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How to Generate Leads on Social Media

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How to Generate Leads on Social Media

According to HubSpot research, 77% of social media marketers say their marketing specialty has been somewhat to very effective for their company this year. With 4.70 billion worldwide users, social media is a force to be reckoned with.

Our phones might as well become extensions of our hands — from blasting off spur-of-the-moment tweets to perusing Instagram for makeup inspiration, social media is a dominant force in our lives that spans generations. That’s why businesses need to tune into social media for lead generation.

How can you leverage social media in your business’ favor and turn it into a force for lead generation?

Download Now: The 2023 State of Social Media Trends [Free Report]

In this post, we’ll cover the following topics:

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  • What is social media lead generation
  • Why businesses generate social media leads
  • How to generate social media leads

The platforms mentioned above are just a few examples of the social media channels people frequent to share content, catch up with friends, read up on the latest news, gather inspiration, or simply browse.

A quality social media lead is one that will provide useful information and engage with your business. While useful information varies, it generally includes name, occupation, and email address.

Why Businesses Generate Social Media Leads

Why turn to social media to generate leads? Social media is pervasive — it has become interwoven into our daily lives. According to Pew Research Center, 7 in 10 Americans use social media.

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With the vast majority of people on social media, it would be imprudent for brands to overlook it as a bountiful and rich source for generating leads.

Pew social media chart

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Both B2B and B2C marketers can implement a wide range of strategies to capture leads.

Social media helps businesses enhance lead generation efforts by increasing brand awareness, fostering engagement, and driving website traffic.

Factors That Boosts Social Media Lead Generation

Brand Awareness

Increasing your brand awareness is key to reaching your target audience. It is the foundation of acquiring a customer audience and helping them learn more about your products and services with authentic, informative, and engaging content.

Social media is excellent for building brand awareness and showcasing your brand’s ethos. According to HubSpot research, content that reflects your brand’s values and showcases your products/services have the highest ROI on Instagram.

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Engagement

Sharing relevant and high quality content leads to increased engagement with your audience. Engagement is key to retaining loyal customers who can vouch for your brand.

Website Traffic

Social media presents a great opportunity to drive website traffic. With content offers, you can bring visitors to your website.

How to Generate Social Media Leads

Generating leads on social media can take form in a number of ways.

In this section, we highlight the best strategies overall, then dive into targeted strategies for specific social media platforms: Instagram, Facebook, YouTube TikTok, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

Best Strategies Overall

1. Optimize your social media pages.

Your profile is what people click on when they are intrigued and want to learn more, upon viewing your content. Your profile can also be the first thing people see. It is critical to get your profile in shape.

This means the following:

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  • Providing clear contact information: Make it easy for people to get in touch with your business. This can include an email, phone number, or link to a contact page on your website.
  • Include a clear CTA, or multiple CTAs: Be strategic about your CTAs, and update them as your business needs change. CTAs can include signing up for a demo or newsletter, booking a consultation, or a link to shop

2. Create engaging content.

Once again, creating relevant and high-quality content will pique customers’ interest. In the algorithm-driven world of social media, creating content that stands out is especially important.

To create compelling content, mapping out user personas can help you better understand the audiences you’re trying to reach and the content that would attract them.

Understanding different content formats will help your business’ content strategy.

A HubSpot study found that short-form videos is the top social media format used by 54% of social media marketers, followed by live streaming, live audio chatrooms, and user-generated content.

It also doesn’t hurt to take risks. Being creative can lead to great payoffs. Keeping track of your different social campaigns can seem daunting, but HubSpot’s Social Media Management Software helps you run all your social campaigns from one place.

3. Create targeted ads.

Paid social media advertising can help your business generate more leads. By leveraging paid ads, you can create offers targeted to your audience’s interests. Your business can be hyper-specific about who your ads are served to.

A Mailchimp ad served on Instagram

As Mailchimp demonstrated, ads are a good opportunity to flex your creative muscle. Advertising can complement your organic lead generation efforts — they don’t have to be mutually exclusive.

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4. Design a compelling landing page.

You’ve done all the hard, strenuous work to get someone to click on your CTA. Good job.

Don’t waste your efforts with a lackluster landing page. A good landing page should be user-friendly and contain a clear path. HubSpot’s free Landing Page Builder can help you seamlessly create a landing page designed to convert.

Targeted Strategies for Leads on Top Social Platforms

Each social media platform is different and has its unique quirks. People use different platforms for different reasons, and there is even preference for one platform over another based on generation.

For example, TikTok is overwhelmingly favored by Gen Z while Instagram is favored by Millennials. In this section, we highlight some strategies tailored to each social media platform.

Instagram Leads

Instagram started primarily as a photo sharing app in 2010. But times have changed. Instagram has since expanded to support more features: reels, stories, and shop, to name a few.

The social media platform is also where people interact with businesses — according to Instagram, 90 percent of Instagram users follow a business.

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Here are some tips:

  • Use reels. Reels are all the rage. 82% post video content on the platform and the content formats they use most are video-based, according to HubSpot’s research.
  • Prioritize visuals. First impressions matter. When someone scans your page, the content you’ve posted will appear in a grid format. Unlike Twitter, which is primarily text-based, Instagram is a primarily visual platform.
  • Leverage Instagram Shop for instant revenue. While leads are key to moving the sales process along for prospects, Instagram Shoppable posts allow you to send serious buyers directly to product landing pages or your own social media shop where they can convert immediately.
  • Explore Ads. There are numerous advertising options for almost all Instagram content formats including in-feed posts, Stories, Reels or live video. If you have an advertising budget and a large following on Instagram, you might want to explore if any are right for you.

Facebook Leads

Facebook was founded in 2004, fresh off the heels of the MySpace era. Despite being around for a while, it hasn’t sunk to the grave like its predecessor. In fact, it is still quite robust, with 1.96 billion daily active users as of Q1 2022.

Here are some tips:

  • Post shareable content. The share button is a highly useful feature to get your content in front of a wider audience. Sharing links to enticing content like an interesting blog post will not only promote sharing, but also lead people directly to your site.
  • Go live. Creating Facebook Live Videos is a great way to engage your audience and give them an opportunity to react in real time.

Need ideas for Facebook posts? We have a handy guide.

YouTube Leads

Videos are not going anywhere. YouTube ​​generates over 1.7 billion unique monthly visitors. Videos about seemingly anything, from cooking tutorials to music videos, can be found on YouTube.

Here are some tips:

  • Create a branded YouTube channel. Creating a branded YouTube channel helps you consolidate your content and grow subscribers.
  • Incorporate links to your videos. Embedding relevant links to your videos, like a link to your product, helps your audience find what they’re looking for.

TikTok Leads

TikTok has quickly established itself as the social media platform to watch. From 2020 to 2021, TikTok was the most downloaded app.

It has also proven to be effective for commerce — two out of three users are likely to buy something on TikTok while using the app.

Here are some tips:

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  • Partner with influencers. Influencers run rampant on TikTok — why not work with them? These partnerships can bring more eyeballs to your page.
  • Be versatile with your content. TikTok trends are ever-evolving. Because of the extremely fast-paced nature of the platform, it is important to be versatile, observing trends and adjusting your content accordingly.

LinkedIn Leads

LinkedIn has more than 830 million active users in 200 countries and regions worldwide. The most professional of all social media platforms, LinkedIn is a great source for generating leads for B2B marketers.

Interestingly enough, the best days to post on LinkedIn are Saturdays and Sundays, according to HubSpot research.

Here are some tips:

  • Create a standout page. Your business needs a page that regularly shares insightful and thought-provoking content that sparks conversations.
  • Join groups. Groups are a great way for you to connect with customers. Though LinkedIn is a professional social media platform, it is still a place for community and connections.

LinkedIn’s VP of Marketing offers more tips on how to generate leads on the site.

Twitter Leads

23 percent of adults in the U.S. use Twitter. Of all the major social media platforms, Twitter is the wordiest. It has garnered a reputation for being the place for opinions and public meltdowns.

Here are some tips:

  • Create clever content. Twitter is a wordy platform, which means it is a great opportunity to let your brand’s witty and pithy side shine.
  • Leverage Twitter Spaces. Twitter Spaces is a fairly new feature that enables you to have live audio conversations on the app. It is a smart way to engage your audience.

For additional ideas of platforms you could leverage for lead generation and tips on how to boost your presence on each, check out our Ultimate Guide to Social Media Marketing, and stay tuned for our State of Social Media Report, coming in February.

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Social Media Lead Generation Tools

HubSpot Marketing Hub

HubSpot Marketing Hub

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HubSpot Marketing Hub is a comprehensive platform with social media management software that helps you create and execute social media campaigns, keep track of social mentions, and report on social media marketing ROI.

These tools help with lead generation efforts by automating processes so you can focus on strategy and content creation. The Marketing Hub also integrates with HubSpot’s CRM.

Pricing: There are free and paid tiers. The paid tier ranges from $45 to $3,600 per month.

ProProfs Quiz Maker

ProProfs Quiz Maker

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Quiz marketing can help capture leads from websites and social platforms. You can customize quizzes and optimize them for social sharing.

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The platform also contains lead forms and reports to analyze results. ProProfs Quiz Maker also integrates with HubSpot.

Pricing: ProProfs Quiz Maker offers a free tier. The paid tier ranges from $20 to $200 per month.

Stay Competitive by Harnessing Social Media for Leads

Social media has taken the world by storm. It is ever-changing and multifaceted, which can make navigating how to generate leads a challenge.

Now that you’ve learned more about lead generation across these platforms, HubSpot’s guide below can help demystify the additional complexities of social media and make the most of it.

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How To Combine PR and Content Marketing Superpowers To Achieve Business Goals

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A figure pulls open a dress shirt to reveal the term PR on a Superman-like costume, reflecting the superpower resulting from combining content and PR.

A transformative shift is happening, and it’s not AI.

The aisle between public relations and content marketing is rapidly narrowing. If you’re smart about the convergence, you can forever enhance your brand’s storytelling.

The goals and roles of content marketing and PR overlap more and more. The job descriptions look awfully similar. Shrinking budgets and a shrewd eye for efficiency mean you and your PR pals could face the chopping block if you don’t streamline operations and deliver on the company’s goals (because marketing communications is always first to be axed, right?).

Yikes. Let’s take a big, deep breath. This is not a threat. It’s an opportunity.

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Reach across the aisle to PR and streamline content creation, improve distribution strategies, and get back to the heart of what you both are meant to do: Build strong relationships and tell impactful stories.

So, before you panic-post that open-to-work banner on LinkedIn, consider these tips from content marketing, PR, and journalism pros who’ve figured out how to thrive in an increasingly narrowing content ecosystem.

1. See journalists as your audience

Savvy pros know the ability to tell an impactful story — and support it with publish-ready collateral — grounds successful media relationships. And as a content marketer, your skills in storytelling and connecting with audiences, including journalists, naturally support your PR pals’ media outreach.

Strategic storytelling creates content focused on what the audience needs and wants. Sharing content on your blog or social media builds relationships with journalists who source those channels for story ideas, event updates, and subject matter experts.

“Embedding PR strategies in your content marketing pieces informs your audience and can easily be picked up by media,” says Alex Sanchez, chief experience officer at BeWell, New Mexico’s Health Insurance Marketplace. “We have seen reporters do this many times, pulling stories from our blogs and putting them in the nightly news — most of the time without even reaching out to us.”

Acacia James, weekend producer/morning associate producer at WTOP radio in Washington, D.C., says blogs and social media posts are helpful to her work. “If I see a story idea, and I see that they’re willing to share information, it’s easier to contact them — and we can also backlink their content. It’s huge for us to be able to use every avenue.” 

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Kirby Winn, manager of PR at ImpactLife, says reporters and assignment editors are key consumers of their content. “And I don’t mean a news release that just hit their inbox. They’re going to our blog and consuming our stories, just like any other audience member,” he says. “Our organization has put more focus into content marketing in the past few years — it supports a media pitch so well and highlights the stories we have to tell.”

Storytelling attracts earned media that might not pick up the generic news topic. “It’s one thing to pitch a general story about how we help consumers sign up for low-cost health insurance,” Alex says. “Now, imagine a single mom who just got a plan after years of thinking it was too expensive. She had a terrible car accident, and the $60,000 ER bill that would have ruined her financially was covered. Now that’s a story journalists will want to cover, and that will be relatable to their audience and ours.” 

2. Learn the media outlet’s audience

Seventy-three percent of reporters say one-fourth or less of the stories pitched are relevant to their audiences, according to Cision’s 2023 State of the Media Report (registration required).

PR pros are known for building relationships with journalists, while content marketers thrive in building communities around content. Merge these best practices to build desirable content that works for your target audience and the media’s audiences simultaneously.

WTOP’s Acacia James says sources who show they’re ready to share helpful, relevant content often win pitches for coverage. “In radio, we do a lot of research on who is listening to us, and we’re focused on a prototype called ‘Mike and Jen’ — normal, everyday people in Generation X … So when we get press releases and pitches, we ask, ‘How interested will Mike and Jen be in this story?’” 

3. Deliver the full content package (and make journalists’ jobs easier)

Cranking out content to their media outlet’s standards has never been tougher for journalists. Newsrooms are significantly understaffed, and anything you can do to make their lives easier will be appreciated and potentially rewarded with coverage. Content marketers are built to think about all the elements to tell the story through multiple mediums and channels.

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“Today’s content marketing pretty much provides a package to the media outlet,” says So Young Pak, director of media relations at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. “PR is doing a lot of storytelling work in advance of media publication. We (and content marketing) work together to provide the elements to go with each story — photos, subject matter experts, patients, videos, and data points, if needed.”   

At WTOP, the successful content package includes audio. “As a radio station, we are focused on high-quality sound,” Acacia James says. “Savvy sources know to record and send us voice memos, and then we pull cuts from the audio … You will naturally want to do someone a favor if they did you one — like providing helpful soundbites, audio, and newsworthy stories.”  

While production value matters to some media, you shouldn’t stress about it. “In the past decade, how we work with reporters has changed. Back in the day, if they couldn’t be there in person, they weren’t going to interview your expert,” says Jason Carlton, an accredited PR professional and manager of marketing and communications at Intermountain Health. “During COVID, we had to switch to virtual interviewing. Now, many journalists are OK with running a Teams or Zoom interview they’ve done with an expert on the news.”

BeWell’s Alex Sanchez agrees. “I’ve heard old school PR folks cringe at the idea of putting up a Zoom video instead of getting traditional video interviews. It doesn’t really matter to consumers. Focus on the story, on the timeliness, and the relevance. Consumers want authenticity, not super stylized, stiff content.”

4. Unite great minds to maximize efficiency

Everyone needs to set aside the debate about which team — PR or content marketing — gets credit for the resulting media coverage.

At MedStar Washington Hospital Center, So Young and colleagues adopt a collaborative mindset on multichannel stories. “We can get the interview and gather information for all the different pieces — blog, audio, video, press release, internal newsletter, or magazine. That way, we’re not trying to figure things out individually, and the subject matter experts only have to have that conversation once,” she says.

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Regular, cross-team meetings are essential to understand the best channels for reaching key audiences, including the media. A story that began life as a press release might reap SEO and earned media gold if it’s strategized as a blog, video, and media pitch.

“At Intermountain Health, we have individual teams for media relations, marketing, social media, and hospital communications. That setup works well because it allows us to bring in the people who are the given experts in those areas,” says Intermountain’s Jason Carlton. “Together, we decide if a story is best for the blog, a media pitch, or a mix of channels — that way, we avoid duplicating work and the risk of diluting the story’s impact.”

5. Measure what matters

Cutting through the noise to earn media mentions requires keen attention to metrics. Since content marketing and PR metrics overlap, synthesizing the data in your team meetings can save time while streamlining your storytelling efforts.

“For content marketers, using analytical tools such as GA4 can help measure the effectiveness of their content campaigns and landing pages to determine meaningful KPIs such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, lead generation, and conversion rates,” says John Martino, director of digital marketing for Visiting Angels. “PR teams can use media coverage and social interactions to assess user engagement and brand awareness. A unified and omnichannel approach can help both teams demonstrate their value in enhancing brand visibility, engagement, and overall business success.”

To track your shared goals, launch a shared dashboard that helps tell the combined “story of your stories” to internal and executive teams. Among the metrics to monitor:

  • Page views: Obviously, this queen of metrics continues to be important across PR and content marketing. Take your analysis to the next level by evaluating which niche audiences are contributing to these views to further hone your storytelling targets, including media outlets.
  • Earned media mentions: Through a media tracker service or good old Google Alerts, you can tally the echo of your content marketing and PR. Look at your site’s referral traffic report to identify media outlets that send traffic to your blog or other web pages.
  • Organic search queries: Dive into your analytics platform to surface organic search queries that lead to visitors. Build from those questions to develop stories that further resonate with your audience and your targeted media.
  • On-page actions: When visitors show up on your content, what are they doing? What do they click? Where do they go next? Building next-step pathways is your bread and butter in content marketing — and PR can use them as a natural pipeline for media to pick up more stories, angles, and quotes.

But perhaps the biggest metric to track is team satisfaction. Who on the collaborative team had the most fun writing blogs, producing videos, or calling the news stations? Lean into the natural skills and passions of your team members to distribute work properly, maximize the team output, and improve relationships with the media, your audience, and internal teams.

“It’s really trying to understand the problem to solve — the needle to move — and determining a plan that will help them achieve their goal,” Jason says. “If you don’t have those measurable objectives, you’re not going to know whether you made a difference.”

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Don’t fear the merger

Whether you deliberately work together or not, content marketing and public relations are tied together. ImpactLife’s Kirby Winn explains, “As soon as we begin to talk about (ourselves) to a reporter who doesn’t know us, they are certainly going to check out our stories.”

But consciously uniting PR and content marketing will ease the challenges you both face. Working together allows you to save time, eliminate duplicate work, and gain free time to tell more stories and drive them into impactful media placements.

Register to attend Content Marketing World in San Diego. Use the code BLOG100 to save $100. Can’t attend in person this year? Check out the Digital Pass for access to on-demand session recordings from the live event through the end of the year.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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Trends in Content Localization – Moz

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Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

AI and startups? It just makes sense.

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