In a previous article, we looked at how to better structure the pages of your website to showcase your activities as a mountain guide or leader. We will now look at how to promote your services by marketing your website on social media.
Driving traffic through social media
To gain visibility online, you need to drive traffic — having a Facebook page in addition to your website is a great way to do this.
Social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus…) run on a sharing model. A post published on your Facebook page, for example, can be shared by your friends on their own profiles. A friend of that friend might like the post and share it on their own profile in turn. And so on. It is, in a sense, word of mouth.
Sharing information
On your Facebook page, you can share articles and pages from your website, but also post about your passions, hiking trips, projects, or articles you have come across online. The goal is to spark the interest of your fans (those who have signed up to your page) and engage in conversation with them. The more exchanges you have with your "followers", the more visible your posts will become.
Creating a page on these networks is straightforward. Simply create a Facebook account (or log in). Click the small arrow in the top right, then click "Create a Page".
By creating a page rather than just a profile, you will have access to the various features of a "business account", including analytics. These will allow you to assess the impact of your posts.
Sharing on social networks can drive traffic to your website (provided you include a link to your site in your posts).
It is also worth adding "share buttons" to your website, allowing visitors to share the content they are reading directly to their own profile.
Visuals
Finally, social media relies heavily on visuals: go for a great photograph with a caption rather than a long block of text, which will put readers off more than anything else. Video content is also very engaging. Post beautiful photos from your hiking trips, for example — make your readers dream and inspire them to join you on a future adventure!
If you are also a photography enthusiast, there are social networks such as Pinterest and Flickr that are built entirely around visuals and can also be excellent channels to drive traffic to your website.
Post regularly and at the right time
A huge amount of content is published on social media, so to make sure your posts are seen by your audience, identify the times when they are most active online. You will have a much better chance of reaching them! The analytics tab will help you with this.
On social media, it is important to post regularly so that you appear in the feed of the people who have signed up to or followed your page. Choose a realistic posting frequency that you can stick to.
Going further: using hashtags
You may have come across them while browsing online. They are clickable keywords preceded by the hash symbol "#".
Widely used on social media, hashtags allow you to search a platform by clicking on a keyword. So if you post about one of your hiking trips in the Pyrenees on your Facebook page, remember to write "#Pyrénées" in your text. And/or if you are wearing a CimAlp product in a photo, add "#cimalp" to your comment :). Be careful not to overuse hashtags, as this can quickly make your posts hard to read.
To wrap up, promoting your activities means driving traffic to your website. To do this, you simply need to share your web pages on social media — and do it cleverly by posting regularly and at the right time!
Of course, none of this happens overnight, but it is worth sticking with it! ;-) Feel free to get in touch via the CimAlp Facebook page for more information.
