Social Media Marketing: How to Make, Measure, and Manage Authentic Leads

Social media has completely overhauled the way in which we market in today’s world. The days in which companies could send out traditional press releases which were meticulously reviewed, approved, and then reviewed and approved again are now over. Whether you are a fan of traditional marketing techniques like the press release or prefer newer, technology-driven techniques one thing is for certain: you must adapt your style to meet the ever-changing social media platforms to gain exposure. Here are a few tips on how to generate, analyze, and maintain leads using social media:

Customize your content specific to each platform

This essentially boils down to avoiding the easy way out. One of the worst ways to engage with your audience is to link to your content across all your social media accounts using the same method. Yes, it can be efficient to hit publish and have your post shared across several accounts at once but not all platforms are the same. One of the worst instances of cross-platform publishing is when an Instagram post is shared on Twitter. You know that clever caption with your well thought out hashtags that just took you twenty minutes to come up with? Not only did Twitter cut your caption in half, but it links to a browser-version of Instagram that your audience will be much less inclined to click on.

Be mindful of the user and how they operate on each platform. Take the time to craft your content specifically for a particular platform – a compelling image + text combination that works on Facebook won’t necessarily work on Twitter which limits your number of characters. People go to different platforms for different reasons and the more you adapt to the uniqueness of each, the better your chances will be generating leads.

Post different types of content & create engaging conversations

When at all possible, engage with your audience using content other than just links to your website/blog post. Breaking up the monotonous tone of your social media platform can do wonders in terms of engagement, especially if it coincides with a current event. For example, perhaps there’s a trending topic going around Twitter that you can customize in a unique way and apply to your company’s line of work. Using the right hashtags and keywords can not only aggregate your post to a popular destination on the platform, but it can instantly put you in contact with hundreds of other Twitter users who you can then engage in conversation with. This benefits you greatly because it can put you in touch with many other liked-minded individuals and influencers who may not have been aware of your company.

Design an analytics strategy

Once you have established your social media presence on a number of platforms, I recommend that you create key performance indicators to set a barometer for whether your social media marketing campaign was successful or not. These key performance indicators should be realistic objectives that you intend to meet and should also align with your broader overall marketing strategy. Then, using your preferred analytics tool synced with your social media accounts, create unique campaigns (ie, “twitter-contest-analytics”) in order to see a detailed report on how successful your campaign ultimately was and to ideally see where your leads, traffic and goal conversions are coming from. This is also an excellent way to track visitor behavior and which social media marketing tactics are working best and when. Finally, it will provide you with a historical perspective of all of your campaigns so you can see what was effective in the past, perhaps during a certain time of the year.

Consider inbound marketing software

Feeling overwhelmed with all of your social media accounts and marketing campaigns? There are various software platforms (HubSpot, Evernote, Hootsuite, etc.) that bring together blogging tools, social media accounts, and search engine optimization and allow you to successfully use all of them together. Although inbound marketing software provides you some of the same metrics gathering as an analytics tool, there are ways to use both to provide you with all the tools you need to effectively target your marketing campaigns. Inbound marketing software shows you specifics on how your audience interacts with your marketing and website. It provides you with performance data, such as an individuals’ entire journey through your website and gives you a more internal look at the activity on your site, such as leads and sale processes. Ultimately, inbound marketing software aggregates a lot of platforms, tools and websites into one central location which can make creating your marketing campaigns a lot simpler.