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These figures give us a clear picture of how powerful using social media is when it comes to generating leads for your business:
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54 percent of B2B marketers have produced leads on social media. (Source)
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34% of marketers have used Twitter to successfully generate leads. (Source)
The numbers are quite staggering, aren't they?
If you aren't giving your social media assets its much needed attention for it to grow, then it's high time you give your marketing strategy a closer look this instant.
However, just like in most things in life, you'll only get real results out of your social media marketing campaigns if you're doing it right. It is only when you have the right strategy, persistence, and hard work, that you can start racking up those leads.
*Note - I don't believe in luck.
That being said, allow me to share with you 5 effective and free techniques that you can use to get more leads on social media.
1. Answer Questions
What I like most about Q&A social media sites is your readers are very targeted.
After all, you'd rarely find someone who is in the poultry business clicking and reading the answers to the question, "What are the most interesting CSS hacks that web developers know about?", right?
The strategy is pretty cut and dry. You just need to keep on answering questions that are relevant to your industry. Once the readers start pouring in and they see how the advice you're sharing are real problem-solvers, they'd still want to know more about you and your services.
However, that's not all.
In addition to simply writing a comprehensive answer to other people's questions so they'd start reaching out to you, I have learned from an online course that I recently underwent at Knowledgehut that there are several ways to optimize this strategy so you'd get way better results.
In fact, after having implemented these tips, I managed to garner 3 inquiries about my client's services in a matter of 3 days from using Quora alone. I only spent about 30 minutes per day to write answers.
What tips am I talking about? Check these out:
a. Add a clear call-to-action at the end of your answers. This will help guide your readers so they'll know what to do next after having read your answers.
The thing is, if you did not add a clear call-to-action to your answers, there'd be a good chance that you readers would simply say, "Great! Now that I have the answer that I'm looking for. Let me turn off the computer and fix myself a sandwich."
In that scenario, you wouldn't gain much from the mental thank yous and your readers fixing themselves a sandwich.
With that, I strongly suggest that you write down a small note at the end of your answers telling them that if they'd need help with (insert the topic here), they could just reach out to you and you'd be more than happy to help them with their questions.This would drastically increase the chances of your readers contacting you for help even if they'd do it in the future.
b. Insert images. Make 'em catchy. Make 'em punchy. This will make your answers stand out from the rest. Remember that you aren't the only ones answering questions. You need to find a way to make your answers "pop", so people will decide to read them.
c. Use headlines and subheadings. This will make your lengthy answer look less overwhelming.
2. Don't ignore the comments.
The comments found on your posts (or even on your competitors') can be a treasure trove for generating leads.
Imagine this.
Let's say you're running an internet marketing business. You then post an update (with an image) asking your audience what challenges they are facing right now when it comes to growing their client's website's traffic.
As you can probably imagine, you'd get all sorts of comments from your audience talking about their traffic generation problems.
At this point, all you need to do is answer their questions while strategically inserting your services as part of the solution to their problems.
Whatever you do, please do not focus on your service/s. Be very subtle in pitching your services. The bulk of what your comment is should talk about the actual solution, and not your services.
3. Use Contests.
© Wissanu99 / Dollar Photo Club
Because most people find contests fun and exciting - let alone less intrusive to the point where they do not realize that your contest is a marketing campaign, it makes for a perfect lead generation tool.
Whether you're looking to get immediate sales, sign-ups, or you want people to share your new products, running a carefully executed contest on your social media profiles helps you get the results that you're looking for.
Allow me to share with you 3 very important things that you need to consider when running a contest:
a. Make sure that your price is worth it. This can spell the difference between your audience joining your contests, or them ignoring it. At the end of the day, they would ask the question, "what's in it for me?". Make sure that the price you are offering is satisfying enough to answer that question.
b. Do not hassle them that much. Whatever requirements you ask of them so they can join your contest, make sure that it isn't too overwhelming or tedious for your audience to do. Otherwise, they'll be turned off in no time.
c. Be very clear with your mechanics. The very thing you wouldn't want to happen is for your audience to complain about how confusing your mechanics seemed to be because of how poorly worded it was . Not only will you as a business appear sloppy and unprofessional, but you might also end up damaging your personal brand as well.
4. Use persona mapping to create compelling content.
The content that you publish on your social media profiles can be as informative or as creative as you set it out to be, but at the end of the day, if your audience couldn't feel any connection with it, then there's a good chance they'll only be ignored.
With the help of persona mapping, however, you can create your content in such a way that it becomes relevant to your target audience. It'd give you insights on what their pain points are, what makes them emotional, and what their preferences are (among others). This then puts you in a strategic position to capture their email addresses, or have them reach out to you for your services.
It goes without saying that for you to generate leads through social media, you need to gather ample amount of information about your target audience so you can create a compelling content that will move them to act.
That's how critical mapping out a buyer's persona is.
5. Promote gated content.
A gated content refers to one that only becomes accessible when the viewer acts on a specific CTA that the publisher has set in place.
One of the most ideal call-to-action when generating and nurturing leads is to capture your audience's email addresses.
This strategy is pretty straightforward. The idea is to put a "content locker" on something that you feel your social media audience would like to consume. Since they are dying to gain access to your content (it could be promo codes, case studies, freebies, etc...) they are compelled to take action on whatever CTA you added - in this case, they would most likely submit to share with you their email addresses.
Once you've obtained their email addresses, you can then nurture your relationship with them by sending them regular newsletters, promo codes, or helpful tips on how to solve their problems.
Would you care to share?
Now that I've shared with you some of my favorite lead generation strategies when using social media, it's about time that you start sharing too.
If there is one lead generation strategy that you'd like to share when marketing on social media platforms, what would it be?
I look forward to reading your answers
Thumbnail image via Shutterstock