According to Hubspot, marketers who use blogs generate 67% more leads than those who don’t. In fact, cost per lead using ‘SEO – content marketing’ (of which blogging is a major component) is the cheapest method when compared with other popular marketing methods.

Social media can help you generate plenty of affordable leads too. As displayed in the above graph, its cost per lead is only higher than SEO – content marketing.

Social media and blogging are definitely effective for generating leads when used individually. But what if you used them together, would it get you more leads? And how would you go about this?

To find out read the tips I share below. How to integrate social media into your blog to get more leads.

Provide social login/sign up options on opt-in forms:

Social login is when you let people sign up for your blog’s newsletter or lead magnet with their social media accounts instead of typing in their email address and other details.

An example below is the landing page from Long Radius.

As you can see they provided the option to either sign up for the guide with email or with social media accounts on Linkedin, Google+ or Facebook.

In the above post, they mention that the older version of the landing page only had an email sign up.

This is a screenshot of the older landing page.

After they switched this version with the landing page offering social login they were able to increase conversion by 52%. This increase occurs because it is a lot easier for visitors to just click a button and add in details instead of typing them in.

An increase in conversions isn’t the only benefit this offers. The other benefit is that you will get your leads’ best email address. People love social media and spend several hours on it daily. So, when they sign up for a social media account they will use their best email address to make sure they get regular email updates.

Therefore, when you capture a lead using social login, you will get the same email address they use for their social media account. This will be their most used email address and will help you reach them better.

Social login can be easily set up with a social login tool.

Add it to your blog’s landing pages, popup forms, and other opt-in forms.

Track site visitors:

A study found that on average blogs convert only 1.95% visits to leads while the top 10% have a conversion rate of 4.77%. This means that even if you are among the top bloggers, for every 100 visits only about 5 will turn into leads. 95 of them will leave and might never return.

To convert more of these lost leads, you can use an advanced analytics tool for tracking website visits, so you can find individual audience members and reach out to them via social media.

A tool like this provides specifics on the country they are from and the pages they visited to help you filter results. It also shows you if any of your Linkedin connections work at the company to make it easy to get in touch. If you haven’t got any connections that work here it will suggest people you can connect with.

If you are like me and mainly use your blog to get clients you will find this tool very useful. It also helps integrate Linkedin into your blog which is the best social network for B2B lead generation.

When I see a potential lead, I contact them with a Linkedin message. It works a lot like Linkedin’s ‘who viewed your profile’ feature. But it takes it to the next level by integrating your blog with Linkedin. If your blog generates a decent amount of traffic, you should definitely try this tool.

Add share buttons to encourage social recommendations:

Whose recommendations would you trust most on social media? One from a consumer or one from the brand itself.

I would definitely trust what a consumer who has no affiliation with a brand writes about them than what they brag about themselves. I am certain most people feel this way too.

Hence, you should make it easy for people to recommend your blog posts and lead magnets to their friends and followers by adding share buttons. This will drive more traffic and leads to your blog

If you want share buttons to offer strong social proof to everyone who lands on your website you should turn on the share count. Especially if your blog’s landing pages get shared a lot. When visitors see that the lead magnet has been shared plenty they will want to get a hold of it too because the shares indicate that it contains quality information.

Also, add the share buttons to the content’s page so people can share it while consuming the content or after they finish. Share buttons can be added to everything from videos to ebooks.

You can also add share buttons to your thank you page i.e. the page a lead is redirected to after signing up.

Bryan Harris found that when he did this on his thank you page and offered some extra free content in exchange for the share 54% of people shared it. This drove 3,498 new visits which converted to 349 subscribers.

Therefore, you must include share buttons on your blog’s landing pages, in the content itself and the thank you page too.

Social media and blogging together get you more leads.

As you can see above when social media and blogging are integrated they do generate more leads. They work really well together. The techniques I have discussed here are also very easy to set up and run. Hence, you should try them and boost your lead generation.

How do you integrate social media into your blogging? Has this helped you generate more leads? Please leave your comments below.