How Much Do Your Online Businesses Benefit from Social Media ...

Email Contacts

In the last few years social media has become a huge part of the internet marketing industry. There are, however many people who are beginning to wonder just how much benefit their social media contacts are worth when it comes to their legitimate online businesses. Nobody gets excited when they realize that they may have more than 1,000 Twitter followers, especially as most of them do not convert into solid leads.

The biggest problem as far as social media is concerned at this point is that the majority of internet marketers have been so concerned with building up a massive following that they failed to spend the necessary time in getting the proper systems set up so that they could make a fair assessment of just how valuable these Twitter followers actually were.

In fact it is more than probable that the majority of your Twitter followers have no idea at all about who you really are. The have in all likelihood followed you in the off chance that you will return the favor and follow them back. Some reports have suggested that a social media contact is worth in the region of $3.50 but if you want to build a relationship using social media you must employ more than one method if you really want it to be effective.

To make a comparison of just how effective social media contacts are we need to take a look at some of the other internet marketing methods that are also popular.

One marketing method that has been around for a long time and started even before the internet is list building. The difference now is that this method is done via email rather than collecting business cards and it is definitely more effective and valuable.

The reason that it works better is simply because when a person subscribes to your email list they are literally trading their contact details for information or for some other free resource such as some software or an e-book. What this achieves is a more personal relationship and this is the main reason why those subscribers to your list are worth so much more than someone who follows you either on Facebook or Twitter.

Somewhere between your email list and your social media contacts there is blogging! For somebody to subscribe to your blog all they need to do is make two little ticks to an RSS feed and this is so much simpler than signing up to your email list but is takes a bit longer than maybe following you on Twitter. So it should not be surprising that an RSS subscriber would be more beneficial than any Twitter followers, but not quite as beneficial as a subscriber to your email list.

There is another reason why someone who follows your blog is more valuable than a social media contact and that is because every time they visit your blog you have an opportunity to make money. With any of the social media sites, unless they click on a link and buy a product you will not make any money.

This does not mean that you should drop social media completely but it does mean that to really monetize your social media contacts it is essential that you can convince them to take that extra step and sign up either for your RSS feed or preferably subscribe to your email list as this will give you a far better chance of building a lasting relationship with them.

So while social media contacts can still benefit your legitimate online businesses it is probably not wise to make them the main part of your marketing efforts. Having a strong media presence will help you to gain credibility within the internet marketing community which can be utilized in number of ways and can be leveraged and monetized without being directly tied to your Facebook and Twitter contacts.

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Michelle Jayes -
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Source: http://j-netsolutions.com/blogs/blog/2011/05/22/how-much-do-your-online-businesses-benefit-from-social-media-contacts/

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