There is no doubt that having a large follower base is key to any social media campaign. However social media building for businesses should ideally lead to bringing in revenues for the business in the short to medium term.
But how do you transition these hundreds or thousands of followers into customers?
How do you circumpose from just having stems and branches across the globe to truly harvesting roots-customers who actively support your business by purchasing your goods and services?
Open Discussion
This article serves to be an open discussion as we as social media enthusiasts try to learn valuable skills and techniques from each other.
That said, I invite you to share your thoughts in the comments section about what are some of the strategies your business has used to bridge this gap.
A great but risky approach
I came across a piece of content recently posted by one of our great enthusiasts who tried the most bold approach I could ever imagine, to digitally circumpose his followers into true leads.
What he did was to completely shut down his current twitter handle and email address but had prior notified his followers that he would be changing his twitter handle and email. This was his approach to see who were the true followers who would switch over before the shutdown.
He wanted to gauge who were really watching, reading and engaging with his brand in order to unearth his true roots. What happened over the next few was shocking! From having thousands of followers, only 500 actively made the switch to continue to follow his new handle and his brand!
This was alarming but was a great piece of information he well needed. He now knew that those 500 followers were his roots, his leads and his potential customers.
Don’t be fooled by numbers
Numbers are great but when they don’t translate to revenue for your business, they mean nothing, just air or words on a screen. The experience documented above should be considered a case study. While not every brand has the boldness to take this approach, similar approaches that can truly tell where your roots are, need to be considered.
Manipulating your Lead magnet
Lead magnets serve to offer some items of value to your follower base in exchange for their email addresses so you can make deeper contacts in the future.
Why are emails still important in this socially diversified era?
They are important because it’s easier to abandon all your social media platforms than it is to abandon your email address. Strange but true. This means, it’s important to move your followers from social only to email contacts to foster more long term relationships.
Coming back to lead magnets…
If you’ve found that even manipulating your lead magnets to give the most valuable and related pieces of content your business has to offer, followers are still clicking that ‘X’ and saying ‘No Thanks’, it means your follower base is mainly composed of stems.
These stems may never become roots and you may never stand to achieve any revenue from this base and you may need to revisit your follower base and how valuable you consider them to be.
Sound Off
I don’t have all the answers but from my own experience, I know there is a problem. A problem with transitioning followers to sales leads. This is where you sound off to share your ideas as industry leaders and players dedicated to the life of socal media and it’s importance to business growth.
I am Leighton Brown, thanks for reading.