Engaging in social media can solidify relationships and establish a more direct connection with your brand. The engagement process is also part of nurturing a lead and bringing them into your brand's circle. On social, sales aren't condoned - in fact, it's known that users don't want to be sold to; they want to be educated so they can make the best choices.
One of the best ways to generate leads through social content is to foster a community for discussion and exchange of ideas about your products and services. While sharing the latest cat video is a fun idea that most likely won't hurt your brand, it's not going to generate meaningful leads. Create content that asks your audience questions relevant to your industry in order to generate responses that can become real business leads, and curate and share content that is representative of your brand, and even highlights your product(s) in action. You can learn who's interested, and how many of their followers may be interested as well, based on interactions and comments to content posts.
Selecting the appropriate tone for social is a choice that each brand must make for themselves, however, due diligence should be conducted in making this decision. Is our brand part of a more formal industry? Do consumers respond well when using a playful tone? Does the brand have an existing personality it can leverage (fictional or real)? In addition to exploring questions like this and consulting with stakeholders, keep in mind that communicating as a single person is generally not the right fit for most brands. Also, remember that deciding on social media tone, theme, and voice is as much a creative and artistic decision as it is a business decision.
When posting content, it should be engaging and interesting to your audience. When brands put their agenda before the audience, it can turn them away, resulting in a loss of followers and believers. Social media is not about a push of product or service; rather it is about a pull into the lifestyle of your brand. It's important to think about the audience's needs, desires, hobbies, priorities and other psychographic information that gives insight into the life of the user.
Another valuable and vital piece of the lead engagement practice: monitor your competitors' social media activity, as well as discussions about them from consumers, and look for strengths and weaknesses. Use content analysis to find industry areas that your competitors are underserving and step in to fill the gaps; assess negative sentiment and pick out patterns. Look also at the times your competitors are active vs. the behavioral habits of your customers. Are there times of day when consumers would respond to messaging, but are not seeing any? Lastly, monitor competitors to see what type of marketing and sales communication from brands that people respond well to in social media. Are they interested in overt prospecting, or are more static paid campaigns the way to go?
Key Takeaways
By monitoring social media engagement and mentions, brands are better equipped to identify leads and communicate with them based on the data collected by a strong social media monitoring and management platform. When engaging a lead on social, consider these do's:
- Do provide relevant, inspiring content that you know your audience engages with based on your monitoring data.
- Do ask questions: post polls or surveys asking for opinions, getting your followers more engaged with your brand, thereby strengthening the lead relationship.
- Do consider the brand's social voice carefully, through due diligence.
- Do monitor your competitors' social activity, identify weaknesses or missed opportunities and learn from them.
- Do ensure you are there and ready to engage when prospects begin interacting with your brand and your content.