One thing that every startup struggles with is driving traffic to its website. Gone are the days when you could simply write blogs and it would be enough to build your audience.
Despite being an effective method, now you also need to club it with many more methods to increase your audience.
You need to also find ways to drive a bigger audience to your blogs, and from your blogs to your website like from, social media and forums. In this guide, we will mainly cover some of the best forum traffic tips and social media traffic tips.
Forum Traffic Tips
Forum marketing might be the most underrated traffic generation technique and people are unaware of its potential. A forum is a website where people can come together to have discussions about specific topics, industry, or a particular niche.
By being an active member of such forums, you stand a chance of attracting a lot of genuine users to your website. We’ve shared some of the most effective forum traffic tips below.
Tip #1 – Picking The Right Forum
Picking the right forum is extremely important in determining how much traffic you attract from there. Firstly, you need to look for popular forums in your niche or industry.
You can also google ‘your niche forum’. From there, you can pick the one that suits your niche and target market the best. There are also a few other things that you need to consider when picking the forum.
- Size of the forum – It shouldn’t be so large and populated that you are unable to make your identity in it. It also shouldn’t be so small, that there is hardly any traffic to attract you.
- Activity – If the forum you pick is dormant or hardly active, it’s not going to do much good to you. Pick one which has active members who post regularly and engage with posts as well.
- Design – It should be well designed and look appealing. The look of the forum talks a lot about its members.
- Signature – Not all forums allow signatures, and without a signature, it’s extremely difficult for you to generate traffic.
- Community – Ultimately, what matters in every forum is the members and the community that has built up around it. Make sure it’s something that you would like to connect and have discussions with.
Tip #2 – Craft Your Forum Profile Well
When users click on your forum profile, they would usually see an avatar, a brief bio, and your website link.
Make sure that your avatar has a picture of you because people like to connect with a real person and your photo gives a face to your name.
However, if you prefer to be anonymous, make sure you use something like a logo of your company, that can make you look authentic and genuine.
Your bio should be brief but informative. It should give them all the information they would like to know about you. Sometimes an out of the box information, that could build a personal connection, could take you a long way.
For instance, if you are a fan of the TV show, “The Office” or you like to go solo-tripping during holidays, mentioning those could help them relate to your personality.
Since it’s a forum, you should also give the members the impression that you are open to their queries and comments, by writing it on your bio. And don’t forget to put your website link, as that’s where you want to drive the traffic to.
Tip #3 – Initiate Threads
In a forum, whenever a user opens up a thread to read, they are going to start with the first post.
The first post always gets the maximum reads. Besides commenting or engaging with existing threads, you should also initiate threads. Initiating threads is one of the most impactful forum traffic tips.
By doing that, you can get in front of the eyes of maximum people, and it can help you leverage your forum posting. However, don’t just initiate threads for the sake of it.
Only genuine and quality threads would make the members want to engage. Wasteful posting could make you look spammy and amateur.
Social Media Traffic Tips
Social Media is not used for just social networking anymore. It’s potential as a means to build traffic for startups has grown manifold over the years. Let’s look at a few social media traffic tips that you can use to drive traffic to your website.
Tip #1 – Hashtags
Social Media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, even YouTube, allow the use of hashtags. Hashtags are social media’s way of boosting reach using keywords.
Social media platforms mini search engines in themselves, and by using the right hashtags, you could get your posts to reach out to huge audiences. Hashtags are the best way to boost your SEO in social media.
If you can build a huge audience for your social media accounts, you can drive the same audience to your website by using CTAs and hyperlinks.
Include your website link in all your social media handles, and keep posting about your products, content, or anything that you might want to share with your audience with relevant links, and drive them to your website or desired landing pages.
Tip #2 – Blog Shares
It’s not a hidden fact that blogs generate traffic for startups. However, you need to make sure that you are using your blog to its maximum potential for driving traffic.
For instance, your blog would have readers who regularly engage with your posts. But there might be a lot of users who could turn into your readers’ list but aren’t exposed to your content marketing yet.
Whatever new blog you come up with, create a photo or video about it, and post it on your social media accounts with the link to your blog. It’s one of the most effective social media traffic tips, as it could help you in attracting a completely new set of audience for your current and future blogs.
Tip #3 – Timing Your Posts
The activity of social media keeps fluctuating with the time of the day, or day of the week. If you post something during the inactive hours, your post might not get good visibility.
Depending on the social media platforms you use, identify the best time of the day, and the best days of the week to post something. It could also vary depending on your target audience.
You can check your analytics, and identify the same for yourself. Time your posts accordingly on the respective social media accounts to drive maximum traffic.
Tip #4 – Social Media Promotions
Social Media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, etc. all allow paid promotions to boost reach. Usually, they are very economical and let you choose the audience yourself.
Even when you don’t manually pick your audience, they target the best possible audience for you as per your previous posts and their audiences.
Most of them cost you per click, giving you the maximum value for money. Use the feature to drive huge traffic, with nominal spending.
Final Thoughts
Driving traffic is a tricky process, and what works for someone might not work for you. But the question is whether you are doing it right! Use the above forum traffic tips and social media traffic tips to drive maximum audience from both the platforms. You can’t just rely on one tip; you need to build a strategy around all of them and make sure that all of them are complementing each other, and giving you the best results.
