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By Ravi Gupta

Most of the marketers associate social media with brand building activities solely. This is a mistake. Social media is much more than simply a platform to connect. If used wisely, social media can be a great channel to generate quality leads for your business.

As several social media platforms continue to dominate our internet enabled world, they are quickly becoming one of the best mediums to have a steady stream of good leads. According to Business2Community marketing budgets assigned for social media will increase more than double by the year 2020.

So, how do we go about it?

Step #1: Selecting the Right Social Media Channel

Before you start formulating strategies and ideas for generating leads for your sales team, you need to ensure that you have chosen the right social media channel that makes an appropriate match with your business.

For example, a B2B business will get more quality leads from the LinkedIn network than Facebook.

According to social media management software reviews website Capterra, more than 80% of B2B leads are generated from LinkedIn.

The key to successfully pick the right social media channel is to rightly understand the type of audience it basically caters to. For instance, a channel like Pinterest’s target audience comprises of mainly women. So if your product or service is woman-centric, Pinterest can be a great social media channel to target.

Step #2: Building a Strong Social Media Presence

Whichever platform you may select, it is imperative that you build a certain level of presence and credibility on it first otherwise it will become difficult for you to directly generate leads. You will be competing with tons of other businesses that are operating in the same domain and seeking the attention of your potential customer. That’s why building a strong presence will bring credibility to you and a competitive edge. DataSauce can help you with research and analytics and establish your brand on the right social network to connect with the desired target audience.

Step #3: Facebook

As of March 2017, worldwide there are more than 1.94 billion active Facebook users. This clearly establishes its dominance in the world of social media and makes it one of the best platforms for marketing and sales. B2C companies especially, can share links, images, video and posts on their Facebook pages to reflect their style and business personality while reaching out to new customers.

For example, running contests and free giveaways help you engage with your target audience and capture their attention. Depending upon your industry you can creatively make up contests to strike up conversations and get your potential leads’ personal details in your CTA box.

Make it a point to treat your Facebook page like a website and post fresh content regularly. It is advisable to create a schedule and keep posting an interesting mix of photos, posts and videos to keep users engaged.

Step #4: LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a great place to start for essentially B2B companies. Unlike Facebook or Twitter, LinkedIn is built for professionals and top of the line business owners. With over 400 million users worldwide, this platform has huge potential for your business.

Further, with LinkedIn Premium offering a free trial for 30 days you can expand your network and experience the benefits of Premium subscription. Premium gives brands and companies great opportunity to expand their reach with several offerings such as:

  • 15 InMail messages in a day
  • See who viewed your profile in the past 90 days
  • Finding connections faster with “Advanced Search” option

Moreover, LinkedIn Publishing is a platform that marketers can use to share their thoughts as industry experts, post useful information and even help job seekers.

According to social media management tool Hootsuite, more and more professionals are using LinkedIn as a blogging tool and gain new opportunities to engage audiences.

Step #5 Twitter

Today, most marketers rely on Twitter to widen their reach and turn their followers into customers despite being a relatively new player. If you really want to turn it into a lead generation platform for your company, here’s what you can do:

Twitter Cards: These lead generation tools like Facebook ads and can help you capture the attention of your audience and engage them. They work directly with the promoted tweet and collect users’ contact details in exchange for whatever offer you are giving. This increases the chances of conversion. Moreover, they are pretty concise and do not require much work. Twitter cards can be of many types, for instance, summary cards, photo cards etc.

Brand Mentions: According to a statistic, almost 80% of consumers admit that online reviews influence their perception regarding companies. Further, most of them also say that negative online comments affect their purchasing decision. Hence, it becomes all the more critical to observe and monitor what is being said about your brand in the online universe.

Events: You can host live events and campaigns on Twitter to further engage your followers. This will help in generating new leads. You can even host an AMA (Ask me Anything) to interact with your followers and get new people to find out about your brand. End with a CTA to offer value and a chance to your followers to get to know you.

Step 6: Instagram

Instagram is hugely popular and one of the fastest growing channels, despite the fact that it is relatively new in the network of social media connection. With over 500 million active users, Instagram is a great platform for marketers to connect with like minded audiences.

In the year 2015, Instagram introduced paid advertising and with this platform, many brands got the opportunity to connect with their users creatively.

Just like Facebook, it is important to strike a conversation with your target audience on Instagram. If someone comments on your photo or tags your brand, make sure to respond to them. Using relevant and distinctive hashtags can help you stand out amidst the crowd on Instagram.

Wrapping Up

There could be endless ways to connect with your target audience on social media channels. The pointers mentioned above can help you generate quality leads that can be replicated across platforms.

Experts believes that in today’s day and age, social media is an integral part of a business’s marketing initiatives and can help you generate great leads. Since social media permeates each and every facet of our personal and professional lives, brands should use it to drive useful content for potential customers.

Ravi Kumarr Gupta is a niche writer and activate blogger. He loves to write about hot and trending topics and currently writing on business and technology news.