Businesses are always looking for new ways to generate leads and increase conversions. Social lead generation is not new but is one of the most effective mediums for generating high quality leads.
#1. Pitch Smarter with HARO to Get Your Brand The Required Media Coverage
HARO allows you to connect with reporters across your area.
You can pitch them something valuable about your brand that can blend well into a news story and they might publish your content on their media publication.
Connecting with reporters on HARO will help you to receive the most required media coverage for your brand and this will help you to generate more leads.
- Register with HARO and join over 475,000 existing HARO users to connect with journalists.
- Once registered, you will start receiving emails from HARO. Check your inbox regularly from Monday through Friday and look out for journalist’s emails who are looking to cover a particular industry.
- Once you have identified the potential prospects in the step above, pitch the journalists and answer their questions or any specified requirements that they might have mentioned. Include a bio of yours or your client’s contact information.
- You will start receiving emails from the interested journalists.
#2. Leverage the Power of Social Media Monitoring
Social media monitoring is a technique that is critical for your business.
Most of the brands are most interested in social media promotion instead of opting for social listening which can indirectly help them to understand what exactly do the customers need.
I would recommend going with Social Mention to understand what your customers are saying about you or your competitors.
- Simply enter brand name of your or your competitor in the query box and press enter.
- You will see a list of search results where the brand has been covered.
- On the left side of the search results, there are certain key pieces of information. Here, you will identify your business strength as to how often it’s discussed, what are the top keywords, users hashtags, what is the sentiment of the brand (positive or negative) and how much is the total reach of the brand.
Once you are aware of the likes and dislikes of the audiences, identify websites, forums and channels where your potential audiences are present (you can easily find out the channels using Social Mention).
Join the discussion and listen to what is being said. Start sharing your thoughts but do not directly jump in to promote your products.
Help the users and engage with them as much as possible. Gradually, they will start becoming your loyal customers.
#3. Take the Help of Influencers
Content sharing on social media still remains one of the top ways to improve customer engagement.
Asking micro influencers to share content on your behalf can be an extremely good strategy to generate qualified leads.
People trust their peers and are more likely to convert based on an influencer recommendation instead of the brand itself.
You can use platforms like Influence.co to easily find micro influencers related to your business niche.
- Simply enter your search query and check the filter that says “only influencers with contact info”.
- Choose a location and select the minimum instagram followers count.
- It will display a list of search results along with the influencer contact information.
Connecting with the most relevant influencers and building a loyal following for your brand will ultimately help you to generate more leads for your business in the long run.
#4. Attract Your Audiences with Special Offers and Discount Codes
People love offers anytime during the day! One of the best strategies to connect with your potential audiences is to lure them with special offers.
Here are some great ways to do that:
- Create an entry form for accessing exclusive content. This way you can get email id’s of the potential customers.
- Ask fans on Facebook about your services and create exclusive offers for them.
- Plan your offers as per the likes of your audiences and shoot it at a time that is most convenient to them.
- Provide discount to customers on their repeat purchase. Door County coffee does this well by offering a discount of $10.
- Offer a special discount coupon to new customers. This will help them to become new customers.
#5. Create Powerful Webinars
Webinars are a great way to connect with your audiences and generate more leads. Moreover, they help to establish trust and brand authority.
Here are some great ways to use webinars in your social strategy:
- You can create a webinar easily using tools like ClickMeeting.This tool allows for customization of your webinar room in a few clicks and also provides meeting summary along with useful predictions and trends. This really helps to create that have the highest engagement rate.
- Once your webinar is created, you can share information about your next webinar on relevant social groups where your target audiences might be present.
- Provide special incentives to all the participants.
- Run your webinar live using Facebook live. This way you will be able to connect with lots of new prospects and the Webinar notifications will be posted on every participants streams. It will enhance the scope of virality.
Webinars conducted via Facebook live are much more social than the traditional webinars. This can be a great source to connect with audiences who are genuinely interested in a long term business relationship with your brand.
On a similar note, you can host a live chat on Twitter. Tools like TWchat easily provides room for chats by easily connecting with your Twitter account.
#6. Tap on the Power of Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing still works to a great extent! Building powerful affiliates for your brand will help to easily increase the number of leads and get more customers.
Here are some fantastic ways to do affiliate marketing using social media:
- Create an affiliate redirect that looks less spammy instead of a raw direct affiliate URL.
Raw URL: http://xy9719rty-kjhkjg6489dmisqhl1v05.hop.server.net/
Redirect URL: http://mydomain.com/click/affiliate/
(less spammy and hence will generate more clicks)
- Provide extra incentives to your affiliates for sharing the offer across social media. Lifelong commission work well as compared to one time commission.
- Follow the 4-1-1 rule that suggests to share 4 pieces of new content from influencers, 1 piece of content from among your audiences and 1 piece of content that is promotional and action oriented.
- Train and guide your affiliates instead of leaving them alone.
- Make use of affiliate sites like Affiliate Window & Commission Junction.
#7. Launch and Promote Gated Content
Gated content is a type of content that is accessible only after user has performed a certain action.
Gated content provides the highest ROI when it comes to generating leads through social media.
You can create a small form containing the fields that you want the user to fill in. Also, show the user what they will get in return when they will fill in the details. Users trying to access the content will have to fill in the details first and this way, you will easily start generating massive leads.
Gated content can be promoted using paid medium across your targeted social channels.
#8. Take Advantage of Social Advertising
Running ads on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn is one of the best ways to generate instant leads.
Facebook allows you to run targeted ads which mean you have the power to define your audience based on their interests, age, sex, and location.
Similarly, you can advertise on Twitter with the help of sponsored Twitter cards. For example, the summary card displays your tweet with a large image along with the standard 140 characters.
Moreover, LinkedIn is a great medium to generate B2B leads. You can run LinkedIn ads and target a unique audience based on their job title, function, industry and more. LinkedIn is also useful in boosting your content marketing efforts across an array of digital devices used by your target audiences.
Social channels continue to remain one of the highest ROI generating mediums for online marketers.
Which social lead generation strategies are you using to generate leads for your business? Please share with me in the comments below.
