You know that most people prefer to do business with those they feel that they “know, like, and trust.” For this reason, all online and offline business owners need to find ways to develop the story of their credibility as a business owner and business. Using social media to boost your business creditably is an effective way to accomplish it.
Using Social Media to Boost Your Business Credibility
- Be Who You Are and Share Your Values – This is the easiest thing you can do. Via the content you share, the things you do, and the people you surround yourself with, your audience will know that you are who you say you are, due to consistently being who you say you are.
- Stay Consistent – The smallest thing can point to inconsistencies. Even if someone doesn’t notice it consciously right away, it will bother them and erode your trust. For example, if you are not a proponent of soy, don’t promote anything with soy. If you say you’re a vegan, you need to be one in real life. The internet finds out things and it will get out.
- Share High-Quality Content – Any content you curate, create, or buy should be accurate, well written, and relevant to your audience. If you post fillers that aren’t good, your audience will notice.
- Engage and Interact on Social Media Platforms – Don’t just post as if the engagement is one way on social platforms. Instead, automate posting but get down and dirty with engagement by doing it yourself or hiring real-life people to engage with your audience in real-time and in real life.
- Go Live More Often – One way to build credibility is not to be so perfect. Go live occasionally to share some information with your audience, even if your hair is not perfect and even if you don’t have it all worked out. Your audience will feel closer to you for it and see you as genuine.
- Incentivize and Encourage User-Generated Content – When your users are active, it makes other people see you differently. Host contests, do challenges, and conduct polls, all designed to get more user-generated content. When others like you, it gives even more permission to.
- Get More Customer Reviews and Testimonials – Make it a habit by putting this into your marketing funnel. Send a testimonial or review request to your buyers automatically after enough time to experience your product or service. All you have to do to accomplish this is add it to your autoresponder to deliver after a certain number of days from purchase.
- Only Link Out to Trustworthy Sites and Products – When you do curate content or link to another person’s site or product, always ensure that you really do know the person and the quality of the content or product. One mistake here can reduce trust forever.
- Give Your Audience a Behind-the-Scenes Peek – Show your audience inside the madness by bringing them behind the scenes. Give them a peek of what you do all day long to bring them incredible products, services, and content.
The truth is, if you want to be perceived as being credible, you need to be credible.
Don’t think for one moment that you can be one thing and present another online.
You will be found out, and it won’t be pretty.
But, it’s so simple to just be who you are, share your values, and add value for your audience on social media in a credible way to help people trust you more.
How to Use Social Media to Drive Traffic to Your Blog or Website
Now you know how you can use social media to build and expand the online credibility, and reputation, of your business. But what about traffic to your website?
The main job of your social media platforms is to drive traffic to your blog, website, or other online real estate. Social media is a traffic-generating tool that you can use to get more eyes on your content and products if you know how to use it right.
Using social media to drive traffic to your blog or website will be a lot easier when you realize how it all works together.
Optimize Your Profile
Your profile should include a great picture of you, links to relevant content, an audience-centered bio, and other information designed to draw your audience into your world in a way that feels good to them.
Each social media platform varies in terms of mood and feel. It’s important that you create a profile that both fits the platform and your own business in such a way that your audience automatically knows it’s you.
Engage with Your Audience Consistently
Setting up the profile is not enough. You really do need to engage with your audience on a regular and consistent basis. Answer questions, like their posts, share their information, thank them for sharing yours, and more. Anytime you can engage with them in a positive manner, you should do so.
Post Sharable Updates Regularly and Consistently
One way to get your audience interested once you have created the profile is to continually share your content and updates on the platform. If the content originates on your blog or other owned real estate, that is even better than having it start on the social media platform; it will help you get links back to the owned blogs, websites, and landing pages for products.
Make Your Content More Visual
The more visual your content on social media, the more likely it is to be shared. Videos, memes, and text posts with images attached, always work best to grab their attention. One thing to remember, though, is that if you post anything with words in it (even if it’s just a meme), you need to put the words in the text area of the post so that the search engines catch it. And also, just an aside but an important one, so that people with certain disabilities can also see it.
Be Active When and Where Your Audience Is Active
Another way to get attention is to figure out when your audience is actively using the platform. That is when you want to post your content, go live on video, post your poll, or announce your contest. It may take some testing to figure out when they are there, but once you do, this is going to explode your results, getting links back to your blog or website.
Run Polls, Host Q & As, Contests and Other Buzz-Worthy Activity
This type of activity will get your audience’s attention because it looks different and will catch their eye. It’s important, though, to have a reason for doing any of this. You don’t want activity that has no direction. Know what your call to action is, and you will succeed with these traffic-generating methods of polls, Q & As, contests and so forth.
Get to Know Your Competition
This may not seem to have much to do with you getting traffic, but it will give you a lot of good information. See what your competitors are doing, and do more of that and do it slightly better.
Work with Social Influencers
This is a superfast way to boost your traffic even when you don’t have a lot of followers yourself. Contact several social media influencers to do something with you that gets the attention of your audience.
Social media is one of the very best traffic-generating tools that exist today. If you use social media correctly as the tool that it is, you’ll boost your traffic to your products, services, and website or blog, and improve your numbers exponentially.
