Social Media-Driven Leads: Why Your Business Needs Them

You want to drive more leads, but don’t know where to start. You know a few things about social media, but don’t know how beneficial it actually is for your company. Put social media and driving leads into the same pot and you have a recipe for success.

The world we live in today revolves so much around the Internet, it is important that businesses keep up. But where do you begin? Social media is a great place to amplify your marketing. But before you take any action, make sure you know how social media fits into your current marketing plan. There is no reason to put time and energy into something that your company isn't ready for. If you're confident enough to move forward, let's get started.

Three of the most popular forms of social media are Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. There are 1.23 billion users on Facebook, 271 million users on Twitter, and 259 million users on LinkedIn. So whomever you are aiming for is most likely already active on these social media outlets. Hubspot’s Inbound Marketing Annual Report explains how using social media has almost doubled the marketing leads of trade shows, telemarketing, and direct mail.

After you include social media into your Inbound Marketing Plan and make your company social media profiles, make sure you have educational content to fill your pages. Know what your goals are before starting this social media project and test them. Brainstorm ideas for how to gain leads with your social media platforms and test them to see which ideas are better than others. This helps you narrow down the spots where you should invest more of your time. A simple, clear, prioritised approach works best.

Here are some of the best ways to help you start:

1. Promote upcoming webinars.
   Webinars are a useful way to share content and information with your audience in a conference style format. Some webinars allow communication between all that are attending, which is useful for the two-way communication between your company and other companies or target audiences.
   
   
2. Adding discussion questions to your social media accounts helps gain traffic by promoting conversation between you and your target audience.
   
   
3. Publicising e-books and white papers is a great way to inform people of topics they may be interested in. These are effective because you are then sending out information to people who want it, but they are able to retrieve that information again whenever they see necessary.
   
   
4. Share blog articles where you see appropriate. This will lead more people to read your content and bring them to your website to see what else you have to offer.
   
   
5. Small details such as a custom company background or profile picture are very important on your social media profiles to keep your company brand consistent throughout.
   
   
6. Be helpful to your followers instead of just promoting what your company does. My way or the highway is not the idea you want to take with this social media plan.
   
   
7. Learn from others; it's a great way to start this social media process. See what your competitors are talking about, how much they post, etc. Experiment, try things out; you will learn what works better along the way. Learning from others is a great starting point but after you understand the process, take more risks, and make your own direction.
   
   
8. Lastly, measure your success. Learning what needs to be changed, kept, or altered in anyway will be very beneficial. Easily track this information using a marketing automation tool like HubSpot.

Do you want social media to be the next step in your inbound marketing plan? Make the account profiles you see fit for your company, but make sure you have your content ready as well. Learn more about How To Generate Leads With Social Media.

More from Vistage: