Do you know how many users are active on social media? The latest data shows that there are 4.95 billion social media users globally and the number is forecast to reach 5.17 billion by the end of 2024. With an average time of 2 hours and 24 minutes that users spend on social media platforms daily, people share their interests, daily life, emotions, etc., online, making social media a valuable database for lead generation. Here, we’ll walk you through how to get leads from social media with easy steps.
Top 4 Social Media Platforms to Get Leads
As we know, there are countless social media platforms online. Each platform has different features in the user demographics, content types, user interests, etc. Therefore, you can hunt for leads with specific parameters like interests, location, preferences, demands, etc., to get the most relevant potential leads from different social media platforms. Here are some TOP social media platforms where you can scrape leads.
1. Twitter (Currently X)
Twitter is one of the most common platforms for news and current events. It now has 450 million users worldwide. Twitter users have a huge appetite for shopping and the potential to make purchases. For example, a report claims that over 75% of users on Twitter have bought something based on Twitter conversion. So, for businesses that look for leads to launch marketing campaigns and boost sales, Twitter can be the perfect place to scrape leads.
2. TikTok
TikTok has been the most trending social media in recent years. Although it only launched in 2016, it has attracted about 1.67 billion users globally. For businesses that aim to reach a young and active audience, TikTok is a great place to get leads in Generation Z. In addition, TikTok is known for its viral trends. Scraping leads from it can help you identify trending topics and influencers within your target audience.
3. Reddit
Reddit is a question-and-answer platform with about 430 million users. Users on Reddit are engaged in sharing insights and solutions about specific topics within numerous communities. Its authenticity and transparency form genuine connections between users. While hunting for leads on it, you might get more reliable leads who are genuinely interested in your products or services.
4. Quora
Users on Quora span a wide range of professionals, experts, and enthusiasts. Similar to Reddit, it’s a diverse community for businesses to find leads by checking relevant discussions and questions. If you look under the trending questions that are related to your businesses, you can identify your potential partners and customers.
Tips: besides social media, you can hunt for leads from a variety of websites. Check out our top list of websites to grab leads.
What Information You Can Get on Social Media
Digging into social media data, you can easily scrape information about users for lead generation in many dimensions. Along with profile information, their interests, network, and engagements, can be found on social media. Such information can be very effective for you to identify ideal leads.
- Profile information: including names, job titles, companies, industries, locations, etc., that allow you to create a targeted list of potential leads;
- Contact information: although contact information isn’t commonly shared on social media due to privacy concerns, sometimes leads will share their email address or phone number;
- Connections and networks: by scraping what users your potential leads are following and connected with, you can get more leads to prospect;
- Interests and hobbies: understanding what users are interested in can help in personalizing outreach to them. For example, the posts users share can give you insight into their preferences, opinions, and the issues they care about. Checking what kinds of posts are getting a lot of responses will help you understand what resonates with users.
In addition to these, you can also scrape leads by checking events like webinars and conferences hosted on social media and specific hashtags to locate potential leads.
Scrape Leads From Social Media with Octoparse
Octoparse is a no-code web scraping tool for anyone. With advanced functions like auto-detection, cloud solution, automatic data export, etc., it simplifies the process of building lead scrapers regardless of coding skills. Now, let’s follow the four steps below to create a scraper to grab leads from social media!
Tips: If you haven’t tried Octoparse before, please download Octoparse for free and install it on your device. You will need an account to log in when you launch the software for the first time. You can sign up for a new account or log in with your Google or Microsoft account.
Step 1: Create a new task to scrape social media leads
Copy and paste the URL of the page you want to extract into the search bar on Octoparse. Next, click “Start” to create a new lead scraping task.
Step 2: Auto-detect leads on social media
The page will load in Octoparse’s built-in browser in seconds. Wait for it to finish loading, then click “Auto-detect webpage data” in the Tips panel. After that, Octoparse will scan the whole page, “guess” what data you’re looking for, and then highlight all detected data on the page for you. Then, you can check all extractable data inside the browser or preview all data fields on the “Data Preview” panel at the bottom.
Step 3: Create and customize the workflow
After you’ve selected all the wanted data, click “Create workflow.” Then, a flow chart will show up on your right-hand side. It’s the workflow showcases every action of the scraper and how it works. When you click on each action, you can check if the scraper runs as expected. Also, you can add new actions or remove any unwanted actions on the chart based on your needs.
Step 4: Run the task and export scraped data
Once every detail has been set up, click on the Run button to run the task. Now, you can run the scraper on your device or hand it over to Octoparse cloud servers. Running the lead scraper on the cloud can be a perfect choice for getting leads from social media because cloud servers can extract up-to-date data for you 24/7.
When the scraping process is completed, export scraped lead data to a local file like Excel, CSV, JSON, etc., or a database like Google Sheets for further use.
The Easiest Way to Grab Leads – Octopare Preset Templates
Octoparse has been working hard to provide an easier and more efficient solution for data extraction. Besides building a scraper yourself, you can use preset templates to grab leads from social media.
Preset templates allow you to grab social media leads by only entering several required parameters. Now, Octoparse offers a list of templates for hunting leads. You can check all of them under the “Social Media” category in the Template Gallery. Or, employ a general template for lead generation called Contact Details Scraper to extract contact details from any social media page and its subpages.
Wrap Up
Social media is a gold mine for lead generation. It not only allows you to reach countless people around the world, but it also allows you to develop a deep understanding of these users by analyzing where they come from, what they love, and what they want. Therefore, you can easily locate ideal leads for your business on social media and launch proper marketing campaigns to attract more attention. Octoparse allows you to turn social media pages into structured files for lead generation. Try Octoparse now, and it’s ready to help you build the database of leads!
