Driving New Leads Through Social Media
Many people would agree that social media has become a norm in the online world of lead generation. Social media amplifies the potential of the Internet by allowing individuals, customers and business leads to share information and contacts. It’s not the only way to generate leads, but anyone serious about building their list of leads and customer contacts should definitely include social media in the mix.
Here are 10 suggested ways of using different social media tools as well as some social marketing techniques for building and developing a solid lead base.
1. Twitter
Twitter is an important social media tool that should not be over looked. It keeps friends and followers abreast of where you are and what you’re doing. Updates your businesses’ activities throughout the day regularly and consistently and you’ll find that Twitter works out remarkably to develop relationships, build leads and attract potential prospects.
2. LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a surprisingly underutilized social media platform that serves pretty well in building and developing a growing list of leads. Through the use of LinkedIn, individuals and business owners can recommend associates and those they collaborate with to help build a growing base of friends and followers. By recommending a friend or follower, it’s very likely they will often do the same in return.
3. Blogs
A blog is the perfect platform to use as a central gathering place for friends, associates and collaborators to comment and compare notes. A blog with relevant and timely information will ultimately draw more leads and customers to your product or service.
4. Facebook
With literally hundreds of millions of subscribers to the Facebook interface, it would be illogical and unproductive to not participate in the Facebook phenomenon. Facebook pages can significantly help to expand your company’s visibility and expand your list of leads.
5. Pinterest
While somewhat new to the social media frenzy, Pinterest is the fastest growing social networking site that offers huge returns from a small amount of effort. It’s a unique tool for expanding a leads list not only because of its visual aspects, but the fact that it has the greatest potential to bring in viral traffic . By posting images, photos and pictures related to a particular product or service, individuals or businesses can attract and grow an incredibly enormous client base and leads list using Pinterest alone.
6. Polls and Surveys
Offering a relevant poll or survey attracts their interest and ultimately funnels them into your website and subsequently your lead list. In addition, polls and surveys offer excellent insight into a customer’s or client’s needs and desires, especially when comments and feedback is given. Even though this method doesn’t generate enormous leads, it does better in terms of finding quality leads as opposed to just large quantity leads.
7. Newsletters
The idea of offering a free newsletter subscription to website visitors or social media friends and followers is not new, and should be a key part of any website owner’s overall lead building strategy. Offering a free newsletter is one of the fastest ways to obtain a visitor’s e-mail address and ultimately converting that visitor into a viable and important lead.
8. User Review Sites
Anyone serious about developing a substantial list of leads should consider looking at review sites such as Yelp.com. See if you’re able to find your brand there because would be talking about you, and you need to see if they are positive or negative reviews. Apart from the feedback, these are potential customers that you can reach out to by adding an “owner comment” so you could probably reward them for giving a good review about your brand.
9. YouTube
Being the second largest search engine next to Google, YouTube allows your friends and followers to track favorite channels and videos using the in-built function similar to Google Analytics. Your subscribers would be the ultimate list that you track and monitor, while the rest of the YouTube population is the large, untapped market yet to be discovered.
10. Forums
Collaboration is perhaps the key that ties all of social media together in one cohesive package. In building leads it is important to understand that social media is changing the way we interact with each other on a personal and on a business level. People would go to forums to entertain, voice out different opinions on different subjects, as well as open up discussions on issues relevant to your business. Not only are forums good for collecting data, but you’ll also be able to interact with your potential leads at a more personal level here.
Conclusion
These 10 key ways to drive new leads through social media are a good starting point for anyone who is committed to developing a large customer and client base. Growing a lead base is really about growing a collection of relationships that can develop into important collaborative efforts and business relationships. Hopefully this has been helpful to you and all that’s left then is to actually start putting these into motion!
Alternatively, how about learning how to drive new leads using Google+?
About Daniel Tan
