9 Ways To Convert Social Media Fans/Followers To Real Leads

Are you using social media for business but struggling to convert leads to customers?

Many business owners are trying to convert fans to customers without adding any value or building trust first. This results in an overly sales-focused approach that turns off prospects before you’ve had a chance to create a meaningful relationship.

Here’s a few ways I’ve been successful with driving more leads on social media for myself and my clients.

1. Use High Quality Blog Posts To Drive Traffic

The first step in any social media strategy should be to divert traffic from social networks to your website. It’s great to have lots of engagement on Facebook but are you converting that back to traffic to your website?

The best social media strategies use social networks to funnel leads into their pipeline. For example, using high quality blog posts to drive traffic back to their site and then making a compelling offer to join their email list.

If you aren’t consistently putting out great content on your site, there is no reason for prospects to keep visiting and, more importantly, give you their email address.

2. Have a Clear Path To Subscribing

Social media expert Donna Moritz recommends including an opt-in form that offers something of high value with a magnetic offer on your website to capture email subscribers. Promoting this on social media organically and with paid ads is critical to converting fans/followers to customers.

Remember to treat your email subscribers like gold. Don’t treat them like just another person on your “list”. Consistently provide awesome value via helpful content in your newsletter or email series. By the time you do offer something for sale, their decision to buy from you is easy because you’ve already built trust and credibility.

3. Use Your Instagram Bio Link To Drive Traffic

Instagram is hard to ignore these days when you consider the fact it’s bigger than Twitternow. The downside is that links aren’t active inside of Instagram posts. This means the only opportunity you have to drive traffic to your website from Instagram is via your profile bio.

Use the link in your Instagram profile bio to drive prospects your website or a landing page for a free offer.

4. Customize Links In Your LinkedIn Profile

When filling out your Contact Info on LinkedIn, the first instinct when it comes to the website section is to put generic information using their default options. One thing I do that has made significant impact is changing these fields to display custom text that drives prospects to content that’s relevant to their interests.

For example, you’ll see below that I use keywords like “Social Media Marketing” and “Free LinkedIn Master Class” to promote content that will get profile viewers to give me their contact information so I can start a dialogue. If I used the default options, such as “Company Website”, it would be far less intriguing to my target audience.

5. Promote Webinars & Teleseminars

If you aren’t already doing webinars and/or teleseminars you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to convert tons of new email subscribers and get prospects into your sales funnel.

Based on a survey conducted with ReadyTalk’s clients, between 20% and 40% of webinar attendees turned into qualified leads. In my experience, this number is accurate, if not higher.

6. Use Facebook Ads

Many business owners are missing a valuable opportunity with Facebook advertising, especially if they aren’t leveraging Conversion Pixels in their ads.  If you create an ad and use a conversion pixel then you will know exactly how much it costs to get a new subscriber on your e-mail list.

A conversion pixel is basically a piece of code that you install on a web page. When you create a Facebook Ad, you “tie” the pixel to the ad so that if someone comes from the Facebook ad and arrives on the web page that has the conversion pixel Facebook then tracks a “conversion” to that ad.

When you use conversion pixels, you can split test your ads so that you are optimizing them and improving your cost per conversion.  You can target your ideal client with keywords and get them connected to your e-mail list to move them farther down your sales funnel.

It’s an extremely powerful tool that is being under-utilized! Start learning how to use Conversion Pixels here.

7. Product Demos & Tutorials On YouTube

If you have a product that can be easily demonstrated in video form, YouTube can quickly become one of your biggest allies. The Will It Blend series by the famous Blendtec blender remains one of the best examples of this strategy to this day.

Think of unique, creative and even comedic ways to feature your product so you’re constantly bridging the gap between creativity and education…a happy medium when marketing any product.

8. Post Great Images on Pinterest

We use custom graphics featuring our blog titles to drive more traffic from Pinterest…and it’s increased our social shares by over 30% (at a minimum). Great images that lead to actionable content are very popular on Pinterest and can divert a ton of targeted traffic your way.

9. Post Original Content In Targeted LinkedIn Groups

LinkedIn groups are one of my essential tools for driving leads but not all groups are created equally and it can be difficult to find the good ones. Once you do find a great set of LinkedIn groups, you likely won’t ever have to leave them.

Once you have found the right groups you can focus on what really matters: engagement.With that said, let’s discuss a few simple ways to find great LinkedIn groups that are very likely to have lots of prospects in your target market.

How Are You Driving Leads With Social Media?

These are only a few of the many ways you can get additional leads for your business using social media. I want to know about your favorite tricks – use the comments below to share your thoughts, tactics and strategies.

ABOUT MELONIE

Melonie Dodaro is the author of the #1 international bestseller The LinkedIn Code. She is also the founder of Top Dog Social Media, an agency that helps businesses, sales teams and professionals use LinkedIn, social media and social selling to boost their visibility, attract new customers and increase their revenue.

Dubbed by the media as Canada’s #1 LinkedIn expert she is highly sought after internationally as a LinkedIn and social selling speaker and trainer. To learn more about Melonie, visit her Top Dog Social Media website or her LinkedIn Code website.

Click HERE to watch a FREE LinkedIn lead generation webinar “Cracking The LinkedIn Code” 

To find out more about how I can help you, CLICK HERE or send me a message or  personalized connection request mentioning this article. For more LinkedIn, Social Selling & Social Media tips and insights, just click the 'follow' button at the top of this page and check out my other articles here.

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