We probably bleat on about this too much, but, there’s a reason you’re not getting leads from social media activity, and it’s NOT because it doesn’t work!

Trust us, social media is absolutely overflowing with prospects and potential leads. No matter what your business is, you can find a platform that WILL generate inbound leads for you. But, it’s not as simple as “showing up”, you have to put at least some effort into it and have a strategy to make sure you reach your goals.

So, there’s generally 3 main reasons why you’re not getting leads from social media:

1. You don’t engage with others
2. Your message isn’t clear
3. You’re not consistent enough with your message

But how do you fix that? In this piece, we will show you EXACTLY how to get inbound leads from social media efforts, no gimmicks, no 5-day challenges, just the stone-cold truth.

What do you want?

Before you even start to work on your social presence, you need to ask yourself 3 main questions:

• Who is your target audience? – Be really strict here
• What is your main message?
• What do you want to achieve?

Once you have decided on those things, you can begin to build a picture of how you should spend your time on social media platforms and which platforms are right for you and your brand, and more importantly, which ones will drive leads!

As an example, we would usually recommend:

• LinkedIn for B2B
• Facebook for B2C
• Twitter for both
• Instagram for tangible products that can create amazing visuals. Although, non-visual brands can do well here too, if you get your messaging right.

Get strategising! (for the remaining guidance, we’ll focus on LinkedIn for ease)

You now know WHY you’re on social media. So, let’s look at HOW we can start to develop your network.

1. Make a list of the organisations you would like to work with. You can start with around 20 and build it from there.
2. Find out who, within those organisations will be your decision maker; for example: Let’s say you want to work with “First Bus” and the decision maker for marketing is their Marketing Director. Look for this person using the LinkedIn search function and connect.
3. Begin to engage with THEIR content. 

That 3rd point is really important for beginning to generate inbound leads. A few dos and don’ts here though:

Do: like and comment on their content with something meaningful; your own opinion or experience for example.

Don’t: Message them with your sales pitch immediately or write spammy sales stuff on their content. MASSIVE TURN OFF!

Do: Check out their previous activity and engage with some of their older content too.

You should aim to spend 20 minutes to an hour a day engaging with other people’s content. Once you’ve worked on this for a while, you can reduce the time down as you’ll know where and when to look for the content you want to engage with.

Create a content plan and be consistent

Now you know your strategy for engaging and WHO you’re going to engage with, you can build your content to suit them.

When writing content, don’t speak generically about your products and services, but instead, try to write as if you were talking to one person directly. 

You can absolutely write sales posts but anything blatantly selling such as “We sell carpets, click the link to buy one” generally won’t get you much traction.

Instead, focus on showing off your products and services by highlighting client reviews, statistics and improvements that your product or service will give the buyer. You should be focusing on how your product or service will solve your audiences’ problems. Sticking to the 80% value 20% sales here works as a general rule.

Consistency is key and you need to post regularly, in addition to spending time engaging with your audience. Think at least a week ahead and create content in advance. You can always change it up quickly to match events as they happen if needs be.

So, in short:

• Build an audience that you want to work with
• REGULARLY engage with that audience’s activity
• Post content that matches their needs, adds value and showcases your brand
• Be consistent with your activity

It really is that simple but, like with any form of marketing, this approach takes time and it’s not an overnight fix to your lead generation problems! Your hard work NOW will pay off in 3-6 months time, so you should always be looking forward and adapting accordingly.

For quicker fixes, paid ads can work wonders but, that’s a blog for another day!

Need help? Contact us to see how we can help!