What are social media leads?
Social media leads are potential future customers.
Any time you collect information from a social media user that will allow you to follow up with them, you’ve got yourself a new lead.Whether it's their name, or maybe you’ve got an email address. If you have a way to contact and connect with a potential client on social media, then you’ve created a social media lead.
Factors That Boosts Social Media Lead Generation
Brand Awareness
Increasing your brand awareness is key to reaching your target audience. It is the foundation of acquiring a customer audience and helping them learn more about your products and services with authentic, informative, and engaging content.
Social media is excellent for building brand awareness and showcasing your brand’s ethos. Social media content that reflects your brand’s values and showcases your products/services have the highest ROI on Instagram.
Engagement
Sharing relevant and high quality content leads to increased engagement with your audience. Engagement is key to retaining loyal customers who can vouch for your brand.
Website Traffic
Social media presents a great opportunity to drive website traffic. With content and offers, you can bring visitors to your website where they can find out more about your business.
Tips for gaining leads on social media
Optimise your profile
Your social media profile should be a one-stop shop for social media users to learn about what you do and hopefully get inspired to follow you or click through to your website.
Make sure your profile is filled out completely with your relevant business description. Consider keywords that people may use to find businesses such as yours and include these in your profile – such as ‘professional will writer.’
Make sure you also have got a working web link that directs people to a compelling landing page.
Make sure any contact details are correct and you show your logo and any other relevant details.
Schedule posts for the right time
It can be tough to impress potential clients if they never see your content. Scheduling your posts to go live at the right time is critical to generating social media leads (and engagement in general).
Use a scheduling tool like Hootsuite to ensure your posts are going up at the right time to capture your audience’s attention.
Customer testimonials
Intrigue your potential customers with stories from your past or current customers. Share client testimonials, and real-life case studies in blog posts or other formats to offer social proof that your business is legitimate and your brand is worth engaging with.
Provide authentic examples of happy clients and successful client cases; people look for reviews and trust other people’s opinions – even if they don’t know them!
Interesting posts and content
Think about what point you wish to make in your post. What are you trying to achieve? Not every post is going to produce an instant lead, but by creating a story, showcasing different aspects of your business and building up credibility, people will be more trusting of what you are saying and more likely to engage positively in your posts.
Post consistently and post about the things that matter to your potential clients. Don’t use a post to show-off, but use a post to show your experience and professionalism.
Consistency
Consistency is key. A one off post will get you one-off engagement. Consistent posts will get you consistent engagement.
Post regularly and make sure your content is true to your business. Think of your client segments and post a mix of content to attract them all at various points.
Design user-friendly landing pages
Once you’ve actually convinced someone to click through to your website, it’s make or break time. If you’re lucky, they’ll carry on to actually book your services, but really, at this stage, just collecting some contact info is a win.
Have a landing page that gives visitors an opportunity to submit their contact info to learn more. Maybe it’s literally a form that says, “Submit your contact info to learn more!” but this can also be a newsletter sign-up or a prompt to access gated content.
Targeted ads
Social media ads are a great way to generate leads, particularly because social media platforms allow super-specific demographic targeting. You can share your offering with a highly-segmented audience — ideally, the people most likely to buy from you.
Ad campaigns can be built specifically for lead generation and include a call to action that asks for contact info. With a Facebook lead ad or Instagram lead ad (both built using Meta Business Manager), you can prompt viewers to fill out a contact form… and Facebook will pre-populate that form with users’ information.
Offer incentives
From a free review, a free will update or discount on a service you can try and test different incentives if you wish.
Put a time limit on them, make them exclusive and be clear on the terms.
Host a livestream event
If you’re feeling adventurous then a social media livestream is an exciting and engaging way to connect with your followers with no big expensive venue required.
Whether you’re hosting a Q&A or industry update, livestreams are a great way to offer educational value or entertainment in an interactive way.
Use the livestream to plug your other products and services, direct viewers to a sign-up form to “learn more,” and encourage newcomers to follow you to learn even more.
Dive into analytics
Your social media analytics offer candid insights into how things are going with your posts. Review them regularly to form a picture of what works and what doesn't
What posts are garnering comments? What are people saving? How many new followers are coming in? Who has clicked through on your profile link to your website....review your stats and learn!