The Creatorpreneurs Academy brings together strategic marketing with eye-catching design so you have the tools and skills to grow your business fast.

Social media marketing is an ongoing process and can be rather time-consuming if you don’t manage it. However, having a consistent plan can can make it easier as well as increase traffic to your website, getting you bigger results, faster.

This article in our Creatorpreneurs Academy series will help bring you traffic from any social media platform by completing 4 defined steps.

The 4 Steps to Get More Traffic with Social Media

1. Plan Your Social Post Content

The idea here is to create content for your target audience. Your focus should be on showing your audience what they need to solve their biggest problem in your niche.

First, consider how often you will post great content on one or more of your social accounts… Twice a week? Daily?

Then create a list of topics that address your audience’s troubles and the solution you can offer. Ask yourself if what you’d like to offer will be something they’ll want to share with others. After all, getting others to share can be the biggest driver of traffic to your site!

To stay on track and provide consistent content, use a simple calendar that reminds you what content you intend to provide on each post, what social platform you plan to share it on, and how often you will share.

2. Create a Brand Story.

Now that you have your content ideas, make a brief “story” out of each one. This is your chance to tell people what your brand is all about… how you understand their problem and how you can help them with it.

Consider making your story into a quick How-To lesson, product demonstration, or story about how your offer helped a customer in real life. Just keep in mind that, because this content is for your social media posts, you need to brief but compelling.

Therefore, give your audience a “teaser” of what they’ll get if they click on your social link. For example, if you are offering a “how-to” article, you might tell about how one customer followed your steps and got double the traffic to their site. Then ask them to click a link to find out how they can do this too (see step #4 below on using a “Call-to-Action”).

3. Add Eye-Catching Visuals.

As is true anywhere on the internet, striking visuals in your social media posts will capture and hold your audience’s attention. Please, please, please don’t get tempted to add a simple colored Facebook background to your post, or worse, to leave out an image altogether!

Just as when you’re telling your “story” above, stunning, unique visuals tell them that they can trust you and that you’re capable of helping them. Besides, you won’t even get noticed if you don’t use graphics and images that catch the eye.

The truth is, the few minutes you spend creating a graphic will be worth it. And, yes, you can create an image in just a few minutes with the right tool.

Simply put, it’ll bring more traffic to your website. This is for two reasons: First, people are much more likely to click on an image than to hunt for a link in the text. And second, you’ll look more appealing, trustworthy, and professional.

How to Use Graphics to Drive Social Media Traffic

The number one most important piece of a perfect social post is your image. If your post doesn’t quickly capture attention, you’ll get very few views, if any.

Words are competing for attention everywhere. And even if you’ve written an amazing story and offer, they may never be seen without first capturing your audience’s attention with a stunning graphic.

Watch this video to learn more about creating eye-catching social media graphics:

4. Include a Clear Social Call-to-Action.

A “call-to-action” (CTA) tells viewers exactly what you want them to do next. On social media, this is just as important as in a blog article, video, or on a web page. You want your planned post to share a story, have a big attention-getting graphic, and then tell them exactly what to do with that information.

In most social posts, you will tell them to: “Subscribe”, “Learn More” “Find out How To…”, “Share”, and perhaps even “Get The Offer”.

Before writing your CTA, have a clear idea of what action you want a potential customer to do. And, decide whether you will direct them to your website, blog, video, podcast, or sales page?

Be Consistent with Your Social Media Marketing Plan

In order to get more traffic, you must consider this a somewhat long-term plan. Posting a few times on any social media rarely doubles your traffic instantly. However, staying on course by consistently following these four steps with each piece of social media content will bring you more traffic.

Why a Niche is Important in Business

Your business “niche” refers to having to a small, specialized group of people that your business provides value for.

For instance, instead of considering just “dog owners” as your niche, you could focus on “first-time dog owners who work outside the home”. This greatly narrows your niche and lets you focus on who you are talking to and what their needs are.

In this case, because they work away from home and are unsure of how to raise a dog, they need help on what products to buy for their puppy while they’re away all day. If you sell automatic feeders and water bowls, entertaining toys, and weather-proof dog beds, then you’ll be selling to your niche! Having a focused niche helps you give these people exactly what they need.

Think of it like this… if you try to sell to everyone (such as “all dog owners”), then your message won’t be targeted towards a small group who truly value what you offer (in this example… dog owners who’re worried about their treasured pet while they are away at work).

Use Facebook Groups as Your #1 Niche Marketing Strategy

This might be a surprise to you, but one of the easiest ways to find your niche online is through Facebook groups. Facebook group “research” can actually help you learn more about and connect with your target audience.

Facebook groups are a place that your audience hangs out. Groups can be focused on a specific brand, organization, club, or interests.

Typically, you need to ask to join a closed group. This is because many groups are hoping to find members that fit in their own online business niche and who would be interested in their product. These groups offer discussions, surveys, informative articles, etc., all based on the group’s topic.

Finding niche-specific Facebook groups that are based on the same niche as your business can be helpful in several ways: They can help you keep on top of what’s happening within your industry, give you ideas for new products or services, and give you access to a pool of people who would likely be interested in what you have to offer.

Follow Your Target Audience in Facebook Groups

The easiest way of finding groups in your niche is to look at what groups your target audience belongs to. Follow these ideas for a strategy that’s easy to do (although it does require time and effort):

Start by using Facebook’s search field:

Type in keywords for your own niche. Or search using the categories. Who are your people? What are their interests? Join those groups!

Take note of who the influencers and leaders are in your niche:

Join their groups and get to know their audience. Pay attention to the value they have to offer!

This is hugely beneficial to you because those influencers will have already gathered an audience in the same niche. Many have hundreds if not thousands of people in their group already. Let’s be real… a list like that would probably take you many months or much longer to build.

Get to know the people in each group:

Once you’re a member of the group, you can get to know much more about the people in your niche. Get to know their interests, fears, problems, and desires. You should post simple questions or games to engage the members and find out more about them.

Take notes on what you learn:

Save their questions and notes about their struggles, as well as the specific words they use to describe their problems. This will help you provide as much value as possible to this group of people. After all, you’ll understand what they need just by spending time with them.

No spamming the group:

Just remember to be respectful and encouraging in each group. Make sure to follow each group’s rules and Facebook best practices. Absolutely no spamming or messaging members with your own links and products. 🙂

Share this pin with your target audience on Pinterest so they can learn this niche marketing strategy 🙂

How to Grow Your Business With Targeted Visuals

Now that you’ve observed and interacted with your Facebook groups and have all the value you can possibly get packed into your product or service, it’s time to share your offer with your audience.

To do this, you’ll need to create advertisements and social media content that targets your niche audience specifically.

First, visually entice your audience:

Use The Graphics Creator to make stunning graphics that appeal to your niche audience.

Choose colors and background images that’ll get their attention. For example, if your niche is people who live alone and are dog owners, you’re not going to place a dark, lonely forest as the background. Instead, you’ll use an image of a happy person hugging a cute little doggie while the sun is shining.

And, if you’re selling collars and cute clothes for their favorite companion, you want to appeal to how happy a dog can make a lonely person feel and how enjoyable it can be for that person to dress their pup up.

Grab The Graphics Creator if you don’t have it yet. Try it out here for free (includes images with watermarks that can be removed 🙂

Second, appeal to your audience by using language they understand and have an emotional connection to:

Write out a sales pitch that addresses how you can solve their “pain” or problem. Use words that they’ll search for (you know what words these are because you’ve saved them as I suggested above, right?).

Third, watch this video for more help!

How to Sell Even More in Your Niche

I’ll leave you with this… If you want to grow your business and make even more sales, use these questions to guide you:

What interests and passions am I sharing with my audience? Are they benefitting or can I be sharing more of myself?

What specific problems am I solving for people in my niche? Can I solve a bigger problem to help them even more?

Am I earning a good living in my niche? Can I further laser-target who I’m selling to?

Who are my competitors? Can I create a product that is better quality, less expensive, or more personalized?