If I told you that social media is the number one referral source to websites, accounting for more than 30% of web referral – you may not be surprised.
As marketers, we’re acutely aware of the power of social media.
We may be surprised though to learn that conversion stats from social media aren’t nearly as impressive.
Research has found that only 0.71 percent of social media traffic converts – making it 2.5 times less effective than search engine traffic and 78 percent less likely to result in a conversion than an email campaign.
Fortunately, there are simple strategies you can use to increase leads and sales from social media.
Here are our top tips for driving conversions from social media.
1. Feature valuable content
When posting to social media you should highlight content that is valuable to your target audience.
You need to create high-quality content on your site that is click-worthy.
This may be an article, an exclusive offer, a how-to guide or an invitation to an unmissable event or webinar.
You should never send social media users to your homepage or any other destination that’s not optimized for conversion.
Instead, send users to a specific blog article or a customised landing page created for a campaign, event or product.
It’s also a great idea to use evergreen content that you know has been popular in the past.
Repeating content and social media posts can be a very effective strategy to increase overall reach, engagement, and traffic.
Additionally, you should consider boosting the posts that have the most engagement with paid ads.
Platforms such as MavSocial enable you to easily identify your best performing posts and turn them into Facebook ads all from the one dashboard.
If you’re using social media ads to increase conversions, you may also like to use Facebook pixels – snippets of code you can place on your web pages – so you can track your leads, and even re-target people who visited your site and didn’t convert.
2. Be engaging
Standing out from the crowd in a user’s social media feed can be a massive challenge.
Hubspot puts organic reach of Facebook posts at 6.5% or less, and even if a post reaches your fans, there’s no guarantee they will engage with it.
To improve your chances of engagement your posts should aim to be one or more of the following:
- Helpful
- Interesting
- Entertaining
- Intriguing.
Create content that jumps off the screen by using stunning images, or colour combinations that pop.
It’s worth noting that content featuring images and videos typically gets more engagement than link-only posts, and 360 videos are fasting growing as one of the most effective types of social media posts.
You should also use a variety of different posts that don’t always feature your content.
The key to keeping users engaged is to post content that isn’t always brand or business related.
If a follower engages with an entertaining meme or cat video you post, then they are more likely – thanks to social media platform algorithms – to see your other types of posts.
Naturally, the more people who see your posts and like your content, the better chance you have of getting conversions.
3. Get straight to the point
Your social media post (and the content it links to) needs to be written clearly and concisely.
Keep your content as brief as possible and use the simplest words possible. For example, instead of ‘accordingly’, you can say ‘so’.
Using active and power words can also help tighten up your copy and result in better conversions. So it would be better to say ‘Find out…’ or ‘Discover…’ than ‘This article explains how to…’.
High converting posts also often include some level of intrigue, using questions like: ‘Did you know…’, or statements that leave them hanging, ‘There’s one secret marketers aren’t telling you…’.
Be careful though not to use click-bait style phrases and posts such as ‘You’ll never believe what happened next…’.
Social media platforms are trying to crackdown on click-bait style posts, particularly when the post misrepresents the content it links to.
Understandably this can also be detrimental to conversions.
Your content has to always match the expectations that are set in the post linking to it.
4. Don’t forget your CTAs
Part of writing a high-converting post is including a clear call-to-action (CTA).
It’s human nature to want to know ‘what next?’, so your post needs to answer this important question.
Give the reader one simple action to do – buy, join, register – then tell them to do it in your posts and the content you link to.
You should test content with different CTAs to identify the most effective ones.
Interestingly the Content Marketing Institute recently highlighted a case study, which tested three different CTA phrases for a monthly subscription product.
The three commonly used phrases were:
- Subscribe
- Join Now!
- Select Your Plan.
‘Join Now’ outperformed the other phrases, confirming the importance of testing, measuring and tweaking.
Even the subtlest changes in word choice could potentially make a big difference to conversions.
5. Native to the platform
Post content that is native to the platform you are using.
This not only shows users that follow you on several platforms that you’ve made an effort, but is more likely to result in conversions.
For example, an image beautifully crafted for Instagram isn’t as likely to be as engaging if it’s also posted on Twitter.
This is because a square-shaped image may not appear in full in a Twitter feed, especially if the user is accessing their feed on a mobile device. They will probably have to click on the image to see it shown in full.
Similarly, each platform has nuances specific to its functionality and how users interact with it.
Twitter, for instance, lends itself to immediacy and the latest news, so your posts should reflect that.
You may also need to change the style or length of a written post, or even your hashtag usage, depending on the network you’re using.
Bonus tip
The most critical part of lead conversions from social media is understanding exactly which posts are performing the best and specifically resulting in actions or sales.
Using platforms like MavSocial gives you access to detailed analytics on your posts and social media campaigns, so you can quickly test, measure and tweak your posts and schedule.
You can also use your website analytics and tools such as Google URL builder to track the specific sources of your website traffic.
Sign up for a free MavSocial trial today so you can start optimizing your social media content and scheduling for conversions.
