Social media has evolved into an effective marketing tool that many small and large businesses alike are taking advantage of to generate leads.
Though it may be tempting to set your profile up, write a few posts and wait for leads to come to you, this strategy rarely works.
In reality, when it comes to using social media to ignite your lead generation, quality is more important than quantity. That’s why having an effective social media strategy as part of your marketing plan is so important.
Over the last several years, many companies have started and abandoned social media lead-generation campaigns that have largely been based on tactics such as posting goofy pictures on Facebook or Instagram. When a strategy does not lead to immediate sales or quality leads, it’s quickly abandoned.
After all, business owners tend to be bottom-line thinkers.
What they fail to understand is that a quality social media strategy is not about “likes” or “retweets” but about building and nurturing prospective customers and leading them to your website or landing page with high-quality, relevant content.
A good social media strategy should help you achieve this and, in the end, ignite your lead generation. Here are five ways to use social media more effectively to create leads and provide measurable results:
Keep in mind that social media sites are evolving as well, so which sites you use could change over time. In most circumstances, the big social media sites, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, X (formerly Twitter), YouTube and Instagram, will offer you access to the most potential customers for your products or services.
However, using other social media sites can add to your marketing strategy as well. For example, if you’re a business like a bakery or art studio, you may find sites like Pinterest to be useful. The Pew Research Center also has found that the location of your client base could impact which social media app you use. Nearly 29% of U.S. adults who live in urban areas have used Reddit, while only 14% of those who live in rural areas have used the app.
So, how do you know what social media sites are best for your marketing strategy? There are a few ways to determine which sites might be the most effective for you:
Social media marketing is a complex strategy, but knowing where you find your clients is an important first step in using it to ignite your lead generation.
Your social media strategy is only as good as the content that you create. Your goal should be to educate, inform or entertain your prospects by creating content that is shareable to expand your reach.
Regularly creating interesting and relevant blog posts about your industry is required for social media success. This type of content marketing - along with downloadable eBooks, whitepapers and videos - is the glue that binds your social media strategy together.
While you’re at it, don’t be afraid to share interesting content, since social media is all about interaction and conversation. Sharing interesting content that is relevant to your mission, but is from other sources, will help keep your prospective customers informed. You also get the added benefit of spreading the content around through reciprocal shares.
X and LinkedIn are great places to connect with industry thought leaders who are always looking for relevant content. Hubspot reports that X has more than 500 million active users worldwide every month, whereas LinkedIn has more than a billion members across 200 countries and regions.
If you create a killer eBook or an interesting white paper that results in instant website conversions, don’t be afraid to share them regularly on your social media feeds.
Won’t this turn off readers? Not if you do it effectively.
In fact, by sharing your content at different times of day across multiple platforms, you’ll likely hit different users. That’s because analytics research tells us there are best times of the day to post on each of the social media platforms, and as we discussed before, each platform draws particular demographics. Keep in mind that when you should post, it continually evolves, so it’s important to keep up with the latest trends in social media posting.
For example, recent research shows that the best three times to post on social media are:
The best three days to post on social media are:
Which social media platform you use may alter these times a day. For example, the best time and day to post on Instagram is between 7 and 8 a.m. on weekdays, with Friday being the best. Sundays are the worst day to post on Instagram, according to Buffer research.
The same research found that the best time and days to post on Facebook is between 9 and 10 a.m. on Fridays, while the best time to post on X is at 11 a.m. on Mondays and Fridays.
Not available at those times? No problem, sites like Hootsuite and Loomly allow you to schedule your posts, as well as manage multiple social media platforms at once. If you only use one social media channel, some social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram allow you to schedule your posts in advance.
Plus, if the content is good, others will not be turned off by seeing the posts more than once. If it’s really great material, sharing it more than once increases the likelihood that your content will be shared, potentially increasing website conversions.
Social media ads provide you with a tool to target your audience even further and more precisely.
Facebook Lead Ads can make the lead-generation process easier because it addresses the difficulties mobile users often face when expressing interest in a company. Here’s how it works: When a prospective client clicks on your ad, a form will open that includes the person’s contact information automatically populated.
All the prospective client has to do is click on the ad to open the form, and then click to submit the already auto-filled form. People can still edit their contact information, but the process overall makes requesting information much easier for the user. This helps make investing in social media advertising more worth your time and costs as well.
There’s many other ways to advertise on social media as well, and knowing who your target audience is and your marketing campaign objective (awareness, conversion, etc.) can help you address which platform(s) you should focus on when determining
Once a prospect fills out an online form to receive your eBook or white paper, you must have a plan in place to nurture the relationship. Downloading an eBook is a great first step, but not necessarily an indication that a prospect is ready to buy.
To increase the likelihood of converting a lead into a customer, you need to stay InTouch (shameless plug here) with emails and additional relevant content like blog posts.
If they like your original material, they are more likely to continue to engage with future offerings. Don’t let these hard fought leads just sit with no more follow up.
Not sure how? Our article, 7 Simple Engagement Ideas To Boost Results, shares specific ideas on how to stay connected and boost your connections.
It’s easy to make your social media platforms all about you. But, when it comes to your business, your primary focus should be on the client. Press releases, marketing materials. and news and information about your company likely will be ignored in the social media realm.
Instead, the content you share should inform and educate your prospects - not tell them how great you are. People tend to be turned off by self-congratulatory promotion.
Putting all of this together into practice can take some time and effort. It can be an overwhelming process to understand the intricacies of social media. However, there are companies like inbound marketing agencies that can do all of this for you.
Inbound marketing allows you to market to your ideal customer, and hiring an agency is a lot more affordable than you think.
By creating targeted content that educates, informs, entertains and solves your prospective customers’ problems, and by sharing this content across your social media platforms, you can draw valuable prospects to your website.
Ultimately, an effective social media plan, with the goal of igniting your b2c or b2b lead generation, increases engagement and loyalty with your company or brand and increases the likelihood of doing business in the future.