Article posted on: 31 Dec 2018
Effective ways to use social media for lead generation
One of the best ways to get social media sales is to speak to clients or prospects about social media marketing and how their competitors are engaging in it. However we are often asked how we suggest getting the leads to call. Our dashboard comes with a fantastic sales lead tool built into it.
 
 All accounts come with free signup area, which allows the customer to see and use the dashboard before they purchase it. Within your dashboard you will be able to identify these users and also see how much they have engaged with the dashboard i.e. how many times they have logged in, how many social accounts they have connected, how much content then have scheduled. This then provides you with valuable information to sell the content writing service
 
 We have found that a great question to ask a client on the telephone is:  Do your competitors use social media marketing? 
 This question can be answered in three ways   and each of these ways is a positive route to market your social media service to them:
 
 1.  No  -  Wow! That is great news, so by actively engaging in social media marketing you will instantly gain a huge advantage over your competitors. You ll also be able to increase your perceived industry
 authority in comparison and enhance your trust worthiness to new clients .
 
 2.  Yes  -  OK. Interesting, so it s going to be important to you to actively market your business via social media to ensure you keep up. Don t worry, we ll take a look at your competitors in a minute, it s very unusual for people to be doing a good job, I m sure we ll see some weaknesses in their campaign that you can use to your advantage. Lets take a look at them  
 
 3.  I don t know  -  OK, well it s easy enough for us to find out, it will be interesting information for you to know and it ll only take a few minutes of your time  lets take a quick look .
 
 Asking the client to name a few competitors, then checking their websites for social media links is an easy task. Then check those social media campaigns to see how often they are updated, and how well managed they are. If they are non-existent, offer poor industry authority or are updated infrequently then this is an opportunity for your client to
 race ahead of their competitors. If they are well managed, then your client really has to engage someone to handle their social media for them to stand any chance of keeping up. It s win, win, win.
 
 It is important for the happiness of your clients (and hence the length of time they will keep the service running) that the service is not oversold. We provide an excellent, and cost effective, level of basic social content. The content we write is written as your customer and is self promotional and positive about their company. It is keyword rich and includes researched hashtags that will help promote their business in social media. We prepare the content in advance (you and your customers will see it 7 days in advance, but we might have prepared it weeks before that). As such we do not get involved in short lived promotions that the customer is offering; if they have an ecommerce website we would talk about categories and sub-categories and core products but not specific products if they are one off items or carry low stock levels.
 
 The control panel is there to get involved with the really exciting part of social media, such as short lived promotional codes, shouting about their attendance in the build up to an exhibition or raising awareness of a day raising money for charity.
 
 We are there in the background writing keyword rich content about your customer s business to ensure that their social media feeds are active and demonstrate their industry authority. Take a look at the Business Profiler that we work with (you can find this in your Admin control panel under the Resources section / Client Documents) along with your customer s website. What to expect from the content that we write:
 
 We also research the industry or sector that your customer is in and write hints and tips, advice, facts, historical trivia and find links to useful websites that relate to their industry. The quality of the content that we write is also partly dependent on how well the Business Profiler document is completed.
 
 Improve your websites conversion rate
 You will see an increase in your website conversion rates. The amount of website traffic (or visitors) compared to the number of sales (or leads) you get is called the sales conversion ratio, if you monitor this ratio before and after installing an embedded Twitter feed you will see it improve. People are re-assured by the presence of a regularly updated Twitter feed on a website (hours, not days). It shows professionalism and clearly displays that your site is  open for business .
 
 Brand recognition and repeat exposure
 Your social media followers or browsers are in an environment they are comfortable in. It is the very best place for you to place your brand and have them take notice. It is said of traditional advertising that a potential customer has to see your advert seven times before taking any action. This is your opportunity to get your brand under their noses without being pushy.
 
 Getting ahead of your competitors
 Do your competitors use social media? Most of your competitors will probably not be doing a good job of embracing social media, so this is your chance to race ahead. If they are engaging well in the social networks then you must get involved or you risk being left behind and losing your audience to your competition.
 
 Your potential customers or clients are engaging in social media personally, whether you like it or not. When they visit a website they expect to find a social media presence and will judge you if there isn t one   or worse if they find one that hasn t been updated for weeks or months.
 
 Grow your marketing power
 As your followers increase your marketing power increases. Initially the SEO benefits of social media are all that you are interested in, but over time you ll gain a loyal following, who you can market to at any time   at zero additional cost! The more following you have   the more people want to join in and get involved. It s the  crowd effect  people always want to see what the crowd is interested in, and they join the crowd!
 
 Improve your authority
 When people see you have a busy social network in your chosen field they will automatically associate authority with it. Your business will be seen as having increased credibility and specialist knowledge.
 
 SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
 Google has placed more and more prominence in what are commonly referred to as  social signals . Your social media marketing campaign will tick a lot of boxes for Google but we ve found the very best way to get an SEO benefit from your social media campaign is to embed your Twitter feed into the homepage of your website. This constantly change text is just the type of thing that pushes Google s buttons and can help propel your website up the rankings, resulting in more visitors and more sales. We can help embed the feed into your site.
 
 Website traffic
 This goes hand in hand with SEO   because Google could be giving you more traffic   but as your social media campaign grows and matures you will also see more and more direct traffic from the social networks.
 
 We provide a gorgeous and easy to use control panel that will enable you to review the content we are going to post for you   and even schedule your own social media posts. We schedule our content at least 7 days ahead, giving you plenty of time to review the content in case you d like to make changes or make suggestions. Your account manager will soon learn which type of posts you like best, and which to avoid.
 
 You can add to your campaign post as much or as little as you like. If you have time to occasionally log in and schedule a few personal posts, you can space them out over a week or month. We ll be there doing the bulk of your work, promoting you every single working day. Equally if you don t have time to post at all  that s no problem either. Do remember however   that nobody knows your business as well as you   and the more you get involved the better and more  social  your social media marketing will be. Powerful control panel
 
 We ll include setting up any social media accounts (or pages in the case of Facebook) and applying some simple client branding to make it look good.