We’ve already covered how social media can help grow your brand and business, but did you know you can use it to generate more leads as well? Now we’ll dive deep into the world of tweets, posts, and messages to teach you how you can get more leads using social media!
When you think of social media, images of celebrities interacting with fans probably comes to mind. While you may not be a movie star, you can certainly use social media to interact with your customers and generate new leads. After strengthening the reputation of your brand on social media, you can use it as an inexpensive platform to get more leads.
Find Your Platform
If you haven’t already, you need to set up business accounts on social media platforms. Deciding which platform to use, however, requires you to know your clients and their demographics. Many contractors looking to start generating leads using social media will turn to Facebook. While Facebook is most certainly the most popular social media platform available, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the right one for you. Some other platforms you can use include:
Find out what your current customers are using and start on that one first. Follow your customers, follow other similar businesses and local groups, and you’ll start to see your numbers increase significantly.
Interact With Your Followers
Here’s the difficult part: interacting with your clients, AKA followers. If you find yourself too busy to post regular updates and interact with your followers, you may want to hire someone to do this for you, or use a site like HootSuite where you can plan and schedule your posts for the week. Even with a tool like this, however, you still have to be able to access your social media account on the go to answer any questions you get from your followers, though. Here are a few ways you can start interacting with your followers and gain new ones at the same time:
Post Updates
These can be short tweets about a new project you’re working on or links to full-length blog posts. The more frequently you can update your posts, the more views (and subsequently more followers) you’ll get. Make sure it’s quality content and try to use pictures or short videos whenever possible. Think about the things you share on your personal Facebook or Twitter account to get some good ideas.
Show You’re Current
By acknowledging current events (i.e. holidays, local news, etc.) your followers will get to know you as a person rather than simply a business or brand. You want that social connection so you can be referred to friends and family.
Host Contests
Contests are a great way to get new followers and build-up a pool of email addresses. While contests may not be the most reliable for generating leads, you’ll certainly get more shares and more views, which opens you up to leads you wouldn’t get otherwise. 
Advertise on Social Media
Now we come to the meat of using social media to generate new leads: advertising. Almost every social media platform offers advertising options for businesses, and you will want to take advantage of these. Advertising your business on social media can help you generate more leads than simply using regularly scheduled content. Prices vary widely among social media platforms, but generally you’ll pay less than using Google AdWords and you’ll still see a dramatic increase in your followers and page likes.
Between the wide variety of social media platforms available and the increasing number of users, advertising options, and ways to interact with your followers, social media can easily become the most versatile tool you have for generating new leads.
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