Social media lead generation: A comprehensive guide

Social media isn’t just for sharing memes and watching animal videos; it can also be a powerful tool for business growth.

When used strategically, social media lead generation can help B2B companies attract high-quality leads, nurture relationships, and convert followers into customers.

But, with so many different platforms catering to unique audiences and the challenge of keeping up with ever-changing algorithms, mastering social media for B2B lead generation requires a tailored approach and clear strategy.

And that’s precisely what this guide is about.

Here, we explain everything you need to know, from the fundamentals of social selling to our top tips for implementing proven strategies that drive results. Whether you’re looking to tap into LinkedIn’s professional network or find leads on Facebook, we’ll show you how to make your social media efforts a steady stream of revenue for your business.

Jump to: 

1. What is social media lead generation? 
2. Why you need to use social media to generate leads
3. Which social media sites are best for lead generation? 
4. How to use social media to boost lead generation efforts
5. The importance of personal brand in social media lead generation
6. How to measure the success of social media lead generation activities
7. Things to avoid when generating B2B leads on your social media channels
8. Social media lead gen 101 with Sopro

What is social media lead generation?

Social media lead generation involves creating content to attract new leads and collecting potential customers’ information using platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Like any lead generation strategy, the end goal is to identify potential customers and convert them into long-term paying customers.

But here’s the catch: each social media platform attracts a different crowd and operates on its own set of algorithms, so there’s no one-size-fits-all approach. You’ll need to tweak your strategy to fit the unique vibe of each channel.

It might seem tricky and time-consuming, but with billions of active users, can you really afford to ignore such a huge, diverse pool of potential customers?

What’s the difference between social media prospecting and lead generation?

Although these practices are related, there are distinct differences between social media prospecting and lead generation.

Before we get into the finer aspects, the main differences between prospecting and generating leads on social media are:

• Scope: Prospecting is more targeted and often involves direct outreach, whereas lead generation casts a wider net to attract potential customers.
• Engagement: Prospecting builds relationships through direct interaction, but lead generation efforts focus on capturing contact information.
• Outcome: Prospecting’s primary goal is to identify potential customers; however, lead generation activities aim to collect information about interested parties.

Social media prospecting

This is the process of using social media to identify, research, and engage with potential customers.

Typically, prospecting on social media involves:

• Searching for and connecting with potential customers.
• Engaging in conversations and building relationships.
• Providing valuable insights and content to establish credibility.

Social media lead generation

By comparison, social media lead-generation efforts focus on collecting information about potential customers to follow up with them later. This can include:

• Creating content to attract leads.
• Using calls-to-action that encourage users to provide contact information.
• Nurturing those leads through channels like email once you’ve got their details.

In a nutshell, social prospecting is a more targeted approach to finding potential customers, while lead generation casts a wider net, focusing on gathering as much contact info as possible.

Why you need to use social media to generate leads

Increasing your company’s social media lead generation efforts can have the following benefits:

• Expanded reach: Social media platforms provide access to billions of users, expanding your potential audience far beyond traditional marketing channels.
• Cost-effective: Setting up and posting on social media is free, and even paid advertising on various channels can be cheaper than traditional advertising methods.
• Enhanced engagement: Social channels allow your business to interact with your audience in real time, helping you build trust and credibility with current and prospective customers.
• Valuable insights: Social media platforms offer detailed analytics, enabling you to track performance, optimise campaigns and redefine what your target audience looks like based on who’s engaging with your content.
• Increased brand awareness: Connecting with potential customers increases brand visibility and can help you build your brand identity. Likewise, social proof, like positive feedback and customer testimonials, can raise awareness even further.
• Lead nurturing: You can foster relationships and leads using social media by sharing content and expert insights, answering questions, building relationships with your followers, and turning them into long-term customers.

Which social media sites are best for lead generation?

To ensure your lead generation strategy helps you generate high-quality leads, you need to know where your audience will likely be.

Each social media platform has its own benefits and audience; figuring out where your ideal customer profile fits into this will help you save time and money and make meeting your business goals easier.

To help you do this, here’s our breakdown of the best social media channels for lead generation:

LinkedIn

There are no two ways about it: LinkedIn is by far the most effective platform for B2B lead generation. It offers powerful filtering options that allow you to identify prospects by job titles, industries, and more, helping you ensure you’re reaching the right people. What’s more, can tailor and sponsor content to specifically target these people and use the InMail function to connect with prospects at scale.

Additionally, LinkedIn allows you to join and contribute to groups and post valuable content publicly. This gives you the opportunity to engage with like-minded professionals, build authority in your field, and start conversations that can eventually turn into valuable leads.

Looking to grow your LinkedIn profile to maximise your outreach potential? Relax, we’ve got you covered. Check out our in-depth guide on building B2B LinkedIn networks in 2025.

Facebook

According to Statista, Facebook is the world’s largest social media platform, with over 3 billion active monthly users. The site also enables you to set up a business page and run targeted ads based on your ideal customer profile (ICP), and its closed groups can be an excellent way of building your brand by sharing relevant content with users in the same industry or a specific location.

X/Twitter

Twitter’s search and trending functions help you find potential customers, understand their pain points, and participate in conversations relevant to your industry and product/software.

You can also share industry insights and information, positioning yourself as a thought leader and building brand awareness and credibility.

Instagram

Although it can be more suited for B2C companies, Instagram can be useful if you work for a B2B business that offers visually striking products, like furniture, tools, or other equipment. 

While Instagram doesn’t give businesses as much opportunity to communicate with potential clients as Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn, it can be used to leverage location tags, address concerns, and market products.

How to use social media to boost lead generation efforts

1. Define your audience

   This step should be straightforward, as you’ll likely already have an ICP in place. To improve your social media lead generation efforts, you should dig deeper into this profile to create a buyer persona.

   This persona will be based on the ICP and further research into existing customers, their interests, and their pain points. Once you’ve defined your audience, you can begin to target the social media users who fit into these characteristics. 

   This includes using the right social media platforms and crafting relevant messaging that addresses prospective customers’ pain points.

2. Optimise your profile

   Once you know who you want to target, you need to design a profile that will appeal to them.

   This includes:

   • Using high-quality images for your profile and header pictures.
   • Optimise your bio with information like what you do, who your product/service is for, and how you can help customers. You should also use relevant keywords and a compelling call to action, encouraging people to visit your website.
   • Linking to relevant landing pages on your company’s website.

3. Use lead magnets 

   Sometimes, the hardest thing can be getting your audience to share their details with you. After all, it’s possible they won’t be familiar with your brand.

   Using incentives is a fantastic way to attract leads who will share their information. These are called lead magnets, and for B2B companies, they could include resources like whitepapers, tools, templates, apps, and webinars.

   For example, a compelling lead magnet could be tweeting out an interesting statistic to encourage people to download a research paper that provides more information on the data in question.

   Psssst…did you know we published a killer B2B lead generation statistics page that’s packed full of exclusive, expert-led insights? Well, you do now.

4. Use ads

   LinkedIn and Facebook Ads, among other methods, are highly effective ways to generate leads – and usually cost-effective, too. 

   Social channels offer highly specific targeting options to help you reach the perfect audience – and even help you research the content or offers that will capture their interest.

   Another payback here is that targeting options, such as similar audiences, can teach you more about your potential market than you would otherwise know.

5. Let people know where you are

   When you start using social media, let people know. Many leads on your mailing lists will likely be active on various platforms, so tell them where to find you.

   Encouraging people to follow you on social media enables you to continue the conversation and expose potential clients to your expertise.

   Another benefit is that it can help to humanise your business and introduce the people who make it special. This can help to familiarise your followers with your colleagues, making those initial sales conversations easier and more friendly.

6. Use testimonials

   Customer stories and testimonials are powerful ways to add social proof to your social media campaigns.

   Two out of three people are more likely to buy something after watching a testimonial video that demonstrates how a business, product, or service has helped others.

   For a simple and engaging way to do this, collect reviews and testimonials together and then turn them into a quick minute-long animated video that you share on your favourite channels. 

7. Use lead gen forms

   Take your social media advertising to the next level with lead-gen ads that have a pre-populated form that makes it simple to finish the sign-up process. 

   LinkedIn has really mastered the art of these. It reports that its forms typically see a 13% conversion rate, while most landing pages struggle to muster just over 2%.

8. Use retargeting 

   Retargeting can amplify your social advertising and help you reengage prospects and lapsed customers.

   For example, when a prospect clicks on your ad, they may browse the landing page but not sign up. Retargeting allows you to continue reaching them with ads. These can either encourage them to finish the sign-up process or to view another offer that may be more enticing.

   You can also retarget others to convert them into a lead:

   • People who’ve landed on your website through search
   • People who’ve visited your site from a referrer
   • Lapsed customers
   • Social followers who haven’t signed up

9. Use social media conferences

   Virtual conferences and events are a great way to establish yourself as an authority while attracting a highly relevant audience of potential leads.

   Generating leads is simple – the conference organisation does the work. Ask people to sign up to attend the conference or access the recordings after the event.

10. Use influencers

    With social media content attracting a strong and loyal audience, sponsoring shows and channels can make a lot of sense. By engaging an influencer to talk about your brand, product or service, you gain social proof. You also benefit from having your specific messages reach your specific audience as they consume the content they love.

The importance of personal branding in social media lead generation

As well as using your company to generate leads and interest in your products and services, you can do this from personal accounts, too.

People buy from people, so posting and commenting as yourself can help your message resonate further and build your reputation as a thought leader in your specific industry.

Another benefit to building your personal brand is that by sharing industry insights and recommendations, you encourage people to buy into your company’s ideas and ways of doing things. This makes the lead nurturing process more streamlined and effective.

It’s likely that many of your competitors will already be leveraging social media, targeting similar buyer personas and ICPs, but posting as yourself gives you an edge – helping to build authenticity and reliability.

To establish your personal brand on social media, remember:

• Consistency is key – post regularly
• Don’t worry about what people will think – just post
• Know your target audience and post content for them
• Carve a niche – ask yourself what you want to be known for and build a content strategy around this
• Comment on prospective customer’s posts – be a familiar face and engage with your audience
• Be yourself – social media conversations should be natural, so try to avoid too much jargon and sales speak

How to measure the success of social media lead generation activities

One of the most important parts of building a social media strategy is reviewing its performance and refining campaigns and content where necessary.

Building a brand, whether it’s your company’s or your own, won’t happen overnight. Trends and audience behaviour change, so your strategy needs to evolve, too.

With this in mind, here are six metrics you can review to assess the performance of your social media lead generation process:

1. Lead volume: The number of leads generated through your social media activity over a specific period.
2. Conversion rate: This is the percentage of leads that turn into paying customers – a high conversion rate indicates that your social media campaigns are attracting the right audience.
3. Cost per lead: This metric helps assess the efficiency of your budget allocation when using targeted ads. You can calculate this by dividing the cost of the campaign by the number of leads generated.
4. Engagement metrics: Social media websites offer a lot of data to analyse, including engagement rates, impressions, and profile visits. Use this information to understand the ratio of people interacting with your posts to the number of people viewing them.
5. Lead quality score: This evaluates how closely a lead aligns with your target client profile, helping prioritise leads most likely to convert. Read our sales expert’s blog for the lowdown on lead scoring.
6. Social media referrals and website traffic: Measure the number of visitors coming to your website directly from social media platforms. You can do this by using UTM codes in your shared links.

Things to avoid when generating B2B leads on your social media channels

When generating leads on social media channels, there are several key mistakes to avoid:

• Not clearly defining your target audience: Trying to appeal to everyone results in generic messaging that resonates with no one.
• Focusing on vanity metrics: Obsessing over likes and follower counts instead of meaningful engagement and conversations that actually generate leads.
• Using a formal tone and being too salesy: Social media users want to be relaxed and entertained, so you need to take a casual, conversational approach to engage effectively with potential leads. Remember to prioritise building relationships and providing value before trying to sell.
• Neglecting to listen and respond: Social media is a two-way conversation. Failing to answer questions or engage with your audience limits lead generation potential.
• Losing focus: Being active on too many platforms can spread your efforts thinly. Focus on channels where your ICP and buyer personas are most active.
• Not utilising paid advertising: Organic reach is often not enough. Use carefully targeted paid ads to expand your reach and lead generation efforts.
• Overlooking email marketing integration: Failing to connect social media efforts with email marketing misses opportunities to nurture leads effectively.
• Using the same tactics for different products: Each product or service may require a unique approach to lead generation on social media.
• Neglecting compliance: Ensure your lead generation tactics adhere to platform rules and data protection regulations.

Social media lead gen 101 with Sopro

If you’re looking for a standout B2B lead generation agency with the skills, experience, and tenacity needed to bring your business’s ideal customers knocking on your door, get in touch, and let’s get to work. 

Whether you need lead generation for financial companies or a lead generation agency for enterprise businesses, don’t look any further than Sopro.

For more insights and guidance, head on over to our blog. Our experts have compiled guides on everything you need to know about lead generation on prospecting, including information on how to overcome sales objections, and how to generate more leads from webinars. 

You’ll also find our ultimate guide to B2B lead generation, which is packed full of advice and tips on maximising your efforts and effectiveness.