How effective is social media marketing for generating business leads?
More importantly how can you measure effectiveness? That’s the $64, 000 question on most people’s lips. We’re constantly told that the social media is wonderful: it can help businesses engage and communicate with customers, it gives them a platform to share experiences and it can help them expand the reach of their brand. The only problem is most of these benefits are difficult to measure objectively. There have been studies looking into this matter over the last couple of years, but most people would struggle to find any survey that gives a definitive answer.
What most businesses would like to know is will social media marketing increase the number of leads they generate? So, it’s good to see that finally a study has come up with what it believes is a definitive answer. Cox Business has recently published an infographic based on research in which it claims companies who are active on Twitter are able to generate twice as any leads as companies who aren’t.
Could this really be true?
Do companies who ply their trade on Twitter actually manage to get twice the leads of those who avoid the platform? It’s hard to say with any degree of certainty. The same study also claimed that businesses which get 1,000 likes on their Facebook page go on to generate 185% more traffic and an extra 1,400 page views a day: and that is very hard to believe. More ‘likes’ will tend to lead to more page views, but 185%? All we can say with any degree of certainty is that the most successful companies have an active social media presence, and Twitter is the one platform that they seem to target the most. If you accept the study at face value, it still begs the question how many of these leads actually resulted in conversions? That unfortunately is something we will probably never know.
So what else can this study tell us? Well according to Cox Business there are certain accepted Do’s and Don’ts on the micro-blogging platform: those businesses that stick with these principles tend to perform better.
What to do on Twitter?
- Know the facts before you tweet. Stay current and don’t comment on subjects you don’t have a grasp of.
- Reward those who tweet you with a retweets. Publicly thank them and show that you believe they are worth investing in.
- Stay true to your brand, and follow and retweets users who post relevant content.
What not to do on Twitter?
- Don’t use a trending hashtag unless you know why it is trending. Some hashtags can be poisonous and damage your business.
- Don’t automatically send messages to new followers, and avoid over tweeting. Both practises can alienate followers and backfire on your business.
- Don’t ignore users who try to interact with you. Engage and interact with them and make them feel valued and respected.
