The Advantages of Social Networking: How to Find New Customers

Including social media in your marketing campaign can significantly amplify the impact of your business’ regular content or latest promotion. If you play your cards right, you can create a snowball effect that puts your content in front of the right people—the ones who will turn into new paying customers.

So let’s take a look at the top social media sites, and how you can use each of these to generate new business.

Facebook

We all know Facebook is an unstoppable, ever-expanding force with a massive collection of people who are constantly active on the site, and constantly sharing and interacting with new content. Though it may not be your first choice to generate leads, it is a great engine to get people talking about your latest content or promotion. This is the place where you can respond to people who are commenting on your post, and due to the staggering amount of users, you have a good chance of putting your content in front of more people who will become new customers.

Twitter

This has become one of the most relevant sites for users to stay informed about all areas of interest. People can search by category, which increases the possibility that those who are really your customers will come across your tweets. That is not to mention the great thing about using Twitter for promotion: Your followers will usually get instant notifications of your posts, and the more followers you have, the more chance you have of bringing potential customers back to your website.

LinkedIn

As opposed to attempting to reach customers directly, LinkedIn is the perfect avenue to get in touch with fellow businesses and partners. You and your partners can find each other and communicate here, and since these businesses are your partners, it’s likely that their colleagues have contacts who are also probably your customers. This is basically the way we have always done networking, but it takes place in the online sphere, and more efficiently.

Pinterest

Pinterest is a powerful promotion tool for a couple of reasons. First, the site is composed primarily of images to showcase content, which satisfies today’s need for visual imagery to engage users. Secondly, this is a platform specifically designed to allow people to share products, so you can directly promote products because that’s what Pinterest users are looking for here. Finally, Pinterest is mainly populated by women; this is a great opportunity to effectively target an important demographic market.

A Few Surprising Statistics

• 54% of B2B respondents said they have generated leads from social media. (CMO)
• 53% of Twitter users recommend products in their tweets at some time. (Socialnomics)
• 100,000 of Pinterest’s members are retailers. (Re/code)
• 83% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn for content marketing. (Business 2 Community)

Reach People You Never Thought to Reach

One of the great strengths of promoting on social media is the ability to reach potential customers that you wouldn’t be able to tap by using email or direct mail. Let’s say one of your colleagues shares your post, and a friend of theirs becomes interested and comments on the post, generating a lead from this person. That’s an example of true organic conversion, and social media is one of the best ways to make it happen.

Social Media is Where the Conversation is Happening

So now that your content is live on social media, people have a chance to start talking about it. To have a comments section on your website is a step in the right direction, but you will typically see a much smaller conversation here than on social media. You’re doing well if you’re inspiring a lot of comments on your own site, but these days people are far more likely to comment if they can do it on a social platform like Facebook.

It’s important to create organic traffic from your posts on social media by engaging your contacts to share your content themselves, rather than using brand posts, which isn’t much different from trying to make a sale from a cold call. There is evidence to support the fact that people just won’t respond well to paid advertisements and brand posts on social media, though it does have some conversion potential. So as you begin to use social media promotion more aggressively, be sure to focus on your customers and their motivations, and not just shoving ads in their face. If you keep the needs and wants of your customers in mind, only then can you effectively use social media to promote your business.

Do you frequently get the impulse to post your thoughts on social media? See how you can use those impulses to promote your business:
5 Ways to Use Your Impulses for Social Media