What Is the Best Social Media Platform for Generating and Nurturing Leads?

Social media and marketing have deep ties nowadays, so deep that a recent Social Media Examiner survey found that 97 percent of marketers participate in social media marketing, up from 94 percent last year. According to that same survey, 86 percent of marketers say that social media is important to their business.

But which social media platform do marketers deem the most important? Depending on what breed of marketer you ask, you’ll likely get different answers. B2C marketers favor Facebook, while B2B marketers seem split between LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

To get more insight into how marketers approach, perceive and favor these platforms, we spoke with seven experts to see what their go-to social media channels are when it comes to generating and nurturing leads.

Franco Puetz, online advertising manager at Veterans United Home Loans:
“Facebook takes the cake when a social media platform that is capable of generating a large number of quality leads is being considered. Not only do you have the ability to target users in your mailing lists with Facebook ads, in many cases you can compile this targeting with ‘social endorsements’ from their friends on the platform. The level of granularity in the targeting that is available to advertisers on Facebook should make any lead-hungry marketer’s mouth water.”

David Neuman, manager of social media and mobile services at Prime Visibility:
“For B2B businesses, LinkedIn is a great channel for generating leads and interacting with prospects. LinkedIn’s advertising platform allows you to uniquely target users by highly specific parameters such as job titles, company size, skill set and more. Additionally, their InMail feature is a great tool that allows you to generate one-on-one, personalized communications to these same sets of users. Recently, LinkedIn has also built up their site to be more of a ‘true social network,’ allowing marketers to interact with customers and prospects through a variety of different features such as groups, profile updates and company page updates.”

Bill Corbett Jr., president of Corbett Public Relations:
“LinkedIn by far is the best social media site for generating and nurturing leads for business. However, LinkedIn should not be used for selling and certainly never used for hard selling. Spamming is frowned upon and should never be done. LinkedIn is a platform that offers the best opportunity to develop personal and business awareness, make connections, and engage with people. This process will lead to relationships and then trust. Only when trust is established will a lead become a real prospect. A prospect, if managed and engaged properly and honestly, will become a new client or customer.”

Nathan Egan, founder and CEO of PeopleLinx:
“My hands-down favorite is LinkedIn. Consumer-oriented platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest may be great for broad, indiscriminate sharing, but to close a deal you need relationships — real one-to-one relationships built on trust and shared context. LinkedIn is the only social platform that delivers that, which makes it the clear winner for social business.”

Olga Mizrahi, founder of ohso! design and blogger on ChunkofChange.com:
“My favorite social media platform for generating leads is Twitter — especially live tweeting during events. I tweet key quotes and ideas, using event hashtags and ‘@’ symbols. Inevitably, I get lots of new followers during the event, whom I then follow up with afterward. It’s a good way to create a more personal connection in real-time.”

Mark Ippolito, senior manager at Lenati:
“For B2B marketers, LinkedIn is the most targeted platform for establishing relationships with prospects. Engaging in relevant LinkedIn groups not only amplifies one-to-one conversations with self-identified prospects but gains trust and credibility for your brand. It’s an effective tool to further understand your targets, where they go for information and what topics interest them. We have seen a huge uptick in content marketing through social channels, especially LinkedIn. Also, content distribution apps, such as Buffer, can serve as lead-nurture tools for B2B marketers to organize, schedule and share content with prospects to maintain conversations and keep the organization top-of-mind.”

Jenny Vance, president of LeadJen:
“When it comes to generating and nurturing leads, the best social media platform for me is LinkedIn. I’ve found that prospects respond more to LinkedIn messages than email. Posting news to LinkedIn is also valuable. Recently, a past client congratulated me on a post — this was a great way to reconnect with a decision-maker. Finally, when I travel, I want to maximize my time. With LinkedIn, I can search by city to see which of my contacts are close by and fill my available time with coffees and dinners. This is a great way for me to nurture prospects.”

What’s your favorite social media platform for generating and nurturing leads? Share your answer in the comments section below.

By Jason Hahn