According to LyfeMarketing, 60% of the marketers who participated in this study said that they struggled with measuring the ROI of social media activity. This could be because your social media activity isn’t focused on generating business and is instead focused on other social media goals. To help you generate business through social media, we asked 5 marketing managers the following questions.
Which social media channels are best-suited for generating business? Which ones have you used? How have you generated business through them?
What are your top tips to generate business through social media?
Before we go into the answers, let’s explore one other study. According to LyfeMarketing, 22% of all media activity is conducted by content agencies, such as ours. If you need custom social media content created for your social media pages, place an order today.
Hung Nguyen
Marketing Manager at SmallPDF
Which social media channels are best-suited for generating business? Which ones have you used? How have you generated business through them?
“‘Generating business’ is a quite generic term, as it depends on the nature of your business. Social media can be used to generate leads, traffic, sales, and also for branding. As an online freemium platform, Quora’s been very useful for Smallpdf. Our Quora profile currently gets over 10k answer views every month! And it’s been great to generate business, in terms of traffic for several reasons. Quora leads the right demographic of customers, who need your product the most to your platform – provided that you are answering questions in the right industry.
We get to showcase our knowledge of our product as well as the industry that we are in. This is very good for branding and has given Smallpdf a competitive edge over our competitors. Customers who come from Quora have already received free support from our end via our answers on the social media platform, which may help to increase the conversion rate.”
What are your top tips to generate business through social media?
“Top tips for social media, not just for Quora, but in general:
- Content is king, especially in a time where social media giants such as Facebook penalizes posts which are overly promotional and do not create organic values to your followers.
- Put visual content to the forefront to guide your followers. Include your text in your images/infographics/videos as well. Text and emojis in the actual status should take a backseat. This also helps to give your posts a boost on Facebook as their algorithm favors the use of images and videos.
- Learn who your most responsive followers are. For Quora, answer questions in multiple languages if you can. For Facebook, go to Insights > People > People engaged to see where your most responsive followers are located, which languages they speak, their age group, gender …etc.. Then, customize your content on for this group. “
Vlad Calus
Co-Founder at Planable
Which social media channels are best-suited for generating business? Which ones have you used? How have you generated business through them?
“I believe LinkedIn is the most powerful tool when it comes to generating business through social media. I’m mostly focused on LinkedIn in our marketing strategy and I’ll tell you how. I’m using just these 2 tools – LinkedIn Premium Account (59$ / month) and MeetLeonard ($39 lifetime offer). I’m sending 150 connection requests every day with an automated connection message + 3 days follow up message. In the first message, I’m never trying to sell anything but just connect with fellow social media managers or digital marketers asking what tools are they using and what’s their biggest challenge. It allows me to start a conversation with professionals and potential clients.
It’s helpful because I can connect with more than 3000 professionals a month and over the past 3 months, I made dozens of partnerships, customers and intros to other big brands/agencies to talk with – just by using this strategy. It saves me more than 100h / month to automate all my messages on LinkedIn.”
What are your top tips to generate business through social media?
- “Focus on making connections on LinkedIn.
- Use LinkedIn tools and the right content to forge influential relationships.”
Hima Muralikrishna
Outreach Manager at Brandloom
Which social media channels are best-suited for generating business? Which ones have you used? How have you generated business through them?
“1) Yelp: Since Yelp provides reviews, it has a direct impact on business. If you can satisfy your customer, you will get a good review. Based on that, future customers will notice you and will come to you if they need service in that field. This is an excellent platform for getting recommendations and for generating word of mouth publicity.
2) YouTube: according to studies, YouTube is the best platform when it comes to SEO, and hence, it gets your brand a lot of traffic and helps raise awareness about it. It also engages younger, newer audiences, and those who do not want to read walls of texts. Video targeting and pre-rolls are excellent ways to become more visible and get your message across to customers.
3) Instagram: The photo-sharing platform is very popular and has proven to have a huge impact on revenues. It is well known how many celebrities generate revenues for brands they endorse by plugging them in their Instagram pictures and videos. People are more likely to check out what their friends are recommending or criticizing- so Instagram, which combines the social approach of Facebook with its pictures-heavy format is a great platform for promoting a brand.
4) Pinterest: This is also a great platform where pictures take priority. It is the best way to visually represent your brand, suggest possible pairings (like in fashion or food) and overall make your product look as attractive as possible.
5) Twitter: The good thing about Twitter is that it gives audiences a chance to respond immediately. Hashtags are great for enhancing any posts and generating buzz, and Twitter is the best place to make your content go viral.
6) Facebook: Facebook is very social, and it gives brands a good scope for targeted marketing. There are many marketing tools available for brands, and there is also a chance of paid advertising. For social marketing, Facebook is very effective.
7) LinkedIn: For B2B marketing, LinkedIn is highly effective. It is a great professional networking platform, so you can connect to a lot of skilled people and industry influencers. It helps you present your brand in a professional way to your peers.”
What are your top tips to generate business through social media?
“Tips for using social media to engage the audience:
1) Share links which would otherwise not be available to non-followers. Like many news, websites share links to their articles for their page followers which they can read by clicking. But if you do not have a subscription, and you reach the page by simply googling it, you will not be able to see it. It cultivates a sense of being rewarded for following a brand.
2) Hold polls and contests. These encourage viewer participation with your brand.
3) Social media advertising through good digital marketing agencies
4) Targetted advertising based on location, or Facebook newsfeed algorithms/preferences
5) Direct engagement with an audience via Twitter or Reddit AMAs etc.”
Gareth Robinson
Head of Business Development & Growth Marketing at Connecting Dots Marketing
Which social media channels are best-suited for generating business? Which ones have you used? How have you generated business through them?
“1. The short answer is all of them. You just need to understand how the algorithm works for that specific channel. All Social Media channels work slightly differently so the best chances of success come from picking one channel and becoming great at using that one channel. There’s nothing wrong with being on multiple channels, you just need to focus on one and everything around that one channel. Which ones have you used? Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn. Although my primary focus is on Facebook and Instagram, especially since the release of IGTV. How have you generated business through them? (With case-example and numbers) I have generated business through Facebook in a number of ways for both my firm and for my clients. I’m sure most people will tell you to use chatbots or paid ads. Which can be effective, although, it’s possible to generate multiple 6 figures without ever spending any money on these things. You don’t need to post every day either. Using just 2-3 targeted posts a week you can very easily generate multiple 5 figures every month. In fact, I recommend that people get to 5 figures a month using organic before they spend any money on their chosen channels. Why is this? Well, all spending money does is put your message in front of more people. If your message isn’t good, you’ll be wasting your money. The best way to build a strong message is to first know your market at the deepest level possible.
The best way to do this engages them. The process looks like this: Get to know your potential customers at 4 levels:
1. Demographics – who are your ideal customers and where do they hang out
2. Problem/Pain – What specifically is the problem you solve for them.
3. Behaviors and language – how your client acts and what they say about their problem-specific language patterns
4. Mental models and belief systems – What that person believes about themselves, their problem, ability to solve the problem, and the world. For the most part level’s 3 and 4 are massively underused. Mostly because it requires much more work to uncover and can often mean having some uncomfortable conversations to get the real root of what’s going on. Thought if you go there, you’ll be miles ahead of 99% of your competition. Our mental models and belief systems are what drive everything we do… and when as a marketer you speak directly to them, that’s when your potential client feels like you understand them better than anyone else. Which makes the chances of them saying yes when you invite them to become a client so much higher. With this information, you can craft powerful writing about posts that speak to your target customer in a way where they feel like you know as well (maybe even better) than they know themselves.
As an example, working with a new client we went through the above process with her to understand her perfect customer. She is selling high ticket coaching services to first-time entrepreneurs. We established who she was talking to: Women leaving a corporate job to start their first service business. AND the type of people she likes to work with. We established where they hung out on Facebook. Yes, entrepreneur groups, however, we also looked at their hobbies, passions, and interests and systematically joined these groups too. Most people are very linear in their approach and forget that their customers have lives.
Connecting with potential customers in an environment where your competitors aren’t is a huge advantage because you connect with them on a subject you’re both interested in so if the conversation turns to business, then they already trust and like you. Which in sales is HUGE! We planned out a series of posts, including written as well as video and some Facebook Live’s, providing education and insights as well as speaking directly to the pain of her audience, and posted them on not just her profiles but into the groups (once she had built trust of course), within 2 weeks she already had her first paying client. Now we’re using the same strategy to launch a group coaching program and already have 20 people interested and we just started making the program.
Personally, I’ve used this strategy to generate more than $100k in my first year in business without spending any money on Ads.”
What are your top tips to generate business through social media?
My #1 Tip for generating business through social media is authenticity. The strategy I outlined above worked because we were authentic.
Today you have to connect with your audience on a personal level. People buy from people and they want to know who you are. Understanding your customers deeply combined with authenticity is THE most powerful tool for generating business through the social media bar none.”
David Ambrogio
SEO & content strategist at Online Optimism
Which social media channels are best-suited for generating business? Which ones have you used? How have you generated business through them?
” Depending on your business, different channels are more effective than others, but generally Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, and most recently LinkedIn are the best for bringing in business. At our agency, we’ve used all of the above. With Facebook, for example, we recently got over $50 million in commercial deposits for one of our financial clients by doing a concentrated combination of paid advertising aimed at our target demographic (retirees and investors) and retargeting previous visitors to the Facebook page. My top tips are:
know who your audience is and connect accordingly – We build our social media strategy around our target audience by tailoring our approach to them. We look at their interests, how they use social media, and what sites they typically go to.
Focus on the channels most relevant to your customers and your business be regular and consistent in your posts and outreach – not only does this encourage engagement, but it also makes your brand appear more on users’ feeds (and in their minds)
With social media marketing on Facebook, in particular, we typically customize our audience targeting by targeting people who DON’T like certain brands (e.g. luxury customers don’t shop at Family Dollar).”
What are your top tips to generate business through social media?
- Focus on channels relevant to your customers.
- Customize audience targeting when advertising on social media.”