When social media entered the mainstream of internet marketing many opined that email marketing would be a thing of the past in a matter of years. But rather than see that happen we have instead seen an increase and better use of this marketing tactic!
However, in this article my focus is not email marketing but something that is not far from it. It's really an innovation or an off-shoot of the email marketing tactic.
Your Email Contact Lists and Social Media Contact Database
As we all know, your database of contacts (email lists, blog subscription, leads, customer lists, product evangelists, etc.) are your greatest assets as a marketer. This is why it is commonly said that the money is in the lists. But what many businesses do not know is that in these days of social media marketing your social media contacts form a larger part of this database!
Indeed this is a new concept. But think of it: Your email contact list consist of those who have OPTED to receive email updates, promotions, announcements, tips, etc from you. On the other hand, your social media database consists of those who have AGREED to receive social media updates from you. These people are already connected with you in one way or the other. They are already engaged with your brand re-tweeting, re-pinning and re-sharing your content.
Looked at from this angle the question you will want to ask is, how can you maximize this database of social contacts to grow your online business?
Good question I must say, and I have a few suggestions for you!
1. Grow Your Social Media Following
Internet marketing is nothing but a numbers game. To achieve the type of success you dream of, you need to increase your marketing reach. One way to do that is to enlarge your database of social media followers. There are various ways you can do this but basically it's about providing more interesting, customer-centric and thought leadership content. When you provide content that is useful to your existing followers they will be ready and willing to retweet, reshare or re-pin it. Now, as they do this, it will open your content to your followers' contacts who may later be converted to your followers!
Another tactic that will quickly grow your social media followership is finding the influencers in your circle and encouraging them to share your content with their followers. Influencers are actually those social contacts who have a great influence on the actions, behavior, opinion etc. of others. For one, these influencers have a huge following and two they are highly engaged with their followers and can quickly and easily trigger a response like more re-tweets, more re-sharing, or re-pinning from their followers.
Getting such an influencer to mention your marketing message is a great way to grow your social media database.
2. Increase Engagement With Your Brand
Beyond increasing your social media followership, you need to ensure that your followers are truly engaging with your organization. Your social media database is nothing if they are not interacting and getting involved with your brand.
When you send out updates you want action to be taken on them. You want your social contacts to read your posts, click on your marketing promotions, download your ebooks and reports, and of course, you want them to retweet, reshare, like or repin your content!
You can encourage this engagement through social media nurturing - sharing the right content with the right people at the right time.
3. Maximize Your Sales Using Your Social Media Database
Ultimately, your ROI in terms of how much social media has impacted your sales is more important to you as a business than how many retweets or resharing that took place. Investing time and resources to build a large following on social media networks without a commensurate return in terms of sales, amounts to nothing.
The question is how do you do this when most people frown on directly selling on social media sites?
First, you need to work with the insights and marketing intelligence gained from interacting with and engaging your social media contacts. By using this information to optimize your sales process you would definitely increase your sales in due time.
Besides, you can also design a social media selling strategy that depends on your interactions with your social media contacts and though, selling may not happen directly on the social media platforms, you can still boost your sales using your social media selling strategy. Read this post that outlines the 3 scientific steps for using social media for selling online for more insight.
Conclusion
Social media is today a large part of our business lives. You cannot afford to treat your social media contacts as separate from your contact database. If you have invested your precious time and resources in building your social media database you must also find ways of use that database to maximize your business profits. Use the above tips wisely and you will see an astronomical leap in your profits!
To your marketing success!
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