How to Use Social Media to Generate Leads

July 16, 2012 By Joe Soto 1 Comment

So you want to use social media to generate leads for your business? If that’s true, then you must also be willing to take the steps necessary to put your business and brand in a position to attract leads online. And those steps may take some time.

Social media is a powerful tool, but cannot stand alone as an online marketing solution. Social media marketing comes after you have discovered your voice through blogging and have a key word strategy in place.

Does Blogging = Leads?

You can’t expect to put your business online and expect the online buzz to suddenly rocket you to online social media stardom. Leads won’t fall from the sky either.

Generating a lead is the end result. And while Stephen Covey has taught us to “Begin with the end in mind,” you must first focus on answering the question, “How can we be valuable to others, consistently over time, so we organically attract people to our business online.”

Then you must have a plan to create the valuable content people want to read, share and comment on. Content people will share and will lead others to you (traffic), who will then want to learn more about how you might be able to help them (conversion) so you can then have a qualified prospect (lead).

You do this from blogging. And how often you blog matters also.

The Impact On Lead Generation

The Impact On Customer Acquisition

It Doesn’t Matter if You Are a B2B or a B2C business, You Need to Be Blogging

Every week I speak to a business owner who thinks his/her business doesn’t need to blog at all, let alone a lot. Thinking that way is similar to thinking back in 1995 that your business wouldn’t need a website. Blogging is the new SEO, and it’s an important part of consumer culture so you better start capitalizing on it.

B2C Blogging Works!

B2B Blogging Works Also!

If Google Can’t Find You, Neither Will Anyone Else

Ranking high on the search engines (particularly Google) is no longer optional, it’s critical. The more keyword rich content you create (and blog), the more search engines will find you. In order for Google to find you often, you need a lot of pages that link to your site. You can control this by blogging often and making sure to use the keywords that will lead people to you.

Are You Showing Up?

More Blog Posts = More Indexed Web Pages

What does this teach us?

That you need to generate as much (keyword rich) content as possible, before your competitors pass you by. Social Media sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+ and YouTube all give you the platform to share your content in different ways, but you have to generate the content first. And oh yeah, that content needs to be interesting. The leads will follow.

The great business management guru Peter Drucker’s most well known quote is “The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer.” Social media can certainly help you create and keep a customer. But you have to be willing to do the work [online] that it takes to get there.

I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts (contribution, feedback) in the comments below. Also, be sure to check out my upcoming Webinar for an in-depth training expanding on this post on “How to Use Social Media to Generate Leads.”

Joe Soto

Joe Soto is the CEO of One Social Media. A leading expert in social media marketing, Joe has over 16 years of experience in all aspects of sales, marketing, online lead generation, and Internet marketing.

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Filed Under: Marketing Trends, Social Media, Social Media for Leads Generation, Social Media Tips, Social Media Trends Tagged With: blogging tips, One social media, social media blog, social media company, social media des moines, social media marketing strategy, social media strategy, social media to generate leads

Igniting and Infecting Your Following…In A Good Way

July 13, 2012 By Mike Bal Leave a Comment

It may sound alarming but just stick with me for a minute. Social media has not just given us the ability to spread content to the masses instantly, it’s set an expectation that it will be done. We don’t consider anything “viral” until we’ve seen it with our own eyes. Everything from clever memes to funny videos and profound thoughts can reach millions or billions of people around the world with the push of a button.

Now we spend countless amounts of our resources trying to master and understand what it takes to make something go viral. The truth is that no one really understands what makes something viral worthy. Quite often it’s a combination of a clever idea, strong execution and well planned distribution. If you don’t get all three of those right you tend to end up with something not much more than mediocre. Even when you do have all three of those elements perfectly in place there’s nothing to guarantee the success of the project.

The biggest variable here is human nature. You can understand it to a point, but there are so many external factors playing a role in every individual’s decision making process that your chances of making an accurate prediction aren’t much better than playing roulette. After watching and studying a variety of content distributed to an even bigger variety of people I have found one thing to be true…

People identify, relate and react to passion.

No matter what business you’re in or content you’re distributing you will have greater success if you present it with passion. When you look at the brands who have really succeeded in spreading content “virally” you’ll see that they are all passionate about what they do and what they say. These brands don’t rely on one piece of content to carry all of their campaigns or to build the following for all of their channels. They create, share and distribute “viral” content to their following every day.

To make it simple would you rather be the Eifel 65 of your industry or The Beatles? A one-hit-wonder with a short lifespan or a legend?

Passion is infectious. It’s something that everyone actually wants to spread and it’s what focuses people’s effort and energy. If you can ignite passion in your following than you’ll be “viral” by any standard. Your reach will grow and spread like the plague, but a good plague. Here’s what you can do to spread your own infection around social media.

Step One – Choose Your Passions – You can’t (shouldn’t) be passionate about everything so choose your battles. If you are using social media to connect with your customers then you should start by identifying some of their interests.

Step Two – Find and Create Your Content – Don’t just regurgitate what other content curators and publications are sharing. Study and understand the news and put the effort into adding your own thoughts and creating your own content.

Step Three – Share With Passion – Even when you’re limited by 140 characters people should be able to tell that you really care about what you’re sharing. Describe how you’re feeling and make your opinions clear. Don’t just make a plain statement about what you’re sharing.

Step Four – Engage - A lot of brands are guilty of stopping at step three. You need to go one step further and seek out other people who share your brand’s passions. You also need to take the time to start and maintain conversations with them and any other followers you have. It’s okay to be a thought leader and to provide ideas and content to spark a conversation but it’s great to be involved in those conversations. This step is what will really ignite your following and spread your content.

Step Five – Don’t Stop – Many ad campaigns have a lifespan. THIS IS NOT AN AD CAMPAIGN. You are developing relationships with people and more specifically customers. You can’t decide to just stop doing it without suffering some serious repercussions. People will take it personally and it will affect your brand and your bottom line.

If you’re looking for more ways to improve your social efforts check out our FREE resources page. It’s loaded with ebooks and articles that will help you succeed online. Click on the image below to go there now.

Mike Bal

Hi, I studied advertising, I have a passion for creativity and I love working in social media. I try to write about the combination of traditional marketing, branding, and advertising strategies that can apply and work affectively with social media. I also enjoy music, batman and life.

Social Media For Business: How To Get Started NOW

July 6, 2012 By Rob Wormley Leave a Comment

Thinking about working on creating or improving the social media strategy for your business over the weekend? Not sure where to start? Let me take some time to share with you some of my favorite resources. In my professional opinion, the best way find success on social media is to:

Learn from others who have already “tested the waters”
Set up profiles and start experimenting in real-time

The resources below will help you with both ways. Enjoy!

Recommended E-Books:

How To Master Facebook Timeline and Ads
Strategies For Effective Facebook Wall Posts
Strategies for Effective Tweeting: A Statistical Review
Top 10 Ways To Engage Your Fans
The Essential Step-By-Step Guide To Internet Marketing
The 15 Imperatives of LinkedIn
55 Brands Rocking Social Media with Visual Content
How to Attract Customers with Twitter
How to Use Pinterest for Business
The Essential Guide to Writing and Launching eBooks that Generate Leads
120 AWESOME Marketing Stats, Charts, & Graphs

Places To Go To Get Started:

Create a Facebook Page
Create a Twitter Profile
Start Using Instagram
Sign Up For Pinterest
Create a LinkedIn Company Page
Create and Participate in LinkedIn Groups
Create a WordPress blog
Create a Tumblr blog

For even more helpful advice, click on the image below:

Rob Wormley

As a social media specialist, Rob thrives in situations that require constant creativity. On days when Rob isn’t working hard to create, maintain, and strengthen relationships online, you might find him spending time with family, browsing through his nearest bookstore, or sipping on a cup of coffee at his local Starbucks.

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Filed Under: Branding Tips, Customer Satisfaction, Social Media Branding, Social Media Strategies, Social Media Tips, Social Media Trends Tagged With: des moines social media company, One social media, social media marketing blog, social media marketing plan, social media marketing services

Apple vs. Google – The Maps Edition

June 6, 2012 By Kelsey Jones Leave a Comment

Remember the days when Google and Apple used to play nicely together? Everyone got along and helped each other out when it came to navigation and map features. Remember when there was a sense of peace in the digital innovation world? Yeah… that’s gone. In the early days, Apple was okay with Google. The technology giant integrated Google-esque features such as Maps on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. It’s rumored that Apple will slowly be fading out these features for the introduction of…. (wait for it….)

Their own navigation system!! (Don’t worry, there are reports of a 3D map system like Google Street View as well).

This announcement of the new iOS Maps app is supposedly going to roll out at their Worldwide Developers Conference on June 11.

How will Google respond? They aren’t going anywhere and especially not going anywhere quietly. Google has its own new maps feature coming out and it (for a lack of a highly sophisticated, professional word) is going to be AWESOME.

Take a look at the video below for a history of the Apple vs. Google rivalry and what’s up next for these tech giants.

For more on the Apple vs. Google war, take a look at this recent Huffington Post article.

Kelsey Jones

Social Media enthusiast who loves reading about and experimenting with the newest forms of communication. I'm a news and political junkie who loves advocacy work, the Green Bay Packers and working in this fast-paced environment.

Filed Under: Social Media Trends, Tablets, YouTube Tagged With: apple vs. google features, best mobile search engine, Differences between Apple and Google, mobile apps, mobile navigation features, mobile search

Friday Clicks [Volume 28] | The Best of the Social Web

June 1, 2012 By Rob Wormley Leave a Comment

There were two exciting updates made to Facebook this week. The first is the ability to schedule content to publish, without having to use third-party sites/apps like TweetDeck or HooteSuite. The second is the creation and launch of “admin roles” for Facebook pages. In other news…

The Links:

The popular URL-shortner site bit.ly launched a major redesign. Click here to learn about it. There are a lot of additional features now offered, and it seems as though the site is trying to position itself as a “social link sharing site” instead of just a place to go to shorten your links. A lot of people are actually making a big fuss about it.
It was announced that Google has applied to buy and own more than 50 new domains, including .LOL and .YouTube. According to their blog post, they focused on domains that fall into four categories:
- Trademarks, like .google
- Domains related to their core business, like .docs
- Domains that will improve user experience, such as .youtube
- Domains they think have interesting and creative potential, such as .lol
Mashable, Hubspot, and SocialFresh all wrote about how important images/visuals are on social media. Think it might be a pretty good hint that you should be sharing more visuals? Read Mashable’s article. Read the SocialFresh article. Download the Hubspot ebook.
Today is National Doughnut Day, and Instagram is keeping track of all the creative photos people are sharing! Click the image below to see the photos, and click here to see ours!
And finally, the video of the week. Have you heard of Google Glasses? If you want to be a little freaked out at the direction in which technology and social/mobile is moving, watch this:

Rob Wormley

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Filed Under: Friday Clicks, Social Media News, Social Media Trends Tagged With: social media marketing, social media marketing strategy, trends in social media

Can Social Media Be an Artistic Outlet?

April 16, 2012 By Tom Hummer Leave a Comment

In my last blog post, The Language of Social Media, I wrote about how social media is changing the way we write. Our vocabulary, grammar, and punctuation all take a back seat to being casual and brief.

Whether this movement is good or bad is entirely debatable: there’s no objective answer. But regardless of your view on the matter, some people are embracing this change and seeing it as an opportunity instead of an obstacle. Here’s one of them.

Teju Cole is a Nigerian-American writer, who has spent time living in both countries. Cole’s experiences give him a unique perspective on life, death, and the different social issues that America and Nigeria face. Along with being an accomplished author and photographer, Cole uses his Twitter account as an artistic outlet of a different kind.

Cole’s tweets mix social commentary, American history, and Nigerian culture– only he writes them as poetry. This unique blend of content and delivery often come off as morose obituaries or headlines, and they certainly aren’t for the weak-hearted. Still, Cole achieves a goal that most of the Twitterverse has yet to reach: he makes you think. Here are some recent examples of his tweets:

What Cole proves without a doubt is that social media can be used as an artistic outlet. And I don’t mean in the way that bands, artists, and authors use it to promote their newest product– I mean it in the sense that social media is providing the actual basis for creation. Twitter is Cole’s canvas, not just a place where he can post a link for people to view or buy his canvas.

On top of that, Cole hardly ever self-promotes on his Twitter. After going back through a week’s worth of tweets (probably about 100), the only kind of posts I could find besides the ones shown above, are the occasional wordy (albeit macabre) joke, and a lot of interaction with his followers.

Cole is showing how to make a personal brand through social media while keeping his integrity as an artist. So what can we take from his example? A lot of things:

Be unique.
Provide value in a way that nobody else is.
Don’t be overly-promotional.
Write about what you know and care about.
Don’t be afraid to be provocative.
Be persistent.
Don’t complain about or shun change: use it to your advantage
Be consistent.
Turn obstacles and restrictions into opportunities.

Tom Hummer

Tom’s two biggest passions in life are writing and music. In his free time, Tom reads, writes, and works on musical projects.

The Status Update: It’s All About Variety

March 27, 2012 By Rob Wormley Leave a Comment

Creating a presence for your brand on social media sites like Facebook. Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, or Google+ is great, but it’s really only the first baby step in a never-ending quest to build and maintain a connection with your online community (prospective clients, customers, loyal brand advocates, etc.). Here’s the harsh truth most businesses are unwilling to understand or do anything about: simply having a place for people to go—like a Facebook page for your business—isn’t enough to make people want to stay, interact regularly, or click on your seemingly enticing links to products or services.

So what is it that makes people stick around and interact with your business on social media? It’s all about the variety of information you choose to share with your network on each social media platform. Yes, consistency is important. Quality is more important than quantity. And you have to have a plan. But if you plan on consistently sharing the same old boring content, you might as well not waste your time. You need to care about the people you interact with on social media, and part of caring means being thoughtful about the information you take the time to share with them. Are you thinking about it? Or are you just going through the motions day after day?

If you’re guilty of not thinking enough about the content you’re sharing on the social media sites your business is using, then take a look at the diagram below. It will help you think more about how to add variety to the social media updates you share with the people you want to connect with.

Don’t just go through the motions because someone told you that your business needs to be on social media. Be thoughtful. Add value. Embrace variety and be creative. Care about your customers.

EXTRA: Want a PDF version of the diagram above to print out? Click here.

Rob Wormley

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Filed Under: Being Interesting, Better Tweeting, Customer Satisfaction, Engagement, facebook, Social Media, Social Media Branding, social media marketing, Social Media Strategies, Social Media Tips, Social Media Trends Tagged With: des moines social media company, One social media, social media blog, social media marketing, social media marketing agencies, social media marketing consultant, social media marketing strategy

The Language of Social Media

March 22, 2012 By Tom Hummer 1 Comment

In this video from the TED Education series, Terin Izil talks about the relationship between brevity and clarity in language. “Ten-dollar words are rendered worthless if they’re not understood,” she says. According to her, the secret to great communication is efficiency: get your point across in as few syllables as possible.

All you need to do is read the comments on this video to get an idea of the controversy it’s sparked. Some people think this is a dangerous idea, and that it would mark the death of artful language.

But despite the opposition, society has definitely moved toward simplicity. In National Treasure, there’s a scene where Benjamin Gates (played by Nicholas Cage) reads the following line from the Declaration of Independence:

“But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

After he’s done, Gates says “People don’t talk that way anymore. Beautiful, huh?” and his friend, Riley, responds, “No idea what you said.” This conversation sums up the gap between the 18th century and now quite well.

Unsurprisingly, social media has definitely played a large role in this trend. On Twitter, for example, where users only have 140 characters to make their point, brevity is key. And that brevity often comes at the expense of interesting language. Even on Facebook, in text messages, and (shockingly) LinkedIn, punctuation and grammar are commonly thrown to the wind.

Since this new style isn’t going away anytime soon, the real question becomes: Is it good, or bad? Or neither?

As a social media professional with a background in literature, I’ve seen enough “LOL”s and “OMG”s to make Chaucer and Whitman roll in their graves. But surprisingly, the lack of engaging language in social media doesn’t bother me– after all, it’s about context. There’s a place for fancy, artistic language, and everyday communication isn’t that place. Izil makes that point when she talks about knowing your audience. A novelist’s audience expects different things than an online audience, because they serve different purposes.

The language of social media is here to stay. Rather than complain about it dumbing down the way we communicate, we should try to improve its efficiency. Remember– you can still read Shakespeare and Hemingway any time. But when connecting and understanding is the goal, simple is better.

Tom Hummer

Tom’s two biggest passions in life are writing and music. In his free time, Tom reads, writes, and works on musical projects.

Why You Should Be Using Instagram For Business

March 15, 2012 By Rob Wormley 3 Comments

2012 is the year of the visual. We’re finally getting to the point where most businesses are—in someway or another—participating on social media sites. So how can you ensure that your business Facebook page or Twitter profile stands apart from the competition in the eyes of the consumer? It’s all about sharing high-quality, unique, and original content. And it’s all about visuals.

Anyone can go to Google and find a photo to post on their Facebook page or Twitter account in an effort to spark interaction. But few brands understand the true power of an original image that can’t be found (and hasn’t been seen) anywhere else online.

That’s why 2012 is also the year of the photo-editing/sharing mobile apps. There are so many apps that exist within the iPhone/iPad App Store and Android Market that you can be using to share unique photos for your business or brand. So why aren’t you?

Instagram is one of the most popular iPhone photo app that individuals AND brands are using this year (about 27 million users total), and it was recently announced that the Android version is set to be released soon.

About a month ago we started sharing a few original visuals with our social media communities to illustrate how effective Instagram actually is. We’ve posted a few of them below with the hope that they’ll persuade you to start using Instagram (or any other similar app) to add a little spice and professionalism to the photos you intend to share on your social media sites.

It’s great if you have established and are maintaining a presence on popular social media sites for your business or brand. However, the key to finding continued success with your social media marketing strategy has everything to do with your ability to constantly be sharing unique, creative, informative, entertaining, and valuable content with your communities. Are you? It’s the only way you’ll stand out from the crowd.

To get started on Instagram, click here.

For other photo sharing/editing apps, click here for iPhone or click here for Android.

Rob Wormley

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Filed Under: Creativity, Customer Satisfaction, Engagement, Entertainment, facebook, Photos In Social Media, Social Media, Social Media Branding, social media marketing, Social Media Strategies, Social Media Tips, Social Media Trends

Using Pinterest For Business

February 22, 2012 By Rob Wormley Leave a Comment

Earlier today Kelsey and I aired our live show that runs every Wednesday at 3 PM Central. The topic for today’s show was all about how businesses could and should be using the increasingly popular social media site known as Pinterest. At the end of the show, I promised to publish a blog post that offered a few extra details and information about the site and how you can use it for your specific business and/or industry. Before I get into the additional information however, I wanted to share the archived recording of the show for those of you who weren’t able to watch live. Here it is:

Here’s a brief description of what Pinterest is, from the site itself:

Pinterest is a virtual pinboard. Pinterest allows you to organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. You can browse pinboards created by other people to discover new things and get inspiration from people who share your interests. People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and share their favorite recipes (Source).

If you haven’t been following Pinterest very closely lately, here are a few facts you should know:

10.4 million Registered users on Pinterest
1/5 Ratio of Pinterest’s registered users who visit the site every day
11.7 million Unique monthly U.S. visitors for January 2012, according to comScore. Pinterest crossed the 10 million threshold faster than any other standalone site in history
18 to 34 Age demographic of women propelling the site

Sourced from: http://theweek.com/article/index/224399/the-webs-growing-pinterest-obsession-by-the-numbers

Naturally, as more and more people have started using Pinterest, the brands that really understand the power and reach of the site have established their own unique presence. Here are just a few examples (click the images to explore the profiles) from a number of different industries:

Now is the time to create a Pinterest account for your business. There are a lot of “big brands” jumping on the site each and every day, but there aren’t nearly as many small or mid-sized businesses taking advantage of the opportunity to reach a new community to interact with.

To take the first step, click here.

Rob’s Extra Tip: Want to learn even more about how your business could be using Pinterest? Click here to download a FREE e-book from Hubspot.

Rob Wormley

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Does Blogging = Leads?

It Doesn’t Matter if You Are a B2B or a B2C business, You Need to Be Blogging

If Google Can’t Find You, Neither Will Anyone Else

What does this teach us?

People identify, relate and react to passion.

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