#TheSocialBoom: How to use PR and Social Media to get traffic on to your site

As the final article of our  #TheSocialBoom series, Vishal Lodaya of ThatPersonal.com shares how to drive traffic on your ecommerce venture.

Let’s face it, the process of getting users onto the site is fairly simple.

A lot of us still wonder how to get traffic onto the site via social media and PR at the right price!

You may make the most interesting and insightful campaign but if you don’t use a few hacks, all might go waste! Your users might love the campaign but may not necessarily come back to the site and even if they do, it might be at a cost which might not deliver the right ROI to your organization.

All of us want to get users on our site at the right cost, don’t we?

Below I am mentioning a few things you can use to make this click!

Being Repetitive on social media is not bad!

Repetitive sharing of content on Social channels cannot be a good idea! No way!

Think again!

Trust me, it is not that bad. Obviously, you cannot share the same content (images or videos or text) with the same supporting copy.

Also, you need to be innovative and intelligent to set the frequency of sharing across Social channels.

While Twitter might allow you to repeat the same content more than 4 – 5 times a week, on Facebook you can try and re-share your blog posts twice or thrice in a month equally well spread.

Also, it is easy for us to get stuck into a mindset of always creating new content. While that is not bad, it may not be possible to create new content always. So, it is always good to be innovative and try and plug in your content more than once!

See what works for your brand on various social channels and go give it a try. It will work!

For example; At ThatsPersonal.com, we create an Annual Research Report which helps people across India understand the trends and patterns of consumption of sexual wellness products in India. So we use the report and make multiple creatives out of the same slides and use it at different times.

Use different copy to make it discernibly distinguishable but we also wish to drive home a point by a subtle bombardment technique which doesn’t irritate or confuse the users.

Use same content at different times in different manners, extract all the juice it has to offer. Pulverize. Squeeze. Exploit all its nuances. And only then feel good that you’ve successfully used an original piece of content to generate the best bang for your buck.

Picture the few creatives below to see how they’ve been repurposed in different ways.

Strike while the iron is hot!

Amplify your top performing content. Keep a track of your high performing content and the kind of engagement it has generated. If it is doing well, back it up with some bucks, will you? It is not rocket science is it?

While all your efforts might go into making the perfect creative visual, spend some time in analyzing how your content is performing. Once you know it is doing well, don’t let it rot. Spice it up and blow it out of proportion.

Make sure you have your web link embedded within the copy of the supporting content or better, create content on your site and share it from the site. Once users click on them, they shall land in a place where they’re in your control and you can then wield the magical wand of conversions on them.

What to do?

If you think a piece of content is doing well, go 360! Move across social. Repurpose it. Spend good money on it.

Create a business report for LinkedIn.

Create a campaign for Facebook.

Search for relevant Facebook groups and engage.

Run a contest on Twitter.

Plug in a photo series on Instagram.

Not all content you create shall be orgasmic! So, it is important is to stay agile, be on top of analytics and when the time is right, explode. Everywhere!!

Hashtags are irritating! Really?

While your immediate peers and colleagues might find your own posts with hashtags irritating, don’t let that cloud your imagination while handling a brand. Innovative and intelligently used hashtags can help your communication travel far and quick.

Picture this: Instagram doesn’t exist without hashtags. Tweets with hashtags attract 2X more engagement. Facebook did not play ball earlier, now hashtags also travel well on Facebook.

Make your content travel, more clicks it gets, more business you do! Simple, no?

For example; At ThatsPersonal.com, we did an interesting twitter contest called as #DirtyTalkin4Words to explore the naughty side of Indians. While we always knew that the campaign/contest will give us good results, the final outcome was unprecedented. The users’ response world-wide was unreal. People across the world from lapped it up with their vivid imagination.

We trended organically in India (no.1) for more than 9 hours! (Brands in India spend lakhs to trend for a few hours!!!)

We trended organically world-wide (no.1) for more than 3 hours!

Users unleashed their creativity with witty answers. And it was not just users, brands like Ola, Magic Bricks, Penguin and many others also latched onto it.

It was a momentous day. Let’s just say, and I won’t brag about it, we made some pretty good buck that week! ;)

Asking questions was only boring during class participation!

Ask questions. Ask interesting questions. Ask intriguing questions. Ask imploring questions. And don’t be ashamed.

Just ask questions. All sorts of questions.

Try making campaigns with questions in them! If that is not possible, ensure your supporting content asks questions.

When posed with a question in the campaign or supporting content, the user has already started to firm up an answer in his own mind. They’ve already sown the seed of forming an opinion in their mind and germination does happen. User gets intrigued, engages with your content and eventually clicks and you make merry!

Traditional media has used questions for a long period of time. Remember – Kya aap Close-Up karte hain? Tum PSPO nahin jaante? Hum Chlormint kyun khaate hain? Few examples of full-fledged campaigns based on questions by popular brands on traditional media.

Social Media is no less different from traditional media. Get inspired. By the techniques and not the taglines. Ask questions.

For example; We did an innovative campaign surrounding the Game of Thrones. Game of Thrones and ThatsPersonal.com shall help in raising a few hormones but hold on to your horses. Nothing like what you’re imagining. The campaign had a simple objective to make ThatsPersonal.com make the no.1 searched site for anything related to buying condoms in India. We succeeded. We asked the right questions.

The simple question was:

What if condoms were available in the age of dragons?

Weave quirky interesting stories

Something that is quirky and interesting does become newsy. Use data, use day – to – day stories from your organization, use important landmarks. Give them a twist, make them interesting, visually and inherently. These stories become newsy and then they’re captured by our friends from the media and then they publish it. What have you achieved?

Practically everything. A story that is real. A story that media finds interesting. A story that media wants to show to their consumers. A story that consumers want to read. A story when the consumer reads, begs them to come to your site and experience what your story has already gotten them imagining.

Data based Content Marketing and Data based PR are the new buzzwords.

For example: With intelligently used data and creativity ThatsPersonal.com has generated more than 2 Mn $ worth of PR in the last 2 years at virtually no cost.

ROI and Extremely low Cost of Acquisition. Delivered.

Few simple steps then. Create interesting quirky original content. Don’t worry about sharing them and re-sharing them. While sharing them ask questions and use hashtags intelligently. Blow things out of proportion. Sometimes. It is not a crime!

This concludes #TheSocialBoom series. You can read all the stories under the theme  here.