What’s the Point of the Social Media Game???

We’ve all heard of the benefits of using social media to build our business. We’ve set up our social profiles and started getting friends and followers. We put links to all of our sites and we’ve shared our opportunity with others. We’ve tried to build relationships and we’ve tried not to be spammers. But where is this getting us? Is it really helping our business?

If you’re only focusing on social media relationships to build your business, you are probably not getting very far. Social Media is just a stepping stone. It’s the only the beginning of the game. It’s what you do with your followers from there that really makes a difference in your business.

How to Build Your Business with Social Media Friends and Followers

• Separate Your Targeted Followers: If you’re out there trying to build a relationship with everyone, you’re wasting your time. You only want to build a relationship with certain friends and followers that are interested in what you have to offer. How can you do this? Give out a free ‘tool’ or piece of information with an opt-in form(have them submit their name and e-mail before you give them the tool). If the tool is targeted toward your niche or your business, then you know that everyone that opts in for it is interested in what you have to offer. Now you have a list of targeted prospects that like you because you have given them something of value for free. If you have a blog, you can include your free opt-in there, or you can set up a separate capture page for it. You will need a place to manage everyone that opts in. You can do that with an auto responder such as Get Response or Aweber(These services also have simple tools to build opt-in forms for you).
• Continue Building a Relationship: Now that you have targeted prospects, you can continue building a relationship with them by sending e-mails that give them more free value. The more you give and share of yourself, the greater connection you will build with your followers. Within an auto responder, you can build a campaign that will send out automated e-mails every few days or so. You can write these e-mails once, put them in your auto responder campaign and continue to leverage off them time and time again. You will be putting yourself in front of them continuously so they can get to know you.
• Start Promoting Yourself: Now that you’ve created a list of targeted prospects and built a relationship with them, you can start promoting yourself or selling to that list. Between your value filled e-mails, you can start sending e-mails talking  you and your opinions. Make sure you are not looking spammy in your promotions. Give them genuine details and feedback on how your product or opportunity has been beneficial to you. Anytime you have new affiliate promotions or new capture pages you want to drive traffic to, simply promote them to your list. It is an asset you will hold forever.

This may sound like a simple strategy, but this strategy is really HUGE. It is the key to online marketing. When you build yourself a targeted list like this, you keep this list forever and you can continue marketing to it forever. No matter what happens to your business and no matter where you go, you always have your list.

There’s a good possibility that this is not the first time you have heard of list building. All of the ‘Big Dog’ online marketers do it. If you have heard of lists before, are you doing it yet? Are you building your list? If you’re not, then you are missing the point of online and social media marketing. Marketing is simply the means to which the list is built.

If you’re just trying to find targeted people and contact them about your product or opportunity, don’t expect to get very far. You need a targeted strategy if you want to turn friends and followers into buyers and business partners. And that my friends, is the Point of the Social Media Game.

Put together your free product offer today and start promoting it(It’s actually pretty simple, check out this post by my friend Justin Glover for some great insights). Get an auto responder and start building your list. You will not be sorry that you did.

Please leave us your comments below and share what building a list has done for your business.

As always, if you found this information valuable, please share it and tweet it to others who will like it too.

Believe in Yourself! I Believe in You!

Tagged as: Business, List Building, On-Line Marketing, Social Media Strategies, Social-Media