How Authors can Use Social Media to Build their email List

social
by CJ McDaniel // October 10  

Social media is a fantastic marketing tool and there are many ways you can monetize a large number of followers or likes and be highly successful as a result.

At the same time though, social media also has some significant limitations. Chief among these is the fact that it means you’re relying on a third party to give you access to your readers. If Facebook changes their terms and conditions it can alter how you connect with your fans overnight. What’s more, if someone leaves Facebook, you’ll lose access to them.

A mailing list is a better and more direct way to communicate with your followers, but unfortunately it is also harder to build and grow seeing as people tend to be rather protective over their personal details.

The goal then, is to take your social media account and to convert those followers into subscribers. Here’s how you can go about doing this…

Share Posts

One of the main ways you can turn your social media followers into email subscribers is to share content. This way, you’ll get them to leave the social media site and go somewhere where you can embed an opt-in form.

Talk About Your Book or Resources

With a social media account you have a captive audience and you can use that to build interest in what you’re offering. If you often provide discounts and special offers from your mailing list then you can just talk about all the exciting offers and provide links to your mailing list.

Likewise, if you have a forthcoming book, you can talk about how it will change everything and suggest people subscribe if they want more information.

Engage

Using social media gives you a great chance to engage and discuss things with your audience. Make sure you ask and answer questions and create discussion. This way, people will feel more ‘involved’ with what you are doing and will want to take that further by signing up to your list.

Provide Value

Most importantly, make sure you provide value by making interesting and entertaining posts regularly. This way readers will assume your mailing list will offer value too!

 

About the Author

CJ grew up admiring books. His family owned a small bookstore throughout his early childhood, and he would spend weekends flipping through book after book, always sure to read the ones that looked the most interesting. Not much has changed since then, except now some of those interesting books he picks off the shelf were designed by his company!