In any business, it is important to build a list of targeted subscribers to market your services or products to. You want a responsive list and your job is to provide value to them, consistently.
Whether you have a website or a blog, you should definitely have a way to capture a visitor’s name and email address.
Two of the biggest components of effective marketing are reach and frequency. Reach refers to the number of people you “touch” with your message; while frequency refers to the number of times each person is reached on average. Frequency is a way to build trust and drives your particular message home.
More people than ever are using social media, so it stands to reason that more of your target market is reachable there today than even just three or four months ago. Take advantage of these ways to add subscribers when using social media sites so you can begin communicating regularly with more potential customers and clients.
1. Create an effective profile. What is effective? Use a real photo of yourself and your real name. Include your location and a good bio–complete, up-to-date and with all of your contact information.
2. Offer events. A great way to add targeted subscribers is to hold an event such as a teleseminar. Invite your friends and followers and direct them to a sign-up page specifically for the event. Let them know that in addition to signing up for the event, they will also receive a free subscription to your e-zine or other valuable information.
3. Join a Ning network or create your own. Ning is a platform which allows people to create their own social networks. Anyone can create a network at no cost around a specific interest. This is a great tool for getting in front of your target market or niche.
4) Sync your newsletter broadcasts with Twitter. If you use an email list service such as AWeber, you have the option to tweet a link to your newsletter automatically when the broadcast is sent out. To do this, choose “Syndicate” and “Twitter Update.”
5. Place an opt-in box on your Facebook Fan Page. This is something I explain how to do in detail in my recent video blog post. The Static FBML application allows you to add your opt-in box very easily. This way you can capture new subscribers when your fans visit your profile.
6. Use social bookmarking sites. Social bookmarking allows internet users to search, organize and store bookmarks of web pages. Be sure to have a way for readers to submit posts that they enjoy to bookmarking sites (Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, etc.) right from your blog. This is a great way to drive traffic to your blog when others come across your bookmarked site.
7. Feed your blog posts to sites automatically. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn all have applications/tools that will post your latest blog posts on their sites as soon as they are published. This keeps you on others’ radars consistently.
8. Be helpful and participate often. The best advice I can give for spending time on social sites is to give, give, give. You don’t have to spend hours there, but when you do use these sites, offer suggestions, advice and tips. Create conversation as well as join it. People will get to know you and then seek out more information about you.
Let me know if these tips are helpful and whether there are any that you are using currently with success–or any that I may have left out!
Photo Credit: Tim Morgan
