Column: Building relationships key to making money on social media

Many people are looking for the secret path to making money on social media. To some people, making money on social media is simple. To others, it”™s an enigma. Which products to promote, what discounts to offer and a bunch of similar thoughts swirl in the minds of many Internet marketers.

You don”™t make money on social media by selling products all of the time. You do it by building relationships, and more specifically, building your email list. Out of all of the forms of online communication, email remains the top way to generate sales. If you can get your social media followers to become your subscribers, then you are poised to see that desired social media ROI.

That leads to how to turn social media followers into subscribers. There are a variety of ways, but the best tactics are to promote your landing page and enable pop-ups on your blog. Every blog you promote to your social media audience can potentially get subscribers because the pop-up is in play.

CREATE A LANDING PAGE

Landing pages give visitors free content, a free video, or a discount in exchange for an email address. The more irresistible the offer is, the more email addresses you will get.

There are numerous online tools to create landing pages; pick the one that best suits your business”™ needs.

PROMOTE THE LANDING PAGE

ON SOCIAL MEDIA

I want as many of my social media followers as possible to become my subscribers. That”™s why 25 percent of my social media posts promote my landing pages. To offer my audience a free offer I know they will like, I consistently tweet digital marketing related posts and see which posts get the most engagement. More engagement indicates myaudience wants more of that type of content. Then I”™ll write a mini guidebook about that piece of content and offer it to people who enter their email address on the landing page.

ENABLING POP-UPS ON YOUR BLOG

Love them or hate them, pop-ups get conversions. Within the first 5 to 10 seconds of someone visiting your blog, you can set the pop-up to appear automatically and promote a free offer. Just like virtually every other pop-up on the web, you get access to the free offer in exchange for an email address. Pop-Up Domination and Pop-Up Ally are two tools that make it easy for you to create pop-ups in a matter of minutes.

BONUS: CONTENT UPGRADES

Savvy bloggers will put an opt-in box at the bottom of every blog they write. While this technique works for growing your email list, the opt-in box usually promotes the same free offer. Someone reading a blog about blogging may scroll down and find the opt-in offering a blogging guidebook. However, that same opt-in would appear for the Twitter-related blogs too.

At least, that”™s the way most blogs are structured. Others provide content upgrades.

They are bonus content in addition to the blog you just read. Visitors who enjoyed reading your blog may see the content upgrade and enter their email address because they want that extra bit of information. Most of my content upgrades are shorter than the actual blogs. They summarize the blog, provide a checklist so the methods can be implemented, or provide additional insight.

A blog without content upgrades usually has a 20 percent conversion rate while some blogs with content upgrades have seen conversion rates above 60 percent. The reason is that the content upgrade strongly resonates with the blog that the visitor just read. When you have the content upgrades on your blog, you can then promote it via social media and grow your email list.

Marc Guberti is a senior at Fordham Preparatory School and a social media and business blogger and author. He”™s on Twitter @MarcGuberti and can be reached by phone at 914-722-6005 or email at Marc@MarcGuberti.com.