I’m starting a series on traffic generation strategies on the Online Business Hour podcast and I wanted to share some of the over 150 traffic generation tips that I will be covering in the series. Here I will reveal several techniques for generating traffic from social media profile pages.
Generating traffic from social media sources is a vital part of any traffic strategy. It’s easy to focus on generating traffic through status updates, but what about getting some traffic from your profile, bio, or info pages? Users often go to bio pages to learn more about you, or your business, so they’re a great place to place links to, and promote, your website(s). I’m going to show you some unique and effective ways to increase traffic from your profile pages on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+. I’m not promising droves of server crushing traffic. My aim is to help you to increase what I call your “exposure surface area”. Increasing exposure and traffic by adding links and branding through out all of your profiles is just one part of your overall traffic generation strategy, but it shouldn’t be overlooked.
Facebook Info Tab
The Info tab isn’t the same on every page, so we’ll look at a few different types of pages. In some cases I wasn’t able to find examples of others utilizing these tactics so I used my own pages as an example.
Personal pages
Contact details
In the case of Facebook’s Contact Information area generating traffic is fairly straight forward. Place links to all of the websites you would like to generate more traffic for and your done.
However, there are other ways to generate traffic on the Info tab by routing traffic through your business, band, fan, and other pages to your website. Let me explain.
On your personal page links to your website and contact information show up at the very bottom of the page in the Contact Detail section. That’s not prime real estate if you’re trying to generate traffic back to your website or blog. In addition the links don’t have thumbnails and so they’re less attractive next to all of those images of books, music, tv shows, movies, etc. So, I suggest you take advantage of the prime real estate available in the sections above your contact information. Here’s how you can do that.
Work and Education
Don’t be afraid to add a Facebook page for your own website, podcast, youtube channel – whatever – as your job. In fact, add multiple “jobs” for everything you want to promote. There’s no reason not to. If you can make a Facebook page for each of your websites, or blogs, than do it. The result will be a list, with thumbnails, advertising your pages at the top of your profile. This is a prime spot, don’t waste it on past employers. You want it to generate traffic to your site, through your respective Facebook pages, not to your ex-employer’s website.
You could try promoting a project of yours in the education field, but that’s a little more difficult and it could look fairly cheesy. “The Circus Animal Blog University” just doesn’t sound right. Unless you’re starting a school, promoting your project here doesn’t make much sense.
You may be tempted to put the 3 high-schools and 4 colleges you attended, but that’s just going to fill the page with images and headlines competing for attention. Keep it simple. If your page is public, and you’re using it to promote your website(s) and generate traffic, then don’t clutter it with ‘ad spots’ providing exposure for something else.
Arts and Entertainment
Music
If you’re utilizing music, or some form of new media (e.g., podcasting) for marketing purposes remember that you can package your videos and audios into Albums and promote and sell them on Facebook. You can even create an artist page for your productions if you like. Add your albums, and or Facebook page(s) to your music list. When people see that you have audio their interest may be piqued. Multiple forms of media will mean multiple channels of traffic back to your website even if that traffic makes a stop at your Facebook page first.
Books
If you don’t have a book to promote, then write one! When you’re done writing your book head back to Facebook and promote it on your personal page in your book list. When people visit your book’s page on Facebook you will send them to your website to download it, or purchase it. Obviously you don’t need to go write a book just to take advantage of this tip, but if you do offer eBooks on your website make sure you set up pages for them and add those pages to your favorite books list. Just another way to use your profile and Facebook page to drive traffic back to your website.
Starting to get the idea? Well then, let’s do it again under TV shows.
TV Shows
If you’re using video as part of your project then add your page to your TV show list. You can even create a TV show page for your video show. That way, when people begin typing in a phrase that matches your TV show’s page name your show may pop-up as a suggestion. That puts you in front of more eyes. Let’s say you have a video show about learning new languages called “Discovering Language”. When Facebook users start typing in “Discover…” while filling out their TV show list they may very well see your page in the list of suggestions. I know, it’s not amazing, it’s just a small part of an overall strategy for increasing your exposure surface area and generating traffic. You’re putting your projects out there for more people too see. As your exposure level goes up, so will your traffic.
Sports
Unless you support a sports team that’s named after your business, or website, then promoting your brand here won’t make much sense. If you happen to have a team – any team, in any sport – then set up a Facebook page and link to it here. For example, the Blue Mountain Real Estate Chess Club. When people visit your chess club’s Facebook page they’ll be presented with opportunities to visit your website too.
Activies & Interests
You’re obviously interested in your own website, so add the various Facebook pages you’ve created for your websites here. By the time a user has made it to the Interest section of the page they’ve been given a pretty clear image (literally) of what’s important to you – your website – and they know where to find the Facebook page for your website. From there it’s just a link away.
Your Facebook page(s) can easily direct traffic to your website or blog. They also give you the ability to showcase your branding so that people will get comfortable with you.
Remember that you can order the thumbnails so that your books, music, etc show up first in the list of your interests.
If you feel like this is the equivalent of spamming your Facebook profile then by all means don’t promote yourself on your profile. Feel free to promote the latest James Franco movie, or the X Factor, or whatever it is you like. I think you get where I’m coming from.
When it comes to generating traffic from Facebook your Info tab isn’t the most important place to start, but that’s what we’re focused on. We’re attempting to make sure that all pages lead back to your website. In the above examples we’ve directed the traffic from your own Info tab to your business, and fan pages. Of course, once a user is at your fan page they should have several paths available to head over to your website. However, you’ll also want to make sure that your Info tab contains links to all of your sites.
Fan page
There’s not a whole lot going on in your fan page’s Info tab. I recommend adding links to your various websites, Facebook pages, RSS feeds etc., to your description. Don’t miss this opportunity to get some traffic from your Facebook fan page to your website. Keep in mind that on all pages you can add nice big images like this one for the Traffic Generation Cafe.
Business Page
Business pages let you add multiple websites in the website field so take advantage of that potential traffic generator too.
By now you have enough to get you started generating traffic from your Facebook Info tab. Let’s take a look at Twitter.
You Twitter Profile page is much smaller than your Facebook Info tab. In some ways this is for the better. There’s only one place for a link and everyone’s eyes have been trained to look there. However, you can also add a link to your bio, and it’s a clickable link too! But wait, there’s more! You can also add a link to another website in the location field. Though it’s not a clickable link some people will type it in. That’s traffic from someone who’s interested!
Another tactic for generating traffic to your site, or blog, from Twitter is to create a custom background image that contains your site’s domain name and branding. Keep in mind that there are several different screen area resolutions and users with smaller screen resolutions may not be able to read the URL in your background image if it’s too big. In the example image Tom Treanor of Right Mix Marketing made sure that his URLs were readable by displaying them vertically. Not a bad idea.
LinkedIn let’s you list your websites, or blogs, and lists them in at least two locations in your profile. Unfortunately you have to choose from a list of anchor tag text (Personal site, Blog, etc.). Also unfortunate is the fact that you can’t put URLs in the Summary area. Not a lot of room for traffic generation from the Profile itself.
Google+
If Facebook is the Microsoft of social networks than Google+ is Linux. The Linux operating system let’s you do whatever you want to it, and so does Google’s About page in your Google+ profile. The About page, or tab, contains some suggestions (i.e., Occupation, Employment) but most people use the Introduction section to list links to their websites, and promote their various projects. It’s a great place to write some effective copy and drive traffic to your website. However, you can’t post images. So, unlike Facebook’s pretty thumbnails you’re left working with plane text and some mark-up to create an introduction that drives traffic to your website.
In the side bar of the About page you can create a list of links as long as you want (as far as I know) complete with favicons. If your introduction doesn’t catch people than their eyes will likely wonder to this list of links. Make sure you have links back to your website, or blog, there.
You can also place your URL in plain text in a few of the other available fields, but this is hardly necessary as Google give you plenty of space in your introduction.
And finally, you can place your domain in your profile description even though it won’t be a clickable link.
And there you have it! More than you every wanted to know about generating traffic from social media profile pages. Much of it is common sense, but sometimes common sense isn’t as common as we think it is. Make sure you’re taking full advantage of your Profile, About, and Info areas and you’ll squeeze out a little more traffic.
