Introduction To Social Media Part 3

 

People have to be comfortable your content has to become familiar enough for them to click on it. 

When audience members click on the content you share through your social media accounts, they get a chance to like your page, follow your Twitter feed, pin your posts, or subscribe to your YouTube channel. They still stay on the platform, but they get a chance to subscribe to your account or follow you.

 

This is the second stage of the social media funnel or inverted pyramid. You have to develop some sort of in-platform credibility. Your content is not just this random material that came out of nowhere. Even if people don't click on it, they see enough similarity in terms of branding, graphics, as well as other content cues so that your brand stands apart from everybody else's.

 

Again, they may not necessarily be motivated to click, but with enough repetition through social media channels targeting certain topic categories and hashtags, your brand doesn't remain an unknown quantity.

 

Once you have people checking your content out through your social media accounts, you can then send them "call to action" content (CTA). This content recruits people to your mailing list. This social content that you're sharing offers some sort of incentive.

 

Maybe you're giving away a free booklet, maybe you're giving away software— whatever the case may be, there is some sort of giveaway to incentivize people to click on that link, enter their email address, and join your mailing list.

 

Whether you use freebies, special content, special free tickets to an online webinar that's pre-recorded, it doesn't really matter. Whatever the case may be, the endgame is to get people to join your list.

 When you look at the funnel, the endgame is to get people to that narrow end of the

 funnel. At that end, you're not necessarily getting them to click on an ad to buy

 something. You're doing something far more valuable.

 

Instead, you're calling them to action so they join your list. You are converting your social media reach, meaning, the top end of the funnel, to list membership, which is at the very narrow point at the bottom of the inverted pyramid.

 

This is where the magic happens. Once people join your list because you have successfully incentivized them to enter their email on your squeeze page, you get a tremendous opportunity to build a long term sales relationship.

 

That's really the best way to describe it because when people give you their email addresses, what they're really telling you is that they trust you enough to want to have a business relationship with you.

 

This means you should not abuse that relationship. You should not send them garbage. You should not send them spam. And by spam, I'm talking about material that is not related to the topic of your list.

 

Stay on message. Because if you are able to do this, you would have a tremendous opportunity to shape the conversation and continue to sell and convert your list, not just once, not just twice, but over the long haul.

 

There are many successful list marketers who make seven figures every single year, and all they have is a mailing list. It all depends on how you build that list, who is on that list, and what you are selling on that list.

 

Regardless of how you cut it, you can turn what would otherwise be a huge amount of social media reach into a loyal list. This is the secret to effective social media marketing.