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What Can Social Media Do for Your Business? Simple: Leads.

 

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So you've been listening to your techie nephew talk about Twitter and Facebook. You understand the appeal from the social and networking perspectives -- but you're still stuck on one question: What, exactly, can social media do for your business?

If you look at our experience here at HubSpot, one answer is clear: leads.

 social media


The graph above represents leads generated on HubSpot.com from visitors who were originally referred to HubSpot via a social media platform like Twitter or Facebook between April 2008 and March 2010. The data is clear: Social media is a significant, growing lead generation channel.

This is by no means our biggest lead channel, but it's also nothing to sneeze at. Based on the leads alone, social media is worth the time we put into it.

Of course, in addition to leads at the top of our sales and marketing funnel, HubSpot gets other benefits from social media. Twitter and Facebook help us nurture prospects through a sale, they help us build relationships with and retain customers, they help us listen, they help us communicate internally, and much more.

How do we generate those leads? That's a separate blog post (or webinar!), but here's one secret: Social media only works as a lead generation tool when you share links to your own content on your own site. It's very hard to generate leads for your business on facebook.com or twitter.com. You have to give community members a reason (great content) to click through to your site.

One last thing: You're probably wondering what caused some of the higher-than-average months in the graph above. They're each months when we published a piece of content that was exceptionally popular on social media. For example, in July 2009 we published the Facebook for Business ebook, our most popular ever.

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Posted by Rick Burnes on Fri, Apr 23, 2010 @ 06:30 AM

COMMENTS

I completely agree!! Thanks to Social Media and all the tools we stay in contact and up-to-date with current clients, can reach out when needed to previous clients and find new ones! We have just recently started using Social Media at my company and in less than 6 months have already seen a huge ROI because of it!

posted on Friday, April 23, 2010 at 6:40 AM by Becky Weiand


Great post. For Eloqua, social media-driven leads are not just plentiful, but they have higher win rates and close faster.

posted on Friday, April 23, 2010 at 6:52 AM by Brian Kardon


Your post is right on. Social media provides companies another channel to reach customers and find new ones. Many people are separating social media from marketing, but it should be mixed in as part of an integrated online strategy.

posted on Friday, April 23, 2010 at 7:04 AM by Jenni Hilton


Great post. I agree that that Facebook and Twitter are a great way to get your content out there and generate more leads. But, do you find that those leads that are generated via social media convert at a lower rate?

posted on Friday, April 23, 2010 at 7:38 AM by Kristeen


Social media has become our number ONE lead generation channel. We tell our clients and colleagues to think of social media as authentic networking that's taking place 24/7/365, replacing golf games and after-hours cocktails.  
 
Social media has become our first line of contact. I use it to build authentic relationships with people I might be able to help someday. Authentic is the key word here, though. If I see every contact as a "conversion project," and that's my only goal from the starting gate of a relationship, those contacts will never become anything more than veiled sales spiels. 
 
Michelle Quillin for New England Multimedia & Q Web Consulting 
http://twitter.com/NEMultimedia

posted on Friday, April 23, 2010 at 8:49 AM by Michelle Quillin


Glad to see some data to help push the value of social media.  
 
It seems like businesses only want activities that generate immediate revenue. Leads may be a longer-term effect of social media for some businesses, but at the very least, social media offers an opportunity to build and grow relationships with prospects.  
 
Thanks for the stats! 
 
Jess 
www.localmatters.com/blog

posted on Friday, April 23, 2010 at 11:49 AM by Jess


Ok, you told us it is SIGNIFICANT, now what? What do I need to give the other party to gain traction? VALUE is obvious, then, what else? 
SHARING? --> Personal chemistry?

posted on Saturday, April 24, 2010 at 5:00 PM by Don Don


Social media happens to be my #1 lead channel. Only because, unlike Hubspot, my onpage SEO "sucks" in a word, and I don't get nearly as many leads through search engines. This is something that I am currently working on. 
 
But, social media accounts for over half of my traffic. 
 
You are right, social media is a great way to build relationships. People buy from people they know, like, and trust. I can't think of a better way to allow people to know, like, and trust you. 
 
Thank You- 
 
Matthew Zinda 
 

posted on Sunday, April 25, 2010 at 1:32 PM by Make My Own Website


I´m agree but i think that if you want to thrive, you will need a balance between to publish wonderful content and to push it to the social networks. lastly i´ve been companies trying to reach big audiences through Twitter and Facebook without before making the prior job "produce remarkable content".

posted on Monday, April 26, 2010 at 8:17 AM by Nicolas Vega


Your post inspired me to write and publish one on Friday called "The Small Business Triple Threat: Relationship Skills, Blogging, and Social Media." 
 
Relationship skills are so important in this arena. If you're not good at relationships, you're going to have a hard time making social media work for you. Once I started handling social media for our company and saw some of the pitfalls others experienced, I was really glad I'd taken it on, and not someone else. Manners are so important. 
 
The Small Business Triple Threat: Relationship Skills, Blogging, and Social Media 
 
Michelle Quillin for New England Multimedia & Q Web Consulting  
http://twitter.com/NEMultimedia

posted on Monday, April 26, 2010 at 11:00 AM by Michelle Quillin


It´s very difficult find somebody today that doesn´t agree with the message of this post, but the point center is as always ¿what do you have to tell to your contacts?, friends, clientes, followers, etc.. is to say content, nothing new. For this reason the question is ¿Do you have the discipline to do it frecuently? (content publishing) or ¿do you have a team that be useful helping everyday? (content muscle) I don´t think the pourpose of this post is to say which channel is best. You have a portfolio of opportunities to select which is the best choice for you according to the company status (employs, stakeholders, marketing and communication team, budget, ideology, etc) 
 
thanks

posted on Wednesday, May 05, 2010 at 8:03 AM by Nicolas Vega


Comments have been closed for this article.