your business/website. Note that company profiles cannot join groups on LinkedIn, but you can do it from your personal profile, promoting your website, so you definitely want to keep that one active, too.
As for your company profile, again, use the logo for your profile and hero images and don’t forget to put the link to your website right there in the bio.
Make sure to be active, both in the groups related to your niche, and on your own profile. The things you post will appear in your contacts’ timelines, so make sure you’re posting “serious,” relevant and well-written content.
Much like Instagram, Pinterest is a highly visual platform. But there is one important difference between the two popular networks: while Instagram doesn’t allow linking in the posts, Pinterest is all about links. Pretty much every pin you see is a link to some external location. This means you have a lot more potential to drive traffic directly to your website.
As for the best practices regarding Pinterest, first of all, you have to make sure you have plenty of vertical images. If you have to, modify your content to fit this preference.
For business profiles, Pinterest also offers promoted pins. The mechanism is similar to promoted posts on other networks: it runs on the cost-per-click model, meaning you only have to pay when someone actually clicks on your promoted pin. As such, it is a good model for websites on the budget. On top of that, it offers a chance to expand your reach based on your own demographic and contextual criteria. And if your promoted pins lead directly to your website – all the better.
YouTube
With 1.9 billion active monthly users, the popularity of YouTube is only surpassed by that of Facebook. And the two networks are completely different. Therefore, it’s clear that YouTube represents an amazing potential for driving traffic to your website and a chance you simply cannot miss.
First of all, you’ll need to set up your YouTube channel. Name it after your website or your brand and, once again, use the logo for the profile picture. Fill in the bio, making sure to include the link to your website, as well as links to your other social media profiles.
Next, it’s time to create some original content to post and share. In this article, we’re not so much interested in videos that convert but in those that promote your website. Basically, you need to create videos that either entertain or inform, such as walkthroughs, product showcases and how-tos, and then invite the viewers to your site by offering freebies (ebooks, discount coupons, courses) for newsletter sign-up or for social shares.
Don’t forget to always put links in the description of the video and to use several verbal calls to action, inviting people over to your website.
Final Thoughts
Social media is an environment that always keeps you on your toes. As the number of users incessantly grows, so does the number of websites trying to reach them.
In such a tough scene, promoting your website often boils down to getting to know the rules of the game and then following them to the letter. More precisely, it means that, after deciding which networks you’re going to focus on, you have to follow the trends and stats for each particular network and act accordingly.
Also, no strategy for promoting your site on social media would be complete without the analytics. A good traffic analysis tool will tell you exactly how many visitors come to your website from social networks, which networks work the best and what kind of strategy yields the best results.
