The Importance of Social Media

If you’re not sure about what the importance of social media is, this is the website for you. Read everything in it. However, I can give a quick overview. Social Media allows you to interact with customers in a way that is always open—with newsletters there are also the fear that you get sent to spam or never get opened. Email isn’t exactly a dying science, but if you market to a younger demographic you might have more success with social media.

It also means you can post much more often. You shouldn’t send out five newsletters in a day, but there’s no problem with five posts, particularly if you’re on multiple platforms. People are also more likely to respond to a post than an email, because it’s so short. This also means the general public is more likely to read to the end.

Unless you pay someone to do your social media for you or you sponsor a post, social media is often completely free. It may make sense to pay someone or sponsor depending on what your business is, but there is the possibility of doing this for free.

The Importance of Newsletters

Social media’s algorithm constantly changes. One day you could be at the very top of all your followers’ feeds, and the next day they only see your posts if they purposely look at your page. In email everything goes by date, so as long as you make sure your email didn’t go in spam your email will always be at the top at one point in time or another.

Newsletters start out free before you have many readers (if you’re willing to use the right services), but often charge money for long email lists. However, you can easily make this money back. People who subscribe to your newsletters are actively seeking you out. People rarely apply to more than a few newsletters at a time, whereas they may follow thousands on social media. In social media, they can’t even tell you who all they are following most of the time, but newsletters take extra work. 

You get to put in a good body of content in a newsletter, unlike social media. Even if you have facebook, which may allow limitless characters, you are only going to annoy people if you try to put a whole newsletter in facebook.

You also have more control over the look of the project. In social media, you are mostly stuck with the look they provide to you. This can limit showing your creativity if your business is related to being creative. Through a good newsletter site you can control absolutely everything. This is a definite advantage.

So Should You Use Both?

The answer to that is almost always yes. Yes, you can do both. But only do both if you can do both well. If you’re going to skimp on one in order to get further with another, then only do the one you can get further on.

One of the good things about using both is the fact that they can lead to one another. You can advertise your social media in your newsletter and vice versa. There may be some people that won’t subscribe to both, but that’s okay. Simply putting the options out there can get your super fans involved, get your regular fans to become super fans, and make people have never heard of you become fans. If you can keep those three things working at all times then you’re sure to be successful in business.

How To Make People Who Have Never Heard of Your Project Into Fans

These are the people that aren’t following you on social media or subscribed to your newsletter. They don’t hate you, they’ve just never heard of you. You can’t blame them for that. However, if you can get them to notice you, you can easily get a fan. Your product is that good, right?

A good thing to look for is who you think will become fans. No matter how good your product or service is, some people are just not going to want it. So it’s important not to focus your energies on them. Figure out what social media platform they are on. Figure out their age, who they follow, anything about them. It’s good to get specific, like what is their favorite clothing brand? If they had a catch phrase, what would it be?

One you’ve decided who your target audience is, you have a few options. One is to make ads and present them directly to the people you see as a target audience. You can also create a non-sponsored post but use the tags the people you see are searching or following. You can then follow them and hope for a follow back. I would not follow them before you have posts aimed at them, as they are less likely to follow back.

How To Make Regular Fans Into Super Fans

If someone is already following you on social media, the next step is to get them to subscribe to your newsletter. Inversely, if someone is subscribing to your newsletter but not following you on social media, you want them to. People rarely buy a product or service the first time they see it, so this way they can see it over and over again.

A good way to get people who are connected to one but not the other to branch out is to have crossover posts. I don’t mean copy and paste the same words to each, but rather mention your post or newsletter with a piece into it.

A great way to do this is asking and answering questions. For example “Want to know why we’re the best place to get a haircut? Find out here!”. This works best if you can figure out what questions your target audience is asking about your product or service.

How To Get Superfans Involved

Hopefully, you know what sort of person I’m talking about. Perhaps they’ve written thank you emails. Perhaps they have told all their friends about you. These are people you can definitely use to your advantage. The best part is that they would love the chance to collaborate with you.

An easy way to do this is to have a referral bonus. If this person, whose all about your product or service, hears they can get free products from you simply by telling people about your business, they will be more than happy to.

Another way is to feature them somewhere. Restaurants have eating contests, blogs have guest posts. You will just have to figure out which one works for you. It can be a real hassle to try to find the perfect answer for you, so if you’re not sure it can be great to ask the super fans what they want. Generally, they have a few ideas of what can keep them involved. You can do this by asking a few people what they want or come up with a few options and put it in a poll or something similar.

When Do I Start These?

If you are a new business, this is one of the things you want to do first. Even if you don’t have products out, you can get people involved, get preorders, and get a countdown to these happening. If you don’t have either, it can be smart to focus on just one for a bit. But as soon as you create the other, start advertising it.

How Do I Advertise These on Other Platforms?

Many email providers for newsletters have a space for you to put all your social media links. It is generally at the end of the email, but you can imbed it anywhere for many platforms. You can generally also see how many people click on your social media links, which is helpful. In some you can even see which email address clicked it so you can make quick campaign decisions on who gets what emails.

Advertising your newsletter on social media is a little bit trickier. You can put the link for it in your description, but that’s not necessarily enough. What you don’t want to do is message it randomly to people who did not ask.

Many people include a part of the newsletter in a post, then do a link for those who want to see the rest of it. This can certainly be worth a try, just remember that they do get the email even if it had actually been sent out an hour or two earlier.

Conclusion

It can be a daunting task to have to do so much work. Didn’t we start a business because we wanted to create a product or do a service? But if those are the two things you want to do often, a newsletter and social media accounts will certainly help on the way. It can make all the difference.