How do you attract visitors to your website? How do you grow your tribe? How do you convert casual followers into diehard fans? Many traffic sources exist, of course, and they all have their respective pros and cons. Search engine traffic can be good for that first-time hit, but how are you going to convince those people to stick around? Email traffic can be great, but you’ve got to get people to subscribe in the first place.
Even though algorithm updates continue to mess with our organic reach, social media continues to be an important branding tool for blogs and other websites alike. Even if a person doesn’t necessarily click through on a link to your blog post, you want them to “like” you on Facebook and follow you on Twitter. You want them to be aware of your brand and you want them to be a fan of yours.
But how do you do that?
A recent survey conducted by Pew Research Center revealed that almost two-thirds of American adults get their news from social media and about a third of that demographic does so “often.” You can check that link for more in-depth stats and analysis.
Looking at Facebook alone though, 67% of US adults actively use the social network and 66% of users are getting their news from Facebook. Put those numbers together and about 44% of the total US adult population is getting news from Facebook. That’s huge.
Have you ever noticed the “trending news” section on Twitter or Facebook? Do you browse around on Reddit to see what people are talking about? You’re definitely not alone. Between those three sites, a huge number of users are anxious and eager to read about the latest news. And this is where you can capitalize.
This is profoundly important for a couple of intrinsically related reasons. News posts are timely and if you catch a trending topic, you could gain more organic reach as a natural result. News posts also tend to attract more likes, comments, shares and other engagement, because people are more interested in topics that are immediately relevant.
When Bernie Sanders announced that he is endorsing Hillary Clinton for her bid to become US President, John shared the NBC News video on Facebook. And it got comments from both the left and the right. It’s relevant. It’s timely. It’s on point and big news like this will also elicit a more powerful emotional response.
That emotional response results in more likes, more comments, more shares. This is one way you can engage your followers without necessarily creating brand new content on your blog. It’ll just continue to grow your audience and your tribe through those social channels.
A common mistake that many marketers take with their social media profiles is that they use them solely for promotional purposes. Here is a new course I’m offering. Here’s a new book I published. Here is the next live event where you can hear me speak. Those are all valuable, to be sure, but sharing tangentially related content can further grow your audience and reach new users.
And when you can tap into thousands or even millions of people with just a few quick key strokes, you wield an incredible power to succeed and profit. That’s newsworthy.