Twitter is one of my favorite social media platforms and the best (in my opinion) for brands who want to engage directly with their audiences and build relationships. There are a variety of ways you can utilize Twitter to your advantage, and one of my favorite ways to use this network effectively is to generate organic traffic and clicks back to brand websites. Here’s how you can do it:

Step 1: Follow people in Twitter lists

Twitter has an average of 304 million users, so you can imagine there’s a lot of ‘noise’ on the platform. Using Twitter lists allows you to find and follow those key individuals you actually want to connect with. Some people use Twitter lists exclusively to stay up-to-date with the people and brands that matter to them the most. With that information in mind, you can assume that people included in lists are quality accounts. Meaning, they’re likely to be real people (not spam) and they’re also likely to engage with your brand and be a valuable connection to you.

Step 2: Use the Pinned Tweet Feature

When you follow new Twitter users, you can bet they’re going to go look at your profile before they decide if they’re going to follow you back. Once they’re on your Twitter profile, you have just a few seconds to make a good impression and entice them to click over to your website. This can be done through the website link under your bio, or (even better) by using the pinned tweet feature. If you have a specific offer, blog post, or recipe you’d like to share with your audience, tweet about it and then pin that tweet to the top of your profile. As new people start looking at your profile, the first thing they’ll see is your pinned tweet and it’s very likely they’ll click through to check out what you’re offering.

Step 3: Tweet to your audience

Don’t wait for people to tweet to you first– reach out and start a conversation through an @mention! This will keep your brand top-of-mind to your audience and may even get those people who forgot to check out your profile initially, to click over to your website. It’s a great way to begin building relationship while also driving traffic to your new offerings.

As with all organic social media efforts, this method of using Twitter to drive website traffic will take time. Sure, you can achieve faster results using promoted tweets, but the value in building organic clicks lies in the quality of traffic sent to your website, rather than quantity.

For more helpful social media tools and tips, download this toolkit!