For some time I’ve been following some of the “big names” in Social Media, quietly studying what they do. What I’ve found is that they are great at creating a community and engaging with their audience.
The provide valuable content, they ask questions; they mix up their posts they do everything that a good social media marketer should do. But there is one thing they miss and in my opinion this is the most important part of social media marketing.
The social media gurus don’t actively move their followers, fans and subscribers from their social media account to their email database. Which means, if there social media account is shut down for any reason they lose all of their hard work.
Now it’s important to understand that there are many well-documented cases of people losing fan pages. In one case, Brads Deals lost their Black Friday Page, which had over 100,000 active and engaged fans.
They had done nothing wrong, but in the course of authenticating their page there was a glitch on Facebook and the whole page was removed. After 10 months of working with Facebook to “find it” they finally had it re-instated.
If this isn’t enough to scare you into there are reports across the web of people losing Fan Pages, Twitter Accounts and even some people keeping their profiles but losing all their followers.
In my opinion, a fan on Facebook, a follower on twitter or a subscriber on Youtube cannot be counted as a business asset until they opt in to your email-marketing database. By doing this, you can ensure you can market to them whether you have access to your social media accounts or not.
So when undertaking your own personal or business Social Media campaign be sure to not miss out on this very important step. Find a reason and incentive for your social media tribe to move to your email database and build a real asset. Don’t make the same mistake that so many social media managers are making!
