Social media is more than a way to connect with friends: it’s actually one of the most powerful and effective tools for marketing and driving traffic to a business website. Building your company’s social media profile and presence is the first step towards driving the kinds of leads your business need. To generate not only huge traffic, but potential leads as well, you need to master the basics of social media marketing – here’s how.

The first step towards driving traffic to your website is providing your social media followers with interesting, original and useful content. This helps
not only direct them to your business page, but also establish your company as a reputable and knowledgeable source in its industry. As a rule of thumb, you
should try to vary the length and format of your content – start with shorter, news-based blogs, and follow them with useful infographics or video content. In
fact, visual content, such as photos or testimonials, has been proven to be one of the most effective types of social media content.

However, to be successful, you need to target your content to your audience. Think about who your potential leads might be, and what they want and need. Suit your tone and content to their preferences, instead of blindly following trends (though keeping-up-to-date is always helpful). Make sure you get the “right” kind of followers – it’s not about the quantity, but the quality of your potential leads.

To raise awareness of your brand and increase the traffic to your website, you need to build engagement with your audience. Ask questions after every post, or try to hold conversations. You can encourage feedback or even cross-link by having your page like, share or comment on other similar content by other pages. Remember: try to stay relevant and connect with people, who might actually be interested in what you have to say or offer, rather than simply build a meaningless fan base.