Social media is an absolutely brilliant platform for generating leads.  However, it is a platform that can go drastically wrong and provide you with little to no return on your investment if you do things wrong.  In this article, we are going to take a look at a few techniques that you will be able to use to boost your results when using social media for lead generation. 

Know your target market

Before you even start putting your social media campaign into action, it is important that you define who your target market is.  There are plenty of companies out there who are using the wrong methods to get in touch with their target clients.  You do not want to fall into that trap.  It will be a waste of your time. For example, if you are dealing with B2B transactions, you really do not want to be on Facebook, not too much anyway.  You should be focusing on sites such as LinkedIn.  On the other hand, if you are targeting clients for your B2C business, Facebook is a good way to go, even Instagram and Pinterest may deliver you a positive ROI.  If you are working with an inbound marketing strategy this should be inherent as one of the first steps with inbound is buyer persona development.  A fundamental in understanding you target market and how to attract them to your valuable content.

Aim for the organic sharing of content

Truth be told, most of the content that you post will not be seen directly by the people who like or follow you.  Your content will be seen by their friends and family.  Why?  Well, because if you produce good content, they will share it.  All it takes is a single person sharing a piece of content with their friends and family for it to go viral.  Imagine one person sharing a piece of content with their two hundred friends, just three of these friends share it with their 200 friends, that is 800 total people viewing the content that you have created, it will almost certainly work its way into the hands of people who may not have heard of you before but are interested in what you have to offer and this means potential new leads.

In short, create content that will get shared - do not just blast advert after advert at your audience.  Share valuable, useful content and you will generate far more leads, even beyond those who already have some sort of connection with your company.

Create quality content

This is not just for the purposes of getting your content shared.  The purpose of creating high quality content is that it will encourage people to visit your website.  If you can encourage them to visit your website, you are going to have a far easier time of gaining a lead.  When your content can ‘easily be digested’ on Facebook or whatever other social media platform you are currently using, and therefore doesnt pose any reason for the reader to visit the source article there is little to no chance that you will generate a lead from it.

Keep your social media accounts up to date

The vast majority of people who follow your social media accounts will not be interested in working with you right now.  This is fine.  This is to be expected, particularly if you offer a service which a person may only need to use every few years.  However, you need to stay relevant.  You need to ensure that your company is at the front of their mind whenever they need what you are offering.  This is why you need to keep a steady stream of content flowing through.  People will see it.  They will have it ingrained into them that you are the ‘go to’ place for something in particular.  It may not result in a lead now but it will almost certainly result in a lead a few weeks, months, or even years down the line.

Engage with your users

There are some marketers out there who do not use social media to generate leads.  Instead, they cultivate a sort of culture around their business.  They get people to talk to them, and they talk back.  To an outside party, this shows that your company is easy to approach.  This will, indirectly, create leads as people will see that you are a company that they probably want to deal with.  Of course, interacting with your customers and clients through social media platforms also means that you are able to answer the questions and concerns of people sooner as opposed to later and this will, hopefully, keep your customers ‘sweet’.  If you can generate trust through your social media platforms, leads will automatically find you.

Use the social media platform the way that it is meant to be used

There are so many people out there using Instagram like Facebook or, worse, LinkedIn like Facebook.  This is not going to generate you leads.  If you want to be successful, you need to look at the nuances of each and every social media site you are using and learn to adapt your strategy to suit it.  Here’s a guide on how to use Facebook for business, how to use LinkedIn for business and how to use Instagram for business.  Search Google for any other social network you are interested in – there’s loads of guides that can help you.