Email Subscribers > Social Media Followers
Email Subscribers > Social Media Followers
Social Media is overrated when it comes to continuing your growth as a brand.
For years, I’ve been preaching that people should not rely on social media to always communicate with customers, instead, it’s important to focus on curating an email (or SMS) list of your customers.
This is how you “own” your audience.
What does “owning” your audience mean?
Owning your audience is how you can communicate with them directly on a regular basis.
This allows you to have direct ways to share business updates, sales, hours, and more about your brand.
How do you communicate with your audience now?
Most companies answer, “through social media”.
But what if social media disappeared tomorrow.
What would you do if Facebook shut down tomorrow?
Scenario: You have a BIG event at your company tomorrow. You have over 100 customers that have RSVP’ed to your event on Facebook.
You plan on sharing photos, updates, and event information like directions on your Facebook page. You also are going to rely on Facebook to check your guest list.
It’s 9 am and the event starts at 10 am, but Facebook is not loading. You close and reopen it and it’s still not loading.
Now what? You have no way to contact or interact with customers. You have no control over how your information is shown to your audience.
You don’t have control over your social media.
You may choose what you want to post, but ultimately you’ve agreed to terms and conditions for the provider (Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, etc.) which can remove violations from your page at any time.
Also, you don’t choose how the information is shown to your followers. You are subject to an algorithm, which determines when and for who your posts show up.
Stop Relying on Algorithms, Use Inboxes Instead
Social Media vs. Emails vs. SMS
About 5% of your audience sees your social media posts.
About 21% of your audience opens your emails.
About 98% of your audience opens text messages.
As you can see the likelihood of getting your message across to your audience via email or SMS (text message) is much greater.
Subscribing to a services like MailChimp or Constant Contact will give you access to tools to start developing your audience lists.
Once you are able to start creating your lists, here are some good ideas of what your can send out to your audience:
Promotional Email - Sales or holiday offers.
Monthly Updates - Keep your audience updated on the latest.
New Services/Products - Send new happenings to your customers.
As you start to develop your audience lists and create regimen of emails, start to prompt your customers on interacting with your business more often.
Social media is still a valid channel for sharing, but focusing more efforts on email or SMS campaigns will reap more interactions.
My Tweet of the Week:
If you have an email list or mailing list do you ever purge it? You should and here’s why.
According to Ignite Social Media