Social media was once used purely for the purposes of sending cute pet videos and sharing unflattering photos from the night before… However, brands now harness the power of social media to connect and engage with their target audiences.
There’s a good chance your business already uses social media. People have come to expect businesses to at least have a presence on Twitter and Facebook.But, are you going about your social media marketing in the right way? Are you using social media management services to generate demonstrable results? Moreover, are you actually generating leads from your activity?It’s one of the biggest areas in which businesses fail.
Many businesses assume that social media is just about building buzz or for branding purposes. But it can be a powerful lead-generation tool when used correctly.So, here are four ways to get more leads from your social media management strategy:
1. Promote your content to drive leads
Logging into Twitter, posting a comment and disappearing is unlikely to generate leads. If you really want to generate more leads, you need to start by promoting your content regularly on each of your social platforms.
Content has long been used as a powerful lead-generation tool. By creating valuable content targeted at your prospects, which answers their questions and solves their problems, you can effectively draw them to your website. However, getting your content found is a challenge – and that’s where social media helps.
By sharing high-value content with your networks, you can encourage shares, get your name in front of more people and demonstrate your expertise.If enough people enjoy it and share it, you might even find your content going viral and generating a surge of traffic.
As long as you have equally high-value content on your website complete with a lead-capture form, lead-magnet and content upgrades, you can capture the details of your visitors and ultimately obtain more leads.
Quick tips for promoting your content:
As with any type of content promotion, give each piece of content a keyword focus, and use these in your posts while promoting them as well as Making use of relevant hashtags to improve content discovery.
Are you promoting your own content yet? If not, start now. It’s one of the best ways to attract genuine leads. So, for example, promote your blogs, case studies, webinars, new articles, white papers, ebooks, downloads and any other content you can think of utilising the power of social media. Keep directing the reader back to your site so they can easily see you are thoughts leaders and experts in your sector.
2. Carry out a profile makeover
Effective social media management involves getting the basics right, and one of the first things you should do is review your profile and give it a makeover. Your profile is fundamental to your social presence. It’s the place where people should be able to find out all about your business after being drawn to your page via a post. Go over every element of your profile on each of your social platforms and make sure you add in as much information as you can.
As for the copy, make it customer-centric. Highlight at every opportunity how you help people, what you do for your customers, how you solve their problems and how you improve their lives – all the things that will encourage people to investigate further.
This should get them interested – so make sure you make it easy for them to find your website by including a link as well as adding in your contact details in the given locations.
3. Be active and make connections
If you ever consider social media management one of the most important activities recommended to you will be the need to be active and make connections.This is the backbone of social marketing.
Many businesses make the mistake of only using their social platforms as a way to share their own content and then disappear without getting involved.
You need to get involved. That means:
- sharing other content that is relevant to your audience which they will find useful.
- commenting on other posts and making insightful suggestions.
- sharing news stories to show you are on top of the latest happenings in your industry.
- answering questions to demonstrate your expertise.
You could even join groups where you can share valuable insights with the very people who are likely to be interested in your services. This is also a great way to find out more about the issues that interest them and the things that they want help with, which can direct your content marketing efforts.
You should also make it a daily or weekly habit to connect with other people, especially influencers in your industry.
By commenting on their posts and making an effort to get on their radar, there is more chance that they will share your content with their own large networks, helping to get you even more attention – and drive more traffic to your site.
4. Experiment with advertising
Finally, consider investing in advertising to reach new prospects and direct them back to your website. This is perhaps the fastest and most direct way to generate leads from social, and it’s worth experimenting with.
All of the major social platforms have advertising options, although they all vary in their processes and their costs. You might want to start with Facebook where you can target your ads with incredible precision to ensure you reach the very people you want to connect with.
You can also choose which type of action you want them to take, such as Liking your page or visiting your website. If your aim is to raise awareness of your website and brand, try to get as many people as possible to click on your ads and visit your site, then use that as an opportunity to encourage them to sign up to your list by providing a value-packed guide as a free download.
It should be stressed that paid ads are not the only way to get leads, and with a solid engagement and content promotion strategy in place, you can get incredible results.
Get more leads from social, starting today.
These are just four of the ways that you can generate leads from your social activity, and you can get started with them all today whether you get help with your social media management or do it on your own.
The thing to remember is that social is not just about building buzz. It’s not just about having a presence because everyone else does. When done properly, social media marketing can get more eyes on your content, direct more traffic back to your site and generate more targeted leads for your business – which is well worth the effort.
If you’d like to learn more, download our beginner’s guide to B2B social media… click here to download
