How to Use Your Social Media Profiles as Effective Lead Generation Tools

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​Many new businesses and websites struggle with reaching out to new audiences. Lead generation refers to the approach that you take to reaching out to and discovering new users or customers and there are few avenues as effective for doing this as social media. However, in order to reap results, you need to use it the right way. Here are three key components to any successful social media lead generation strategy.

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​Promote Gated Content

Many websites have discovered that they can utilize gated content as a way of improving user engagement. If your gated content is good enough, users will be willing to create an account with your website just so that they will be able to access it. If they create an account with you, that means they will give you their email address and you will be able to add them to your mailing list.

You can also ask users for other information as they complete the sign-up process. This information can be used to further personalize the messages that you send to these users. It can also inform your marketing and social media decision-making.
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Your social media profiles make an excellent channel for promoting gated content. Provide a preview of the content along with a link to where the user can access the full thing. Of course, the key to this strategy lies in producing gated content that users find worth going to extra effort to access.

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Know Your Niche

The more targeted your message is, the more it will resonate with its target audience. If your social media is going to be an effective avenue for improving your lead generation then you need to have a good understanding of the niche that you are operating in and how to communicate effectively with them.

The more niche your niche is, the more selective you need to be about who you reach out to and how you reach out to them; that includes influencers and other profiles on social media. Take a business like Altium that produces electronic PCB design software. Pursuing this audience in the same way as you would a more general tech audience is still going to lead to a relatively low hit-rate. Instead, it is better to target smaller but more focussed groups, like hardware hobbyists.

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​Run Contests and Make Them Worthwhile

Many businesses now understand that contests can be very effective ways of enhancing customer engagement and encouraging more of your audience to make their way to your website. However, there are still lots of businesses that don’t seem to have cottoned on to the importance of ensuring that their prizes are up to scratch.

If the prizes that you’re offering don’t even justify the small amount of work that is required to enter them, they aren’t going to be effective at encouraging people to engage with you and you will be unable to utilize one of the most important lead generation techniques that is available to you.

Lead generation is a vital component of any healthy marketing strategy. Even if you are dependent upon repeat customers, you still need to be able to find new earning opportunities and your lead generation techniques will be key to achieving this. If you play your cards right, your social media accounts can be the best lead generation tools at your disposal.