Top Ten Social Media Sites for Building Traffic and Sales

Online merchants know it’s important to interact with consumers and expand website traffic to increase sales. Online sellers use may Internet marketing tactics to this end. An excellent tactic for building traffic and interest in your products is to post and network on social media sites, which can result in many interesting conversations and more qualified traffic to your site. Below is TopTenWholesale’s list of social media sites for building traffic.

Facebook – The most popular social media site has more than 800 million active users with over 50 percent of them logging in every day. That makes it a great source of traffic for brands. A good many brands have a presence on Facebook because they like the constant updates to their fan pages and the great free apps and analytics. Most brands go here first before any place else when it comes to social networking. You have to work to develop a following, especially if you aren’t a big brand. However, if you post your links offering incentives, contests or promotions, you can quickly develop a following that will likely share your site with friends given the incentive. The average Facebook member has 130 friends. Facebook has the potential to provide a good chunk of traffic to your website, so make your presence appealing to customer with the knowledge of fulfilling their needs without shilling. Be sure to add the Facebook Like and Share buttons to your site to help your customers share deals with their friends even when they’re not on your Facebook fan page.

Twitter – Create a Twitter business account and encourage followers. It can be hard to get customers to pay attention to your tweets, unless it’s about meeting their needs. The average Twitter user has a huge list of people they follow so a single tweet can be lost in the stream of things. Establishing a good list of followers, in addition to getting some of the deal bots to follow you, can help gain momentum and connect you with people that are interested in your tweets. Some companies use Twitter as a customer service outlet, which is a great way to connect with customers and get them to interact. When you get customer service interactions, make sure to have the necessary staff to provide good customer service through this channel. Once established, the traffic possibilities from Twitter can be satisfying.

LinkedIn – This business networking site can help develop your brand engagement, providing traffic, as well as employees, if you develop it. Try answering the questions in the question and answer section, and encourage your employees to add themselves to your company. You can also advertise to potential employees and customers. LinkedIn allows your organization to provide a public face for potential employees as well as other members, allowing them to get an idea about your corporate culture.

YouTube – As the second most popular search engine, Twitter can provide a lot of great traffic when you post great videos. You must be creative and have access to good equipment to create and post videos that might go viral. Nowadays, you can do this with most smartphones. Businesses can run and promote video campaigns that will bring their videos to the top of search results, along with the additional benefit of getting clickable links to your site as users watch. YouTube gets over 100 million views per day and more than 50 percent of the videos are rated or commented on.

Quora – Quora has a question and answer format and gets a lot of well-known people using the site and creating great content. If you join Quora and start providing excellent answers to questions that haven’t yet been answered, you can develop some good traffic  to your site while also establishing yourself as an expert in your niche.

Digg – Digg is a site where people discover and share content from anyplace on the web. Digg displays the best content as voted on by the community. You can post content and promote it with buttons, widgets and the like. You can also post from Digg to Facebook and Twitter. It’s a great place for posting and finding news on all topics. Digg Ads are also available, which are said to provide a better user experience than banner ads.

Flickr – This is a great place for posting your product photos, which are easy to upload on Flickr and can start providing traffic. Since this is a photo community, your photos must be good or they won’t attract attention. However, if you post cool pictures, you can get some traffic from the Flickr crawlers such as Google Images. Flickr is a great place to showcase a new product that’s relatively unknown because it can get your product picture in front of a lot of people fast.

StumbleUpon – StumbleUpon is a great site for people who are looking for something new. Submitting your site can provide a lot of traffic if your pages are exciting and grab interest. Don’t submit your homepage or about us page, as these can be boring. However, if you have a new infographic, linkbait or cool blog post, submitting it to StumbleUpon can create great traffic results.

Amplify – This site is more for a personal brand than for business, Amplify is like Twitter without the restriction in the number of message characters. You can follow people and post links and information. It’s similar to Twitter but allows you to share larger chunks of information. Amplify has a good community with the potential to bring good traffic to your site.

Google Plus – The Google +1 button is used to share information and get conversations started. Google displays +1 buttons in search results, and user can add it to content on their own site. When users click the +1 button, it means they like the content. They can add a comment and share it with people in their circle. For Google, it results in knowing what users like and using that data to affect organic search results.

In conclusion, it’s important for online merchants to continuously expand their website traffic to increase conversions. A good way for building traffic and interest in your products is to post and network on social media sites where you can interact with consumers and stakeholders, resulting in information exchanges. The list of social media sites above can be useful for firms interested in building traffic, interacting with consumers and learning what people think about their products and services.