How to Find Your Audience on Social Media
Social media offers an excellent and highly effective way to build your email list. The first step is to find your customers and potential customers, who will become your audience on social media, but how do you do that? Here are some tips on how to find your email list prospects.
[Tweet “Social media offers an excellent and highly effective way to build your email list. “]
Ask Current Customers
Start by simply asking your current customers. You can ask them face-to-face when you interact with them at networking, your retail outlet, office or elsewhere, or send or give them a survey, or a form to fill out at point-of-sale. You can also send an email to your current subscribers asking them who they think might be interested in your services. Offer a small incentive, like a discount or free report, for taking a minute to fill out your survey.
Add Social Links in Emails
Add social media links to the email messages you send your customers. These links invite your contacts to like your page on Facebook, connect with you on Twitter, and so on. You may want to create a special email message just to draw attention to your social media presence or offer an incentive for connecting with you. This method requires that you have an account already with the major social media networks.
[Tweet “Add social media links to the email messages you send your customers.”]
If you’re not sure how to do this try using a service like WiseStamp which is free for the basic level or Exclaimer, you will get a professional looking signature with all the right links.
Search in Social Media
Most social media sites have search functions that allow you to search using keywords. You can choose keywords that are related to your business, such as hobbies or interests your customers have. This gives you an idea of how much of your target market uses a particular site.
Watch Your Competitors
You can also check out your competitors and see what social media sites they use. If you have a competitor with a well-established social media presence already, they probably have a good reason for maintaining it. You can search within social networks for your competitors’ names.
On Twitter, for example, you can find your competitors and then look at who’s following them. If you think any of their followers are your potential audience on social media then follow them and chances are they’ll follow you back.
Match Subscribers
This is a bit laborious, but you can take your list of contacts and search to see if they have social media accounts. Although their accounts may be private, you’ll find them if they have public accounts. You can also search for them using their names or email addresses within social media sites.
All of this takes a bit of research but it can really pay off. You’ll discover which social media sites your customers and prospects use, and you may find a site they like that you didn’t even know about. Building your audience on social media is a great way to add people you might not access any other way to your email list.
