74.jpg)
In order to have interested people to send your marketing message to, you need to ‘build a list’. This has become the ‘holy grail’ of small business success on the internet and is often misunderstood. Only today I saw a question asked on LinkedIn about the best place to buy a list …
Back when direct mailing was the best way to reach a wider audience, and before junk mail became such a problem, you could buy a list and send out as many mailings as your budget would allow. It was quite expensive to have flyers printed and posted out.
Email did away with most of these cost constraints, although you still had to pay if you decided to go down the route of buying a list.
And of course, the latest way to quickly reach large numbers of people with your message is through the social networks. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are far and away the most popular for small businesses online.
The fly in the ointment (you knew there had to be one didn’t you?) is that with so many marketing messages arriving in our overflowing inboxes, all vying for the same very limited amount of attention time, we’re becoming overwhelmed and as a result ignoring more than we read.
I recently culled two-thirds of the blogs and email newsletters I subscribe to because I didn’t have enough time to read them … no matter how good they are.
At first I thought I’d miss receiving all the new tips and information but it’s actually been quite a relief not to have so many messages to trawl through each day, so much so that I’m seriously considering how to reduce the noise from my social networks too.
I started out on Twitter and Facebook just a couple of years ago – with lots of enthusiasm but without a plan. Consequently the number of friends and followers have become like an unruly crowd of people at a party. I don’t know who most of them are and unfortunately haven’t got time to get to know them either. It’s not fair to send them spammy marketing messages – just because I can.
While the numbers involved in my case are a tiny fraction compared with the internet marketing gurus, I’m beginning to understand why some of them have ‘blown up’ their Facebook profiles and started again from scratch, keeping personal and business pages separate. These same marketers also follow only a small number of people on Twitter, keeping to a manageable number they can engage with.
Do you play the numbers game? How do you manage your social networking contacts? We’d love to know.
About Louise
Louise Barnes-Johnston has been working in social media marketing since 2007 after realising that it was a powerful marketing tool which would enable her clients to raise the profile of their businesses on the internet, even when working to a limited budget. Her specialism is in researching social media practices; trying out the most effective online tools and then sharing the best of them with her clients.
