What is Social Media Conversion?
Social media conversion is the process of optimizing your website and social media content to guide social media traffic into becoming conversions. While search engine traffic may produce more qualified leads and conversions, social media is still an extremely viable source of traffic for a lot of businesses. Therefore, after you establish a strong social media presence and brand awareness, you should build and optimize your website to drive social users down your conversion funnel toward conversion.
How Can I Convert Social Media Traffic?
While traffic from social media channels may sometimes lack buyer or transactional intent, the content you post on social media, if convincing and engaging enough, can persuade users that your business is the best fit for them. Here are a few practices and guidelines on how to do just that.
Use Social Media Logins
Traffic that is coming straight from content or links posted on your social media accounts will appreciate a quick login or sign up process. By integrating social channel logins and sign ups on your website, you can decrease any frustrations. This is also applicable for your checkout process as users won't have to fill out forms to create new accounts or signups and will be less likely to abandon their shopping cart.
It's much easier for users to click once rather than fill out forms with their email accounts, names, and passwords. Brands like Spotfiy do this well, like the example below.
Depending on the social media channel you want to integrate into your sign up or login process, you'll have to follow the steps listed on their website, which are linked below.
Create a Path for Social Traffic to Become Leads
This step requires that you place calls-to-action (CTAs) on a content page that you post on social media. By ensuring that your page has CTAs on it that users can click on, such as signing up for a newsletter subscription or free trial, you can turn them into leads for your sales team.
The path would look something like this: Social Channel → Article / Content → CTA → Lead / Conversion
If the content you posted talks about a specific product or service along with a promotion, feel free to add in a "purchase now" CTA or something similar. The reach of every article is dependent on how valuable it is to users, therefore you should never miss a chance to turn your social traffic into leads.
You can use a Conversion Rate Optimzation tool like Unamo Conversion to monitor the behavior of users on these pages with heatmaps and session replay to see how they interact with these pages so you can place your CTA in the best place.
Optimize Your Content For Each Social Channel
Different social channels have different demographics in terms of users. What some users find engaging on Facebook may not be the case for users on LinkedIn. That is why you should take a slightly different approach to the way you post content on different channels. Use the demographic data of your target audience in tandem with the demographics of the users on social channels to streamline your approach.
Also pay attention to the hours when users are most engaged with your brand on each social media channel. With Unamo Social Media, you can see the time of day where users make the most mentions of your brand or targeted keywords and distribute your content accordingly. Some users are more active on different social channels at different times, so plan appropriately. This will ensure that you get the maximum exposure possible for the content you're posting.
Post Gated Content
Increase your leads by having users fill out subscriptions before they read your content. Gated content is a small form that users have to complete to view the content they want to see. This will obviously turn some users away from reading your post; however, those that do will become leads and you'll be able to market relevant information to them about your product based on their interest in the content they wanted to view.
Embed Calls-to-action in Your Video Content
With the increasing rise of shared video content on social media, you should be taking advantage and posting your own original video content. If you use YouTube, you can add Cards to include CTAs to your website that will appear in the video.
You can add a card by following these simple steps:
- Sign in to your account
- You'll have to add your website as an associated website to your account, which you can learn how to do here.
- Click on your account icon in the top-right and hit Creator Studio
- Hit edit on the video you want to link from
- Above on the right you should see Cards. Click that.
- Click Add Card and then, if you have't already Enable the Links part.
- Hit Create Link
- Upload the URL you want users to be sent to
- Upload an image to go with it
- Edit the text, CTA text, and adjust the start time for the card to appear
- Hit Create and you're done.
Create your video content with CTA cards and increase your leads.
Put Promotional Codes or Offers in Your Brand's Bio or Profile Picture
If your profile page gets a lot of views and mentions, you should consider placing promotional codes on them. It's a good idea to place different promotions on different channels as the demographics of these users and their needs may be different within each social channel. You can send them directly to product pages with CTA links or include the number or email of your sales rep to streamline the process.
This will give you definitive leads that you can showcase your products and services to in order to turn them into qualified leads or customers.
How to Monitor Your Social Media Conversions
Use a social media monitoring tool to see the effects of your content distribution and react to what users are saying. Check their mentions and reach out if some of them show any interest. Stay on top of the sentiment, reach, and amount of mentions corresponding to the content and promotions you release across each channel.
With all the data you'll have in Unamo Social, you can optimize your content distribution periods, reach out to the highest performing influencers, and always stay up-to-date with alerts.
If you're only focusing on a few social channels, but see the amount of engagement or higher ranking influencers change, it could be a good indication to focus more of your recourses on those channels. Furthermore, you can tag your links with Google Analytics and monitor which links lead to more conversions and pivot your strategies accordingly.
Use your conversion tools to monitor the behavior of users on these pages and organize your content and web page to minimize any frustrations they may be having.