Lead Generation on Social Media for Business Growth

Lead generation is the process of attracting and converting strangers and prospects into someone who has indicated interest in your company’s product or service. Some examples of lead generators are job applications, blog posts, coupons, live events, and online content.

Whenever someone outside the marketing world asks me what I do, I can’t simply say, “I create content for lead generation.” It’d be totally lost on them, and I’d get some really confused looks.

So instead, I say, “I work on finding unique ways to attract people to my business. I want to provide them with enough goodies to get them naturally interested in my company so they eventually warm up to the brand enough to want to hear from us!”

That usually resonates better, and that’s exactly what lead generation is: It’s a way of warming up potential customers to your business and getting them on the path to eventually buying.

Why Do You Need Lead Generation?

When a stranger initiates a relationship with you by showing an organic interest in your business, the transition from stranger to customer is much more natural.

Lead generation falls within the second stage of the inbound marketing methodology. It occurs after you’ve attracted an audience and are ready to convert those visitors into leads for your sales team (namely sales-qualified leads).

How to Generate Leads

Now that we understand how lead generation fits into the whole inbound marketing methodology, let’s walk through the steps of the lead generation process.

First, a visitor discovers your business through one of your marketing channels, such as your website, blog, or social media page.

That visitor then clicks on your call-to-action (CTA) — an image, button, or message that encourages website visitors to take some sort of action.

The CTA takes your visitor to a landing page, which is a web page that is designed to capture lead information in exchange for an offer.

An offer is the content or something of value that’s being “offered” on the landing page, like an ebook, a course, or a template. The offer must have enough perceived value to a visitor to merit providing their personal information in exchange for access to it.

The form on your landing page consists of a series of fields (like in our example above) that collect information in exchange for the offer. Forms are typically hosted on landing pages, although they can technically be embedded anywhere on your site. Once a visitor fills this out — voila! — you have a new lead! (That is, as long as you’re following lead-capture form best practices.)

Lead generation especially with social media is very cost effective and gives a guaranteed return on investment. Businesses that have taken time to invest in lead generation often times has resulted into higher sales and upward spiral of the business.

It is something businesses should try sooner than later.

Additional Content from http://www.blog.hubspot.com 

Introduction to Social Media

In today’s ever changing business and social life, one thing is for sure. You have to stay connected somehow to friends, relatives and customers one way or the other.

The reality, is the conventional way of staying connected is changing rapidly.  To stay connected you have to embrace and appreciate all the forms of staying in touch and am afraid you are going to have to one way or another. That’s the harsh reality.

Then comes the rush to be connected on all the different channels of communication in the 21^st Century creating some sort of communication hub important to the daily lives of many people allover the world. Some sort of online community where people meet, interact, share ideas, form groups some closed to a specific interest and others open. This online inter-connectedness is what has come to be known as Social Media.

With Social media sweeping all over the place, there have been so many opportunities arising from this communication hub. Some are yet to be harnessed to realize the full potential of social media.

To an individual, social media could just be another way of avoiding written letters as a means of communication, it could be one way of interacting with friends and family who might not be physically close. It could be anything from a platform on which to socialise and make new friends to being a hobby or addictive routine.

To a business oriented person, it could mean an opportunity of a life time. It could just be your big break. Social media has brought with it so many ways of showcasing uniqueness in the way business oriented persons present their business case to this sea of people on social media who are prospective clients. You can be able to create a community of people who are interested in the kind of services or stuff you do. This community can be your loyal clients and all you have to do is keep them occupied with your products and you will be in business for as long as you keep feeding them with information about your products or services.

Social media sites like Facebook,Twitter,Instagram and Youtube make it possible to create forums or segments on which you have authority over. Think of them as virtual community meeting places. You can control who enters the community, who says what and  advertise your community as well to select audiences.

Same applies to medium and small scale businesses. There are numerous examples of such business who have and continue to harness the power of social media for all sorts of reasons such as Visibility, advertisement, sales growth, public relations, brand identity and customer retention.

When handled well with a touch of expertise and experience, social media can turn out to be such a huge success for businesses in whichever aspect they chose social media for.

One of the fastest growing job markets today is in the field of social media! The web has become the first place most people look to make purchasing decisions, and they depend on social media for advice and guidance from their peers.

Businesses that formerly depended on Yellow Pages ads, direct mail marketing and in store advertising are realizing that they cannot neglect online marketing. However, many of these business owners have no idea how social media works, let alone how to leverage it to increase their sales or positively promote their brand.

Social media managers come in to fix the above problem.

Many businesses do not have the time or are lacking some of the skills to do this well. Some people would argue that unless these platforms are maintained regularly and kept dynamic and fresh that it is better not to do it at all. It is also important that businesses understand web etiquette and best practice when making posts or submitting articles and videos.

A social media manager has a number of roles and can offer a wide range of services. These can include training individuals and organisations or managing the whole thing.

Management involves:

• Helping people to set up a social network package
• Explaining the interconnections between the various platforms
• Creating a routine and schedule for posting
• Helping to streamline existing routines
• Making them more efficient or partially or completely managing all of the social media and networking

A social media manager becomes the front line of customer service and can pick up communications from existing or potential customers and feed them to the appropriate person. The manager can also keep an eye out for any potentially damaging or incorrect information that is being posted by others.

A good social media manager will gain an excellent understanding of the business and be able to spot opportunities as they arise, plant seeds and connect with the right people. He or she can deliver content, build links, network and translate digital information from the online community. A good online presence is not about just having a website or ranking well on Google anymore, businesses need a presence on sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Linked In and YouTube. A business blog is where people will go to make sure they are current and credible but it also floats the site. Good social media managers are passionate about social media and are there to help their clients to have success online!

Benefits of social media for branding

1. Increase Brand Awareness
One of the most obvious benefits of social media is increasing brand awareness. With millions of users on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other networks, there are plenty of people to reach. And several of these users have never heard of your brand.
Use social media as a way to fill in the gaps and get exposure to a new audience.
2. Improve Brand Loyalty
Are people willing to choose your brand over the competition on a consistent basis? Or would they be willing to switch to another product or service if it were cheaper or newer?
When you think of companies like Nike, Apple or Starbucks, you’ll notice their customers are extremely loyal and consistently choose them over the competition no matter what.
Building that type of brand loyalty doesn’t happen over night, but social media can help you get there a lot faster. You have the ability to consistently interact with your audience, respond to questions in real time and build a tribe on different platforms.
Curious about what drives brand loyalty? According to research from Rare Consulting, 86% of consumers feel it’s about likability and 83% say trust.
3. Build Brand Equity
Getting someone to go from a prospect to a customer isn’t always as simple and straight forward as getting them to discover your brand and then make a purchase.
Instead, you need to earn their trust by initially providing your brand’s value for free. Whether it’s through blogging, free guides or other resources that educate or entertain consumers, you need to build equity with prospects.
Social media eases the process because you can consistently share free and valuable content across all your profiles and earn trust over time.
4. Humanize Your Brand
Social media has been great for breaking the stigma of faceless corporations that are only after customers’ dollars. These days, consumers care just as much about who they’re buying from as they do about what they’re buying. Use social media as a way to humanize your brand and showcase your company’s personality.
Start by developing a brand voice. It should be consistent across all of your profiles and fit the perception you want to give about your brand. For instance, Wendy’s has developed a humorous and witty voice that consumers now associate with their brand.
5. Stay Top of Mind With Your Customers
Since social media is on 24/7, your brand is able to keep in constant communication with customers. In a world where consumers are constantly bombarded with ads, content and marketing messages, it’s easy for your brand to get put on the back burner.
With social media, you’re able to stay in front of your audience, even when they aren’t in buying mode.
6. Establish Your Brand as an Authority & Thought Leader
Social media is an excellent platform to establish your brand as an authority in your industry. Through sharing relevant content, responding to industry-related questions and being a go-to resource, you can use social media as a solid platform for becoming an authority.
For instance, Tesla Motors’s CEO Elon Musk is considered an authority on energy efficiency, innovation and sustainability in tech and automotive industry. His Twitter feed is packed full of content about those topics and his opinions on the industry.
7. Reputation Management
People will talk about your brand on social media regardless of whether or not you’re active on the platform. It’s in your best interest to be proactive by using social media monitoring tools to see what’s being said. You can use a tool like Sprout Social to monitor mentions of your brand name so that you can quickly respond to customer complaints or issues.
8.Crisis Management
PR issues can happen at any moment. Whether it’s the company CEO Tweeting something inappropriate, a controversial television commercial or a customer service fail, you need to be prepared with a crisis management plan. One of the first places people will go for information when your company has a blunder is social media.
You can use Facebook or Twitter to issue a public statement or respond to questions and concerns.

Social Media Etiquette for businesses

1. Read the room

Using social media without knowing your audience is like going on a blind date and immediately bringing up a polarizing political issue. Social media is about two-way dialogue and your business needs to be a good conversation partner.

Do research to better understand your audience, figure out the best time to post, use the right image sizes, and don’t use words and phrases that may compromise your brand reputation.

What this all boils down to is listening before talking. Social listening can help you better understand how to engage with your audience more effectively—it can also help you uncover gaps or opportunities that you can address before your competitors get a chance.

2. Don’t be a robot

While social media automation can come in handy at times, you should avoid it in direct interactions with your audience. This means no automated Twitter DMs, private Facebook messages, or Instagram comments. People are smart, and can easily sniff out automation on social media. They can also report it as spam, which isn’t good for your business. Put a human touch on everything you do, even when bulk scheduling messages across your social networks.

You should also switch up the type of content you post on a regular basis. Nobody follows a business on social media because they want a constant stream of annoyingly similar posts. They’ve given you the green light to appear in their personal feeds—make sure they don’t regret it.

3. Respond to comments, fast

According to Econsultancy, 53 percent of customers who ask a business a question on Twitter expect a response within one hour. If a customer makes a complaint, however, that figure goes up to 72 percent.

Being on social media means you’ve opened up a direct and highly public communication channel between your business and your customers—don’t leave them hanging. Assign messages to members of your team to ensure they all get a prompt response, whether those messages are positive or negative.

Ignoring a negative review can lead to the loss of a customer or a major PR disaster. Addressing negative feedback in a timely manner can help you turn a detractor into a brand advocate.

4. Don’t badmouth your peers

Playing nice with competing brands on social media goes a long way. Not only can it help establish a professional working relationship with others in your field, but it also improves your online reputation in the eyes of your followers, as well as your competitors’ social media audience.

But this doesn’t mean you should keep mum if another brand calls you out on social media. Take time to respond to their comments, just as you would with feedback from your customers—especially if those comments are negative. Their audience deserves to hear your side of the story, to decide for themselves if the negative messaging from your competitor is worth considering.

5. Tame your hashtags

Hashtags are a great way to give your social media messaging higher visibility and greater reach. But they can look distracting and desperate if you use too many of them.

It’s considered best practice to use your hashtags sparingly and choose them carefully. Your hashtags should help you join a larger discussion or target a specific audience, without forcing your audience to reconsider their decision to follow you.

Learn how one business started a hashtag that now attracts millions of users from around the world and get tips for creating your own branded hashtag in this post.

6. Be careful mixing professional and personal

Cornering an unsuspecting coworker and unloading your personal problems on them is poor etiquette in any business setting. But your personal life doesn’t belong on your company’s social media accounts either.

Accidentally posting something personal from your company’s account is every social media manager’s worst nightmare. To avoid it from ever becoming your reality, follow these tips:

• Use a social media management platform. Managing all of your accounts in one place is the easiest way to keep everything safe and separate. In Hootsuite, you can create separate tabs for your professional and personal accounts. Or, you could separate the two completely and only use a social media management platform for your professional accounts.
• Secure your company’s social media accounts. With Hootsuite Enterprise, you can designate certain accounts as “secure” profiles, which will help prevent messages being posted by accident. Any time you schedule or send a message to that account you’ll be required to confirm your intent to post, giving you that extra moment to ensure you’re posting to the right account.
• Double (or triple) check before you publish or schedule content. You’re busy, but taking the extra second or two to make sure you’re sending content from the right account is always worth your time. Think about it this way: having to delete a post, issue and apology, and explain what happened to your boss will take a lot longer.

You should also be aware of how connected you are online to your company’s brand. For example, mentioning where you work in the bio of your personal accounts is a great way to put a human face on your brand and connect with people in similar industries. But it also connects your company to anything you say and do on social media, so you should always act (and post) accordingly. To keep things entirely separate, you may want to keep your personal profiles set to private.

7. Don’t follow everyone and anyone

Following thousands of people with the hope they’ll follow you back will not only oversaturate your feed with irrelevant posts, it will tarnish your brand reputation and detract from the perceived value of your social media presence.

The number of followers you have shouldn’t be your main indicator of success on social media anyways. While it’s a good indicator of how much awareness there is of your brand on social media, your follower count doesn’t mean much without context.

Follow accounts that produce valuable content you would consider reposting as part of your content curation strategy—such as brand ambassadors, think tanks and watchdogs in your field, active fans, and fellow industry professionals.

8. Always give credit

For better or worse, social media is a recycling bin of content. This opens the door for your content to reach massive audiences in the blink of an eye, but it can also lead to plagiarism, copyright infringement, and the absence of credit where credit is due.

Sharing user-generated content (UGC) is a great way to give your followers a steady stream of fresh and engaging posts, but giving proper credit is an absolute must. Otherwise, you risk coming off as disrespectful and greedy. The easiest way to do this is to mention the creator’s handle in your post. Asking permission before sharing someone’s content is also a good way to score polite points for your business.

Courtesy of Hootsuite

Why every business needs a social media presence

To some entrepreneurs, social media marketing is the “next big thing,” a temporary yet powerful fad that must be taken advantage of while it’s still in the spotlight. To others, it’s a buzzword with no practical advantages and a steep, complicated learning curve.

Because it appeared quickly, social media has developed a reputation by some for being a passing marketing interest, and therefore, an unprofitable one. The statistics, however, illustrate a different picture. According to Hubspot, 92% of marketers in 2014 claimed that social media marketing was important for their business, with 80% indicating their efforts increased traffic to their websites. And according to Social Media Examiner, 97% of marketers are currently participating in social media—but 85% of participants aren’t sure what social media tools are the best to use.

This demonstrates a huge potential for social media marketing to increase sales, but a lack of understanding on how to achieve those results. Here’s a look at just some of the ways social media marketing can improve your business:

1. Increased Brand Recognition. Every opportunity you have to syndicate your content and increase your visibility is valuable. Your social media networks are just new channels for your brand’s voice and content. This is important because it simultaneously makes you easier and more accessible for new customers, and makes you more familiar and recognizable for existing customers. For example, a frequent Twitter user could hear about your company for the first time only after stumbling upon it in a newsfeed. Or, an otherwise apathetic customer might become better acquainted with your brand after seeing your presence on multip

2. Improved brand loyalty. According to a report published by Texas Tech University, brands who engage on social media channels enjoy higher loyalty from their customers. The report concludes “Companies should take advantage of the tools social media gives them when it comes to connecting with their audience. A strategic and open social media plan could prove influential in morphing consumers into being brand loyal.” Another study published by Convince&Convert found that 53% of Americans who follow brands in social are more loyal to those brands.

3. More Opportunities to Convert. Every post you make on a social media platform is an opportunity for customers to convert. When you build a following, you’ll simultaneously have access to new customers, recent customers, and old customers, and you’ll be able to interact with all of them. Every blog post, image, video, or comment you share is a chance for someone to react, and every reaction could lead to a site visit, and eventually a conversion. Not every interaction with your brand results in a conversion, but every positive interaction increases the likelihood of an eventual conversion. Even if your click-through rates are low, the sheer number of opportunities you have on social media is significant. And as I pointed out in my article, “The Four Elements of Any Action, And How To Use Them In Your Online Marketing Initiative,” “opportunity” is the first element of any action.

4. Higher conversion rates. Social media marketing results in higher conversion rates in a few distinct ways. Perhaps the most significant is its humanization element; the fact that brands become more humanized by interacting in social media channels. Social media is a place where brands can act like people do, and this is important because people like doing business with other people; not with companies.

Additionally, studies have shown that social media has a 100% higher lead-to-close rate than outbound marketing, and a higher number of social media followers tends to improve trust and credibility in your brand, representing social proof. As such, simply building your audience in social media can improve conversion rates on your existing traffic

5. Higher Brand Authority. Interacting with your customers regularly is a show of good faith for other customers. When people go to compliment or brag about a product or service, they turn to social media. And when they post your brand name, new audience members will want to follow you for updates. The more people that are talking about you on social media, the more valuable and authoritative your brand will seem to new users. Not to mention, if you can interact with major influencers on Twitter or other social networks, your visible authority and reach will skyrocket.

6. Increased Inbound Traffic. Without social media, your inbound traffic is limited to people already familiar with your brand and individuals searching for keywords you currently rank for. Every social media profile you add is another path leading back to your site, and every piece of content you syndicate on those profiles is another opportunity for a new visitor. The more quality content you syndicate on social media, the more inbound traffic you’ll generate, and more traffic means more leads and more conversions.

7. Decreased Marketing Costs. According to Hubspot, 84% of marketers found as little as six hours of effort per week was enough to generate increased traffic. Six hours is not a significant investment for a channel as large as social media. If you can lend just one hour a day to developing your content and syndication strategy, you could start seeing the results of your efforts. Even paid advertising through Facebook and Twitter is relatively cheap (depending on your goals, of course). Start small and you’ll never have to worry about going over budget—once you get a better feel for what to expect, you can increase your budget and increase your conversions correspondingly.

8. Better Search Engine Rankings. SEO is the best way to capture relevant traffic from search engines, but the requirements for success are always changing. It’s no longer enough to regularly update your blog, ensure optimized title tags and meta descriptions, and distribute links pointing back to your site. Google and other search engines may be calculating their rankings using social media presence as a significant factor, because of the fact that strong brands almost always use social media. As such, being active on social media could act as a “brand signal” to search engines that your brand is legitimate, credible, and trustworthy. That means, if you want to rank for a given set of keywords, having a strong social media presence could be almost mandatory.

9. Richer Customer Experiences. Social media, at its core, is a communication channel like email or phone calls. Every customer interaction you have on social media is an opportunity to publicly demonstrate your customer service level and enrich your relationship with your customers. For example, if a customer complains about your product on Twitter, you can immediately address the comment, apologize publicly, and take action to make it right. Or, if a customer compliments you, you can thank them and recommend additional products. It’s a personal experience that lets customers know you care about them.

10. Improved Customer Insights. Social media also gives you an opportunity to gain valuable information about what your customers are interested in and how they behave, via social listening. For example, you can monitor user comments to see what people think of your business directly. You can segment your content syndication lists based on topic and see which types of content generate the most interest—and then produce more of that type of content. You can measure conversions based on different promotions posted on various social media channels and eventually find a perfect combination to generate revenue.

These are the benefits of sustaining a long-term social media campaign, but if you’re still apprehensive about getting started, consider these points:

• Your Competition Is Already Involved. Your competitors are already involved on social media, which means your potential social media traffic and conversions are being poached. Don’t let your competitors reap all the benefits while you stand idly by. If, somehow, your competition is not involved on social media, there’s even more of a reason to get started—the field is open.
• The Sooner You Start, the Sooner You Reap the Benefits. Social media is all about relationship building, and it tends to grow exponentially as your followers tell their friends, and their friends tell their friends, and so on. The sooner you start, the sooner you’ll be able to start growing that audience.
• Potential Losses Are Insignificant. Realistically, you don’t have anything to lose by getting involved in social media. The amount of time and money it takes to create your profiles and start posting is usually minimal, compared to other marketing channels. Just six hours a week or a few hundred dollars is all it takes to establish your presence.

Conclusion

The longer you wait, the more you have to lose. Social media marketing, when done right, can lead to more customers, more traffic, and more conversions, and it’s here to stay. If you’re interested in getting started but aren’t sure where to begin—head over to my Resource Library or leave a comment below!

By Jayson DeMers, Fobes Contributor

Case In Point- Bora Bora FEST Social media campaign

Case Scenario- Bora Bora fest

I was privileged to run the bora bora fest social media campaign for the duration of one month.

I want to use this as a casing scenario for medium to small scale businesses who feel or rather do not take the power of social media seriously to influence customer base.

You do not need a huge budget to have a successful social media campaign. You have to however have a picture of what you expect to achieve and then talk to someone (Social media Content Manager-That would ideally be me) to paint that picture into something real.

When you decide to have social media as part of your main stream media to achieve your intended audience or campaign for that matter, have a one on one talk with the social media content manager to give him a rough picture of what you envision and the intended outcome. It is also at this point that you decide which social media platforms will work best for you.

Of course, by the time you decide to use social media, you should have known the advantages of social media and how if harnessed can go a long away in promoting your brand/event/product/service.

Should you decide to use Facebook for example, some of the questions which need to be answered include; do you have a Facebook page for your business? How often do you interact with the audience you have created on the page? If not, the latter can be created and still serve its purpose of creating an audience suited for your business. If not, the former can still pick up and improve on the day to day interaction with the audience over the course of the campaign.

Many a time you might feel that you have what it takes to administer your page but if daily interaction is anything to go by, you realize that you don’t have the time and patience to dedicate to your audience. A social media content manager (Me, again) will ensure that your audience is kept active with relevant content on a daily basis.

The Facebook ads I run for Bora Bora fest altogether reached a combined audience of 10,000 people within Kampala and Wakiso Districts. The select audience included people within the age ranges of 18-65 who love music, food, live band and so on. You can select your audience to suit your business’s intended target audience.

The Facebook ads run co-currently with Instagram ads and for that matter, it makes sense to have an Instagram account as well for your business.

Twitter on the other hand, for a successful social media campaign, you will need to have a twitter account, and develop a hashtag for your business or event. The hashtag will have content under it for the campaign. Interestingly, you can be able to see what is trending on twitter in a particular country. Your hashtag is able to trend because the number of people tweeting to the hashtag at that particular point in time cause it to trend. You will either be very active on twitter to have your hashtag trend or have what we call influencers.  Influencers have a large following on social media and a combination of 3 or 4 of them tweeting to the hashtag can cause it to trend.

We used influencers for the Bora Bora fest and we did trend for 2 days in a row during the event and after the event. It would have been desirable to trend  2 days to the event such that people would  know about the event and this would also affect the number of people who turn up to the event. It is important to trend.

Twitter, as you should know, is not a marketing space. It’s a social space in which marketers insert themselves. As such, a big part of what happens on twitter is absolutely and totally disconnected from marketing. Most of the time it’s about fun. Goofing off. Trying to make your followers and strangers alike share a laugh. The influencers you hire should be able to understand the thin line between a fun tweet and promoting your brand or hashtag.

In a nutshell, the Bora Bora Fest social media campaign was a success having run it for a period of about one month. There are lessons however which can be drawn from this, such as coming up with specific timelines of how you want content on social media to roll out, trending before an event is paramount on twitter.  Be reminded that you can always pull off a social media campaign without a lot of money and at the same time achieve your intended goal.

Kindly share this article if you feel it is something worth sharing.

You can contact me as well if you want to share your thoughts.