This article will share six easy ways to turn lurkers into leads.

Some background

A little background starts by evaluating your current lead generation process and whether it’s helping or hurting your efforts.

It’s important to understand the relationship among your lead generation strategies, your social media channels, your blog and your landing pages. Many times when we think of generating leads in social media, we look at the content we’re posting and neglect to look at the surrounding elements that also touch the user.

Every status update about a new blog post has three steps to drive lead generation: the status update, the blog post and the landing page. Each one of these has a different role in the process and offers a unique opportunity to optimize lead conversion. A typical lead conversion process in social media looks like the image below.

Understand your opportunities to convert leads.

You’ll notice there’s a critical component in the middle—the blog post. We spend a lot of time creating relevant content for our readers and promoting it through our social media channels. But many times, we forget to look around the content of the post to see if there is an EASY way for our visitors to become leads.

Karen Rubin, marketing product manager and marketeer for HubSpot, offered these great tips to help you optimize your blog to convert your social media traffic into leads.

#1: Offer an email blog subscription

RSS has become one of the most popular ways to allow readers to subscribe to your blog. However, it has significant limitations for lead generation. There’s no way to message an RSS subscriber directly because you don’t actually have any contact information. Your only point of contact with an RSS subscriber is when you post a new blog article.

Offering an email subscription as your primary blog subscription vehicle allows you to keep your subscribers up to date on the latest content while also sending emails that facilitate your lead generation process. Once the user has opted-in to receive updates from your company, you have the ability to continue to market to them and nurture them throughout the buying process.

Offer an email subscription on your blog.

#2: Add a Welcome pop-up for new visitors to drive email subscribers

I know many of us probably cringe at the idea of having a pop-up when someone comes to our site; however, this has been shown to tremendously increase the number of subscribers to your blog.

Chris Penn from Blue Sky Factory tested this methodology and was able to increase his blog subscribers by 733% in only two months! If you implement this well and establish rules for when the pop-up will show, it can greatly increase your email list.

Drive email subscribers with a Welcome pop-up.

#3: Include RELEVANT calls to action on your blog posts

Every blog post should include a call to action that is relevant to what the post is about. Karen pointed out that “The key is that your call to action be relevant. On the HubSpot blog, if we have a blog post about social media and marketing, we don’t include a call to action to our landing page optimization webinar. We include one to a social media–based webinar.”

Put a call to action on EVERY blog post.

#4: Keep it light and easy

Most of the calls to action we see on websites are all about buying a product or requesting to speak to a sales rep.

Karen describes this as a process of building trust, “just like you don’t ask a girl to your place to spend the night on a first date, you also don’t ask a visitor from social media to sign up for a demo with a sales rep. Someone who has read 140 characters about a blog post on Twitter and clicked through to see what the article was about likely doesn’t know enough about your company to want to dive in head-first and sign up for a trial or a demo.”

Many times our blog has first-time and repeat visitors; therefore, include calls to action that make it super-easy to buy if they’re at that point, but also include the “softer” call to action for those on a first date with your site. You definitely don’t want to force someone to search for how to get more information about your products or turn off a first-time visitor with a sales offer. Balance is the key.

#5: Be your own advertiser

Traditional content creators’ goals are to bring in visitors and then sell ad space to make money. As the world of marketing has changed, marketers are creating content and using social media to drive visitors.

Why not also use your ad space to promote your own offers? Modify traditional banner ad locations into new calls to action for your offers and drive more of your visitors to landing pages where they have the opportunity to convert into leads.

Use traditional advertising spaces to promote your own calls to action.

#6: Optimize your offers with landing pages

Once someone has clicked on one of your calls to action, make sure your landing page is optimized to convert the visitor into a lead. HubSpot recommends you follow the 7 steps outlined here to start converting more leads! For example:

• Keep it simple: keep everything about this page simple, including the number and nature of the questions you ask.
• Keep it short: seeing a massive list of 15-20 questions will make your prospect think hard about the value of his or her time.

At every stage in this process there will be people who fall off and don’t convert. You can maximize your efforts and minimize fall-off by optimizing each step in the process to drive efficient throughput.

Ultimately, the lead conversion process on your blog is just as important as the actual blog post itself. The goal is to create an efficient lead generation process between your social media channels, your status updates, your blog and your landing pages. Don’t let your social media strategies fall flat because you haven’t created an efficient way for them to become a lead.

What do you think? What has worked for driving leads on your blog? Do you have an example of a great blog that is set up to convert leads? Leave a comment below to share your thoughts or questions.

This article will reveal five ways you can build meaningful relationships on LinkedIn that will lead to business opportunities.

Is LinkedIn Not Working For You?

Up to this point, you’ve probably focused on building up your connections to grow your online influence and visibility. However, the greater challenge lies in actually going deeper with those connections that you’ve made online. If you’re simply connected to someone but have no further dialogue, what have you really accomplished?

The lifeline of new and existing business is relationships, and having meaningful conversations and in-person meetings are crucial in order to move from the connection phase into the relationship phase.

How can you leverage your professional presence on LinkedIn to connect on a deeper level with people and turn those connections into more meaningful relationships?

#1: Timing Is Everything

The time to go deeper with a connection is when you’re top of mind; after you’ve made a new connection, an introduction, received an introduction, answered a question, received an answer to a question and even after someone has commented on your status update or group discussion!

Action Step: All of these situations give you a reason to take the next step and initiate a related conversation. Give a compliment, ask a question, ask for a favor, ask for advice, or ask for an introduction soon after you’ve had a basic interaction with one of your first-, second- or third-degree connections. Conversations can lead to phone calls, ongoing dialogue and potentially even in-person meetings!

#2: Leveraging Events

If you’re paying attention to what your LinkedIn connections are up to, you may be able to see if they’re planning to attend an upcoming event if it is highlighted in the LinkedIn network. Look for events in your area that you’re also planning to attend or may possibly attend. Live events provide an excellent opportunity to meet and converse with online connections even if they’re second- or third-degree connections!

Action Step: Visit the event RSVP page, determine who’s attending and reach out to one or two of those individuals. You can either send a message (if you have a first-degree or group connection) or an InMail^TM (if second or third degree, or no group connection) letting them know that you’ll also be in attendance and that you look forward to the opportunity to meet them in person. This is a very nonthreatening way to get face-to-face and go deeper with your connections of every degree.

Find events in your area and reach out to connections that you can potentially meet in person

#3: Sync Geography With Travel

Perhaps you have clients in several geographical locations. Where does your network live and work? Under the “My Connections” tab, you can see the location of all of your connections. Let’s say you have a business trip planned to New York City to visit one client, but 15 connections are there whom you might also be able to get in front of. Or perhaps there are a number of connections within the same city whom you can bring together for a special lunch or dinner!

Action Step: Contact connections to let them know you’re going to be in their area soon and ask them if they’d like to meet for coffee or lunch so you can spend a few minutes learning more about their business. Or contact several connections who have complimentary businesses and live in the same area and invite them to a small-group networking dinner!

Reach out to connections based on your travel in order to arrange for face-to-face meetings

#4: Ask for Advice

Most influential people don’t like to have their brains picked, but everyone loves to give advice whether they admit it or not! People love to give their opinions when asked, and asking for advice can actually endear you to people because it makes them feel important.

When you reach out to an influential connection, first explain who you are, reference a common thread, give a genuine compliment, ask for advice, and explain your reason for doing so. Always have a reason when asking for advice. You’ll be amazed at how you can open the door to building a deeper relationship around common personal and professional interests by asking for advice!

Action Step: For example: “Hi John, we connected recently here on LinkedIn and I noticed that you commented about the upcoming technology event taking place next month in Seattle. It appears that you’ve attended in the past and you really seem to have a grasp on the subject matter. I’d like to ask whether you think it’s a good fit for a marketing team to attend, as I am thinking about taking my company. Thanks so much in advance for sharing your thoughts!

#5: Be a Resource

Going beyond basic listening and serving as a resource to your connections is a powerful way to stay top of mind and develop more meaningful relationships on LinkedIn. Review status updates, discussion topics and questions from your connections frequently to determine where you can add value, provide insight or resources, or help promote your connection through a key introduction.

Once your connections see you as a resource, they will classify you as a valued relationship in their network. Acting as a resource can create opportunities to move from online social networking to offline conversations and face-to-face meetings.

Action Step: Look for opportunities to reply to connections’ status updates, questions or discussion topics publicly, and then send a more detailed message to them privately with additional tips and resources that can help accomplish their goals.

Take time to reply privately to connections where you may be able to offer more detailed resources, tips, or guidance to them

If the purpose of social media is to build your network of connections, you must also think about how to engage those connections to turn them into true relationships. As you build solid relationships, you’ll create more opportunities for introductions and referrals into your own business.

There are plenty of resources available to help you grow your influence on LinkedIn. Here’s a great resource for learning more about the basics of LinkedIn and also some top marketing tips that can help you gain greater visibility on this powerful, professional social network.

Challenge yourself to go out and participate on LinkedIn with a strategic focus on getting to know your connections better, and use the steps mentioned in this article to help you generate conversations and face-to-face meetings. You stand to gain a greater return on your social networking investment if you can turn connections into relationships. Good luck!

What do you think about these tips? Have you tried any?  How is LinkedIn working for your business?  Please leave your comments in the box below.

But, if you build it, will they come? And if they come, will they stay and engage?

There are two primary components to Facebook fan page engagement: 1) Sharing quality, relevant content and 2) inciting comments.  In this article I’ll tell you how to best engage with Facebook fans.

Of course, there are many other components of effective Facebook fan pages and Facebook marketing in general. However, for the purposes of this two-part post, we’ll focus on content and comments. The more comments you have, the more viral visibility and free marketing you’ll create. But your fans have to have something to comment on!

Share Quality, Relevant Content – Daily

TechCrunch recently posted a Facebook fan page study by Sysomos that revealed 77 percent of fan pages have fewer than 1,000 fans. What stood out for me in that post was this fact: “Facebook fan pages tend to be updated only once every 16 days.”

TechCrunch goes on to say, “On Twitter, you follow someone because you want to hear what they have to say. On Facebook, you fan them just to show your support or affinity. Too often, it’s a throwaway gesture.”

While this may be true for many Facebook members and fan pages, I see a lively fan page as an extension of your blog and business – a place where you can generate real community and further solidify your brand.

1) How Often Should You Post?

• For most fan pages, there is a direct correlation between frequency of posts and number of fans. Frequency is king, but there’s a fine balance – you don’t want to overwhelm your fans.
• If you’re just starting out with your fan page, I would suggest a minimum of one update per day and increase from there to several times a day (mixing up the types of posts – see below) if you’re getting a good response from your fans.
• Daily posting (at least Monday through Saturday) should yield daily comments and engagement.
• You’ll find the right rhythm with your fans. Better to start with once a day than several times a day and have your wall filled with only your own posts.
• Also, keep in mind “high traffic windows.” Depending on your time zone and the time zone of the majority of your fans, you’ll probably want to post sometime between 8:15am PST and 2:00pm PST.

2) What to Post

• I recommend a mix of your own thoughts, breaking news, useful tips, tools, resources and links from other sites in your industry and related industries. Stay on topic, stay focused.
• You could create an editorial calendar for your fan page just like many bloggers do.
• If you’re not sure what content your fans want, ask them – in a poll or status update.
• If your fan base is small and still growing, ask your Twitter followers, Facebook friends, email list, and blog subscribers. They are all potential fans. (See related post: 5 Ways to Promote Your Facebook Fan Page).

In this screen shot of Volkswagen’s Facebook Fan Page, photos from a recent auto show yielded 363 likes and 68 comments and a video trailer got 121 likes and 25 comments. These are great results, as every one of the fan actions created a post on their respective walls and out into their friends’ news feeds. Free visibility, and every line item has a link back to VW’s fan page.

3) Sourcing Quality Content

• Your own blog: Import using the Notes app or, ideally, the Networked Blogs app.
• Create your own Alltop page and review each morning for fresh content to share.
• And/or subscribe to the top 15 to 25 blogs in your industry and related industries in your Google reader and review daily.
• Create Twitter lists and scan daily for new, relevant information to share (see also 5 Creative Ways to Use Your Twitter Favorites).
• Your Twitter Favorites RSS feed imported via the Notes app.
• Your YouTube videos and/or other relevant videos.

4) Cultivating Your Style

• Most people will come back to your fan page if there’s a real sense of community.
• It’s important to be open, inviting, warm, friendly and personable. Even if you’re a large brand.
• Starbucks leads the way with engagement – you might observe their style for ideas. Though they use their globally recognized logo, you’ll occasionally see posts in first person. I think this is commendable, as it really creates that personal feel so important to social networks.

5) Mix Up the Types of Posts

Text

This is your standard status update. You get 420 characters in the publisher to say what you want. As long as you don’t have a link in the update, the post automatically changes your latest Status Update at the top.

I highly recommend using the Facebook fan page to Twitter app at http://facebook.com/twitter. You simply link your fan page to your Twitter account, then choose which posts to share as tweets (Status Updates, Photos, Links, Notes, Events). You may need to experiment to get this just right.

Your posts will automatically truncate at around 120 characters and include a bit.ly link back to your fan page. Regardless of the number of characters, the tweet always contains the bit.ly link. Here’s an example of an update I posted for this blog post:

To track stats on any bit.ly link, just paste it into your browser and add a “+” sign at the end. As of the time of this writing, this post/link had 109 clicks and the post had 23 comments, plus replies on Twitter.

Video

Video is the next best thing to meeting your fans in person. There are many choices for video updates: You talking into the camera, photo montages (try Animoto), screencasts (using software like Camtasia Studio for PC or Mac, or ScreenFlow for Mac).

When you talk into the camera, always make good eye contact with the camera lens – just as if you were chatting to one good friend. You could do a video tip per day or per week. Make sure to keep the length short and the content concise. The ideal length for videos is up to 1 minute and 40 seconds.

You can record directly on Facebook or load a file onto your fan page – see screenshots below:

Here’s a video upload example from Dell Computer’s Facebook Fan Page – a 41-second ad for their nifty new customizable range of laptops, with 179 likes and 57 comments.

Or, you could pull in the video from YouTube as a link (click the Links icon on the publisher) – and this pulls in the live video player just as if you’d loaded the video file as in the example above:

Photos

Upload relevant pictures periodically and be sure to encourage your fans to upload photos anytime they wish. Each time your fans upload a photo, the thumbnail goes onto their profile wall and out into the news feeds of their friends.

Make sure your settings allow fans to post content. Just to the right under the publisher, click Options, then Settings:

In the screenshot below, there’s a photo on the Coca-Cola Facebook Fan Page – what’s neat about this photo is it was actually a fan-loaded image that Coca-Cola then reposted using the Share button (a great illustration of how Coca-Cola partnered with their raving fans who created the page).

Links

• Anytime you post a link in the publisher, Facebook displays a preview with a choice of thumbnails. (If you’re publishing content from a third-party app like Ping.fm, the thumbnail will be a default view.)
• You may at times wish to create an actual status update with a link in it, instead of a link with the preview on the wall. Here’s what to do: Before clicking the Share button, simply click the “x” to delete the link preview:

The post goes out as a status update with a clickable link:

Events

You can quickly create Event listings right from the publisher for any virtual or live event you have coming up. Fans can easily RSVP, as a regular Event page is created when you publish the event.

@ tags

This is a relatively new feature on Facebook. You can tag any friend, any fan page you’ve joined, any group you’re a member of and any event you’ve RSVPed to attend. You can include up to six @ tags in any update. Use the @ tagging strategically and your post will show up on your friends’ walls and other fan pages’ walls per the tag. (Just type the @ symbol in the publisher and the first letter or two of who/what you want to tag and a list drops down for you to select from.)

Notes app

This app is typically used to import your blog. However, I like the Networked Blogs app, so I actually import the RSS feed of my Twitter Favorites via the Notes app, which makes it easy to push relevant, regular content onto my fan page wall (and into the news feeds of my fans).

Incite Comments

Now that you have a wide variety of regular, quality, relevant content posting on your fan page, here are some points about inciting comments:

• For status updates, try ending with a question.
• Add your own comments as needed to get the ball rolling.
• Come back and reply often to your fans’ comments – Facebook currently doesn’t have threaded commenting, so I suggest addressing specific fans in your comments as @name.
• Do your best to respond to fan questions as promptly as possible. If you find you can’t keep up with the volume of questions, offer a free teleseminar or webinar in which you answer your fans’ top questions.

Vin Diesel has the second most popular Facebook fan page with well over seven million fans. Vin doesn’t post all that often, but when he does, each post yields tens of thousands of comments and likes. Just like Starbucks, there’s something to learn from Vin’s style – he talks to his fans in a very warm, caring and authentic manner.

In part two of this Facebook Fan Page Engagement post, I’ll cover:

1. How to encourage fans to keep coming back to add their own content and comments and ask questions, etc.
2. Monitoring insights – what do they mean, how to analyze the numbers and adjust your posts accordingly.
3. Should you also use the “Send an Update to Fans” feature? Do fans read their updates?
4. How to spark ongoing engagement via the Discussions tab.
5. Setting up systems for monitoring and responding to your fan engagement, given that there are currently no notifications of activity or RSS feeds to subscribe to on fan pages.
6. Integrating your Twitter followers and activity into your fan page engagement.

Editors note: Check out Social Media Examiner’s new Facebook fan page by clicking here.

Now it’s your turn: What types of content are you finding sparks the most engagement on your Facebook fan page? Where do you get stuck most with your fan page and what else would you like to see covered in future posts about social media engagement? Please add your thoughts in the comments below, then stay tuned for part two!

Do any of these sound familiar? “Who has time?” “You expect me to do all this on top of my normal duties?” “How do you fit everything in?” … and so on.

I am not going to lie to you. Social media does take time. In fact, time is going to be one of your major hidden costs of doing business on the Internet.  And for some of us, that time could be wasted if we are not careful.

You need to watch where your time goes to ensure you’re spending it efficiently and with the desired impact.  Here are five tips to help you.

#1: Spend Your Time Intentionally

It’s all too easy to just chit chat, browse and surf, get distracted or feel like we are making progress when really we are avoiding work and using social media “engagement and interaction” as an excuse to procrastinate. There are good conversations and wasteful conversations and you need to decide which is which.

Consider a face-to-face networking event. Do you spend all of your time speaking to one person at that event about the weather, or do you spread yourself around a bit and find new and interesting people to connect with? Are you just hanging out or do you direct your efforts toward a precise tactical aim or specific goal?

You need to know what you are doing and how you are going to measure your success.

How does this help you find time? Well, most businesses and individuals already allocate time for marketing, networking and research. If you know that your social media activities come in under one of those headings, and your efforts in social media are going to achieve equal or better results to other things you could do under those headings, then you are equipped to carve out time to try social media instead.

#2: Carve Out Time Where Social Media Is More Efficient

Because of my social media efforts, I no longer have to pitch, write proposals or go to sales meetings. I have never had to cold-call for my own business, and I do not write competitive bids.

How much time could you save if you didn’t have to do this kind of sales lead generation or closing?

In my previous job, I would have to spend more than six hours in a car just so I could go to one 30-minute sales presentation competing with several other companies with very little differentiation between us. Not only was it soul-destroying and a colossal waste of time, it was actually very ineffective.

I am not saying you will be able to 100% replace your old way of doing things with social media right away, and I would not suggest that is wise even if you could. But you should be able to take an hour or two out of a week to test social media and see how the results look. In fact, combining approaches usually works best, as each technique and medium compounds the results of the others. Reaching prospects through a multi-channel approach is normally much better than the sum of the parts.

The great thing about social media is you can pretty much get involved anywhere and any time.

#3: Use “Dead” Time

How much time do you spend just waiting? I was recently at a conference in Las Vegas and because of the long-haul nature of the travel and the fact that I would be alone much of the time, I did a lot of hanging around and waiting, which I filled with social media. Just think of your average business trip… What do you spend a lot of time doing?

• Flights
• Taxis
• Queues
• Departure lounges
• Restaurants
• Meetings
• Hotels
• …?

If, however, you have an Internet-connected laptop or smart phone, you can at least use some of this time to stay connected, engage with people, write some content or otherwise go from “hanging around” to being semi-productive. If nothing else, you will feel like you are not all alone in the world!

How long does it take to check your messages and send out a tweet, status update, check out a link, or answer a question? Seconds? Minutes at most?

How many times during the day do you get the odd 10 minutes where you are simply waiting?

Even at my desk I have to sit and wait, watching progress bars as something calculates, prints, renders or uploads. Those are prime “check what is happening in social media” times!

What if you find you have more than a few minutes to spare?

#4: Escape, Bulk-Produce, Store Up and Schedule

On those occasions when you have a good chunk of time, make the best possible use of that time and get a power hour of content produced.

• Outline and write a set of blog posts to go out later when you are too busy
• Brainstorm and create ideas, mind map your thoughts and generate headlines
• Plan for the future, write up an editorial calendar, “most like to meet” list or line up meetings with people with whom you have lost contact
• Get organized and make your week more efficient with tasks, to-dos, filing and an empty inbox
• Write out some interesting tweets to go out over the next week so you only have to check in and reply each day

One of my friends “escapes” to the coffee shop a couple of times a week and does all his content creation and planning for that week in those few concentrated hours. Being out of the office with zero interruptions (other than the constant stream of fresh latte) means he can bang out several quality items and his brain cooperates, rather than fights against his productivity with distractions and… Ooh, shiny!

#5: Just Relax

My last point is that this is not meant to be a chore. Nobody is testing you, tracking your use of time or holding you to any grading system. It should be useful and it should be fun!

Aim to build a reputation for being helpful and providing value, and most of all being a real human being. Then people will be much more forgiving and understanding. You do not need to be perfect.

If you do not post an article this week, so what? Your Twitter followers might be concerned if you do not appear for a few days, but they are not going to start saying bad things about you if you are too busy to tweet!

For me, social media is primarily social. It is my coffee break. Yes, I do find it a very effective set of tools for my business, but I also deeply appreciate the people who are at the other end of those avatars and tools. If you keep relationships foremost in your mind and do not treat social media as something you have to do or else, you will have much greater success at it!

What do you think? Have you struggled to find time? How do you find time for social media? Please share your comments below…

Photo by Leo Reynolds