Social media is completely changing the way we all communicate each day. And it’s not going away anytime soon. However, for businesses using social media, it can be more than simply posting updates about your business or providing customer service. In fact, it can play a large role in your lead generation strategy.

The key word in that sentence is “strategy.” It’s not enough to throw a bunch of spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks. For social media to be effective for lead generation, you need to have a solid plan in place and know exactly how your social media efforts will help you generate leads.

Here’s how you can use social media as part of your lead generation strategy:

Pick the Right Channels
There’s little point continually updating your Instagram if your target audience is hanging out on LinkedIn. The first step is to find the most relevant channels where you can engage with your audience.

If you’re not sure where your target audience is active, now’s the time to go back to your buyer persona. This will also help you see what kind of information they’re looking for, and where they find this information in their spare time. If you’re in a formal B2B industry, LinkedIn may be your best bet, but if you’re engaging with millennials, you may want to focus on Facebook or Instagram.

Engage with your Followers
If you want to increase your followers and keep those followers engaged, you’ll need to be constantly creating high-quality content that they’ll find relevant. Of course, any great lead generation strategy will already include content marketing as its main focus.

If you’re known as an expert in your industry, your followers will listen when you have something to say. This will make it easier for you to increase engagement and send traffic to your website or landing page.

Link to Gated Content
One of the most important parts of a lead generation strategy is creating a content offer that your potential leads will be willing to give you their email addresses for. Once you’ve created this, you should continually use social media to link to the landing page where this content can be found.

Create Conversation
Social media gives you an excellent opportunity to showcase the human side of your company. Your business is more than just a logo, and you can demonstrate this by talking to your customers. Create a survey, video, funny quote, tip, insight, or question and use it to engage with your followers.

Use Advertising
When you use social media advertising, you can promote your content to highly specific target audiences- making it more likely that these people will become leads. Social media advertising can also help you collect your leads from within the social media networks themselves.

Facebook lead ads allow you to provide followers with a whitepaper, ebook, coupon, or newsletter in exchange for their information- right within Facebook itself.

Social media presents you with an excellent opportunity to generate more leads. The trick is to make sure that absolutely every activity you’re doing on social media has a purpose- and that purpose leads back to lead generation.

Need some help using social media for lead generation? Get in touch today.