There are 1.44 billion active users on Facebook every month, but that doesn’t mean you should put all of your eggs in one basket. Recent statistics also show that LinkedIn is the top social media platform for most B2B marketers, but your specific target market might not use LinkedIn all that much. So, what should you do? TRY Lead Generation Using Social Media.
You need to go back to your target audience profile and analyze their social media consumption habits. It is also important to note that every social media platform has a particular image and tone. For instance, LinkedIn posts are more formal compared to Facebook posts even if they come from the same brand.
Tweaking the same material to develop platform-specific content published across various sites will help maintain your brand’s message while staying consistent with posting styles that users have come to expect.
Now that we’ve walked through some of the mistakes tech marketers can make on social media, let’s dive into the specifics of marketing on particular social media platforms.
Lead Generation on LinkedIn
LinkedIn is definitely trying to position itself as the go-to social media channel for business and they’ve largely succeeded. A recent Weber Shandwick study found that LinkedIn was the top social media choice for CEOs. A similar report by Domo and CEO.com found that among the Fortune 500 CEOs who only have one social media profile, 73 percent are on LinkedIn.
Here’s how to reach out to the ultimate decision makers on LinkedIn:
Search for connections and request an introduction. LinkedIn’s connection hierarchy helps keep the platform exclusive and professional. Find a common connection between you and the profile you want to connect with, and request an introduction.
Join groups and participate in discussions. There are various groups you can join in on LinkedIn, and getting engaged in a group is one of the easiest ways to connect with people without the need for a shared connection. Make sure to be helpful and authentic and always engage on topics that you’re genuinely interested in.
Check out who’s viewed your profile. Make it a habit to check who’s viewed your profile on LinkedIn. You can take it one step further and message anyone who’s taken a peek at your profile to see if you can help them with anything. This is a great way to start a conversation and create a new connection.
Play fair when building your lead list. Always ask to be introduced to people who do not know you. Adding people left and right without actually knowing them, or worse, when you have no shared connections at all, will make you seem untrustworthy.
Stay active and relevant. Staying active on LinkedIn doesn’t just mean adding people every day. Nurture potential leads by publishing relevant, timely, and informative content. This will remind people why they connected with you in the first place. Use your editorial calendar to help ensure that your LinkedIn campaign is at the top of its game.
Lead Generation on Facebook
Facebook has approximately 936 million daily active users, and about 83 percent of them are outside of the United States. Facebook remains a top choice for most marketers because of its huge number of active daily users and relative ease of use.
Here are some ways you can leverage Facebook’s vast reach:
Play nice. Facebook is all about engagement, and they have rules. As a tech marketer, you are representing your company on a huge platform. So stay professional!
Set up pages. Build an audience. Join groups. Create an official Facebook page for your company to build an audience. Apart from publishing relevant content and engaging with your audience online, extend the conversation outside the official page by joining groups and bringing outsiders in.
Use a simple, short vanity URL. When you first create an official Facebook page, you’ll notice that the URL is just a combination of characters. Choose a good vanity URL that you can share outside of Facebook—in print, TV and radio ads, and on other social media platforms. Keep it short and simple, so it’s catchy and easier to remember.
Go for paid ads. Investing in regular paid ads can help you reach a wider audience. If you haven’t done it before, try it once and measure the returns on your investment to see if it’s an effective tool worth consideration in the future.
Create online brand ambassadors. Chances are, you’ll find very active users who visit your page. Empower these individuals by transforming them into online brand ambassadors. Bring in bloggers or even celebrities, as this is a good way to introduce your brand to new audiences.
Engage. Now that you’ve set up your online stage, it’s time to engage. Answer queries in a timely fashion and respond to any comments that mention your brand. If users are mentioning positive things about your brand, thank them. If users are posting negative comments about your brand, ask them why and respond empathetically if they tell you their problem.
Lead Generation on Twitter
A staggering 82 percent of social media-generated leads come from Twitter. Social media is all about connecting with an audience, that’s why 74 percent of companies use Twitter to distribute content.
Here are some smart ways to generate potential leads with a tweet:
Schedule your tweets. Analyze your audience to see what time of the day they are most likely to be online. Allocating a specific time during the day for your Twitter tasks is a good practice.
Use Bitly.com. Twitter is popular because the content is short, fast, and fuss-free. If you want to share article links, use bitly.com to shorten your URLs and track how many clicks they receive.
Easy on the hashtags. Keep your hashtags to a minimum. One or two hashtags per post is enough. Nobody wants to read tweets with the ‘#’ symbol all over it.
Go for paid tweets and ads. Just like Facebook ads, paid tweets and ads are good ways to reach a wider audience. However, make sure to segment your audience when rolling out paid ads. Customizing your ads to target specific audiences will help your ROI, providing more audience engagement and increasing click-through rates.
Lead Generation on YouTube
About 77 percent of small businesses have used YouTube for marketing purposes. To date, videos are the fastest-growing type of content on the web. IT and software companies can harness the conversion powers of video content by producing a good mix of tutorials and marketing videos.
Cisco predicted that by 2019, about 80 percent of all consumer internet traffic will be generated by internet video traffic. That’s huge!
Here are some fantastic ways to tap into the power of video traffic using YouTube:
Create a YouTube Channel. A single video is not enough. You have to come up with regular high-quality video content to keep your audience’s attention. Creating a YouTube channel will help you organize what you publish and help users find your content.
Create top quality content. Make sure your video content is something worth sharing. Keep your videos short, informative, and entertaining and people will talk about it for months. Don’t limit yourself to tutorials. Even if you’re selling technology, there are many ways to spin it to make things more interesting.
Use keywords in the video title. A good video title does half of the job of getting your audience’s attention if they happen to come across a social link. But adding keywords to your video’s title will help people find it if they’re simply firing up a Google search.
Add relevant links to your YouTube videos. Embedding a URL that leads to your company’s landing page or Facebook page is a good way to lead your audience from one social media platform to another. If a viewer wants to learn more, don’t make it hard for them to get to your site.
Serialized videos. If you have a social media campaign, supplement it with YouTube video content and release it as a series. This is a good tactic to engage your visitors and followers multiple times.
Share! Don’t depend on YouTube alone. Share the videos across all of your social media channels to generate more leads from various touchpoints.