Why Subscribers and Community-Building Are Vital to Your Social Media Marketing Strategy?

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Why Subscribers and Community-Building Are Vital to Your Social Media Marketing Strategy?

If you want your social media marketing campaign and online brand to flourish, you must build a powerful community of subscribers, a.k.a. fans.  Subscribers are a key ingredient to the success of popular websites because they allow you to further the reach of your online communications. Here are some of the top reasons why building a subscriber base is such a vital component of your social media marketing success. 

RSS Feed Users Are Often Web Publishers Themselves:

Did you know that eleven percent or less of web users know how to use RSS?  It makes sense that those who are savvy enough to use RSS are also the ones who produce and share information on the web.  When you build your RSS subscribers, you are forming relationships with influential people who are the movers and shakers of the web.  As long as you do a great job of providing quality content that is worth spreading, your subscribers are bound to help you out by getting your message to more people, who may in turn spread your message even further. 

Subscribers Build Community:

The communities of social media are what attract users.  Compelling communities that flourish attract more people and make sites worth visiting.  For example, as the community on Facebook grew and attracted people from all walks of life, people were slowly drawn away from Myspace and moved over to Facebook. 

The More Subscribers You Have, the More Inbound Links You Get:

As you grow your subscriber base, an increasing number of them will consider you as a source of linkable content.  Many web publishers are constantly on the hunt for great content that they can link to or refer to in their own posts.  If you consistently provide high quality content, they will look to you as a resource.  The more times your content is linked to, the more SEO benefits you will get from link juice.  You can accomplish this simply by making an effort to constantly provide great content.  The occasional link bait wouldn’t hurt either. 

Your Subscribers Will Motivate You to Produce Better Content:

The more you grow your subscriber base, the more feedback you will receive about your content.  The feedback you get will enable you to learn more about your niche and how you can serve your subscribers better.  When you know that your reach is growing, you will inevitably make a greater effort to produce excellent content that gets people talking.  As a result, you will improve your work in many aspects and become an authority in your niche. 

Social Proofing Benefits:

Subscribers serve as social proofing.  When new visitors to your site see that you have lots of subscribers/fans, they are more likely to believe that your site is worth visiting and subscribing to.  When new visitors see your subscriber list, they will give you the time of day and be more likely to join your community right then and there. 

Less Reliance on Traditional PR:

Traditional PR methods such as pitching to the media and other bloggers will no longer be a necessity if you have a large subscriber base.  When you grow your subscriber base, you will see increasing returns for your communications.  Media coverage will come naturally, without you having to solicit it. 

No matter what type of online business you have, you will be in a better position than your competitors if you build a specific audience around your content.  When you build that audience and connect with them on a personal level, it takes your social media marketing campaign up a notch, enabling you to grow your online brand. 

How to Grow Your Subscriber Base:

Now that you understand why it is so important for you to grow your online subscriber base, here are a few tips on how you can accomplish the task.  First off, you must create content that gets people’s attention. It must have networking built into it and encourage people to share it with others.  Your content must also contain multiple hooks to get more visitors to join.  Great content is usually the biggest pull but you should also use other methods to attract new subscribers. 

Make sure your content is focused on your niche.  Your goal should be to consistently meet the expectations of your subscribers.  People are going to visit your site expecting a certain type of content so try not to go off topic too much and you will build a stronger, more tight-knit community. 

Surely there are plenty of other communities in your niche already.  In order to attract more subscribers, study the existing communities and try to do things differently from them.  When you focus on topics or details that existing communities in your niche aren’t touching upon, you can achieve online growth much more quickly. 

Four Community-Building Tips for Social Media

admin    Twitter Marketing     CommunityBuilding, Four, Media, Social, Tips

Four Community-Building Tips for Social Media

The world of social media has presented some unique opportunities not just to marketers, but to community organizers and communicators. While ‘community’ is becoming the online business world’s hottest buzzword (and most misused), if the predictions and proposed changes are at this point limited to the business world.

Building a community is not limited to people with a product to market; it can be a remarkable opportunity for entrepreneurs who are still deciding on a product, non-profit groups looking to unite passionate people, and of course, marketers looking to connect with a wide audience.

These four methods will help you build a community, connect with your users, and create social media ‘permission marketing’ assets:

1: Bundle your best content with your community.

It is hard to predict what will ‘tip’ and what won’t in the online world. The best strategy for ensuring that community can gather around your best content is to always provide a platform for it to grow. That could mean a Ning forum, like this one on social media marketing, for your most popular blog posts, a Twitter account feeding out your recent articles and presentations, or a community forum with a thread for every blog post. Content should be produced in function of your community and you should include the content your community creates, as is explained here.

2: Comments are a thin attachment, so find something thicker.

Blog comments have often been considered a good indicator of connection and value. If you racked up a lot of comments, you were connecting with people and your blog was valuable. The problem is that blog comments are not a particularly deep connection. Instead of merely taking comments, link to your forum or Ning community at the bottom of every post, and encourage readers to join the community.

3: Offer unique content to your community.

Got a podcast? Take suggestions from your community members for episodes, and offer unique content and special features to them. A little goes a long way when it is exclusive, and you will find that your community really values being offered something that nobody else gets to see. Offering content like this is great for two reasons; you get ideas and inspiration from your community, and you tighten your bond with them by offering something unique. Besides, you do not have to be a creative person to offer unique content — if you are a merchant, offer unique offers and promotions.

4: Actively participate and keep in touch with your members.

Some of the most impressive and important online communities were built by people or companies that truly interacted with their customers and fans. Even if they are not huge names in business or entertainment, they kept in touch with people, built their recognition and created a friendly relationship with their fan base. A community is something that you should earn as is explained here. If you can actively communicate with your community, do it. Nobody is too big to keep in touch with customers and fans, and when you embrace your community you will see their word-of-mouth marketing efforts increase.