Using Social Media for Lead Generation

What’s the top emerging channel for lead generation, according to the Unisfair Marketing Survey? Social Media.

According to the May 2010 survey, marketers are beginning to rely more heavily on social media to supply them with a source of new, potential clients than ever before.

In another study, conducted by Chadwick Martin Bailey and iModerate Research Technologies, found that 79% of Twitter followers and 60% of Facebook fans are more likely to recommend the brands that they follow in their social networking circles. Not only are they more likely to suggest these brands to others, but they are also much more likely to purchase the brands themselves.

What is this Social Media Phenomenon?

It’s all about making connections, building brand awareness, and developing a trust and credibility factor among your followers. If you are engaging others through social media avenues in a positive way, you will inevitably develop a following who will recommend you to others.

According to Josh Mendelsohn, Vice President at Chadwich Martin Bailey, “Social Media is an extremely important and relatively low cost touch point that has a direct impact on sales and positive word of mouth. Companies not actively engaging are missing a huge opportunity and are saying something to consumers, either intentionally or unintentionally, about how willing they are to engage on consumers’ terms.”

How to Develop Leads Using the Power of Social Media

Being that social media is a great place to attract new customers, here are a few tips that will help you to develop the solid leads you desire:

Create Valuable Content and Share It:

Use a Blog or Website to develop authoritative content and continuously point users to it. How is this accomplished? After posting a timely and informative article on your business blog, Twitter about it (including the links to your post), post it on your Facebook Wall, and feed your blog posts to your LinkedIn account and your Facebook Fan Page.

Promote Your Social Media Presence:

Once you’ve created accounts on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, be sure to have your icons prominently displayed on your web pages, blogs, email signature, business cards, and flyers. Whenever possible, include the links that will take readers directly to your account.

Speak, Listen, and Monitor:

In order for a conversation to occur, brands must not only speak out on social media platforms, but they must listen as well. This is the one feature that sets social media apart from communication through advertisements. When a brand puts an ad in the newspaper or on a billboard, there isn’t an opportunity for direct response. Social media has changed all that. Brands now have the ability to start conversations and engage individuals. This opens up doors to easily create a buzz without spending thousands of dollars on marketing campaigns.

Besides talking to and engaging with consumers, it’s also important to monitor conversations for mentions of your brand name, product, or any keywords that could potentially generate a lead or give you insight into consumer perception.

You can monitor social networking platforms using simple methods such as Google alerts and Twitter Search, or you can choose more elaborate tools that will scour the web for any mention of your keywords or brand. SocialMention and Trackur are two of the more sophisticated tools.

Most monitoring tools allow you to set up email alerts that will breakdown your results and present them to you in detailed summaries. You’ll be able to see where your brand was mentioned, whether it is a blog post, video, image, news item, or tweet. You can even set your alerts to be notified every time someone saves a link from your website or blog to StumbleUpon, Reddit, or Desicious. Pretty impressive and highly useful.

What are some of the ways that social media has worked for your lead generation?