In a previous post, Social Media for Businesses: Six Tips, we said that in order to generate business leads from social media you need to win over the influencers, they, in return, “will pitch your company and products online on your behalf in subtle and not so subtle ways. With their blessing, qualified leads will start to come your way.” But generating business leads from social media is not as easy as it sounds. In this post we outline the challenges in generating business leads from social media and why social media leads are different.
Social media is different from traditional media
Social media is media (words, photos, videos, etc.) that is spread through social interaction, person to person, and chiefly using individual communication networks. Popular web-based social media technologies are Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Unlike the traditional advertising paradigm that spreads information from one source to many, social media promotes peer-to-peer communication and an active role of individuals to opt in, or out, of virtual conversations. With social media, consumers of media turn into producers of media—this can be through photo and video sharing, blog posting, and many other content forms.
Social media (can) generate better business leads
Importantly, social media is a strong tool you can use in an overall strategy to generate organic business leads; social media helps you connect with people in the places where relevant conversations are happening. Social media used correctly will create awareness and strengthen your brand, drive people to your website, and generate high quality leads. Social media inverts traditionally impersonal marketing so that marketers can build networks by becoming trusted resources and members of groups.
Social media business lead generation is based on network theory. Growth of leads is exponential, not linear, due to the effect of a growing network and related referrals. (One person might tell three people, and those three tell three more people.) Social media allows you to reach more people directly through your social network, and get third and fourth degree connections engaged in your activity.
Leads from social media can be better because people are more open to messages from people they know or are connected to through intermediaries. Social media sites like LinkedIn expose otherwise distant connections and allow your message to be shared through your network and for you to be introduced to an expanding number of contacts.
Social media is a good lead generation funnel because it is largely permission based and the leads are people who you know already show an interest in your offering. With social media, targeted and trusted leads make sale cycles shorter, and as sharing is an acceptable practice and an incentive for the social media practitioner, your message can reach more targeted people faster and for no cost. Well, for almost no cost.
Generating business leads is up to you
Although leads from social media are generally high quality, generating those leads requires work. For companies with no extensive marketing budget, or dedicated personnel, generating social media leads means investing time in social media activities.
The first step to generating business leads from participants in social media is to listen to the conversation and then participate by offering a valuable contribution to that conversation. This might take the form of a helpful answer on Yelp, an on-topic link to an interesting site (not your site necessarily), or a business case that illustrates a solution. Monitor the blogosphere for topics and issues related to your business and respond to posts, comments, and questions.
These days, because most businesspeople are on Linkedin and/or Facebook you should regularly search for existing customers on these sites and expand your network by connecting to them. Follow customers on Twitter and most will follow you in response. Your company should have a fan page on Facebook and an information page on LinkedIn. Make sure that these pages and groups are well maintained. Create a strong social media presence for your company and post links back to your website whenever possible. Customers may use your brand name or website URL in a tweet and provide exposure. If you post to Twitter and someone retweets your message, their followers will be introduced to your company.
Remember, social media can be a fast and inexpensive way to direct traffic and awareness to your website–but it’s usually not so simple. It takes time and deliberate effort to create a social media presence, and generating business leads in a continual way requires strategy and resources. Social media might be cheap in terms of dollars expended, but it’s not free in terms of time necessary to achieve results.
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