Are you Leveraging your Guru-ness through Email and Social?

Some people think that email marketing is dead. Don't listen to them. Email marketing has never gone out of fashion. What has changed is that you can now link it up with social media to create a broader online marketing strategy.

In the early days of writing my newsletter I often received a less than overwhelming response. It made me wonder if it was worth all the time and effort. Fortunately, now and then, someone told me they read every article I published, or that they loved a particular article and they ended up buying something because of it. Even if I got no immediate response I knew my efforts were generating business.

Go Social ...

With the growing trend towards social media, people wonder what the future of email marketing is. Well, email marketing is going nowhere. It's been around for over 20 years now and it's not going away. If you already have an email marketing list, keep it, and if you don't already have one, now is a good time to start.

People tend to keep their email addresses in the same way they like to stick with their telephone number. You know yourself it's just really hard to change these isn't it? They almost become part of your persona. That link makes it very easy to reach people once you have their details.

Social media is more transient. People come and go, they're in and out. If your timing isn't quite right they might miss your update, or, it might not get shown to them at all, as we showed you in a recent Sales Tip.

Use social media to engage people and then direct them to your mailing list.

Facebook changes its rules often and people who build their business on there get shut down all the time.
What's more, social media platforms come and go. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn look unstoppable at the moment, but networks like MySpace and Bebo that once looked dominant have either disappeared or lost prominence.

... And Stick with Email

If you've built your business on email lists you are in control. Emails are right there in your inbox until you make a conscious choice to delete them. It's a medium people are familiar with, in a way that many are still not comfortable with social media. You can use this to your advantage to build trust with your audience. Give them information that's highly targeted and valuable once and they're much more likely to open your emails in the future. Why?

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