David Schneider
Would you like to learn some new ways to use social media to drive leads?
Ah, the big mystery of social media and how to use it to drive leads.
Many ask – how can I better leverage social media for my business?
And few know the answer.
The truth is, social media can be the biggest waste of time or can be a huge lever for business growth. It all depends on your approach.
I’ve cracked the case on a few different channels and I’m here to share what I’ve found, hoping that you can do the same. Here are 5 ways to use social media to drive leads…
Reddit: For Customer Research
Reddit now receives over 168 million monthly unique visits.
From who, you ask?
- The largest group is males 18 to 29 years old.
- Those without a high school diploma and those who have at least an undergraduate degree are most likely to use Reddit
So, let’s say I had an idea for a new way for gamers to communicate in a game.
Reddit seems like the perfect choice, doesn’t it?
That’s exactly what two guys did who thought of a new voice chat program they were considering designing.
They posted their idea to get feedback, and had some awesome results:
- 4,694 upvotes
- 1137 comments.
- Over 6,000 subscribers to their email list
Months later when the product was finally released, they were able to convert these leads to paying customers.
Twitter: For Special Invites
Twitter isn’t just about 140 length character tweets about your cat.
The fact is you can tweet at anyone you want, whenever you want (though it’s best not to spam).
At Ninja Outreach, we have had a lot of success with Twitter, because it is easy to find the target market and engage with them.
We used Moz’s tool FollowerWonk to capture thousands of Twitter handles for our target keywords in seconds.
Next we uploaded the handles with appropriate messages into HootSuite.
Now, every day, we send out a handful of tweets to our target market asking if they would like “Early Access” to our tool.
This resulted in over 400 people signing up for our beta.
FaceBook: Paid Advertising to Consumers
OK, I know this feels like cheating, but I didn’t claim that every single method was going to be free!
Sometimes you do have to put out a little money.
After all, if the leads are worth something to you, then there should be an amount that you’re willing to pay to get them.
My preference for this is Facebook (yes, over Google Adwords). It is excellent for B2C marketing.
A fantastic tutorial on the matter is Matthew Woodward’s FB campaigns which resulted in an over 2000% ROI.
Facebook advertising does have a bit of a learning curve but you can get the hang of it in about a day. There are a lot of ways to go about it, but traditionally you’re going to want to do the following:
- Creating a compelling offer that is going to want to make people convert to your list. This can be a course, a book, or even a simple cheat sheet.
- Creating a landing page to collect opt-ins.
- Setting up an email auto responder on the backend to deliver the offer.
- Monetizing that email list with cross sells and upsells.
This video from Matt tells us how to do the Facebook Ad split testing:
Pinterest: ‘Pin it’ To Win It!
Alright, now it’s time for an example from the big brands, and for this I’m going to cite one of Pinterest’s very own case studies.
Pinterest largely appeals to women and excels in the niches that tend to be very image heavy, like fashion and food.
AllRecipes dramatically increased their referral traffic in the simplest way imaginable.
They added the ‘Pin it’ button on each recipe page.
Yep, that’s it.
After noticing a surge in referral traffic from Pinterest, they designed a custom pin it template and strategically placed it above the fold.
Within three months, more than 50,000 recipes were pinned resulting in 139 million Pinterest impressions, and clicks on Allrecipes’ Pinterest content increased more than 900%. Not bad!
LinkedIn – Engaging With Discussion Groups
If Facebook is the answer for B2C, LinkedIn is his B2B sister.
LinkedIn also has their own paid advertising option, but if you’re on a budget, a fantastic way to get yourself out there is to join relevant groups.
Consider Digital Marketing.
Finding a digital marketing group is as easy as typing it in the search bar and selecting groups:
You get over 5,000 results, with segmentation options such as language, group type, and relationships.
Of course the key to being successful in a group setting is NOT to join all 5,000 of them, but to find the most active and relevant groups, in which you can frequently engage.
Being a groupmate with someone is also the perfect ice breaker to form a relationship with them, which is why I like to select 2nd Connections.
Not only do you know someone in common, but now you can engage with them directly in the group setting.
There are many options from transitioning from group mates to leads, such as:
- Engaging in the group – people will naturally view your profile more.
- Posting in the groups (when allowed), so people will see your content.
- Messaging group members and introducing yourself.
In short, LinkedIn is a great way to form relationships when you can’t be present.
Conclusion
Have we successfully cracked the social media mystery?
I hope so!
Every platform has potential, based purely on the fact that they have such large user bases.
The key is identifying what types of users flock to each platform, and how to leverage that platform to get in touch with them in a cost effective way.
How are you driving leads with social media? Are there any other ways to use social media to drive leads? Please leave your comments below.
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