Social Selling on Twitter: 7 Easy Steps to Create Lead Generation

Contrary to what you may think, Twitter is NOT dead. In fact, it is one of the most popular ways to use social selling to generate leads. Millions of followers browse Twitter every second and you are missing out on a powerful lead generating tool if you're not one of them. Here are some ways to effectively use Twitter as a lead generator. Create a Tracking System Digital tracking software attached to your tweets allow insight on who is reading your content and creates follow up opportunities for your sales and marketing teams. Using software such as Eloqua, HubSpot or Marketo will allow you to capture data analytics and create ways to request contact information from your website visitors.  Create a Catchy Tweet Short, sweet and to-the-point is best when creating leads. Make sure to use a short but intriguing status and use only one link. Try to minimize the use of hashtags when you have a call-to-action because this can clutter your post and steer the follower away from your highlighted link. However, hastags are very useful in other situations, like promoting events and tracking conversations. High Frequency Make sure your content has a high frequency. Every time you add a new blog, white paper, case study or press release, generate traffic by tweeting the link. Well-crafted blog posts contain information of interest to customers as well as a call-to-action designed to generate leads. Likewise, a well-written white paper can help generate more traffic when users realize the quality of your "free" content. Reaching more of these leads with a tweet is easy and can be automated with marketing software, like those mentioned above. Promote Your Tweet If you have a good marketing team, you should know who your audience is. Find out demographics, popular topics, geography, gender, etc. From there create content with your followers in mind. How-to guides, free downloads and current industry trends are all hot topics. Allow your followers to learn from your content. Do away with anything that sounds like a sales pitch and make sure you provide current and thought provoking content. Try Out a Twitter Lead Gen Card Essentially digital postcards attached to promoted tweets, lead generation cards allow other Twitter users to quickly and easily participate in your event or offer. To do so, they supply you with their email address, which can be automatically sent to your CRM. Rock/Creek Outfitters, for example, used Twitter lead gen cards offering tweeters entry into a drawing for a free pair of sandals. The campaign provided 1,700 new email addresses in under a week. Twitter Search Twitter search allows you to search all of Twitter by keyword, user, location, date and other criteria. You can perform a search yourself using multiple criteria or use software to set up an automatic, ongoing search. Use the search to find Twitter users looking for the services you provide.  Analyze Results Study your traffic analytics which will tell you what types of people are viewing your content. From there you can see what tweets were most popular and what content seemed most interesting and created action. You can optimize your posts with your detailed analytics. If you haven't yet created a Twitter account for your company, you now have a quick and easy guide to generate leads. Go online, get involved and reach a broader customer base by adding social selling to your business plan.