Generating Leads Through Social Media–A How To Guide

If you’re not using a social media strategy in your business you’re missing out on revenue and leads. That’s a fact. And, to be honest, not understanding how to drive leads and ROI with social media is causing a lot of once robust companies to wither on the vine. They’re dying. As in, soon to be extinct. You don’t want to be buried with the other fossils. So, listen up.

Ninety percent of top decision-makers have copped to never respond to cold calls. That’s a staggering number. However, data shows that 76 percent would be open to a social media conversation.

Social media allows the user to focus specifically on highly qualified leads through advanced targeting.

Proven Methods for Lead Generation

Create Gated Content

Gated content is exactly what it sounds like—content is hidden behind a virtual gate. If the content is valuable enough, interested readers will be willing to provide some basic contact information in exchange for access.

When using social media for lead generation, you can promote gated content by sharing a link to a landing page where potential readers provide their information before gaining access to the content.

Some people who click through to the landing page will click away without accessing your content—maybe they were mildly interested in the information but not so interested that they feel it’s worth sharing their contact details. But those who are truly interested and understand that they will gain significant value are willing to overcome this minor hurdle, qualifying themselves as more than casual readers in the process.

Gated content can take several forms, and you should learn what works best for your audience. Some examples include white papers, webinars, and case studies.

Create Contests

This makes collecting data and building a list easy. People want a prize; they have to give you their contact information.  Be sure to target the people who have the highest potential to become repeat customers.

But keep in mind, if the prize is not valuable enough, no one will enter the contest.

There are a couple of different ways to allow people to enter a contest for lead generation through social media:

• Enter by retweeting/sharing/liking/following
• Click through to a landing page

Host a Webinar or Livestream Content

There are several approaches to generating leads with live video, hangouts, and webinars. You can offer a video as gated content. This requires people to register in advance by providing their contact information.

Second, open the video up to a wide audience and generate leads from that audience during the video while directing viewers to offers, contests, or other social media lead generation tools on another platform, such as a landing page.