Last updated on June 27th, 2025 at 05:06 am
Many businesses neglect to have a strategy in place to drive organic social media traffic to their website, leaving a massive opportunity for you.
I still see a lot of businesses fail to drive traffic to their website from their organic social media campaigns because, they either have no strategy in place or their strategy is not well resourced.
A common problem I hear is that businesses say they have built a good following, however, cannot get that following to visit the website.
Bridging the gap between social media and your website doesn’t have to be a difficult thing if you have a well thought-out campaign and some very creative content.
I am going to go through why your social following might not be visiting your website, how to make improvements to increase organic social media traffic and a couple of case studies for inspiration.
Why Your Organic Social Media Traffic is Failing
Life has been a bit frustrating since Facebook changed their algorithm, pushing business to pay for ads.
I know a lot of companies are still struggling to regain their organic Facebook traffic since that change.
There are a few fundamentals that you can do that will not only help with your organic Facebook problem but with your organic social media marketing as a whole.
1. Review Your Content
Is your content relevant? Is your content engaging?
Is your content interesting?
If you honestly can’t answer ‘yes’ to any of these questions, is it much of a surprise why your social following isn’t clicking through to your website?
2. Timing
You would think the best time to post you content on your social networks is during the busiest times but isn’t that when your competitors will post too?
Because the busiest times have more competition, the chances of your content showing in news feeds are actually lower than if you were to post at a less busy time.
There’s food for thought!
To back this theory up, Jon Loomer found that only one in ten organic Facebook posts were launched during the busiest times and that the most successful posts were actually those that were published at 1:20am.
3. It’s All About Quality Not Quantity
I remember visiting an online retailer who was posting that much on Facebook that they were actually seeing more unfollowers than followers, and they didn’t realise that it was happening.
While it may seem logical that if you post more, people will see you more… that’s not the case.
How to Increase Organic Social Media Traffic
Now that you have fixed what you may be doing wrong, it’s time to look at what you can do to start increasing your organic social media traffic.
To do this, you will need highly shareable content that will not only generate following and engagement but also drive traffic to the website.
This is no easy feat, but if you gather your creative team, you should be able to come up with some great ideas for quizzes, content, competitions and more.
Create a brief checklist to run each idea through, for example:
- Would you share it?
- Would you leave a comment?
- Would it make you want to visit the website?
This is so that you don’t get carried away with an idea that you ‘think’ will work great but forget about the objectives.
Here are some great ideas to drive organic social media traffic:
Quizzes
Everyone loves to find out more about themselves and share the results with their friends and family; you may have already seen the “what Disney character are you” style posts on Facebook.
Essentially you want to create a quiz that still has relevance to your products or services and host the quiz on your website.
You can then use social media to share the quiz resulting in followers and fans clicking through to your site.
If you add a note at the end of the quiz to encourage users to share their result on social media, your website will then reach out to those who aren’t yet aware of your brand, gaining a greater impact.
A company called Grist.org tried this technique and seen 5,000 new visits to the website in just one week.
Questions
If there is one way to get your social media following engaged, it is to ask them a question.
By asking questions and getting their input, you are giving them the opportunity to engage with your brand.
Telling them to do something doesn’t leave much room for them to engage.
A company called Camera Chicks used social media to ask their followers what would be their perfect camera bag… and then created that bag!
Not only did this generate a lot of engagement with followers, but it also drove traffic to the website to view and even buy the camera bag that their following had created.
The question doesn’t have to be that elaborate. However, it could be something simple like: “what giveaways would you like to see more of”.
If you’ve been following the ClickFunnels blog I’m sure you’ll have noticed we end all posts with a question to our audience.
Content
I’m sure you realise by now how important content is to every aspect of online marketing, however making it work is another story.
I have many businesses telling me how they create blog posts and share on social media to no avail.
Usually, the main issue is that the content isn’t something that would resonate with their target audience and when I ask “would you share this on your social media network”, the answer is usually “no”.
To create shareable content, you first need to understand your target audience; what interests them, what information then find useful and what content they share.
Once you know this, you can create content that will resonate.
When you share a piece of content, don’t just leave it to do what it will join in the conversation too; a one-sided conversation is never much fun.
Competitions
When doing a competition, make sure you have your target audience interests in mind to keep the giveaway brand focused.
Either the prize should be one of your products or how to enter the competition should be something only your target audience would be interested in.
For example, Eggo ran a competition to win $5,000 but to enter you had to publish your best waffle recipe.
The recipe with the most votes won the prize.
Who is Doing it Right
For inspiration, I have added two companies who have done commendable social media campaigns that have driven organic social traffic to their websites as well as build their following and engagement.
One of the case studies is a small business so you can’t have any excuses as to why you can’t create a successful organic social media campaign… if they can do it, so can you.
Taco Bell
Taco Bell is, of course, a recognisable brand but surprisingly had a very low engagement rate, mainly because people saw them as a corporate megalith.
They decided that they needed to humanise their brand so followers would engage with them and so they set off on a mission to turn themselves into a playful and cheeky brand rather than a corporate logo.
How Did They do it?
They started to initiate or join in on conversations with Twitter users who had over 10,000 followers and done so with a humorous and light-hearted tone.
They had a great conversation with Old Spice that saw them get 603 retweets.
The Results
- Now has a 1.6 million following on Twitter
- Seen 3,000 retweets just from one Twitter post
Emerson Salon
Emerson Salon is a hair salon located in Washington and because the two entrepreneurs spent $40,000 on renovating the hairdressers, they did not have much left to invest in paid advertising.
For this reason, they had to think on their feet and use the power of organic social media marketing.
How Did They do it?
They followed every organic social marketing best practice written in the book… if there was a book.
They used their blog on the website to create meaningful content to share on social media that would in turn attract traffic to their website.
They would also offer discounts and would ask their social media followers for feedback.
The reason it worked so well for them is because they also joined in on conversations and quickly replied to all messages.
The Results
- 400% Increase in revenue over two years
- They now have 11.7K followers on Twitter
- 2,464 Likes on Facebook
Don’t Neglect, Get Social…
Nothing will ever change if don’t change anything.
Play by the rules and start planning the greatest social media campaigns to increase your organic social media traffic… I’ve given you plenty of inspiration and ideas to do so.
What are the main challenges you face with organic social media marketing?
Share them by leaving your comments below.