Using Social Media for Traffic

Social media sites are the new norm. They’ve gained significant traction in nearly every age group. From brands to clichés and grandparents to young people, social media is a busy and populated meeting place. Vital to the health, reach, and sustainability of your online ventures, establishing a presence within this gargantuan meeting place is crucial.

Twitter & Facebook

These two sites are similar in a lot of ways. Due to the layout and function of these two social media sites, buzz and traffic peaks immediately after you post.

Time, followers, content quality, and audience all influence how well the immediate and one-time peak a post receives.

StumbleUpon & Pinterest

Whereas buzz and traffic from Twitter and Facebook generally peak then fall, the layout and model of StumbleUpon and Pinterest are traffic generators that potentially sustain a cruising altitude. This is due to the layout and function of these two social medias. They present content their users have declared interest in.

Therefore, submitting quality content that provides value to the reader will earn likes and repostings, in turn, generating traffic.

Simply setting up accounts with these two and submitting your content will not get the job done. If you do not have developed accounts, do not except to see as positive a return. These two can generate some serious passive traffic. They’ll essentially do all the hard lifting. You just need to prove to them that you are not a spammer.

Promoting only your own stuff is basically spamming. Doing this is pointless, wasted effort.

You need to develop authority. This can be done through promoting and liking unique valuable and interesting content from multiple sources. Work off the ratio of 5:1. By adding five pages of quality content from a wide range of sources for each one of yours, you will build authority, voice, and an audience – proving you are not a spammer and, in return, gain traffic.

Forums

Forums are another great source to generate traffic. You have the option of having a signature at the bottom of all the posts you make. Signatures can be used to post links and direct traffic. It is best to go on forums in which you have a general interest. Having a vested interest in the subject will lend to you gaining authority and appreciation for your contributions to the forum. This will incline others to investigate you and your profile.

Again, just going in, blasting your stuff, then leaving is detrimental and useless.

Email lists

Building email lists of interested followers is a great way to promote and communicate with your audience.

Viral Content Buzz

This site has a self-sustaining model of earning and spending credits. Credits are earned from reposting a link on your social media accounts that a fellow user wants traffic directed towards. When somebody posts your link, you pay them with your credits. When you post something, you earn credits. The amounts vary accordingly with the social media weight you command – the higher amount of followers, the higher the credits.

Additional benefits of social media

Networking, brainstorming, gaining new ideas, insight into competition are all additional benefits social media can be used for. Used to your advantage, social media is quite resourceful.

Social media has the potential of being a self-sustaining engine; therefore, generating truly passive traffic and income.

The one thing all social media has in common is that they are the antithesis of static, through and through. They evolve to the times and their users. New ones will materialize, each with its own hard to predict lifespan. Some will become stigmatized and wither away, others will collapse unto themselves.