Advantages of Increased Traffic
1.Increased traffic to your site
Social media marketing can significantly increase the traffic to your site. This traffic consists of both primary and secondary traffic. Primary traffic comes directly from the social media site where your content is tagged to read your article or watch your video. Secondary traffic comes from a third party website that has linked to your site after seeing it tagged on a social media site.
Although a larger portion of your traffic will be primary, these visitors have a high bounce rate, as they may just look at the content that was references and then leave. Secondary traffic tends to be more valuable and more likely to generate customers, because these visitors have seen your site recommended by a third party site and have taken an active interest in you.
2. Increased back links to your site
A website ranking is improved by increasing the number of links that direct to the site in turn increasing traffic. Social media marketing is a very effective way of attracting links to your site. As well as a link from the social media site itself, which is not necessarily valuable depending whether the site uses search engine friendly links, other sites may reference your content and link to you based on the social media tag.
You may find it hard to believe that web publishers will link to your site based on a tag on a social media site, but many will see the fact that your content is tagged on a site like Digg as a sign that your site is worth checking out and referencing. You are actually using the trust that the social media site has built up with its readers to promote your own website.
One advantage of getting links through social media marketing is that they are natural links, with no obvious pattern, which will keep the search engines happy. The links will be one way, which makes them more valuable. However, it can be a good idea to thank a website for linking to you by linking to them in return. A reciprocal link may have less value with the search engines but the goodwill you build up with the other site may mean that they social bookmark, or promote you at some point in the future.
3. You get a high return for a small investment
Social media marketing is very cheap compared with paid advertising and other forms of online marketing, and the rewards can be much greater. Generally the only investment you need to make in social media marketing is your time, and in return you will get back links, brand exposure and traffic that would be impossible to generate with paid advertising.
The beauty of social media marketing is that it can form just a part of your overall marketing campaign, and can be used alongside other marketing strategies.
4. Increased brand awareness
Having your site tagged or referenced on a popular social media sites can increase exposure to your brand, and get your name known in the online world. If your name is seen regularly on the home page of a social book marking site, you will become known as an expert in your field, and your site will gain in credibility and authority.
Social media optimization and marketing are part of the Web 2.0 craze that is currently changing the way the internet works. Static content and traditional forms of search engine optimization are no longer sufficient to get your website noticed. If you don’t regularly create new and compelling content that is causing a stir on the social media sites, your website will struggle to compete in the online world.
