Social media has the potential to become the largest source of online traffic for any company. That distinction is now claimed by search engines.

While search engines do have a wider footprint and record more activity than social media, the ability of companies to reach out to their target audience and in person is what makes social media special.

You can target profiles and hence generate quality traffic from social media platforms.

Search engines have very little to offer to companies that don’t manage to get their websites ranking on the first page of search results. Social media too has its share of challenges but those are a little less overwhelming.

The odds are a bit more manageable compared to organic search engine optimization. There are more than two billion people on social media. There are dozens of social media platforms. How you strategize your social media outreach will determine the traffic.

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Here are ten tips to get traffic from social media platforms.

1. Know what to post. It is no secret that you need to come up with engaging content to intrigue your followers and the larger target audience so they check out the links or information and get redirected to your website. Normal posts, shares and tweets or images and videos will be of little help unless there is a content development and management strategy. The content can be anything from an article to an info-graphic, an image to a video.

You could share short or long content, in snippets or as a larger report hosted on your website. You could publish content directly as pages on sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Whatever you choose to share must be relevant for your audience. For instance, very few teenagers would want to read a three-thousand-word post. Very few professionals will have the time to check out a five-minute video. You need to know how much time your target audience will be willing to give you, what format they would prefer to access and what kind of information they are looking for. Develop the content accordingly.

2. Interactive content works better than one-way communiqués. Polls, quizzes, surveys, contests and any kind of Q&A or inviting feedback will open up a channel of communication. Social media works best when there is a two-way communication and in real time. Twitter and Facebook have become phenomenally popular because of this reason.

Companies are using these mediums to engage with their audience live. When you are done with polls, quizzes, surveys, contests and feedback generation or addressing grievances, you should focus on content that will initiate a discussion. Contents that encourage or invite comments, where people have something to say will always score better than just close ended informative contents. The purpose is not just to share some helpful information but to get the reader to check out the website. Only that will generate traffic for you.

3. Once you know what to post, you should know when and where to post it. There are specific times when people of specific profiles come online and check their timelines.

Students wouldn’t be online when they are supposed to be at school. Professionals will not check the posts from brands they follow when they are in the midst of their first meeting or the end of day session at work. Homemakers will rarely be online when they are cooking breakfast, lunch or dinner, doing chores or when they need to get groceries. Likewise, every social media platform has its periods of peak and off-peak activities.

Find out when your target audience is live or active and on which social media platform. Share your content when your target audience is online and has the time to check out your posts.

4. You can post your content at the best possible time after due research and even then, your traction could be limited. Be sure that your competitors will also do their homework and post at the same time. Hence, you would need to repost your content. If you repost frequently then you would just be spamming your audience. Time, you repost smartly and offer something new every time. Do not just share or re-tweet. Add a new fact or highlight something new from the post as you repost it or share it. This will keep the same post interesting and you can avert being deemed a spammer.

5. You must become an influencer or you should use influencers. Associate with influencers on specific social media platforms who are followed by many and whose opinions are trusted by many. If these influencers endorse your posts or share your content, then you can be sure of having a windfall gain in traffic.

Some influencers offer their endorsement for a fee. You could try this route. You can also go for organic endorsements. In due time, your social media presence must command the influence to form and shape opinions.

6. Try to trend your content. You can use hash tags for easy indexing of contents and also to entice more people to check out the piece. You can sponsor a post or some content to pop up on timelines of people who don’t follow you. A trending topic will always have a larger outreach and you would witness a spike in your website traffic. Social media is all about expansive outreach and that is what you must focus on.

7. Always work on the credibility of your brand. Your social media presence should be impeccably trustworthy. Spamming, sharing poor quality content or generating interest and then failing to satiate the needs of the target audience will erode the trust of the people and that can be hard to regain.

Trusted brands will always have more people willingly checking out the links or contents. Others will be shrugged off by the same people who still follow those handles or profiles.

8. Promotion or an amazing offer is the best way to generate substantial traffic immediately. However, it cannot be misplaced, mistimed or poorly targeted. Do not put forth a discount for those who wouldn’t be in a position to purchase.

Do not come up with an offer that may look great on paper but doesn’t really help in reality. Do not promote everything but your bestsellers. Many companies commit this mistake of trying to prop up products that people don’t necessarily want at this time or the offers are not enticing enough. Go all out with your promotions if you want an exponential spike in traffic.

9. Consider social media automation. Automate daily posts, use software to track the traffic generated from social media, use analyses to study the outreach and the impact of every post, have auto follow ups for any activity originating from social media such as a redirected user signing up for newsletters or making an enquiry.

These are some ways to make social media marketing more efficient, punctual and organized.

10. Finally, combine social media marketing with email marketing, search engine optimization, pay per click advertising and other outreach programs for an optimum impact.

Often, the first communication doesn’t generate traffic or any traction, the second or the third point of contact does and they don’t have to be through the same medium