How to Turn Your Social Media Followers into Email Contacts

Like a rock star, today we all have followers, for our businesses, or personal lives. Like the groupies of days gone by who would follow the musicians from town to town. Unfortunately, a follower may not be on the same bus all the time. With so many avenues to follow, one business to another, one friend to another, it can be hard to know where loyalty lies. We all participate in this phenomenon, so it shouldn’t be so upsetting of an idea.

However, we still want the result to be turning these followers into solid contacts via email. How is the best way to do that?

Competitions and Giveaways

People love giveaways, think of all those jars of jelly beans. You sat there and analyzed the size of the jar and the beans to estimate how many were in there. The prize was probably not as exciting as say a trip to Mexico, more like a basket of cleaning products for your car or truck.

Better still, the infamous basket raffle, paying crazy amounts of money so you can win a basket full of stuff that probably cost less than the money you just put into the raffle. The point is we all love contests. Be it of strength, intelligence, or sheer luck.

Using possibly www.shortstack.com as an example you would create a contest with a short duration, possibly a week or a few days. This will cause a sense of urgency that they need to complete this now or possibly lose. Make the prize exciting, it doesn’t need to be big or expensive, as seen above but something your followers will want. You would create a sign-up form that would clearly state they will be added to your email list. And voila, you’ve created a new email contact.

Freebies and Downloads (Whitepapers)

Again, the same premise here, as above. People love getting stuff.  If the supermarket is giving away a spatula today to all its customers, almost all those customers will take the free giveaway of a spatula. They may already have 3 at home but one more is always nice in case the other 3 get lost or broken.

We simply can’t resist free stuff, no matter what it is. Think of all those free bins of stuff after a yard sale that sit out front of a home. By morning, or maybe not even that long, the box will most likely be empty.

Offer a free item possibly an eBook, free article (whitepaper) or short video. What it is doesn’t matter so long as it is important and relevant to your followers. State clearly that the freebie comes with a email opt-in to receive this priceless freebie, and again, new email contact.

In conclusion

Bringing the follower to your door may be an easy thing to do with giveaways and free stuff. Keeping this new contact may be a bit harder. That is where having a good web design comes in. Learning to pull that strings at what drives us all is the key to success in any business or personal venture.