10 Ways To Use Social Media To Increase Your Leads
Social Media Marketing

10 Ways To Use Social Media To Increase Your Leads

10th July 2014

Grow Your Email ListIf you are using social media correctly, you’re using it to build your email list. Honestly, your email list is where the gold is. Too many people think you can put up a website, build a store and people will buy. While partially this is true, you do need an online store to sell online, what you really need is to build your leads and email list so that you can nurture them into buying. Believe me, it works a lot better this way.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Social media is great for building relationships and creating conversations. Relationships help you sell and conversations increase demand. But without the leads, your sales efforts can only go so far.

To do it right, you need to have your targeted landing pages set up correctly. Each social network or strategy should lead you to a new and personalized landing page. If you aren’t using a tool like Infusionsoft to track your leads, this is the second best way. Plus, it shows your leads that this page is custom for them and that they landed on it for a reason.

I’m all about optimizing my time, so whenever I come up with a new strategies I like to test them against each other, see what works and move forward accordingly.  Here are 10 proven strategies that will help you grow your list.

1. Twitter Lead Cards
If you aren’t familiar with Twitter Lead Cards, basically they are Twitter’s stab at direct response. With integration to your email system, people can sign up to your email list with a click of a button without ever leaving Twitter. You can promote the post attached to a lead card, which work well if you have a budget. If not, you aren’t going to be able to optimize your engagement enough to verify the cost per lead.

2. Facebook Sponsored Posts
With the new and improved custom audiences and targeting on Facebook, sponsored posts are a great way to drive people to sign up for your email list. Instead of promoting a sale, promote a landing page and target accordingly. The cost per signup has been very low for me thus far which I like.

3. Give something away for free
People love to give you their email in exchange for something. I call this the lead magnet. Ebooks, whitepapers, and coupons all work well. On our site, we split test two different lead magnets at the bottom of each blog post.

4. Webinars
Webinars are a great way to bring new people into your world. If you can do a webinar with an expert guest and require him/her to invite people, you are looking at growing very quickly.

5. Contests
This is nothing new. Contests have always been a great way to grow your email list. Sweepstakes work best if you don’t care as much as the quality and target audience of your list. In general the lower the barrier to entry, the more people you’ll get signing up. The harder you make it or the more your require someone to do, the more targeted the person will be but the numbers will be much lower. I like to experiment with different Facebook tabs for contests and have been very successful with Pinterst contests.

6. Instagram
Instagram is one of my favorite networks for lead generation and community building. In order for this to work, you need to make sure your website is optimized for mobile. The best way to do this is to encourage people to click through by telling them the link is in your bio. That’s the way the cool kids do it, and that’s the way it works.

7. Facebook Offers
Facebook offers work as a lead generation tool because in order for your customer to receive the offer, they have to sign up and get the coupon in their email.

8. Slideshare
Slideshare is great for B2B. You can embed a lead generation form at the end of your presentation if you upgrade your account. This is really a no-brainer especially if you are great at creating visual content.

9. Private G+ Hangout
I love the idea of exclusivity and if you have something special to offer you can really use this one to your advantage. The trick is getting people to opt-in before they get any link or details about the private event. This is great for showing off a first look or if you have celeb status.

10. Personalize Your Outreach On LinkedIn
This is one of my very favorite tips for generating leads on LinkedIn. Whenever someone connects with you send them a personalized email right away about who you are, what you do, your free offer (ebook, in my case) and ask them a little about you. By sending them to your landing page for the free offer you can put them into your funnel and nurture them.

How do you use social media to generate leads?

Written By
Stephanie Frasco is a leading social media marketing consultant. Over the past 7 years, she has worked closely with clients from all over the world to help each of them get more results from online social networks. Through experience, Stephanie has mastered some of the most powerful social media websites....
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