There is no denying that social media is one of the best ways for businesses to engage with their audiences. With 3.196 billion users using the various social media channels, it is likely to be among the top traffic sources on the web.

Whether you use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Instagram, it helps you build your brand recognition and foster a community around you.

If you have started a business, you may also be baffled by questions like:

How do I grow my traffic and manage it? How should I grow my followers? How do I bring potential leads to my business?

Here are ways you can grow your following and get quality traffic from social media:

Choose The Right Social Media Channel

Before you start using the social media channels, make sure you focus on the one that makes the most sense for your business. It may sound obvious to you, but many brands miss this memo as they feel they have to do it all. If you have a finance-related business, then promoting on LinkedIn and/or Twitter would better show what you have to offer, as opposed to Instagram.

Understand the niche of your business, think of what would show off what you have to offer to potential customers, measure the success rate, and then focus on the right social media platform.

However, when it comes to the cost, every channel will cost you a few hours a day—perhaps some some cash to keep up with producing quality images. According to HubSpot research, by spending just six hours a week, 66% of marketers have the various lead generation benefits from social media.  But the key is consistency.

Make Use Of Visual Content On Your Social Media Page

Social media channels thrive by visual content like videos, images, GIFs—even memes! According to 2018 research published on HubSpot– if visuals are used along with the information, the audience is more likely to retain 65% of the overall information, and 54% of them want to see more video content from the brand.

However, if we categorize the ranking for various platforms:

• The image posts on Facebook garner 39% of the engagement.
• On Twitter, if you post images, vines or videos, you get more engagement as compared to the text-based posts.

Moreover, the amount of traffic you garner from social media channels depends on how you write, schedule and structure your social media posts, as well as how well you present them and the number of hashtags you use with each post.

Use Hashtags Wisely

Hashtags are everywhere on social media and its use for marketing is no new concept.  But have ever wondered how the hashtag count affects your marketing strategy?

• Hashtags For Twitter

Tweets with Hashtags tend to perform better than the posts that are posted without hashtags. But make sure that you only post tweets with 1 or 2 hashtags.

Moreover, the best approach is to look for best hashtags for Twitter marketing before you post.

• Hashtags For Instagram

According to a research published on Hootsuite, using hashtags on Instagram gets you 12.6% more engagement on an average. However, you can use as much as 30 hashtags or at least 11 hashtags on Instagram.

• Hashtags For Facebook

Don’t use too many hashtags on Facebook as it might make your business look spammy. Instead use 1-2 hashtags on each post for best engagement.

Use Short Updates

Shorter social media gets more attention than the longer ones.

The average attention of an avid social media user lasts on a post for three seconds. With this span, there are fewer chances that a user might read your entire post.

So, if you are using Twitter, make sure the posts are shorter than 100 characters; for Facebook, aim for less than 40 characters as it intrigues the user and makes them click as well.

Be Consistent

This cannot be overstated. The last thing you can do to grow a following is to be consistent with your efforts.

Now, you don’t have to post the content every hour. But you do need to promote high quality and interesting content, respond to the users, and make your presence known because the last thing you want is for your followers to forget all about you. Once you are known among your followers, your following will strengthen, and traffic will grow automatically.

Summing Up

Driving traffic from social media requires some minor tweaks in your posting strategy and proper SEO optimized content on your business page. You also need to keep a close eye on which content is working for you and which is not.

Along with this, use the above tips, and you are halfway done in the process of attaining quality traffic from social media platforms. With the social media audience growing by 20 percent every year, there has never been an easier or more cost effective way to grow followers and a bigger piece of the traffic.