Can too many social media sites harm my website traffic?

I’d be the first to say that social media is awesome. It’s a great way to reach your audience. You can share, engage, and drive more people to your website. Best of all, they’re free. Why wouldn’t you maximize and make the most out of all these platforms?

The simple answer: because the traffic that you’re building for your website should always be relevant.

There are instances when your brand, product, and service are relevant for all social media platforms. However, more often than not, this isn’t the case at all.

Not all social media sites are built alike, nor do they cater to the same audience. This means the quality of traffic it will drive to your site will vary.

So, to answer your question, no—too many social media sites won’t hurt your website traffic. On the other hand, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be strategic about your use of social media either. To that end, I thought I’d share these tips to make your efforts more focused and effective:

Define your target audience and align that with the key audience of different social media platforms.
Remember that different social media platforms will cater to different audiences. Learning this means you can choose the right platform to boost your traffic.
Learning the niche of the various social media platforms also allows you to tailor your communications so you can create content that’s more relevant and engaging for different audiences.
Create a social media plan and calendar. This can help you save time when it comes to posting and ensures that you’re able to update on each platform consistently.
Speaking of consistency, be sure to post regularly.
Try automating social posting, especially if you’re posting across multiple platforms.
Respond to people posting on your page and engaging with your posts. This has been shown to drive better engagement from audiences.
Pay a lot of attention to the kind of content you develop, not just because you want to create materials tailored for each platform but because your content has to cut through all the noise available online. Audiences want content that’s relevant, relatable, interesting, and brief.
Make sure your call to actions drive back to your website.
Use videos. Engagement rates of videos on social media is higher than any other form of content that’s commonly posted on social platforms.
Use hashtags. But don’t just throw them in your posts for the sake of it. You can easily research relevant hashtags that will expand your post’s reach and help introduce your brand to new audiences.
Make use of social media tracking and monitoring analytics. Today’s social media platforms are inherently built to track analytics regularly. Be sure to check the data to gain valuable insight into your audience and your strategies.