Key to driving leads - beyond social media

I recently spoke about how social media can be utilized to drive positive ROI for your business.

Here is one of the more direct ways to driving leads, while you define the over-arching social media strategy for your business – INVEST (if you haven't already) in creating a company blog.

According to eMarketer study, company blog drove the highest number of leads in both B2C and B2B firms, although Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn were close second, third & fourth, respectively. Why this makes so much more sense is because there is a limit to how much can be said about your products, updates, tips, values, news, etc., on Twitter, Facebook and similar social sites, not to mention the timeliness of posts. We need to provide a more robust & permanent landing page experience (read company blog), with appropriate detail, to expand upon the 140 characters long nugget of information that you just updated on social sites.

The company blog should let your customers know more about your products/services, while encouraging participation (call-to-action). This can be through sharing knowledge about key features, competitive differentiators, upcoming changes and upgrades, issues and related solutions, user feedback, etc. Also, don’t forget to include employee comments about products, services, culture, etc., that can be valuable in promoting the company itself as having an open and transparent organization.

Interested readers (brand followers) on Twitter, Facebook, etc., can redirect themselves to the blog to read more. This approach serves 3 purposes that are critical for differentiating yourself in an over-crowded social media space. One – provides a common, yet an open platform for your customers (new and existing) to come to and learn more about your products/services. Two – provides a sense of attachment to the brand (comes from knowing and engaging more). Three - provides a forum to connect customers and employees for greater participation and transparency. Finally, maintain and nurture the company blog and its readers, and encourage participation through polls, promotions, events, tips, values, news, etc.