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Are You Building An Email List Or A Tribe?
Are You Building An Email List Or A Tribe?
You are using email marketing as part of your business strategy, right? I am sure you are but thought I’d ask because some folks get distracted by the next best thing and tend to neglect using email as part of their marketing strategy and they are seriously missing out.
Let me say this now, email marketing is not going anywhere, and is a simple, effective way to reach and engage your readers, but it must be done correctly to be optimally effective, and hopefully this post will help with the way you approach email marketing and nurturing your list in future.
Now, if you’ve been doing online marketing for any length of time, you’d have heard the line, “The money is in the list” repeated ad nauseam. Yet, it is true. The money is truly in the list, especially if you have a large and responsive one.
But it shouldn’t just be a list of freebie seekers; the real money is in the buyers list, as you know they are much more likely to be serious, take action and see results.
Because of this obsession with list size, thousands of marketers resort to a myriad of methods to grow their list. They focus on the numbers and the size of the list but often fail to realize that quality beats quantity.
It is a fact that there are marketers who have a list of about 10,000 subscribers and are able to generate six figures a month from this list as compared to many other marketers who have 10 times more subscribers but can’t make even half of what those with the smaller list are making.
If You Are Just Building A List And Not A Tribe, You’re Doing It Wrong
The secret to getting the most out of your list is to build a tribe and not a list. You may be wondering, “What’s a tribe… and what’s the difference?”
The difference is that a list is just a group of subscribers who’ve either opted in to get a freebie or they’ve purchased a product of yours and landed on your list. At this stage, the list isn’t too familiar with you, and they don’t really know you well.
If you do not establish a relationship with them and you just keep hitting them with email after email, many will unsubscribe and leave because they do not feel a connection with you. You’re just another marketer to them.
A tribe, however, is loyal. It takes time to nurture a list till it becomes a tribe. You’ll need to provide value to your list and help them progress towards their goals. Your emails will need to be entertaining and yet, useful.
You’ll need to be honest in your emails and your personality needs to shine. The products you recommend should be good and you must always look out for your tribe because in a sense, since it’s your tribe, you’re the leader. Your vibe attracts your tribe.
Just like any leader knows his tribe well, you’ll need to understand the needs of your list. Create a subscriber avatar. For example, if you’re in the weight loss niche, you must know who your target subscriber is.
It may be a middle-aged woman who could be juggling her career and her family and trying to get her body in shape. Or it could be a busy mom who has had no time to exercise and she’s trying to get rid of a few pounds.
Or it could be an overweight man who wants to get in shape so that he can gain confidence and ladies will start looking at him in a whole new way.
As you can see, all these are different types of people with different needs. You cannot help all of them. You need to pick one specific group or niche and address the needs of these people.
Trying to be everything to everybody is a surefire recipe for failure. Speak in a language that your subscriber can identify with. If your list is mostly comprised of women trying to lose weight on their tummy but you’re talking about getting ripped and muscular, you will not form a bond with your list.
You need to be on the same page as them and know what their needs, goals and dreams are. Now you can help them and provide them the value they need. Once they see that you have their best interests at heart, they’ll trust you and anticipate your emails. You now have a tribe of people who look up to you and want your emails.
It is inevitable that you will get unsubscribes along the way. Do not take this personally or lose sleep over it. To become a navy seal, one needs to go through a series of rigorous of tests and must make the final cut. Many start out but only a select few get through. However, these few are highly trained and have a bond like no other.
In the same way, the people who do not ‘get you’… are better off on someone else’s list. You can’t please everyone. You should be glad to see them go because not only will your autoresponder fees be lower but you’ll also have a list that’s ‘tight’ and a bunch of subscribers who hang on to your every word.
That is definitely a good place to be. Keep building your list and while you’re doing that, always establish a relationship with your subscribers so that you have a growing list that becomes a tribe.
Many marketers, especially affiliate marketers, simply pound their list with offer after offer and provide absolutely no value. This inevitably results in a high unsubscribe rate, so they must be constantly trying to build their list to replace all those that are leaving.
Just thinking about that makes me feel exhausted! Wouldn’t it be easier to nurture your list, look after them and offer them products and services that will genuinely help them, instead of thinking purely selfishly about your next commission payment?
Take time to grow your list, nurture them, look after them and always have their best interests at heart and they will reward you and your business.
If you want to know more about nurturing you list, check out the featured resource below for a free Simple List Building report; download, read it and take action 😊
7 Steps To Optimize Your Affiliate Marketing
7 Steps To Optimize Your Affiliate Marketing
To succeed in affiliate marketing, you’ll need all the gears in your affiliate marketing ‘machine’ to be perfectly aligned so that the machine runs smoothly and generates sales like clockwork.
In order to reach this stage, there are a few factors that you must be aware of and make sure that they’re all optimized so that your marketing efforts yield the best results.
Getting them wrong can end in frustration and a loss of time, energy and money, so you need an effective affiliate marketing strategy.
Let’s look at an effective 7 step affiliate marketing plan to get you started in the right direction.
Formulate A Plan
If you fail to plan, you’re planning to fail. Before even getting started on the content creation or buying a domain, you’ll need to assess if your niche is worth targeting.
Is it overly competitive? Are there enough products to promote? Will you be targeting long tail keywords?
You need to know your plan of attack and exactly what you’re going to do. That is your first step.
Research And Reach
The second step is research and reach. You must do a lot of research before diving into the niche. It’s fine to even spend a week or two doing thorough research.
You’ll get a feel for the niche and know just how far your reach will be. Better to be well-prepared than to get started and be unprepared.
If the niche you are in has a very small audience, your earning capacity will be limited. While you can still give it a try, it’s inevitable that you reach an income ceiling that you can’t seem to break through. So, be aware of this.
Traffic
Traffic is of paramount importance. The more targeted traffic you have, the more sales you’ll make.
So, you need to know where you’ll be driving traffic from and what you’re going to do.
Focus a huge chunk of your efforts on getting the right traffic to your web properties.
Content Creation And Marketing
No matter what affiliate product you’re promoting, there will be some type of content creation involved.
You could be writing blog posts or creating infographics or just pinning images on Pinterest – whatever the case, it is content creation and marketing.
People come online looking for information. They’re looking for content. The better and more engaging it is, the more visitors you’ll attract and retain.
Your goal should always be to help the visitor out. Avoid appearing like a rapacious marketer who only hard sells and hypes products up. It’ll just turn off most people and cost you sales.
Promoting
When you’re online, you must promote your content. Actively post your images in image sharing sites, share your videos in as many places as you can, get in front of as many crowds as you can, etc.
There are people on Pinterest who love gardening. There are also people in Facebook groups who love gardening. Let’s not forget all those people who subscribe to gardening channels on YouTube… because they love gardening.
Guess what? Most of them are not on all 3 sites. The audiences will be different. So, by promoting your content on different platforms, you’ll reach more people.
Analyzing
Analyze your traffic stats, clicks, sales, conversions, etc. Even if numbers scare you, after a while you’ll get a hang of things.
Once you understand the numbers, you’ll know how to scale your efforts and improve upon the winning strategies while ditching the poorer performing ones.
Knowing your numbers is a crucial skill to learn for any successful entrepreneur or affiliate marketer.
Rinsing And Repeating
Last but not least, find out what’s working and keep repeating your efforts. Rinse, lather and repeat.
Consistency is everything and your repeated efforts multiplied over time will result in avalanches of sales.
Follow the 7 steps above and you’ll be an affiliate marketer par excellence.
Now you have a plan, let’s look at some of the folks you will need to deal with in the world of affiliate marketing.
Who Are The 3 Types Of People Involved In Affiliate Marketing?
In your affiliate marketing journey, it’s very important to know that you’ll encounter 3 different groups of people. Knowing who they are is very important because you need to know how to deal with them.
Each group is different and poses its own type of challenges. By understanding how the different people in the groups behave, you’ll be better prepared to handle them and be in their good books.
Let’s look at the groups now.
The Publishers
The ‘publishers’ refer to affiliates just like you. These are the people who create niche sites or run YouTube channels or Facebook groups. Even the affiliates who use paid ads can be considered as publishers.
The goal of most publishers is to put out relevant content or ads that attract people who will click on their links and buy their affiliate products. The publishers are your ‘competition’ and you must watch them closely.
If you have a niche site on fishing tips, where you promote fishing-related products, the other sites that show up on the first page of the search results are your competition. They could be affiliates or actual brand name companies selling their products.
You’ll notice that there can be an overlap here because affiliates can sell their own products too. Let’s look at the next group to get a better picture.
The Advertisers
The ‘advertisers’ refer to the companies who create the products you promote. They recruit affiliates to do the selling and they also advertise on their own to boost their sales.
An affiliate who promotes other vendors’ products but also creates his/her own products to sell, now finds himself/herself in the advertisers group. Similarly, the company that’s selling fishing rods and publishes lots of fishing tips and content on it’s official blog is now a publisher too.
So, the groups can overlap. What’s important to know is that while fellow publishers can be your competition, you can also network with them to promote their products if they’re vendors too. So, now your competition has become a mutually beneficial relationship.
At the same time, the vendor whose products you were promoting, might end up ranking for a lot of keywords that you’re targeting, because their marketing is on point. So, the vendor you were trying to support, has now become your competition.
Alas, the tangled webs we weave! Generally, companies try not to compete with their affiliates. But if you notice that the one you’re supporting is posing competition for you, you’ll need to reassess your marketing strategy and see if you wish to still support them.
The Consumers
This group is without a doubt the most important of the three. The consumers are the people who come online looking for information and solutions to their problems. Most of them don’t come looking to spend money or buy stuff.
They want help. Your job as an affiliate marketer is to give them enough information to help them a little and whet their appetite for more information that will help them solve their problems faster and easier.
If you have a website on back pain, the content in your site can talk about the different causes of back pain and natural remedies that could help. However, if they wish to bring much needed relief, you can mention that the special ‘Pain Away Pulse Massager’ has been shown to help many back-pain sufferers.
Now, not only is the visitor better informed about his condition and has a choice of home remedies that he or she can try, but they have been subtly introduced to a product that brings much needed immediate relief.
What do you think they’ll do?
Soak in that Epsom salt home bath which is a home remedy… or get the pulse massager to ease their pain quickly?
Most of them will get the pulse massager. The content you provide is a vehicle that not only helps them become better informed, but also transports them through the invisible journey that they need to traverse to go from reader to buyer.
Understand the different people who are involved in this affiliate marketing circle and you will be much wiser in your marketing efforts.
If you want to know more about affiliate marketing check out the featured resource below for a free report; download, read it and take action 😊
Audiobook Marketing Basics
Audiobook Marketing Basics
Are you familiar with audiobooks? I’m sure you are as they are becoming increasingly popular in our mobile world.
There are multiple ways to publish your book, including digital, print, and audiobook form. Audiobooks have been around for a long time, and they are starting to make a huge comeback. In 2018, sales of audiobooks neared $1 billion. Thanks to companies like ACX, creating one has never been easier.
Once your book is narrated, perfected, and published, you have to get it out there to listeners. Just like your digital and print versions, there are specific tactics you can use to generate traffic, reach new listeners, and maximize your profits.
Securing Partnerships
If you want to maximize exposure and boost sales of your audiobook, you need to make sure you are creating relationships with others in the business.
Partnerships with authors, bloggers, marketers, and anyone looking to promote their work and help you do the same, can be vital to your success. Almost every business out there uses partnership programs to promote their product.
Audiobook promotion is no different.
When you are starting in the world of publishing, things can seem overwhelming. There are a million different schemes, marketing techniques, and far too many articles to read.
One of the purest forms of marketing, though, is partner promotion.
Begin the process by getting to know people in the business. Listen to other author’s books, review them, take part in social media discussions, and make your name recognizable. Be authentic and genuine when talking to someone about partnership promotions.
Creating a partnership promotion can work in several ways.
You can even incorporate multiple lines of promotion for a better reach to new listeners.
These are some of the ways you can use partnership promotion:
- Trade audiobooks, listen, and review each other’s work.
- Guest blog post on each other’s websites.
- Include promotions for the other person’s audiobook in your newsletter, and vice versa.
- Run giveaways with your fans that include samples of your partner’s audiobook.
- Do live author events jointly to cross-promote your audiobook to both fan bases.
- Cross-promote your audiobooks on your partner’s social media.
By keeping a healthy and open line of communication with your chosen partnerships, the sky is the limit.
Be creative and come up with ways to use each other’s clout to gain new listeners and help another author along the way.
Working through a partnership can not only be lucrative for both parties but can be fun as well.
Always remember, just because a promotion hasn’t been tried, doesn’t mean it won’t work.
Authentic Connections
The publishing world is a lot different than other business ventures out there. When you release your work to the public, you are opening your life to them. By doing this, you are making a connection with your readers.
This connection is vital to a successful book promotion.
When we get caught up in the daily drone of marketing process, promotions, and numbers, it’s easy to forget about human connection.
Your fans, they are not just fans of your writing, but of you as well. With so many books out there to read, it’s easy for listeners to forget about a book or author once they’re done listening to your audiobook.
Whether you are planning to write another book, or this is your only one, you want to keep your listeners engaged. Those who purchase your book can be the best form of marketing. Word-of-mouth is a great way to bring new listeners into the fold.
By creating an authentic atmosphere around your persona through social interaction, personal connection, and willingness to open up to readers were making them feel like more than just a customer. You are bringing them further into your book.
When you create this personal relationship with listeners, it will attract others to join in as well. You want to continually entice new listeners to download your audiobook.
By creating personal relationships, you are offering more than just a book to listen to, but also an experience a connection as well.
These are some of the ways you can create an authentic relationship with your readers:
- Create a private Facebook group from your author page. Make this group feel as if they are unique. Don’t just post about your book, but post lively discussions and interact with your readers.
- Write personal messages to your newsletter subscribers talking about things within your life. Give them a glimpse of who you are outside of your book.
- Share and retweet postings relevant to your book or the literary world, created by your readers. If they are authors as well, share their book promotion.
- Do Facebook and YouTube live events and interact with your listeners in real-time. You can make the live video specifically about your audiobook. During the video, answer questions, give insight to the process and hold conversations with those tuning in.
- Have giveaways for no other reason but to say thank you to your listeners. This will promote others to join your readership family. Have a specific giveaway for audiobook listeners.
- Schedule meet and greets in any location you have the capability of traveling to. Personally invite your readers to come and meet with you. Let them know that if they are in your area, you would love to have dinner with them and talk about your books.
Being authentic in no way means you have to share everything about yourself with the world.
What it does mean is that you should be true to who you are, let your personality shine, and allow your listeners to be part of that.
By creating a family atmosphere centred around your books and brand, you are encouraging listeners to promote your books, download future audiobooks, and give you genuine and honest feedback.
Listeners want to feel as if they are appreciated. They want to have a connection with the author who wrote the book that they spent their money on and took their time to listen to.
This will also encourage listeners to leave their feedback for your audiobook. This influx of reviews will help to bring in more authentic listeners from the audiobook platform that you use.
Remember, unless your book is specifically tailored to politics or religion, try not to steer conversations in those directions. You don’t want to alienate listeners.
If you want to know more about audiobook marketing, check out the featured resource below, for a free report, Audiobook Marketing Tricks; download, read it and take action 🙂
Use Your Blog For Your Own Personal Development
Use Your Blog For Your Own Personal Development
Many people think of blogging as a way to try to make money online, perhaps by writing posts and recommending products or services where they get paid a commission.
But blogging didn’t really start that way. It was a way to jot down your thoughts and feelings and to allow readers to follow your journey, especially if they were going through the same situations.
And you can still do this, as well as using your blog for business. It may even help your business as it will make you more human to your readers and potential customers.
And it can help you to grow too, on a more personal level, so what are you waiting for?
By the way, if you are serious and want to take your blogging to the next level, check out the Rapid Blogging Blueprint. This is a premium level training that takes you through each and every step of setting up your own highly profitable blog and profiting from it. You can check it out here.
OK, on with the article…
Banish Distractions When You Blog for Personal Growth
When you embark on a journey of personal growth, you have a mission to become a better person. It’s not an easy task and very few people make a stated effort to do it. It requires a lot of introspection and uncomfortable inner work.
Thinking through tough questions about how your life is unfolding and what personal responsibility you have in how it’s turning out requires you to do it in an uninterrupted space.
If you’re in the middle of a thought and about to have a major breakthrough, it’s a shame when something – some outward distraction – thwarts your progress and throws you off track.
Many people blog for their personal development and self help issues. It’s a platform that allows them to streamline their thoughts and work through any issues they may have.
They blog whenever they have a few minutes of free time – maybe from a coffee shop or on a mode of public transportation during a commute. But some of these places are filled with distractions that pull you away from your train of thought.
Even in the comfort of your own home, it’s sometimes difficult to write at a steady pace without having your spouse or children enter the picture, the pets needing you to let them outside, or the phone ringing.
If you’re serious about making changes in your life, you have to be just as committed to the quality of your introspection as you are the consistency of it. That means refusing to put up with interruptions and distractions as you wade thorough the current state of your life to analyze it for a better future.
Create a space that’s reserved for your blog purposes. It can be a quiet nook of your home, with a comfortable seat and perfect lighting. No technology other than your laptop or PC should be present.
Enable yourself the private time necessary to reach into your mind and see what’s troubling you or what you wish you could do differently. Then you can formulate a plan of action that lets you evolve into a better person.
Don’t accept any guilt over the fact that you need some personal space to create your blog and learn form it. Everyone should indulge in some self care, and this is a form of that which can help you become more fulfilled in life.
A Blog Keeps You from Bottling Up Your Emotions
In a world where just about everyone is suffering from some sort of stress, it’s difficult to find a venue to be able to express your emotions without worrying that you’re just going to burden others.
In our private lives, we often keep the turmoil hidden just below the surface, never sharing our troubles, but instead keeping them bottled up so that we can deal with them on our own when time allows – if that ever happens.
But now, you can use a blog as your pathway to emotional peace and end the frustration of keeping all of that stress inside your head and in your heart. You can let it all out in a digital format and also get the support of your global audience.
A blog allows you to do this with your anonymity intact if you prefer – or, you can use your real name. If you’re shy or uncomfortable talking about things that are troubling you, then you may want to keep your name hidden.
Journaling on a blog is the perfect way to let out pent up emotional trauma. It’s very healing and can combine the down times with the good, letting you see that life is a mixture of peaks and valleys, so you’re never despondent for long.
With a blog, you can be creative about how you convey your emotions. You can do it with text, but you can also embed a video into a blog entry if you prefer to speak your mind on screen or off.
Blogging can teach you a lot about yourself. It lets you talk about and work through thoughts and feelings without having to expose yourself to anyone else’s judgment. It’s your digital home, and you can pick and choose who stays in your community – or whether your blog posts even go public or not!
The words you formulate on your blog will have an impact on your life as you sort through the emotions you’re going through. This isn’t just a chronological history of your day – it’s a focus on how you’re dealing with whatever happened, good or bad.
You can slant your blog so that it’s all encompassing regarding your life – career, parenting, relationships, health, etc. Or, you can target one area of your life for the blog that you want to improve. You get to choose how you document your emotional outlet, which can be very freeing and put you at peace.
Blogging Allows You to Heal from Emotional Trauma
Emotional trauma can be very debilitating into the future. So it’s something you want to address before it festers out of control and haunts you at every turn. There are many different types of emotional trauma.
You may have experienced being bullied, natural disasters, medical events, grief, violence at the hands of strangers or loved ones or other forms of horrific abuse. Some people even endure multiple forms of trauma they have to deal with.
There are many forms of therapy and you may need to embark on a journey to find out which one best suits you personally. Therapy is never a one size fits all solution. Everyone responds uniquely to these methods.
Blogging is one strategy to help men and women deal with the events that have happened to them. It allows you to spend time working through your reactions to the moments you spent suffering and the time since then that has never been the same.
No matter how long ago the event transpired, a blog can assist you in journaling about it. You’ll formulate your thoughts based on the emotions you’re feeling at that moment and be able to take note of any healing methods you’ve tried in the past.
You can use the blog as a portal to vent and release anger and sadness whenever you have down moments, or to fortify your strength and prove to yourself that there are many good days sprinkled amid the bad ones.
One of the best things about using a blog to deal with emotional trauma is that it lets you create a community of other survivors. People who are online seeking solace about something similar can find your blog and interact with yourself and others who have experienced the same thing.
You’ll find that it’s not just the fact that they’re able to give you insight about recovery or provide comfort, but the blog helps restore your faith in humanity and feel a sense of camaraderie as you grow and provide support for others in your circle who have landed on your blog in search of help.
This can be a very soothing process for you as it takes the focus off of your own troubles and allows you to help heal others as you, yourself are healed. Your blog can be the beacon of hope and light that others need to get past traumatic events in life.
And remember, if you want a premium training on blogging the right way, check out the Rapid Blogging Blueprint which includes over the shoulder training on blogging the right way.
Or, if you just want some more basics to see whether blogging is right for you, check out the featured resource below for a free Blogging Fundamentals report; download, read it and take action 😊
Is Your Website User-Friendly For List Building?
Is Your Website User-Friendly For List Building?
When growing your list, remember that gaining more traffic is not the only goal. Attracting highly targeted traffic, full of people who want and need what you’re offering, is the goal. Therefore, you need to develop a list-growing strategy that uses tactics that focus on your goal: Building and Growing a Responsive List, because when you have that responsive list, using email for marketing becomes much easier.
The following tactics will ensure that when someone joins your list they really do want the information you’re providing and will likely turning into a paying customer if you’ve matched your freebie opt-in offers to the right audience and with the idea of promoting specific products and or services to them.
So, let’s build that traffic and ensure that you have a great list that will respond to every email marketing campaign you send them.
First and foremost, everything begins and ends with your website. If your website doesn’t look great, work fast, and doesn’t work on all devices you are likely missing out on numerous opportunities to connect with potential customers.
- Develop a Responsive Website – Using a responsive template is simple today but if you add images, always double check to make sure they resize and are positioned correctly on the screen. You can check by using Browserling.com, as well as your own mobile device, and other tools.
- Brand Your Website – You don’t want your audience to be confused when they visit your website. Keep your branding the same throughout your online real estate, from social media to your website, and everything in between. You can do this by using logos, fonts, colors, etc., to develop your branding so everything matches.
- Make it Easy to Contact You – You don’t want someone to have to dig around your website to find a way to contact you. Make it very easy by placing the contact info at the top and bottom of your site, as well as in the sidebar (if you have one). Visitors should be able to contact you easily, when needed.
- Create Simple Navigation – The rule of thumb with navigation is that less is more. Plan your navigation in advance to help create the right setup. Use labels on the navigation links that adequately identify what they’ll find there. Make sure your primary navigation stands out. This menu is usually at the top of every page of your website. Always link the logo to the home page so no one gets lost.
- Ensure it Loads Fast – A slow loading site is a traffic killer. In most cases, if your site takes longer than .8 seconds to load people will leave. Consider using a content delivery network (CDN). Use the right image formats and sizes, browser caching, fewer plugins, enable compression, the right web host, and more.
When you create the website, it’s important to consider your audience because that’s who is going to use it most. Are they tech challenged? What colors do they like? What do they expect when they come to your site?
Making their wants and needs top priority helps to ensure you build a user-friendly website that people want to visit.
Know Your Audience & Your Competition
Before you start building or changing your site, get to know your target audience and your competition. You can only make informed decisions if you are well informed. It’s hard to create products, services, or content for your target market, if you don’t know what they want and need.
The same is true about your competition. It’s hard to compete if you don’t know who your competition is, as well as what they’re doing right and wrong.
- Conduct Research – There are many ways to do research. You can look at the analytics you already have, but you can also do research using government databases such as the United States Census Bureau to compile information about your audience. Not only should you study your audience, study your competitors too.
- Develop Customer Personas – This involves creating a profile of your ideal customer. Find an image of how your imagined customer looks. In the profile, include personality traits, education, family life, career, income, and other details needed to develop content, products, and services.
- Monitor Social Comments – Whether a comment is on a blog or on social media networks, finding comments from your audience can help you learn more about them. Engagement on social media within groups is usually more trustworthy because they tend to ask honest, straight forward, questions.
- Conduct a Survey – When you know your competition well, you can develop a survey, which targets that audience. This helps you discover what they want and need. You can use Facebook Ads to market the survey, which lives on your website. Learning about your competitor’s audience can help you, if you have the same or a similar target market.
- Engage Often – The more you engage with your audience the better. Keep your email open to replies, invite questions, and answer questions, as they come. The more open you are the more open they will be. This is especially true if they feel you truly listen and appreciate their input.
Your audience can teach you a lot about your business. You may think you know something, but even if you are part of your audience’s demographics, what you experience is subjective.
That’s why you need to look at the data, pay attention to what your competition is doing, and keep your ear to the ground, regarding your entire industry to stay on top of what’s coming next.
Participate On Social Media
Social media can be very beneficial, as you build your opt-in traffic and mailing list. Since you need to be “social” and build relationships anyway, you may as well get the most out of your efforts. Let’s look at how you can use social media to drive traffic and grow your mailing list.
- Build a Facebook Group – Social media is the perfect place to build a community. Create a niche group, where you can promote your freebies, content, and products. Link your business page and your related group. In your profiles, include a link to your website and/or your main opt-in page. In your group, get the group’s thoughts on your “new” website content and discuss the nuances. You’ll also want to do live events. Weekly live events can really boost traffic to your business page, the group, your website, and your mailing list.
- Monitor Comments – Don’t allow comments to go unnoticed. Sometimes you only need to acknowledge that you read it. Other times, you should respond in more depth. Try to keep everything positive and be yourself. Being authentic on social media is important to building trust. Answering questions and linking to your “helpful resource” allows you to establish your expertise and build trust.
- Share Your Freebies – Share your freebies directly or indirectly in your group. Indirect sharing might be done via sharing blog posts, where the opt-in is. Members only items may be added directly to the group area. Every page of your website should offer a way to share the content blurb and link.
- Engage Your Audience – Post questions and information that makes your audience think. On Facebook or YouTube, use Live Q & A events to engage with your audience. Post polls, quizzes, and other interactive information help to encourage engagement.
- Use Amazing Visuals – Social media posts with visuals get more response than social media posts without images. Use the right type of visual to get your audience’s attention and make the post more interesting to your target market.
- Make Content Shareable – Everything you post needs to be easy to share. Don’t restrict sharing. In fact, ask people to share your content and thank them when they do. Sometimes a little reminder is all that’s needed to get people involved.
The more active you are on social media the more you’ll see the traffic to your website, but the action needs to be purposeful. That means you need to plan the content you put on social media just as you plan the content that goes into your blog, email messages, and newsletters.
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