Your Internet marketing efforts range over many venues, from blogs, search engine advertising, and your own website. Social networks are a valuable addition to your Internet marketing roster, with Pew Internet reporting that 73 percent of adults use at least one social network, with Facebook taking the top network spot. Social media is the digital age’s version of word of mouth advertising, and knowing how to generate leads from your social media profiles is essential to creating a well rounded Internet marketing approach.

Media Fit for Social Networks

Consider your media options when you market on social networks. Instead of pouring money into an expensive commercial or informational video, consider creating media with socially connected tools. Forbes recommends looking at Vine, Instagram, and other services to create and host your marketing content. The challenge of this form of lead generation and sales is creating either a relevant clip in a limited time span, or choosing to focus on the viral or humor route and hoping that it brings enough recognition to your company and brand to create qualified traffic.

Social Network Advertising

Social network advertising opens up avenues to place your ads in front of a large audience, but the question is whether you get enough lead generation to make it worth your while. Adobe reports that Facebook click through rates have increased 275 percent. Much of the increase can be attributed to ads that are within the Facebook newsfeed, instead of placed off to the side of the content. You also pick and choose the demographics for Facebook advertising. Generating home insurance leads, for example, is a much simpler process if you target the age demographic more likely to own a home instead of renting. This method allows you to spend your advertising dollars in the most effective fashion.

Social Media Engagement

Learn the etiquette and rules of each social networking platform, and apply these lessons in conversations with potential customers. While it’s great to use social networks as a way to support existing customers, don’t overlook the potential use as a lead generation tool. Follow relevant industry hashtags, post about news that interests your demographic even if it isn’t strictly relevant to your business, and build up connections with your network to continue growing your brand awareness. Utilize hashtags to your benefit for visibility or for organizing group discussions on a platform such as Twitter.

Social Media Monitoring

Get a heads up about a viral marketing success coming your way, or a public relations disaster by using social media monitoring tools such as Sprout Social. These tools make it easy to interact with your potential customers and clients by steamlining responses, allowing you to schedule content, and letting you know who is mentioning you across multiple social networks. You want to cover as many relevant networks as possible, so this type of tool is also useful for keeping your profiles organized and active.