Boosting Visibility and Generating Leads with the Right Social Media Channels

In today’s digital age, social media has become an indispensable tool for businesses to boost visibility and generate leads. As seasoned marketing experts working with SMB owners as well as sales and marketing leaders, we understand the importance of leveraging various social media channels to reach your target audience effectively. This blog post will explore how to use Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, X (formerly Twitter) and TikTok to enhance your marketing efforts, when it’s ideal to use each of these platforms, best practices for each and how to measure the success of your social media campaigns.

Facebook: Building Relationships and Community Engagement

Facebook is ideal for building relationships and engaging with your community. It’s particularly effective for B2B organizations looking to create a sense of community and foster long-term relationships with their clients. Customers can share photos of themselves using your product or service, which is in essence giving you testimonials with little effort on your part.

Both small and large organizations use Facebook Messenger for customer support needs. Since so many people use Facebook, using the Messenger feature allows businesses to avoid costly customer service apps on their website that also need to be maintained. Consider using Messenger to provide customers with updates on product deliveries and to resolve concerns.

According to Hubspot, “Consumers spend the most time on Facebook, followed by YouTube. These two platforms dominate the social media world, each with over 2 billion monthly active users.”¹ The largest age group to use Facebook is people age 25-34,² which surprised me a bit because it used to skew a bit more for an older age bracket.

Facebook also ranks highest for the platform with the most direct sales,² so use Facebook to highlight products and promotions. We love it for posting photos and videos with quick access to metrics so you can measure your ROI.

Facebook Best Practices:

Create a Business Page: Ensure your business page is complete with all relevant information, including contact details, business hours and a compelling description.
Post Regularly: Share valuable content regularly, such as industry news, blog posts and company updates. Have a new product releasing? Covered in a great article? Post that news.
Engage with Followers: Respond to comments and messages promptly to build trust and rapport. Avoid the “post and ghost” approach that is really just pushing out your content. Instead, use Facebook to really engage with your followers.
Use Facebook Ads: Use targeted ads to reach specific demographics and generate leads.

How do you measure your success on Facebook?

Track metrics such as engagement rates (likes and comments), click-through rates and conversion rates from Facebook ads and posts. A key to success is monitoring your overall page growth, engagement levels and the number of leads generated through Facebook. We recommend looking at these numbers each month and comparing the results over time. Is your business affected by seasonality? If yes, you should see more engagement during your high times. However, you can also interact more on Facebook during your slow times to attract new followers and nurture them. This can also help improve your sales to turn your slumps into peaks over time.

Instagram: Let’s get visual.

This social channel continues to be popular with Gen Z and Millennials, prime for consumers age 18-34. Per Sprout Social, “the 18-24 age group (31.7%) makes up the largest share, showing that Instagram is still a go-to for younger generations” and a whopping 61 percent of users rely on Instagram to influence purchasing decisions.² That is no wonder considering Instagram’s heavy focus on visual elements. Use this channel for unboxing videos to showcase your products and the experience that your customers can expect when they receive their order.

With the popularity of Instagram comes responsibilities. Direct messages (DMs) require prompt attention and younger audiences have grown to expect more responsive engagement. Waiting a few business days won’t cut it. If a customer sends your business a DM, your ability to respond after 24 hours won’t be a possibility in this platform (with a few exceptions that we won’t get into). Most customers report expecting a response within 24 hours, but research shows some anticipate a response on Instagram within three hours.³

Best Practices for Instagram for Business

Optimize Your Profile. Use a recognizable profile picture like your logo. Use tools like Linktree to feature multiple links in your about section.
Write a clear, keyword-rich bio or about section that explains what your business does and how that helps your ideal customer.
Post high-quality, consistent content. Use visually appealing images and videos that align with your brand. Because Instagram emphasizes visual elements, businesses should pay extra attention to the quality of images and videos posted.
Maintain a consistent posting schedule, aiming for 3–5 times per week.
Use Instagram stories and reels to increase engagement and reach.
Use hashtags strategically, mixing popular, niche and branded hashtags. Avoid using too many hashtags. We recommend no more than 5 hashtags per post. Research the hashtags your target audience is using and look at who else is using your most common hashtags to ensure alignment with your brand.

Tips for measuring success on Instagram

Track your performance and adjust. Businesses can use Instagram Insights to monitor engagement, reach and follower growth. You should also identify which types of content perform best and double down on that type of content. Test different posting times and formats to see what resonates.

LinkedIn: Professional Networking and Thought Leadership

LinkedIn is the go-to platform for professional networking and establishing thought leadership. It’s perfect for B2B organizations aiming to connect with industry professionals and decision makers. With this in mind, it’s not only important for your business to have a LinkedIn business page, but also for you as a professional to have your own page. As an individual you can weigh in on industry trends, relevant news items and even public announcements by your organization. Business pages focus on branding and recruiting.

Best Practices for LinkedIn for Business:

Optimize your profile by ensuring your company profile is complete and optimized with relevant keywords.
Share industry insights: Post articles, whitepapers and case studies to showcase your expertise. Comment on others’ posts that are in your industry or whose leadership you respect.
Participate in LinkedIn groups that are related to your industry to expand your network.
Leverage LinkedIn’s advertising options to target specific professional demographics.

Tips for measuring success on LinkedIn

Monitoring, measuring and improving is important here, just like it is with other social media channels. Start with measuring lead generation by tracking connection requests, message responses and conversions from LinkedIn ads. Secondly, monitor your profile views and engagement rates on posts. Track those metrics over a set amount of time to determine which actions positively impacted lead generation.

YouTube: Visual Content and Tutorials

YouTube is ideal for sharing visual content and tutorials. It’s particularly effective for B2B organizations with products or services that can be demonstrated through video.

Best Practices for Businesses using YouTube:

Your video sharing should be reflective of your business culture and brand. Consider the difference between Red Bull’s YouTube channel that’s full of adventure and seemingly produced with less of a corporate feel versus Disney’s YouTube approach at behind-the-scenes views and even the sophisticated, carefully curated Ferrari YouTube channel. Even if your budget doesn’t allow for this level of high-end video production, the videos should be aligned with your brand.
Optimize your video titles and descriptions to use relevant keywords to improve searchability.
Engage with viewers by responding to comments (You should see a constant theme around responding on social media by now!) and encourage viewers to subscribe to your channel.
Use YouTube ads to reach a broader audience and generate leads.

Tips for measuring success on YouTube

As suggested with other social channels, track metrics such as video views, click-through rates and conversions from YouTube ads. Monitoring your subscriber growth long term is important as is engagement rates on videos and the number of leads generated for shorter term focus.

X (formerly Twitter): Real-Time Updates and Customer Interaction

Interestingly, I attended a luncheon this week with college students that represented a broad range of ages and backgrounds. When asked which social channels they prefer, they overwhelmingly said TikTok (more on this later) and asked if anyone still uses X. Of course, knowing your target audience is tantamount. X is ideal for real-time updates and customer interactions. It’s especially effective for political entities, sports authorities, higher education and non-profits according to Rival IQ.⁴

Best Practices for Businesses using X:

Tweet regularly by sharing industry news, company updates and relevant content.
(Again) engage with followers by responding to mentions, retweets and direct messages promptly.
Use relevant hashtags to increase the visibility of your tweets.
Leverage ads to target specific demographics and generate leads.

How to Measure Your Success on X:

Track metrics such as engagement rates, click-through rates and conversions from X ads. Monitor follower growth, engagement levels on tweets and the number of leads generated.

TikTok: Creative Content and Brand Awareness

This channel is ideal for those age 10-29 with the most common TikTok creators coming in at age 18-24⁵ and offers businesses (and individuals) the opportunity to share creative content and build brand awareness. It’s effective for B2B organizations looking to showcase their brand personality and engage with a younger audience. Authentic and often humorous content reigns here. Check out GymShark’s Tiktok account for an informative, athletic and strategic use of the channel to connect with young health and sports enthusiasts.

Best Practices for Businesses using Tiktok:

Produce short, engaging videos that highlight your brand and offerings. Aim for 21-34 seconds in length.
Weigh in on trending challenges and use popular hashtags to increase visibility.
Remember to respond to comments and interact with other users’ content.
Use TikTok ads to reach a broader audience and generate leads.

How to Measure Your Success on Tiktok:

Tracking your success here is not much different than the measures suggested for YouTube since both showcase video content. Track metrics such as video views, engagement rates and conversions from TikTok ads. Monitor follower growth, engagement levels on videos and the number of leads generated. While

By leveraging these social media channels effectively, you can boost visibility, generate sales leads and achieve your marketing goals. If you don’t have the people or budget to regularly manage more than one channel, find the one that best aligns with your number 1 customer and focus there. Doing one thing really well beats spreading your marketing dollars and efforts too thinly across many channels. For more information about planning and executing your social media outreach, contact us.