Social Media Marketing Plan: Treat Your Followers Like Your Email List

   

     SEO is dead! Use social media to grow your online business! Guest post on other blogs!

     We have heard all the great things we are told to do by the online marketing gurus but did you ever stop to think if that is what they are doing? Does it ever cross your mind that these so called experts are doing any of what they are suggesting that you do? The simple answer is no, They aren't doing that. Let's look at what they are doing....





     "The money is in the list."  To all Internet Marketers, this has become a staple and a battle cry. We know that to make money we need to be able to collect something and market to that said something. It's also a well known fact that E-mail converts among the best of any time of marketing strategy there is. The reason being is because the person has trusted you and given you a way to communicate with them. They saw something in your offer that they valued and they wanted to be apart of it. Its also well known that building a list is quite hard, really challenging and down right expensive.

     Using social media to build your list is of course a great avenue to pursue because of its amazing price tag. FREE. The going rate to collect email addresses is about a dollar an E-mail address. Its also said that for everyone who is on your E-mail list, you can expect around a dollar a month for it. If your E-mail list was 100,000 strong, a good marketer should be able to get 100,000 a month from that list. Now that being said, I think only the top tier marketers could pull that off. But there is no reason to believe that you could bank 20,000 off that easily as a mediocre marketer. That list costs 100,000 dollars to make though. This is why social media is so amazing because you can actually make a follower base of 100,000 without spending a dime. But what if you treated social media like you treated your E-mail list?

     If every E-mail on your list was worth a dollar then how much would a follower on your social media be worth? I have no idea. What I do know is that if you were to spend all the money that you would building an E-mail list and spent it building a following on social media you would have a lot more then 100,000 followers. E-mail converts at roughly 3% of offers. Social media converts at 1%. This is the reason a lot of people don't invest in social media and instead focus on E-mail lists. Some of the most successful marketer I know are laughing all the way to the bank because they know that little secret. It costs a hell of a lot less money to build a huge following on social media then to build a list.

     I'm not suggesting you buy fake followers for your social media campaigns. Those followers aren't going to convert for you. No, I'm talking about real people following your social media accounts because they love your content. There is a lot of ways you can spend money to gain real followers and not split your wallet at the seams doing it.

     First off, we need something to sell. Pick what ever item, idea, or service you want to promote. Do all the research you possibly can on it to make sure you can turn a profit from it. Make sure you can live with whatever the product is because you're going to be spending a ton of time promoting it and talking about it.

     Make a social media account on every platform you can. Make sure the account name is easy to remember and catchy. If you have the money, then buy an account off of someone who has a great account name. Remember, we are treating this as we would our E-mail list so spending money here will definitely increase your following.

     Now that you have all the account created, you are going to want to get followers like you normally would. follow as many people as you can and then unfollow those who don't follow back. Along with this, you are going to pay for shout-outs from the largest accounts you can and as often as you can.

     Cross promote everything! make sure all your accounts are pointing at each other so that you can get the most amount of followers on as many platforms as you can. If someone is following you on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram, they are most likely going follow you to your website and buy your products.

     Depending on the budget you have and how popular your product is that you are promoting, as well as how you promote it, will be how large your social media accounts will be. You will easily topple 100,000 followers among all of your accounts and for a fraction of the cost of what an E-mail list take to build. Your going to have duplicate followers and that's OK. It actually means a stronger fan base you have.

     This is the top of your sales funnel. You have all your social media accounts based on one product and you are growing these accounts as large as you possibly can. You want to lead these people down your funnel and land them on to something they would want to buy. They found value in your social media account and now you want them to find value in your product. Its time to send them towards your product.
   
     You want all of your accounts driving traffic down your sales funnel. The first stop is the all mighty landing page. This is where you give them the chance to opt into your E-mail list. You want them to opt in to your E-mail list now so you can re-market to them later. This landing page has to give them a reason to opt into your E-mail address. The money is in the list right? Then give them something that's worth giving up there E-mail.

     After they opt-in (or don't opt-in) send them down your sales funnel again. Your going to redirect them from your landing page to your offer. This is where they are going to buy what your selling or they aren't. If you have a great sales funnel, and they came all this way with you, you stand a higher chance that they will buy what your selling.

     The power behind this kind of Social Media Marketing Plan is you aren't a servant chained to your E-mail list. You have a large following of people who you are driving down your sales funnel and along the way you can collect their email or you don't. It's cheaper then building an E-mail list alone and you also have the opportunity to build your E-mail list along the way.

     A lot of Internet Marketers who are just starting out find social media very hard to use simply because they aren't using it correctly. If you build your sales funnel correctly with social media, then seeing 20,000 dollars a month will be very easy for you to obtain.