5 ways to get leads from social media

Getting pressure from your sales team to provide more leads from “that Twitter stuff you do”? Or perhaps you have an executive board looking for Lead Generation results to prove ROI from social media activity?

Lead generation and sales may not be the No. 1 objective of your social media activity but stakeholders can have high expectations in this area as a result from building online community.

And they’re not necessarily wrong. Sometimes we spend all this time building a community or fans and then back off converting it into business.

Here’s 5 ways to get leads from Social Media. Give them a try and let me know how you get on.

If they don’t work for you then drop me a line at and I’ll happily take a look at your Social Media activity (and maybe improve this post).

1.   From reader to customer

All those hits to your blog are potential customers but are you making the most of them?

Email subscription is still one of the strongest communications channels available. I use RSS to read blogs but I’m aware I’m still in the minority [What is RSS?]. If you’re already writing a blog make it available in email format. A free service like won’t let you see the readers’ email addresses but you can track how many people are subscribing to your content and have your brand name hitting their inbox every time you publish something new.

If you want to start collecting more data you can use a paid service like Aweber or connect your newsletter sign-ups direct to your CRM database with software like Salesforce. (ExactTarget have a Salesforce App).

Leverage your blog content further and don’t forget to tell your online fans that you have a newsletter they can subscribe to. Just because they follow you on Twitter doesn’t stop email being useful for them.

2.   Give something to get something

Social Media has lowered the barriers to publishing your own content as marketing collateral but this is still surprisingly under-utilised.

Consider creating downloadable resources like Whitepapers, Newsletters or Video Tutorials available free in exchange for entering an email address and perhaps job title and organisation.

Sure, you’ll still get the odd but most people use their work email address for things like this. Speaking personally, if the information is interesting enough for me to download I’m happy to give data so I can keep informed of future materials or events.

Tip: Knowing what was downloaded can also progress a cold lead to a warm lead very quickly as you have extra insight into what topics and areas the prospect is interested in before you speak.

3.   Virtual Networking

Twitter gives you a free ticket into just about any conference taking place anywhere in the world – as long as they’re using a hashtag. [What is a hashtag?]

Research your top industry events, their associated hashtags, and set up search columns on a Social Media management tool like TweetDeck or Hootsuite. You can be sat at your desk working while jumping in and out throughout the day noting down speakers and attendees at a multitude of events.

And don’t just be a wall flower, get involved. If you have something to say join the conversation. Meet and network* virtually with people who may very well turn into leads.

Tip: *Normal networking rules apply. Don’t be pushy, salesy, keep talking about yourself or downright creepy.

4.   Vouchers and special offers

Direct marketers have been doing this for years, offering vouchers and coupons in print titles with special codes to track where the placements generate the most leads from.

Stats show that Social Media communities are widely motivated to hang around brands looking for discounts & rewards. So, what better way to convert a follower into a customer than by giving them a Call-to-Action to buy via a special offer.

With further stats showing that Social Media fans and followers are more likely to recommend your products or services to other customers this should have a wider Lead Generation effect too.

Tip: Encourage referrals by also offering discounts for friends or 2-4-1 deals.

5.   Facebook ads

I am often asked “Can you use Facebook for B2B Social Media activity?” I’ll admit, this is not as straight forward as for Consumer brands but I think Facebook ads really come into their own for this space.

Did you know that Facebook ads allow you to target users based on:

• Job Title (type this in to Interests to see what comes up)
• Workplace
• University (e.g. if you wanted to target PR students you could filter University of Westminster students who have listed “PR” in their interests]

An example of when I’ve seen a company successfully use this is when a health care company wanted to target nurses in regions where they provided services. Facebook targeting allowed them to make bespoke ads for nurses based on who had listed their job title as an interest, place of work, or whether they were training in nursing.

You can’t sell with Social Media

With so many black hat, unethical, and plain awful sales & marketing tactics taking place on Social Media some parts of the industry have gone too reactionary cautioning against not selling with Social.

Good sales and marketing is about telling stories, helping customers, and creating products and services people want or need.

If you’re doing that socially, conversationally, or otherwise just behaving like a human being I don’t see anything wrong with using Social Media to drive leads and sales.

Why would people spend so much time on community if ultimately it didn’t benefit the business in any tangible way?

Want to learn more about Social Media management or managing a community of your own? Please join the group on LinkedIn.

(The group is private and we won’t spam you with emails, promise)