The internet offers a number of ways to generate leads with social media. Social media gives you a direct way to talk to people, without having to get them to open an email or pick up the phone. It’s designed to encourage conversation, and many people use it to seek out new people to have conversations with. Social media is an excellent tool to use for lead generation because it allows you to focus on highly qualified leads through advanced targeting. You can find just the right people to follow, encourage to follow you, and engage in various different ways. Find out how to generate leads from social media using this guide.
Social media encompasses a variety of different platforms, with some techniques that you can use across all types of social media and some lead generation methods that are more specific to particular platforms. There are a plenty of ways to generate leads with social media, your aim is to generate leads that will enter the sales funnel and boost your sales. You can use lots of techniques that are often simple but effective to start bringing in leads. Now let’s discover how to generate leads with social media using this article.
How to Generate Leads from Social Media
Choose the Right Channel
If you want to make sure that your lead generation on social media is effective, you firstly need to make sure that you’re using the right platforms. Not every platform is right for your brand, so you need to consider which ones are best suited.For example one of the best way to generate leads from social media for aB2B business might be LinkedIn. Instead for a B2C business a good way to generate leads from social media can be represented by Instagram. Instagram offers a very visual platform and has a younger audience than some other social media options. Facebook’s users are now slightly older, with younger people choosing other platforms instead, and Pinterest is heavily skewed towards women. Make sure your audience can be found on the platform that you choose.
Run a Contest
One way to generate leads with social media that can work on several platforms is to run a contest. A contest is an excellent way to get people to sign up to a newsletter or just submit their contact details. You can promote contests and competitions across different platforms and get people to share them in various ways. You might even ask people to like, share or comment a post to enter the competition. You could choose between getting people to perform a simple action, such as answering a question or sharing a post, or you might ask people to create content or do something that requires effort. You can ask them to click through to a landing page to get more interaction on your site.
Share Gated Content
Another good way to generate leads with social media is gated content. This is a great way of collection leads, and social media can help you to promote it. Create some useful and valuable content that you can share, whether it’s a white paper, an ebook, an infographic, a video course or something else that will inform, educate and entertain the people who access it. Once you have your content, a landing page where people can enter their details to get access to your content is the next thing that you need. You can then share the link to this content on social media. Perhaps share it exclusively on your social media platforms and let your followers know it’s just for them.
Track Brand Mentions
Eavesdropping on the way that people are talking about your business isn’t rude – in fact, it’s a must. Tracking your brand mentions allows you to see what people are saying and find potential leads. For example, someone might ask for opinions on choosing a product and mention your brand as a possible option. However, you should be careful about how you respond. If someone mentions your brand but doesn’t directly tag you, they might not appreciate a response. It can be helpful to chime in, but you should avoid being too pushy. Sometimes all it takes is a link to a relevant product or letting someone know that you’re available if they want any help or advice.
Make Use of Social Media Advertising
Adverting represents an interesting way to generate leads with social media . Get familiar with the advertising tools available to you. Social media platforms also offer paid advertising options, helping them to make money from businesses. You can advertise on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and more, and you can create cost-effective campaigns if you know what you’re doing. Facebook and Instagram advertising are connected because Facebook owns Instagram. So when you choose to advertise on Facebook, you can have your ads appear on Instagram at the same time. Facebook has a specific ad type for lead generation to make it easier to bring in leads effectively and without much commitment. If you are looking to set up successfully your first Lead Ads campaign I suggest you this free guide, that will help you to accomplish this goal 🙂
Use Live Streaming to Engage People
Live streaming could be a very efficient way to generate leads with social media . Several social media platforms offer the option to stream live video directly on the platform. For those that don’t, it’s easy to use another streaming tool and share the link for people to visit. If you want to stream a live video, whether it’s a webinar, an interview or something less formal, you can do it as gated content, asking people to register before streaming so that they can get a link to access the video. The other option is to have a wider audience when you share directly on your social media pages, which can allow anyone to watch. You can then use the content of the video to generate leads, whether it’s by mentioning a contest or content, or by encouraging people to visit a landing page.
Look for Local Leads
Generating local business is essential for many companies, including those that have brick-and-mortar, public-facing premises. You want to get people walking through your door, which means there’s no much point targeting people hundreds of miles away unless you’re looking for tourists and travellers. You can use various tools to target the right people, whether you’re using paid social media advertising or just using the free tools available. Geotargeting allows you to search for the right people and also track your brand mentions and relevant topic discussion from people local to you. For example, Twitter advanced search allows you to search for tweets by location.
Use Social Media Influencers
Another way to generate leads with social media can be found trough the influencer figure. Social media influencers can be useful to some brands who want to expand their reach on social media. Influencers already have a good following, with an audience that matches up to your brand’s audience. By partnering with influencers, you can have them promote your products or services to their followers. There are plenty of people who are happy to consider a purchase because someone they admire recommends it. There are a few ways you might use influencers to help generate leads. You could send them products to review or use, or you might ask them to get involved with things like interviews or Twitter chats.
Change Your Tone
You might decide to use several social media platforms to generate leads. While it’s not a method of lead generation in itself, watching your tone of voice will help you to find success. Generally, you’ll find that different tones are suitable for different platforms. More formal business language might work on LinkedIn, but it’s not so suitable for Facebook or Twitter, and definitely not for Instagram or Snapchat. If your brand tone of voice tends to be on the more formal side, it’s worth adjusting it to fit more relaxed settings, especially if you can find your target audience on those platforms.
Optimise Profiles and Pages
A fundamental way to generate leads with social media is think how your profiles and pages are set up. Sometimes your posts will simply be seen in other people’s timelines or feeds, among all the other content. However, some people will choose to visit your page or profile to find out more about you. When they do this, you want them to be able to find the information that they’re looking for easily. How you do this will depend on the platform and what tools are available. For example, on your Facebook page, you can add a button at the top for people to message you, visit your website, make a booking, shop with you, learn more about your business or download your app. But on any social media platform, it’s important to add your contact information and business details to make it easier for people to visit your site or get in touch.
Improve Your Reach with Hashtags
Hashtags aren’t useful on every social media platform, but they’re particularly smart to use on Instagram and Twitter, as well as Tumblr. People look for new content by browsing hashtags, which is how you can benefit through tagging your posts. While creating your own hashtags can work for some campaigns, you also need to use the tags that other people are already using and browsing. This is a good way to build your “Instagram” followers so that you can then share content with them and collect more leads.
In this article we learned how to generate leads from social media looking at different ways to generate leads with them. Start generating more leads from social media by improving your understanding of how to use it more effectively. Other lead generation techniques can be tied into social media for higher success.
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