5 Easy Ways to Use Social Media Platforms for Lead Generation

Social media is a great platform to generate sales leads for businesses. But you need to invest time and effort.

However, why is it still important to think about how to generate leads on social media? Consider that 90 percent of top decision-makers say they never respond to cold calls. On the other hand, 76 percent of buyers are ready to have a conversation on social media.

So, if you’re looking to generate sale leads successfully, you need to go where the people are. And currently, everybody seems to be on social media. At first glance, social media looks like a place for friends and family members which is true to some point – as social media is about connecting people digitally through conversation. With the average Facebook user spending 6.35 hours a month on the social platform, and 260 million active users on Twitter, you cannot afford to avoid social media.

Read on to find out 5 key points in generating leads using social media platforms.

• Utilize Multiple Channels

In order to generate more leads, you need to make use of all possible social networking platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, Google+ and LinkedIn.

• Useful and Valuable Content

“All great marketing is about understanding the people you want to reach and creating something valuable, interesting or entertaining just for them,” – David Meerman Scott said.

The more useful and valuable the content is for your audience, the higher the chances of generating more sales leads. Therefore, you should try to understand what your target audience truly value and want to read. Then you can share articles according to their needs and wants, and establish yourself as an expert.

• Engage the Audience

To create a great impression to all potential leads, you should consistently engage your audience. You should re-post, re-tweet, and link interesting articles. When customers and visitors post questions and comments on your social media pages, you should respond to them within a short period of time. Also, you can have people write guest posts for your blog and you in turn can write for them. Fostering connections is important for social media success.

• Add Website Links

Adding your company’s websites on your social media is a vital way to generate more sales leads. Having your company’s website address in the profile descriptions of social media accounts can lead to more access to your website and more lead conversions eventually.

• Measure the Results

By measuring your social media marketing results, you can understand if what you are doing is generating leads. You should quantify the social media activities into useful metrics so that you can decide your further actions. It is necessary for you to use social media monitoring tools since they can provide you the best possible evaluation.

Remember: Social media may just appear to be a brand awareness medium for small businesses. However, productively use social media and your business will see an increase of brand awareness, website traffic and conversation.

Michael Stelzner (Founder of Social Media Examiner) said it best, “Social networks are the fastest and lowest cost way to generate leads, bar none.”

If you are interested in learning more about lead generation, feel free to download our FREE eBook, “The 30 Greatest Lead Generation Tips“.