Gather Followers With Social Media, Nurture Them Through SMS

Gather Followers With Social Media

Gather Followers With Social Media, Nurture Them Through SMS

Social Media is the new business card bulletin board. There is no better way to quickly spread your brand name and arouse curiosity. If you are in an established business, this media will help you expand in ways traditional advertising formats could never compete. Some of the biggest sites in social media boast a membership database larger the population of several countries… combined! So, there is a readymade world of social media followers all congregated in one spot, just waiting to hear what you have to say and offer.

There is one quirk though. Social Media will not allow a business to communicate or market directly to customers as efficiently as can text message marketing. Text marketing, or SMS Marketing, is immediately actionable the minute it is received by the subscriber. Social media sites require you to log in and stay connected as messages or posts are created, requiring undivided attentiveness. SMS, on the other hand, is a personal link to customer’s phones which is always on and ready to receive your information any second. The only kind of login required is simple for customers to opt-in and receive such messages. Once customers register, it is like the pilot light in a gas powered appliance, it is always on and ready to work whether you are attending to it or not.

This all sounds like a great process for any business but there must be a starting point to get all these people interested in the first place. Below are three pertinent examples of where and how to start getting the fan base or social media followers building process and then integrate that with an SMS marketing campaign.

  1. Use Facebook as the primary tool to elicit interest in your business. You can initially build the fan base by getting people involved and interactive with your page.
    • Ask questions of your fans.
    • Ask for fan supplied content.
    • You can even get quite personal and begin featuring a fan of the month section.
    • Once you have a few onboard, grow that base by asking fans to share your content, and if you post content on a regular basis, ask fans to share content as soon as they read it. In other words, timing, take advantage of a fresh idea and popular content as long as it lasts.

To integrate this into SMS you have to be direct. Provide a link on the page that will allow customers to sign up for your SMS marketing campaign online if they wish. The best way is to simply provide a number and instructions so people can sign up with their phones.

  1. Use Twitter to keep users aware of your immediate goings-on. Twitter usage is already a massive micro-blogging phenomenon and allows virtually anyone to create their own specialized group of followers. Some things you can do to cultivate a following are:
    • Teach about something, educate people. This can be done one tweet at a time and will tend to keep viewers anticipating the next tweet and installment of the instructional course.
    • Hold contests for retweets. This is a good way to get people to relay your messages while offering rewards for those who help you the most.
    • Tweet things of value like a recipe list or something else people may find useful.

Let people know that they can follow your tweets through SMS. It’s as simple as texting “Follow @(whatever username) to 545454 and that person will begin receiving SMS alerts for “whatever username’s” tweets. This is an especially brilliant tool because it can be utilized by people who don’t even have a twitter account.

  1. Use Pinterest to post a photographic montage of your offerings. If you are in the restaurant business, images of succulent dishes you serve can easily grab attention. Solid actions you can take would be:
    • Keep an eye on boards that are posting information or products similar to yours.
    • Review other business boards to learn how they nurture their followers. Don’t necessarily copy it, but rather augment, modify and make it fit your business personality.
    • Become involved with and be a feature on lifestyle boards, niche boards or get into any interest group where you would like to see your product offered.
    • Send invites to exclusive followers and/or customers, since Pinterest operates primarily on an invitation-only basis.

If you have a collage of photos that words cannot describe, pin them on Pinterest then start blasting SMS messages asking followers to check them out. This social site is all about visual stimulations. SMS does not provide that but it can certainly alert followers that you have posted something their visual receptors will love seeing.

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