6 Ways Social Media Marketing Helps B2B Lead Generation

Most companies know that social media is a hot trend right now in marketing, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that these companies understand how social media can help their marketing or why it got so popular in the first place. Well, in our opinion, one of the biggest reasons why social media is so popular (and effective) when it comes to B2B marketing is its ability to generate leads for your company.

How can social media accomplish this?

1. Social media can increase your company’s reach. Social media lets you publish your company’s best practices and expertise quickly and easily to platforms that reach millions of people instantly. The better your content, the more likely it is to get viewed, which means that with some good quality content, you have the capability of reaching millions of potential leads in a matter of moments.
2. Social media can establish your company as a thought leader. Thought leadership is an essential way to build trust for your company. Buyers often trust companies that can demonstrate their knowledge about their buyers’ problems, and can prove that they know how (and have the solutions) to fix them. 
3. Social media facilitates word of mouth marketing. Word of mouth has been, and continues to be, one of the best ways to generate more leads for your business. Buyers tend to trust peer referrals more than any other source of information and since social media allows people to share their experiences (both good and bad) with a wide range of people, this can help increase trust in your company’s products and services. 
4. Social media can help your company’s SEO. Social media sites usually have good authority in search engines and because of this, inbound links from these sites are extremely helpful to your SEO. The higher your company ranks in search engines, the more often you get found by potential customers and often, buyers trust companies that rank higher in search engines.
5. Social media can connect you with other local professionals. This is related to the word of mouth point above. Using social media allows you to connect with other professionals in your area or industry so that you can share information, and create discussions. Developing conversations with other professionals can help lead to business relationships that often generate quality business opportunities.
6. Social media let’s you search for interested parties.  Social media is a great way to locate and target leads that are looking for your products or services at the moment of interest. A quick search on a site like Twitter, can instantly show you all of the Twitterers that are discussing products and services like yours at the exact moment they begin the conversation. 

Posted by Amberlie Denny at June 8, 2010 8:15 AM

Comments

Social Media Strategy

Wow nice information you have shared with all. Actually Google made searching of information easy on any topic. Well keep it up and post more interesting blogs.....

Social Media Optimization

Perfect post! I've bookmarked your blog as well. I enjoyed reading your posts...