Social media is one of the most cost-effective digital marketing methods to communicate and engage with stakeholders.

A social media following means you have an audience of  people aware of your brand who have an interest in what you do - giving you the ideal opportunity to generate leads from your followers.

Here are our five favourite ways to generate new leads using social media:

1. Use social media advertising

If managed effectively, social media activity can focus on certain groups of people using mechanics such as hashtags and timing your tweets well. However, social media advertising is a far more effective way to focus your posts on specific groups of potential customers.

Every social media platform has unique demographic criteria that help you target adverts, such as age, gender, location, industry and much more. If you plan your advertisements correctly, you can ensure that you’re targeting only an audience who will find value in your content - you won’t be wasting resources on people who are not interested.

When setting up social media campaigns, choose the most appropriate advert style and make sure you use clear and concise strong call-to-actions so that your audience will understand exactly what you want them to do. Be clear, concise and it’ll generate good levels of return.

2. Run competitions

Competitions are great way to increase engagement on your social media page as people like, comment on and share your posts.

Before launching a competition, think carefully about the prize - the higher quality the prize is perceived to be, the more likely people are to enter. By offering a unique prize, you will encourage more people to enter and share the competition with their networks.

Whether you offer a VIP experience with your brand, a free upgrade to a superior service, or large discount, it is vital that you choose a social media contest prize that will appeal to your target audience. Often the best prizes are those that money can’t buy.

Now you have a prize, you need a way for people to enter. Two ways you can do this are:

• Enter by liking or commenting: This is an easy way for people to enter, and you are likely to get many people entering if you do this. Even though it is easy, the downside is that entrants will only be sharing information that is already available on their public social media profiles, as a result this is not great for lead generation.

• Click through to a landing page: This will require entrants to take an extra step, likely resulting in fewer entrants. However, this option will allow you to capture information through a contest entry form, and help turn your competition entrants into leads.

3. Promote gated content

Promoting gated content is an easy way to generate leads from social media. Gated content is online content that requires users to fill out a form in return for access. This could be articles, white papers or videos. You may want to ask for a person’s name and email address, or more detailed information such as their company name or job title.  The more information you request should reflect the perceived value of the gated content.

By using social media, you can create posts that direct people to a landing page where they are prompted to fill in this form, and allow you to gain relevant customer information. Alternatively, you can use social media advert types focussed on lead generation for similar results.

Posts should captures interest, so make use of images, gifs, video, or stats to help tell the story of your content. Every post should have a visual element and appeal to your target audience.

Keep any landing pages simple to avoid overwhelming or confusing your leads. This is important as most leads take only a couple of seconds to decide whether they’ll read a page and give their information - keep their attention focussed on the value of the content you’re offering.

4. Post live videos

Live videos are an effective way to help with engagement and consequently lead generation. 80% of brand audiences would rather watch live video from a brand than read a blog, and 82% prefer live video from a brand to social posts.

Live videos can be free to make, as they do not require expensive or specialised equipment. All you need is a smartphone or tablet and internet connection, and you’re good to go!

A great advantage of live streaming on social media is that it allows you to quickly and easily reach out to your followers, and it is available to them at the click of a button.

This helps generate leads by engaging with your target audience in real time. Users are able to join in a direct conversation with you, and have questions answered, get live support, and even learn more about the brand. Through this real-time engagement, you can develop the relationship between yourself and your audience, and direct people to relevant landing pages to turn them into leads.

5. Post polls and survey

Posting polls is an easy way to engage with your audience and get a better idea of what your audience cares about. Use polls and surveys strategically to get feedback on how people are using your products and services, what they like about it or what they don’t like. Feedback can help you improve, but also allows you to tailor your online content to be more relevant to the needs and interests of your target audience. To increase response rates, consider offering incentives. By acting on feedback you’re more able to create an offer that appeals better to your target audience, making it more likely that you’ll generate leads.

Here at r//evolution, we have a team of social media marketing experts on hand to help you generate more leads for your business. If you want to use your social media more effectively, get in touch. 

If you'd like to know more about lead generation and how marketing can help - download our free lead generation ebook to discover how to increase quality traffic and turn website visitors into leads and customers for your business.