Social media has taken the internet marketing industry by storm in recent years.
If you are using social media, have you ever wondered how much your contacts there are worth? People are no longer surprised that they may have more than 1,000 Twitter followers, but hardly any of them are converting into solid leads.
One of the major problems with social media is that most internet marketers get so caught up in building a massive number of followers that they never take the time to set up the proper metrics to determine how valuable these followers are. In fact, there is a good chance that most of your Twitter followers have no idea who you are. Most of them probably followed you in hopes that you would follow them back.
To get a better idea of how effective social media contacts are, let’s take a look at some other popular internet marketing communication methods. The most obvious method of communication has been around long before the internet. At one time list-building, was done by collecting business cards, and is now done by email. List-building is much more valuable than Twitter, for example, which is estimated to have a top value per contact of about $3.50..
On the other hand, an IBM study reported that a single loyal email contact is worth just under $950. This is because when someone signs up for your list, they are trading personal information for something else, normally a free resource, such as an ebook. This instantly builds a more personal relationship, which is a major reason that a person on your list is worth so much more than a Twitter or Facebook follower.
Blogging fits somewhere in between social media contacts and people on your list. Subscribing to your blog’s RSS feed takes as little as two clicks, which is much faster than signing up for email, but longer than following someone on Twitter. Therefore, it is no surprise that your RSS subscribers are more valuable than Twitter followers, but less valuable than someone who has subscribed to your email list.
There are several conclusions that you can draw from this and none of them involve ditching social media all together. In order to monetize your social media contacts, it is essential that you get them to take another step. It is important that you get your followers to sign up for your blog’s RSS feed or email list. This will give you a greater opportunity to build a lasting relationship with them, and of course monetize them a little better. The second conclusion is that while social media contacts can still be useful, they should not be the primary factor of your internet marketing.
A strong social media presence will help you achieve credibility among your readers, which can be leveraged in a variety of ways that are not directly tied to your Twitter followers or Facebook friends.