How To Use Social Media To Generate Leads

In the last few months there has been a rise in courses, funnels and mini training webinars designed to show you how to use social media to generate leads, and of course make comissions. 

One of the reasons it has become popular, is due to the fact that many of these platforms boast millions (or billions) of users, who can be targetted with ads and content, both paid for and free. 

Each platform has it's own audience, way of targetting and of course methods to generating these leads, today I will run through some ideas and how I bring in traffic from these different platforms. I will try and talk about the big social media platforms, but some of these ideas can be used across multiple social media sites and are not just specififc to one. 

TikTok

Depending on when you read this, TikTok is either the fastest growing, biggest app on the internet, or it's now an empty husk because someone (probably trump) decided it took too much data and people worried it was stealing your identity.

At time of writing, this platform is huge, with around 115m global downloads in March 2020 alone and roughly 800million active users, but over 2billion downloads in total, this app is something of a phenonemum. 

The majority of it's user base site between 16 - 24, depending on where in the world you are, TikTok has really dominated the Gen Z market. This stat alone gives you a great idea on what types of products or even services may be worth promoting on there. 

Legendary Marketer did a great eBook on how to grow a TikTok channel and how to sart building leads up, based on following viral trends and targetting certain hastags or even channels. 

The idea works really well, with many of the 18 - 24 crowd always looking for a cheeky side hustle that they can run alongside school or college. 

From experience one of the best ways I managed to start getting leads was by sharing money saving ideas or crafty ways to save time when it came to running the blog. For example using Canva for a lot of my blog graphics and even for a huge majority of the content I post on Facebook (more on that later). 

It's worth nothing that TikTok does only show videos to people within the same country as you, so if you are in the UK then you will only reach around 8m people (if a video goes viral), US you will probably reach 14m or so. You can try and get around this by purchasing SIM cards and registering phones in your chosen location, but personally I never found it was worth it. 

Capturing leads is more difficult for the first few videos, and you won't get a nice clickable link in your bio until you reach around 1,000 followers, though some seem to hit it quicker than others. 

How To Use Social Media To Generate Leads
How To Use Social Media To Generate Leads

A great example of someone who has done really well with TikTok, and even helped with the 15 second Leads book is Dom Bavaro of The Dadaprenuer blog. As you can see from the image he has 2 calls to action. I had to get Doms own image from his article on Buildaprenuer just to try and show what it should look like! Damn TikTok. 

As you can see, when logged in correctly, Dom has a link in his Bio, that can be click easily (going to a really good challenge), as well as having a link to his YouTube channel. 

People will naturally look at someones profile after watching a video to find more, if they like your content they usually want to find out more information from you, be it the secret to your success and how you got into your side hustle, to being a a product or service you want to promote. 

If you want to learn how to follow trends or grow your TikTok account, and start generating leads, I highly reconmend this $1 eBook

Instagram

A platform that I used to use a lot for eCommerce, and then later started to grow accounts for affiliate marketing websites, Instagram can be a hugely diverse and interesting place for finding leads and generating commissions. 

I like to create Instagram accounts for every niche website I run, as well as having 1 or 2 specifcally designed for capturing leads and getting images viral. 

A great example of an Instagram account that is set up to specifcally harvest leads daily, is the Businessmentorship account. With 600k followers, the account posts quotes, viral business memes or simply inspiration advice. 

How To Use Social Media To Generate Leads

Each time the account posts, it hopes that their image or video etc will get picked up by Instagram and added too the 'check this out' stream that Instagram has. 

Getting into this section on Instragram opens your account up to a whole new audience, giving you hundreds or thousands of new eyeballs on your profile. 

As with TikTok, the aim is to get people to go to your profile, find other cool stuff on your account or click through on your call to action. For the Businessmentorship account they have a clear call to action pointing you towards a LinkTree link, designed to give you a number of options, in their case consultancy calls and even an affiliate partnership with an Instagram growth service. 

Check out my free eBook on how I use other peoples content to grow lead generation accounts, with basically an hour or two of work a week. 

Facebook

With 2billion total users, hundreds of different niches catered for and a variety of ways to use this platform to generate leads, Facebook is the hot topic of 2020 and there has been a huge rise in funnels and courses to show you how to leverage Facebook. 

One great example of this is the Super Affiliate Accelerator, that focuses it's time and energy on helping you build authority, and increase your following on Facebook, utilising groups and your profile to help generate leads and commissions. 

Using Facebook to help generate commisisons can be done in a number of ways, but pretty much all of them require you to set up a profile in a funnel style. 

How To Use Social Media To Generate Leads

Looking at my own profile, I have a slightly tongue in cheek bio (because most are cheesy BS that mean nothing), with a number of links that people can use. 

The obvious ones and the link I show twice is to my own Facebook group, bringing people into my own domain and helps build up trust and let's me help them in a safe enviroment. 

The other links such as the LinkTree passes them onto a list of around 4 or 5 programs that I like to promote. 

How To Use Social Media To Generate Leads

The links in my bio passively send me a few leads per day, with or without me needing to actually post something. The days in which I post or provide value do of course increase the leads and commissions I recieve from these links. 

A question you are probably asking right now is, "But how do you actually get people onto your profile" and this is probably one of the hardest things to master. Essentially becoming useful, without just being baity. For me personally, I like to join groups and help people who are new to affiliate marketing get started, or even other niches such as eCommerce. 

I also like to create posts that will help other users, not the usual 'provide some vague generic advice', but something that will actually give something back to others. Some of my posts and comments can runto 500 words or more, hence why I tell people to grab themselves a coffee!

How To Use Social Media To Generate Leads
How To Use Social Media To Generate Leads

Using a mixture of helpful posts and comments has allowed me to start building up my own group and talking to potential leads daily. Everytime you give back to the community, their trust and belief in you builds, giving them the confidence to take advice or even product reconmendations from you. 

These types of posts have helped me sell multiple high ticket products each week, in a vareity of different niches and capture hundreds of leads. 

If you are interested in learning more about this, I highly reconmend checking out this case study, the training attached too this case study is something I have followed for a while now and has really allowed me to step out of my 'SEO' focused comfort zone. 

Snapchat

A platform that is starting to twindle, and getting more difficult to see results, but it is still possible, using methods similar to TikTok and Instagram. 

Though, it's worth baring in mind that there are not easy places to add links, and you will be relying on pushing people onto other platforms, or possibly paying for story ads to help get click throughs and leads. 

Snapchat allows users to create public stories, which can be picked up by Snapchat and shown to more people, much like the Instagram search & discover functions, Snapchat let's people see what others are posting. 

From looking into the platform, Snapchat looks to promote those who are set up correctly and possibly require you creating a 'creator' style account, as apposed from a normal everyday type of account. 

Pinterest

A platform that hasn't changed much over the years, Pinterest is brilliant for those in niches or areas that are image focused and an be utilised the same way as Instagram. 

Building up a Pinterest account can be done via pinning images (with links and hashtags) and re-pinning other peoples pins to help build your following. 

Pinterest will show your Pins to others if they start getting re-pinned or 'liked' a lot. 

How To Use Social Media To Generate Leads

If you happen to get really lucky then Pinterest will add your images and pins into it's 'Today' collection, again as with other social media platforms, it's their version of discover. 

They are categorised pins that fall into certain niches, for example the luxury bath time collection I was shown the other day. Contains pins and images from people selling products to simply showing off really cool looking baths or products. 

Being picked up in these types of collections starts to boost the number of eyesballs falling onto posts.

One of the great things about Pinterest is that it is both mobile and desktop compatible, which can't be said for TikTok or Instagram, both of which just become crap when viewing on a desktop. 

This opens up the opportunity for slightly older generations to view your work, and actually increase the number of people who may see it (but don't actually have it installed). 

Platforms such as TailWind can be a great way to find other pins to re-pin and help grow your account and again eyeballs. It works by looking at similar accounts to yours, reconmending content to posts and if you fancy it joining groups that can be used to increase the interactions with your posts. 

I haven't used my own Pinterest account for a while now, but TailWind keeps a track of the number of repins my account has had and the number of new followers, plus it will still offer me pins that I can quickly schedule if I want too. 

Each pin is set up with links and my own profile also has a linktree set up, meaning that if people decide to look at what other cool boards I have, they will see the bio links and the links inside the pictures. 

Free social media leads, without me really having to lift a finger.

YouTube

I may be possibly stretching the defintion of a social media platform, but YouTube does provide media and the way it works is much the same was as Pinterest, Instagram and TikTok, the only difference is is that you can cram a lot more into a a YouTube video than you can on a 15 second TikTok video.

Using YouTube can be used in a number of ways, from creating your own high quality videos (reviews, how to guides, general talking etc) to changing your blog articles into videos with tools such as Vidnami

It can take more time for videos to be picked up, and can take lots of videos to increase those chances, but each video you produce can be used to generate leads and make commissions.

YouTube allows you to add links and descriptions undernearth each video, giving you the ability to add a number of different links (from things you are talking about in your videos, to more generic links designed to capture leads that can then be sent to whatever product or service you want to promote. 

This method can be slower than other platforms, videos can take longer to be picked up, and there are thousands of videos being uploaded constantly, but the pay off can be fantastic, with the possiblity of getting millions of views on videos. 

Twitter

Lastly in this list of social media platforms that you can use to generate leads is of course the OG, the underdog for years, Twitter. 

The place for shouting at companies when they wrong you, share conspiracy theories and getting into arguements with strangers. But it can also be pretty amazing for some automated content marketing. 

Twitter still boasts 140million daily users according to Brandwatch, offering you a huge potential market to play with. I have found in the past that Twitter can be great for republishing content from other platforms, for example blog posts, videos or Instagram images. Using relevant marketer hastags such as #business or #makemoneyonline #ecommerce etc can all help when trying to pick up momentum. 

As with every platform, it requires a concistent approach, just tweeting once or twice a month isn't going to get you a following, but tweeting helpful content everyday (the same with Facebook or TikTok) gets your message and more importantly profile infront of people.

Providing useful tips, short soundbites of information inside of 200ish characters can also be a quirky way to increase exposure. Become a mini expert within a particular niche, and provide tips, ideas and solutions. Each tip or idea you push out into the Twitterverse can be picked up, retweeted and quoted hundreds, if not thousands of times. 

I would defintely take advantage of platforms such as If This The That (IFTT) to help the automation and reposting of content, to work alongisde the Twitter exclusive content you produce. 

Conclusion

Most people see Social media platforms as hugely different beasts, with no similarities in marketing, but that's pretty far from the truth these days. 

Yes, platforms such as TikTok can be used to jump on trends as explained in the 15 Second Leads book, and Facebook can be used to grow a group or a following by basically being omnipresent. 

But, they all require consistent content, the more good, relevant content you provide, the more likely the algo's found on each platform is going to pick up your posts, videos or images and share them with the masses. 

The biggest mistake that people make is that they will tweet a few times, make 1 or 2 TikTok videos, see no results and simply give up. If you follow people such as Dom you will see that he constantly creates 15 - 30 second videos hints and tricks on TikTok that can get a few hundred or a few thousand vides, each person can become a potential lead. 

If someone likes your content, they will usually take a scroll back through, checking out past videos and posts, building that trust and authority, eventually becoming that lead or possibly a sale. 

Got any more ideas on how to leverage social media for leads and commissions? Drop them below.