By now, almost every social media platform has become a staple in every brand’s marketing campaign. Whether it is Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, or Snapchat, social media has the power to establish a wholesome, credible, and likeable image for your brand and even promote products and services directly to your target market by posting meaningful content and engaging with your followers.

But there’s more to social media than likes, comments, and follows. Check out these tips on how to leverage social media for your business and turn social media engagement into actionable sales leads.

Pay attention, participate, and be proactive  

Many social media guides will tell you that posting content consistently every day is the key to success. This makes total sense, of course. However, some businesses forget the other side of this social media strategy. After scheduling Facebook or Instagram posts through Later or Hootsuite, there are some who no longer bother to check back for comments or inquiries from customers coursed through the social media channels. This is something that is extremely important, so don’t miss our Hootsuite Review.

In The Social Habit research by Jay Baer, they found that many people use social media to get through a brand’s customer support. Of these people, at least 32 percent expect the brand to respond within 30 minutes and 42 percent within an hour. Interestingly, more than half of these people expect brands to be active on social media 24/7, regardless if it is day or night.  This may seem a tall order. But on a positive note, Baer said that brands who are quick to respond to a customer complaint posted on social media actually had increased customer advocacy by up to 25 percent.

A brand’s social media account should always be quick and prompt to respond and jump into conversations happening on its page. Always check back for comments on your posts. What’s better is you can be proactive and take this social media strategy a step further by monitoring brand mentions through tags and hashtags, which is an efficient way to see what other people are saying about your business. In this social media age we live in, most consumers post raves and rants about brands through social media.

There is no denying that social media influencers are a force to be reckoned with in social media. They are the modern-day celebrity endorsers that enable brands to have significant exposure to a wider audience through the millions of followers of these social media influencers.

What makes social media influencers super effective in advertising brands is that they have a specific niche, a well-thought-of and relatable content strategy, and again, millions of followers who resonate with them. Their followers give them impressively high levels of social media engagement and will actually take what they say, hook, line, and sinker. Because of this, collaborating with a local social media influencer related to your niche will make your social media marketing campaign more targeted and will yield better results in the end.

Micro-influencers are better

But here’s a revelation. Apparently, when it comes to choosing a social media influencer to collaborate with, the secret is going with someone who has fewer followers. In a recent eye-opening study by Experticity, it was discovered that micro-influencers with 1000 to 4000 social media followers are more likely to be believed by 82 percent of consumers and have 22.2 times more buying conversions.

In theory, a makeup hobbyist with, say, 3000 followers on Instagram will have more organic actionable sales leads on Instagram than a big shot celebrity like, for instance, Kim Kardashian who has 124 million followers. How can this even be possible? According to experts, this is because over 85 percent of consumers prefer peer recommendations over paid brand advertisements, which actually turned them off.

This is great news for new businesses who do not have the resources or the connections to reach out to bigtime influencers who demand a lot. By going the other way and tapping micro-influencers who are locally based in the areas your business caters, you have higher chances of gaining social media engagement and generating sales leads.

Take advantage of lead generation ads

Let’s be honest. Sometimes it can be really hard for brands to rely on organic reach alone. They got to do paid social media ads every once in a while because that is just how these platforms want the game to be played. Facebook, for instance, does not prioritize business pages in FB Newsfeed unless you are running a promotion. Even if you have 20,000 followers, your post will only be shown to a percentage of your total followers. You can see this through the Facebook Analytics for each post.  They do this so you will be forced to run a Facebook ad for brand exposure.

Aside from Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn also feature lead generation ads for businesses and can be customized according to your target audience, location, gender, and many more.

Make An Effort To Create Engaging Content

No matter how popular your brand is, people are not going to follow you on social media platforms if your profile is lame and you post boring content. Furthermore, you cannot be lazy, too, because your existing followers will not bother to stick around if you do not post regularly or have a sudden change in content. This is especially true for Instagram where the competition for attention is pretty tough. That being said, you got to research about what type of content your audience wants and must always be up to date about the trends and topics they are into.

Try Gated Content to Generate Sales Leads

Another excellent social media strategy that many brands are taking advantage of right now is posting gated content or downloadable content materials. This actually directs social media followers to a landing page where there is a form they need to fill out with their name, valid email address, and/or mobile number before getting the free download, which efficiently generates sales leads. You can then store customer information in your database and use for email marketing and/or mobile marketing.