Welcome to How to Make Money as a Content Creator, the course that covers everything you need to start earning money online doing what you love. I’m James Caran, content creator at WayAway and Travelpayouts. You’re joining us for our 3rd module of the course — How to Get Visitors to See Your Content. And, today, we’re talking all about driving traffic to your content through social media!
In this lesson, we’ll cover how to increase social media traffic to your website. However, to drive this traffic, you first need to build it and get more people to your social media profiles and YouTube channel. So, in this lesson, we’ll share some actionable tips on how to grow your audience on social media and YouTube and as well as explain how you can translate this audience to your website. Let’s dive in.
So, what can you do to grow your social media following and get your social traffic rolling?
First and foremost, to boost your visibility: optimize your social media profiles. For this:
To learn more about how to make your social media profiles more searchable, check out the resources section.
Next, interact with your audience and boost engagement. For example, on Instagram pages, you can increase engagement through: likes, comments, story shares, and mentions! And very similarly on Twitter you can encourage retweets, likes, and mention others to ask questions and start discussions!
Here’s another way to increase engagement — keep to a regular posting schedule. When users know when to expect your content, they’re more likely to interact with it. Not only that, consistency also allows you to build credibility and trust and grow your following.
Social media also allows you to know exactly what’s engaging your followers and get honest feedback in real-time! Comments and discussions on your social media posts help you gather some research material regarding what people liked or engaged with most! This will help you generate new ideas for the future.
When you engage and use feedback from your audience, it increases loyalty, as viewers feel they have an impact on your content! Encourage this more by running polls, or inviting your audience to vote! You can use the results of these polls in order to create content directly shaped by your audience! Everyone loves to feel that their voice is heard.
To drive engagement, you can go one step further and use user-generated content, which is any content — text, videos, images, reviews, etc.— created by people and published on social media or any other channels. For example, you can encourage users to share their travel photos using a relevant hashtag in return for a prize. It’s a great way to connect with your followers – but there are some things to be mindful of, so be sure to check out the additional materials in our resources section for advice on using it.
But don’t get in the habit of only reviewing your own content! Noticing your competitors is one of the most important ways to understand your users’ needs. Following other influencers or content creators in your niche is a great way to interact with your audience. Reply to comments of these creators, share your ideas — stay visible. And who knows, you may even earn some new followers yourself!
However, remember our tips from lesson 2 of this module about referral traffic. Don’t sell your products on another user’s platform — stick to sharing your ideas and offering insights rather than poaching!
Now let’s see how you can increase your views and subscribers on YouTube. YouTube IS a search system, so first and foremost you should optimize it for search! Meaning: you need to use relevant keywords in video titles, descriptions, and the video itself. Also, make sure to load up your video tags with keywords too.
Engagement is another factor that determines how high your videos will rank in search results. To boost engagement, encourage users to like, subscribe, and share your channel or video with others!
Not only this, but YouTube is a visual platform. So, consider:
We will be linking some useful tools to help you optimize and grow your YouTube channel down below.
Once you’ve grown your audience on social media and YouTube and have a nice following to your name — you’ll want to share your website with them as well!
Some ways to do that are:
At the end of the day, social media can be incredibly helpful as a supporting means for audience engagement. With social media, you can reinforce your brand, establish your authority, and hang out in the same sphere as your audience! Think of it as your social hour. You’re sort of your own referral partner. Refer your traffic from social to your home page, simply by engaging with the right audience!
Let’s go over what we have learned today.
Start growing your social media channels today by implementing some of the tips we mentioned in this video! With consistency and engagement, you’ll be well on your way to driving your social traffic to your content!
In the next episode, we will learn about the final method for getting visitors to see your content by means of direct investment — paid traffic. Keep watching!
