How to Use Social Media to Increase Traffic to Your eCommerce Store

Every month, Amazon receives roughly 197 million unique visits to its website. Wal-Mart’s online store gets 127 million hits and eBay, though it comes in third in this particular race, still has 113 million unique visitors each month. Not too shabby.

While these are the top three eCommerce sites today, which would definitely make them hard to beat—especially if you’re new to the eCommerce world—imagine having just one-half or even one-third of their visitors come to your site. Picture in your mind what that type of spike would do to your online sales.

Neil Patel, co-founder of Crazy Egg, Hello Bar, and KISSmetrics, explains that social media can help business owners achieve this goal because these particular platforms are “still a significant driver of traffic for websites.” So, if that is your goal, to use social media to increase traffic to your eCommerce store, here are some ways to achieve it.

Develop Effective SEO Strategies

Developing the right social media SEO (search engine optimization) strategy can make it easier for your target audience to find and connect with you.

If SEO is a little confusing, it’s kind of like taking a brick and mortar business, getting rid of the small, hard to see name plate out front, and replacing it with a huge sign that has a lot of flashing lights on it.

This draws more attention from passersby, increasing the likelihood that they’ll stop in and look around. In the online world,

SEO acts like that sign, increasing traffic to your site, which can also increase your sales.

To create an effective SEO plan, you first want to get to know your audience better, so you know what types of posts would appeal to them most. And, when posting, aim to use long-tail keywords (phrases that they’d likely use when searching for you), so you appear higher in their search results.

Publish Guest Posts

Because exposure is the name of the game, it also helps to publish content on other sites with links back to your online store. So, think about blogs your target market would likely read and reach out to them to see if they take guest posts.

Remember: the goal of these posts isn’t to try to sell your products. Instead, you want to share your knowledge and experience in a way that naturally compels others to want to see what you have to offer.

One way to do this is to write about common problems your target market has and ways they can overcome them. If you can slide one of your products in as a solution, great. But provide other options too so your potential customer base sees you as someone who is trying to help versus just a business that is after their hard-earned cash.

Run Social Media Ads

One of the biggest draws to social media is that it is totally free. Yet, you can also get further ahead faster if you pay for a few well-designed ads. How?

Once you learn how to advertise on Facebook or some of the other highly trafficked social media sites, you are able to position your eCommerce business so it appears right in the face of your target consumer. Now they don’t even have to look for you because you are right there.

All they have to do is click on your ad and it takes them directly to the products they want most. This makes it super easy to secure a buy because you’ve already done most of the work for them.

Social media can help you generate more traffic for your eCommerce store, making you a true contender in this space.