SMT Challenge Day 2
The Big 5 Social Media Platforms You Can’t Ignore
Social media has brought the internet alive in ways that most people didn’t even think would ever be possible. Even those of us who witnessed it happening sometimes feel surprised when we realize how much social media platforms impact our lives. Social media is used to socialize, get news, study a topic, and yes buy things. Witness the proliferation of live events within private selling groups to sell fashion, makeup, jewelry and even food.
The best social media platform to use for generating traffic depends entirely on your audience. Where do they hang out? To know this, you’ll need to study your audience to find out what platform they’re most likely to use each day. You really don’t have to be everywhere, you can focus on just one or two if you want to.
However, when using social media to get more traffic, there are five major social media platforms that you just can’t ignore. Look to these five platforms first to find your audience before branching out to any new ones.
Probably one of the better known social media platforms, at least for adults. It’s free for anyone to create a personal profile, business pages, and groups. You’re in full control of who can see your personal profile but it’s how you start with Facebook.
You can make groups open, closed, or private. Open means it’s public closed means that only people you approve can be part of the group plus see the conversations, or secret which means that no one can even see that the group exists without being personally invited.
There is also a marketplace where you can sell right on Facebook. This, along with events which allows you to publicize your events and pages where you can advertise, all work together to create an amazing traffic generating machine. Considering that there are over one billion active Facebook users, you can’t go wrong.
The popularity of Twitter with millennials is well-known for its short 140 to 280-character broadcast messages designed to get attention and engagement. A certain famous person loves to use it to get his message out. Tweets can be liked, retweeted, saved as favorites, and replied on the platform.
Just like Facebook, there are many millions of users, about 330 million in 2017. You can share video, images, links, and short text posts on Twitter. You can also boost a Tweet, and run paid promotions on Twitter to help you get more traffic. On Twitter, you can join today and start following anyone you want to.
If you want to get the word out about your products and services, the best course of action is to follow people who are in your audience’s demographics. More than likely a few will follow you back, then share good information, engage, retweet, and run some advertisements. You’ll be shocked at just how much more traffic you can get. Due to the short character count, people on Twitter are used to clicking away from Twitter to view content.
This social media platform is made for people who love pin boards, vision boards, and tracking things in a pictorial way. The platform calls for images and video so anything you can make more visual is a good candidate for marketing via Pinterest.
Valued at over 12 billion dollars, Pinterest has over 150 million active monthly users. Depending on your offering, your audience may love to hang out there looking at pins, clicking pins to go through to the original site and even buying right off Pinterest.
Considering that 26 % of all US adults, mostly between the ages of 18 to 49, are using Pinterest at least monthly – it’s likely you can find your audience here. The trick is to figure out how to make your offerings as visually appealing as possible since what people see without clicking are made up of images.
This visual social media platform is also a favorite of the youthful, with more than 59 percent being between the ages of 18 and 29. Further, most of them are female. A highly visual medium, Instagram is very popular with lifestyle brands and fashionistas.
To generate traffic from Instagram it’s important that you understand the ins and outs of the social media platform. For Instagram users, it’s all in the bio and profile. You’ll need to put the right kind of link that sends them to a great landing page to convert them to your email list. Use awesome images, creative videos, hashtags (5 to 10 per post), and exclusive content.
Finally, be active and engaging as much as possible so that you become known as the go-to person in your niche on Instagram. Be engaging, share information freely, and focus on relationship building.
A much more professional social media platform that can be used to build a following and send traffic to your website. It’s a much more buttoned-up version of Facebook in that most people use very professional looking profile pictures rather than the more artsy images used on other platforms. It’s a favorite platform for coaches, teachers, real-estate professionals, recruiters, and salespeople.
With over 450 million active members, it’s more than likely your audience is there. To get involved with using LinkedIn to generate traffic the best thing you can do is create a full profile using all the features their system offers, bringing in the people you already know as connections, then building your connections from there via your activity in groups on LinkedIn.
These five social media platforms can’t be ignored as amazing traffic generating platforms. But, don’t rush out and make profiles on all of them right away. Take the time to find out more about the social media platform and how it relates to your audience first.
A Message from Norma... In case you're curious, I started working online in 1997 - in the dinosaur days of the internet. My purpose here at HomeFreeMedia is to help YOU build the business of your dreams by developing and recommending top quality products and tools. This will also result in profit and affiliate commissions for me, so we both win!
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