When it comes to Facebook –make that any social media service– some purists will give you a dirty glare when you use it for lead generation. Conversely, I cringe when I hear of someone using social media only for branding because I know they can do so much more with a little bit of lead generation put into the picture.

I won’t jump the shark and boldly claim that Facebook is greatest thing for lead generation. However, I want to put to rest the assumptions that social media (Facebook included) is only for branding and doesn’t actually translate to hard numbers.

Facebook offers great branding opportunities, and even cool ways to measure impact on the brand. One measurement is number of fans, another the type of engagements people have on your page.

What about conversions? Revenue per Fan? Revenue per Engagement? Possibly.

If you recall, our VP of Marketing, Tyler Garns, revealed his Social Media Money Formula on Small Business Trends. His article described the ways to measure and quantify social media activities into dollars and cents. I think it’s a great way to put lead generation into the works and facilitate a new revenue stream into your business – by simply providing value to others.

Facebook is no different. It’s a communications medium. People go there to connect with friends, family and are receptive to brands they love. When anyone updates their status with a piece of content that attracts and engages people … people share it. Your brand is no different. If you produce content that holds people’s attention longer than a few seconds, you have a good chance someone will share it with their friends. (The average user has about 130 friends who will likely read their update.)

Just to stir the pot a bit, here are several ideas to use Facebook for lead generation:

• Publish a special discount for Facebook fans.
  Be aware that if you push discounts too much, you risk them being numb to sales. Use discounts on Facebook wisely.
• Use the Static FBML App to host an opt-in form to collect leads.
  We’ll go in-depth on this soon. This app is very cool and useful!
• Send a note to loyal customers asking them to write up a review of how their service was to share on your Facebook feed.
  Reviews by themselves aren’t exactly lead generation, but when people read reviews, it minimizes their barrier to purchase when it’s favorable to your brand.
• On your success page (after purchase or opt-in), invite people to “Like” your Page and to spread the word about what they purchased.
  This is a great way to spread the word on webinars or events that people want to share with others. (This continues to work well on our Revolution Tour page.)
• Publish an exclusive report or quality information only through Facebook, recommend people pass the info along to their friends.
  Such reports should be of high quality and worth sharing. (If someone wants to steal it, it’s probably worth sharing.)
• Create a compelling and interesting contest.
  Facebook has restricted the use of contests related to growing fans unless you’ve got a lot of budget to spend. I don’t really think those are effective. Instead, you can run a contest where people share a story, experience or upload videos to Facebook to your Page and choose one of the best ones.

To be effective, you must carefully balance  the need to generate leads and providing value for people. Ideally, your lead-gen pieces are valuable for people. A good way to do this is to provide a piece of content well-worth people to opt-in to receive and follow-up to keep the messaging relevant to what they signed up for and insert yourself into the message. Tyler did a great entry and video on the Mountain Man Method to Copywriting – the same principles will help keep your offers exciting and relevant.

The goal is to be relevant. Facebook empowers people to instantly “opt out” by hiding your updates from their feed. If you’ve got the chops with your messages, people won’t hide it, they’ll like it, they’ll click it and they’ll convert.

Facebook is a registered trademark of Facebook, Inc.

You might also like these blog entries:

• Facebook Marketing Week (Recap)
• 5 Reasons Why Your Business Needs a Facebook Page
• Facebook: The Big Picture for Small Business