Have you ever considered using social media as a way of getting more leads? If you’re already using social media for your business, either to get more engagement, more traffic to your website or to raise awareness of your brand, why not also make an extra effort to also get more leads out of it?
An infographic by Wishpond shows us just how useful social media can be when it comes to generating leads: for example, 77% of “B2C marketers say they have acquired a customer through Facebook”, “34% of marketers have generated leads using Twitter and 20% have closed deals” and “LinkedIn is 277% more effective at generating leads than Facebook and Twitter”, with 77% of B2B marketers saying that they have acquired a customer through LinkedIn.
Social media also leads to more “indirect” leads, as it helps you get more traffic that you can try to convert once they get to your website, and studies have shows that most buyers (77%) are “more likely to buy from a company whose CEO uses social media.”
Generating leads using social media doesn’t happen instantly, like all other social media results. It takes a bit of effort, and the bigger and better your social media profiles are, the better the chances that you will generate more leads.
1. Use social media to share valuable and useful content.
If you have a blog you can share your content on social media – the more valuable and useful this content is for your audience, the better your chances at getting more leads. It’s also important to share other people’s content, and not just yours, but make sure it is content that your audience will truly value and appreciate. By sharing your own useful articles and resources, you will establish yourself as a knowledgeable person, and ultimately one that people will want to hire for their insight. When writing articles, try to think of the type of content that your target audience will truly value and want to read more about.
2. Always be nice on social media and engage with your audience.
By constantly engaging with your audience and always being polite and nice (even when they don’t really deserve it!) you will create a great first impression to all potential leads. But, perhaps even more importantly, this way you will start building long-lasting relationships with your fans and followers that can later lead to more leads and conversions.
3. Add links to your website/s on your social media accounts.
This is a very important aspect if you want more social media leads. Simply write your website address in your profile descriptions or in the designated spaces so that interested people can easily access your website and lead to more conversions.
4. Don’t just wait for the leads to come to you – look for them yourself.
Occasionally, people will use social media to look for a specific business they need. This is especially the case with B2B, where a particular business requires some services and asks around on social media to find the best candidate for the job. Try to check related groups and communities regularly and make keyword searches to find anyone that could be interested in your services, and approach them.
5. Calls to action.
Don’t be afraid to sometimes be a little salesy on social media. Among your regular updates and engagement with other social media users, you can sometimes post updates where you advertise your services or products and their benefits, and encourage people to go to your website to see what you offer. Don’t go overboard however so as to not alienate your followers and so that they think that you are only using social media to sell, as this will have the opposite of the desired effect.
6. Advertising on social media.
Advertising on social media can help you find lots of quality leads. On Facebook, you can use the Promoted Posts feature to advertise your most valuable posts and drive more targeted traffic back to your website which can lead to more conversions. You can also use regular advertising, which usually helps raise traffic, and try to target your ads as much as possible. If you have any special offers running, advertise them on social media to reach your target audience. It’s always preferable to try to link back to landing pages in order to increase your conversion rate.
7. Be helpful.
The more influential and respected you become on social media, the more questions and enquiries you will get. Make sure to take the time to respond to these questions, and also let them know that if they any more help with anything else, they should contact you for your help. By being helpful this way, you increase your chances of getting quality leads in the future – some of the people you’ve helped may come back to you when they need your help and this time even employ your services or buy your product. It will also help you become more influential on social media, and create a better name for yourself, one that people respect and go to whenever they need the help. It’s important to understand is not by any means about short-term gratification – it requires a lot of work, time invested and patience to get the results you want.
8. Add a contact form to your Facebook Page.
This is easy to do and can lead to great results. Simply get one of that contact form apps for Facebook and install to your Page – try Contact Form and install it in seconds:
With Google+’s Hangout feature, you can easily set up a webinar that can help you not only get more traffic, but also more quality leads. For example, you can set up a Hangout where you hold a webinar where you teach the viewers something useful that relates to your business, or even present one of your products or services. Your viewers will feel like they are getting something useful out of the Hangout and there will be more chances that they will go to your website and buy something from you! When you set up your Hangout, make sure to advertise across your social media profiles and consider sending an email to your list to help spread the word and get more viewers.
10. LinkedIn.
LinkedIn can be an amazing source of quality leads if used properly. Start by making sure your profile is complete with all the relevant information about your company, links to your websites, images and work history. Then find people you know and have worked with in the past to get Recommendations from them – this way you will be more influential on LinkedIn and your profile will look much better. Once your profile is all set up, start to engage with other users and build relationships with them before approaching them directly. Then start joining different relevant groups or even consider start one yourself. Make sure you engage with people in groups and try to look for question and enquiries that you can help with. There’s much more that you can do to get leads from LinkedIn, so much so that it requires it’s own article – so make sure to keep checking Socialable for a post on this in the very near future.
Are you using social media to generate leads? Have you been successful so far? And if so, what techniques do you use? Please leave your comments below!
After launching her first business within three years of becoming a mother, through marketing via business networking and social media, her financial success was recognised by being a finalist at the Best MumPreneur of the Year Awards, presented at 10 Downing Street. Following a resultant offer and wishing to spend more time with her daughter, she sold her first business to focus on social media, developing a multi-site blog and online marketing portfolio that generates in excess of 500,000 + page views per month.
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