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How Much Are Your Social Media Contacts Worth?

Guest post by: David Hurley

Article Overview: Many people are starting to wonder just how much their social media contacts are worth.  People may have more than 1,000 Twitter followers, but hardly any of them are converting into solid leads. Here's what you need to do to get more value from your social media contacts.

How Much Are Your Social Media Contacts Worth?

With the growth of social media marketing on the Internet many people are wondering just how much their social media contacts are worth. It’s pretty common for people to have well over 1,000 Twitter followers these days, but the problem is that in most cases the "followers" seldom convert into solid leads.

The biggest problem so far with social media is that most internet marketers got caught up in building a massive amount of followers that they didn't bother setting up the proper metrics to determine how valuable their followers actually were. The truth is, there’s a very good chance that most of your Twitter followers don’t have the slightest clue who you are. Most probably just followed you hoping that you would follow them back. Some reports have estimated that a social media contact is worth a maximum of $3.50. However, in order to build relationships using social media, it’s more of a one-on-one task in order to be truly effective.

This article will take a look at some other popular internet marketing communication methods to gain a better idea of how effective social media contacts are. List building, the most obvious method of communication, has been around long before the internet. List building is now done through email instead of collecting business cards and is infinitely more valuable. An IBM study reported that a single loyal email contact is worth just under $950. This much higher number compared to social media contacts is due to the fact that when someone signs up for you list, they are trading personal information for something else, normally a free resource of some kind. 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 lies in between your social media contacts and your email list. Subscribing to your blog’s RSS feed takes someone only about two clicks, which is a lot faster than subscribing to an email list but longer than following someone on Twitter or Facebook. Therefore, it's no surprise that your RSS subscribers are more valuable than Twitter followers, but less valuable than someone who has subscribed to your email list. Another reason that blog followers are more valuable than social media contacts is because you have a chance to make money (even if it’s just by selling advertising space) every time that they visit your blog. With Twitter or Facebook, if you don't get them to click on a link and purchase a product, you won't make any money.

You can draw several conclusions from this, and none of them involve ditching social media. The first is that you must get your social media contacts to take another step past merely following you in order to truly monetize them. It’s important that you get your followers to sign up for your blog’s RSS feed or email list. Both would be ideal. This will give you a greater chance to build a long-lasting relationship with them, and of course, monetize them better. The second conclusion is that while social media contacts can still be useful, they should not be the backbone of your marketing efforts. You have gained credibility among the community by having a strong social media presence, which can be leveraged and monetized in a variety of ways that are not directly tied to your Twitter followers or Facebook friends.

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Article Tags: followers, lead conversion, list buildingmedia contacts, social media



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