Every company’s dream is to have their content flooding with traffic, their name at the center of attention, and social media buzzing around them. This isn’t just for the opportunity of growth it would present to your company, but we want this traffic to our sites, because as creators, we know how good our content is, and we want others to know too. When you create effective content for your company’s site, you want it to reach that vast audience, serving as much of your community as possible.

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A JD Power Survey showed that out of 23,000 online participants, 67% of consumers engaged a brand’s social media for customer service needs. Sharing self-service content via social media to answer those questions not only helps address the customer's immediate concern, but also creates awareness for the self-help resources customers can leverage any time, driving traffic back to the brand's website. You know your content is valuable, so you want your audience to be able to experience it, and ultimately, learn from it, aiding their self-service journey.

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Other than making an epic viral video (which is nearly impossible), the only way to do this is by optimizing your SEO. There are tons of ways to boost SEO and get your name higher up on search results, but one great and simple step is through social media.

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Although social media followings don’t directly contribute to your search engine ranking, they do contribute on a deeper level. The amount of followers you have on Twitter, or the links you share on Facebook may not improve your ranking, but they bring exposure to your company, which in turn, brings traffic to your site. And what you’re ultimately looking for here is more traffic and exposure.

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However, successfully building a social media following and transferring them into site visitors who can enjoy your content is a tricky act. But, once it is done successfully, you will dive into a successful cycle of writing effective content for a happy community that keeps growing. So how exactly do you do that?

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First, Create Some Awesome Content

Before you can direct anyone to your site, you need to fill it with rich, engaging, and effective content. Your content should be informative and educational to enhance your audience's journey with your product—before, during, or after they purchase. You can’t launch your new social media presence until you can link it to a website that is filled with helpful tools for your community to interact with, so they are encouraged to stay and connect, rather than abandon. Follow these steps to create effective content for your self-service knowledge base.

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Make Sharing Easy on Your Site

Before your audience can be directed to your site, you need to leave easy links or calls-to-action to allow them to share your content. This can be as simple as “share icons” attached to your post, encouraging your audience to post to their own community about your site. This helps spread word and increase traffic to new groups of people who may not be aware of your company yet.

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Pick Your Platforms

Once you’ve created your content and your site is ready, the first step is to choose the social media platforms you want to leverage. There are a lot to choose from and it may seem overwhelming. The current top 5 social media platforms of 2020 are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Snapchat, in that order.

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The best way to pick your platform is by finding where your customers are. By basing your network here, you can easily reach a large portion of your customer base in their preferred method, getting a jump-start on growing your social community. Remember one of your main goals here is to help your customer find the content you’ve created. So to do that, you should base your platform where your customer is.

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If you don’t know where your customers are, some easy solutions are:

• Send out a survey: A direct, one-question email survey sent to your customer base can lead you to the right platform.
• Target your audience based on buyer personas. If you haven’t created a buyer personas yet, follow this step-by-step guide to find out how to do so. Use your buyer personas to get inside your audience’s head and find out what social media they may use most.

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Build Your Profile

Once you’ve picked what social media platforms you want to focus on, you need to build out those profiles. This means:

• Consistent profile pictures and banner photos across every platform your company uses. Whatever picture you choose should be unique and somehow speak to your brand.
• A catchy and distinctive bio on your profile page (for the platforms that require one). This allows your audience to get a quick snippet of who your company is, what you value, and what they will gain from following your content.
• And most importantly, link to your website! The main reason you’re facelifting your social media is to boost traffic to your website, so placing that link on your profile, in a convenient place, is the most crucial step.

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A great example of a brand smoking the competition on social media is Wendys. All of their accounts match with cohesive profile images and color palettes. But what sets them apart, are their witty and unique bios. Whether it’s their one-liner joke on twitter or the simple and trendy three emojis on Instagram, they know exactly what their audience wants (fast meals), and therefore, how to relate to them (fast content).

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Build Your Community

Ok, now your site is ready. Your profiles are ready. It’s time to start building your community so you can reach as many people as possible. The first thing you should do is keep your target audience in mind. Look back at those personas you created when you were making your content.

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Ask yourself:

• Who am I trying to reach?
• What kind of people do I want to engage with my social media accounts, and ultimately, website content?
• Who do I want my company to be associated with on social media?
• Who is already in my customer base and community that I can easily connect with?

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Once you’ve answered those questions, take action:

• Build relationships with your customers by following them, replying to any comments they leave, or messages they send.
• Build relationships with companies in your community. This means sharing posts from fellow accounts or interacting with them through comments. This allows you to adopt their community with your own, which ultimately, expands yours.
• Become a part of the conversation. Whether that conversation is the presidential race, pineapple’s rightful position on pizza, or the chicken and egg debate—if it’s important to your brand and your target audience, post about it. Talking about trending subjects will bring more traffic to your posts.
• Use relevant hashtags. Tag trending subjects that your company and your audience care about. This helps put your name out and expand your circle. But don’t go overboard. No one likes tacky walls of hashtags!

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Check out what Airbnb is doing with their #weaccept campaign. This simple and memorable hashtag speaks to their brand values and the importance that diversity holds in their company. It encourages people to use this tag in all different scenarios, expanding their community outside of the B&B circle.

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Share Your Published Content

Finally! You thought we’d never get here, didn’t you? You put in the work of creating amazing content and building influential social media platforms with relevant profiles and an engaged community. Now sharing your content is a breeze!

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What’s important to remember here is that you should always update your social media whenever you publish new content on all platforms to properly get the word out. Now, as your social media community grows, your website can gain traffic, and your target audience can absorb all the content you’ve created.

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Keep Engaging With Your Community

Nope, not done yet. Just because you’ve captured your audience, doesn’t mean they’ll stay. The internet moves quickly, and people lose interest just as quickly as they gained it. Luckily, there’s a lot you can do to avoid this from happening.

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• Consistently interact with your community. Whether it means posting, commenting, liking, sharing, or whatever it is you do—just keep doing it. Becoming stale on social media is a sure way to lose your followers’ interest.
• Reinforce your brand reputation. Remind your community who you are, what you provide, and why they are benefiting from being involved with your company. This could mean new releases, giveaways, product teasers, live videos, Q&A’s, etc.
• Encourage interactions. Post questions, polls, surveys, contests, or anything that gets your community involved in what you’re doing. Think of your social media as a tool for collaborating with your audience. It’s a great way to work together, in a partnership, and gain from each other.
• Always, always, always respond! 32% of social media users expect a response within 30 minutes, and 42% expect a response within 60 minutes. Whether it is a comment or private message, always respond promptly. This shows your social community that you care about their thoughts or concerns. And showing that you care is a great value to add to your brand and one of the best tactics to building trust with your audience.

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Sometimes, like in Netflix’s case, engaging with your community means listening to your audience’s concerns, and providing resolutions:

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Wait, What About SEO?

Ah, yes. So you have created an awesome social media community that is engaging with your company and your site’s content. What does that have to do with SEO again? As your community has grown through social media, and traffic has increased on your site, search websites will begin to index your site higher. This means, users will be able to find your content easier through organic searches, leading to more traffic, growth, and SEO. Ultimately, the more people visiting your site, the easier it will be for your audience to find the content they need to successfully serve themselves.

All that’s left for you to do is continue engaging with your community and creating effective content.

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