3 Ways Content Can Convert Social Media Fans Into Customers From determining the best linking opportunities to choosing the best headlines, here is how to turn social-media users into regular visitors and customers.
By Jack Dawson
This story originally appeared on PR Daily
Social media is great, but with so many people and posts, it's easy for even a practiced online marketer to feel overwhelmed.
The volume of content can keep you scrolling and scrolling, with no end in sight.
High-quality content is mandatory if you want social media users to become regular visitors and customers. Content is king, and high-quality content is the only way to endear yourself to search engines. Google demands high quality content—and since Google commands 31 percent of all web traffic—you want to be on its good side.
High-quality content can also help you move beyond boosting brand awareness to inspiring clicks that turn into sales or subscribers.
Follow these three tips to increase social media visitors and transform traffic into customers:
1. Identify high-quality linking opportunities to boost traffic.
If you manage a big brand with hundreds or thousands of avid fans, you can post content to your homepage or newsfeed, but for many whose online status is nothing like that, different tactics are necessary.
If you want to improve your rate of conversion from social media visitors and website users, increasing online traffic is crucial. The most effective way to do this lies in high-quality links, which make users click.
Links acquired on social media are high quality by Google's standards because social media sites have high online authority. They offer greater trust and better opportunities than other link sources. Even if you have a relatively new webpage, you're likely to get high rankings in organic search.
Use tools like BuzzSummo to identify influential social media users who are relevant to your niche, and find out what they say. Connect with them and persuade them to mention your brand to gain a link—and their followers' eyeballs.
2. Offer users a reason to click on your links.
Many social media users attest that there are too many unconvincing posts by online businesses. If you want users to click on a link, you must give them a persuasive reason.
Countless brand managers do everything right on their site, but fail miserably in their social strategies. The reason is simple: Their posts don't issue a clear call to action.
Tell your audience exactly what you want them to do—whether it's clicking, buying or another action.
Both Twitter and Facebook have attempted to solve this problem by adding images to tweets. Images increase the engagement and click-through rates for your posts. A 2014 Media report revealed that adding a photo to a tweet boosts retweets by 35 percent. However, adding an image is not enough.
Don't give away too much on your post, but rather, include a surprise. If you give too much detail, you give the user an option to choose whether or not they're interested before they click. There's a fine line between under-sharing and over-sharing. Don't cross it.
Just as you carefully craft your headlines for articles, write a preamble to the link that inspires the user to click on that link. Use a graph, photo or video to tease the audience to read more.
3. Choose your headlines carefully to invoke desire.
Most brand managers already generate excellent content. The problem is that they don't know how to make their content snag their audiences' attention.
Create titles to deliver value to your audience and pique their curiosity. It's one thing to say, "6 web design tips to improve your SEO" and quite another to say, "6 ways for designers and marketers to improve conversion rates on landing pages."
Creating memorable headlines helps you target the right audience, which attracts high-quality links that can turn your social media following into regular consumers of your content.
