Edit: This content was updated 8/23/23

Here is a fact you may not want to hear: Likes and shares on social media are not leads. They may make your brand feel good, and we can’t lie – they do offer some validation and possibly some exposure - but they are not leads.

What this means for your content marketing strategy is that you could be wasting valuable time, talent, and resources if you’re busy chasing likes instead of focusing your efforts elsewhere.

In this blog post, we’re going to explore engagement on social media and explain why likes and shares are not leads.

We’re also going to provide some examples of how to use social media content to increase engagement with the right audiences using digital content to reach leads effectively.

What Do Social Media Statistics Show Us?

So, starting out, let’s take a look at what social media statistics tell us about who uses social media platforms. This information will let us know from the start whether it’s even worth pursuing leads using social media content.

We can then consider how to craft our digital content to speak to the things that build awareness, educate and inform leads, and finally, cause leads to convert to customers.

Social Media Usage Statistics Around the World

Every single day, brands spend countless hours and resources on social media encouraging likes and shares, and it’s true that these do serve some important purposes.

Likes and shares build social proof, they have the potential to expose your brand to new buyers, and they can tell you what content is resonating with your audiences so you can focus on the most effective forms of content.

Let’s look at some numbers:

• Over half the world’s population uses social media. If you run a business of any type and you aren’t leveraging social media as part of your content marketing strategy, you’re likely missing out on a huge segment of your customer base.

• Most people are on social media at least weekly, and many use social media daily. With this kind of reach, you would be wise to use social media to build brand awareness.

• Even in older demographics, 40% of seniors use social media. Compare that to 84% of young adults, and it’s fairly obvious to see that the reach of social media is huge.

Unfortunately, for all of the work and money that many companies put into their social media efforts, the simple fact remains: Likes and shares are not leads.

What is a “Like”?

Before we go on, take a moment to think about this question: What is a “like” on social media? What does a “like” really mean?

For many brands, receiving a like on social media means that someone took the time to acknowledge your business, products, or services. This is great, right? Well, it is, but what does it mean for conversions?

When someone likes something on social media, they are sending a signal to a brand that they want more of that type of content. They don’t necessarily plan to purchase a product or service related to the content, however.

Instead, they are, at that moment, expressing approval of the content. We’ll get more into this below, but you need to differentiate between someone liking your content and someone liking what you're selling.

Let’s take things a step further and look at false engagement numbers and why they can hurt your social media content marketing efforts:

Beware of False Engagement

If you put up a funny meme on your company’s Facebook page or you upload a non-sequitur to TikTok, people may give it a like because they liked the content itself.

They did not click “like” because they care about your brand. Cute cat videos will always garner likes, but do they encourage further engagement? Maybe, maybe not, but that’s kind of the problem here.

Unless you are, at the very least, raising awareness about your brand and gaining brand followers from your social media content, you’re wasting time. Digital content should encourage people to follow your brand. They should want to follow your brand to get more of the same content.

Followers Can Be Thought of as Distant Leads

Unlike likes and shares, followers can be thought of as leads, at least in a distant type of way. Of course, the goal of getting followers is so that you can target them again and again with valuable content that causes these followers to become customers.

This means that, unless your brand sells cute cats, it’s unlikely that you can survive on cute cat videos alone. But, remember, you got engagement from your cute cat videos. Doesn’t this mean that people want more cute cat videos?

If people are only following you because of the cute cat video, you have a problem. Once you stop posting cute cat videos and focus on content that’s relevant to your products and services, engagement will tank, and followers will drop off.

This is false engagement, and it not only does you no good, but also causes your engagement metrics to become inflated. Can you trust the data you have? If you can’t, then all of your social media content efforts don’t matter because there’s no way to know what’s actually helping and what’s simply false engagement.

Are Shares Leads?

You might think that shares would qualify someone as a lead more than likes, but the truth is that they are about the same as likes. People share content for all kinds of reasons, but you don’t know who they are sharing the content with.

The people who see your content could be the furthest thing from your target audience you could possibly imagine.

In fact, this is akin to handing out flyers on the street for a niche store that sells highly-specialized products. Yeah, you may get a customer or two out of it, but for each one you do get, you’re going to waste days handing out flyers.

Why Do People Share Social Media Content?

In some cases, people share content or tag others in content that they think might be of interest to that person. But does that mean they are sharing for the purpose of driving leads to your brand? The truth is that people share things they think are funny, cute, interesting, or unique.

These people are not sharing your brand’s content - they are sharing cute cat content. It doesn’t matter what brand is creating this content - they would share it no matter what because they like the content, not the brand behind the content.

Unless you sell cute cats, this content has no value to the audience as it relates to your business. In other words, it’s forgettable in terms of branding and lead generation. It’s the fast food of content, and it isn’t going to be filling for social media users or healthy for your bottom line.

There are Exceptions That Can Cause Shares to Turn Into Leads

Now, there are exceptions to this. When we look at an example like the Geico Gecko, we see a different type of sharing and engagement taking place.

Geico sells insurance products, and geckos are lizards. The two have nothing to do with one another in any meaningful way. The key to Geico’s memorable success in turning the Geico Gecko into a mascot and calling card was repetition. The cute commercials featuring the lizard were played non-stop on television when the campaign first got started.

The commercials were memorable and included the catchy tagline, “15 minutes could save you 15% or more on car insurance.” People talked about the cute commercials, and as video-sharing services like YouTube came around, sharing of funny brand commercials became popular.

In this sense, Geico got name recognition through the commercials, and the gecko mascot became synonymous with cute commercials. People wanted to check out Geico because of the tagline, but the commercials repeating constantly for years made the tagline stick in your head.

So, it wasn’t the gecko itself that generated leads. Instead, it was the tagline; however, the lizard sold the tagline which generated leads.

Repeating something often enough to the point where it’s part of the cultural zeitgeist is definitely one way to do things (see: the ShamWow commercials or the Head-On headache medication commercials,) but for many brands, the cost of advertising like this is out of reach.

This is also a hit-or-miss strategy since what your brand considers funny or clever may be a total flop with audiences no matter how many times you repeat it.

Creating Leads Through Social Media Content

So, if you can’t count on likes and shares as leads, how can you use social media content to create leads? The answer is to consistently develop content that has clear goals in mind, is relatable, and speaks to the core interests of your audience without betraying your brand values.
The social media content portion of your overall content marketing strategy should rely on making shareable content, but you also need to think about where social media falls in your sales and marketing funnels. In most cases, social media content is considered top-of-funnel and middle-of-funnel content.

Let’s Talk About Content Funnels

We don’t want to get too “in the weeds,” but funnels in content marketing are broken down into different types of content designed for different purposes. Your funnel starts out wide and narrows as leads progress toward becoming customers.

Below is a brief explanation of the top, middle, and bottom portions of marketing funnel content:

Top-of-Funnel Content

Top-of-funnel content is meant to build awareness and attract attention. This is perfect for social media because it can generate followers and likes. The more your content resonates with your audience, the more likely they are to follow or subscribe to your social media channels.

Middle-of-Funnel Content

Although people at the top of your content funnel are not leads, they may be considered leads in the middle of the funnel. The wide top portion has brought in a lot of awareness, but some people fall away as they lose interest. The ones who remain move onto the middle of the funnel and can be considered distant leads.

Bottom-of-Funnel Content

Finally, you can then create bottom-of-funnel content. This is content that leads social media followers to your website where they can either fill out a contact form or make a purchase.

How Do You Create Top-of-Funnel Content?

It’s beyond the scope of this post to get into the specifics of content funnels, but for the sake of our discussion, let’s focus briefly on top-of-funnel content:

You can create top-of-funnel content by attracting people to your site through shareable content and well-written, valuable web pages. Once there, your landing pages should guide the visitor where you want them to go to experience the journey you’ve laid out.

To keep them coming back and boost visibility in search results to generate more leads, create engaging blog posts using keywords and topics that are relevant to your audience. Lastly, create a valuable email newsletter or content subscription that provides an ongoing connection to your brand.

How Do You Create Middle-of-Funnel Content?

Creating middle-of-funnel social media content means creating content that shows the value of your brand and its products and services. This can be done by highlighting success stories, showcasing real-world product demos, putting together customer testimonials, using infographics, and more.

At this stage in your content funnel, you will have already attracted attention and promoted awareness. Middle-of-funnel content speaks to people who are following your social media accounts.

These are people who can technically be considered leads because they are followers, but middle-of-funnel content supports their journeys to get to bottom-of-funnel content.

As such, middle-of-funnel content should be geared toward driving visits to landing pages on your website that contain bottom-of-funnel content. You want to entice social media followers and visitors to click through to your landing pages.

How Do You Create Bottom-of-Funnel Content?

Most bottom-of-funnel content is placed on your website or store page. It doesn’t get used exclusively for social media since social media is a place to generate leads after building awareness.

Now, some social media profiles double as storefronts. If you run your business entirely off of Facebook or some other platform, you can create bottom-of-funnel content for your profiles. The challenge here is balancing all three types of content for the right audiences.

If you’re always promoting bottom-of-funnel content on your social media pages, you may drive away newcomers who should be exposed to top-of-funnel content.

If you jump right from top-of-funnel content to bottom-of-funnel content and ignore the middle, you’ll have a harder time getting your audience to click through to your landing pages to complete a sale.

Bottom-of-funnel content includes content that sells the product or service. This content can include more in-depth case studies, competitive analyses of your products versus your competition, and sales collateral with pricing tiers.

Is Social Media Marketing Bad for Lead Generation?

Social media marketing is a fantastic and powerful tool for lead generation. It should be one part of your overall content marketing strategy no matter what industry you serve, and when you harness the power of social media content to resonate with buyers, you absolutely can generate leads using social media platforms.

What you want to avoid is thinking that because a post received a lot of likes and shares, you’re somehow engaging in lead generation. Likes and shares are not leads, but social media content can be used to generate leads.

The key to using social media content effectively to reach people who are more willing to convert is to know your audience, attract them to your profile(s), make them aware of your products and services, and provide useful, valuable content that entices them to follow or subscribe. From there, develop middle-of-funnel content that causes your audience to move onto bottom-of-funnel content where you can close the sale.

Contact Charlotte Content Marketing to Learn More About How Social Media Content Can Generate Leads

To learn more about lead generation through content development and strategy in Charlotte, NC, and beyond, contact Charlotte Content Marketing. Our content marketing experts can develop a customized strategy that improves lead generation efforts on social media and everywhere else your brand is found on the web.

Call our team today at (704) 323-6762 to schedule a personalized consultation, or use our convenient contact form to schedule online.