Building a large social media following is important, but if you are not getting those followers to join your own database, they are not YOUR followers. Social media is always changing and that makes your social media following volatile. You could lose your following at any time because you don’t “own” them. It’s easy for people to LIKE you on Facebook, but those followers don’t belong to your personal database. For example, if your social media site is “hacked,” you could actually lose all of your followers and will need to start all over again to rebuild your following.

This “hacking” nightmare happened to one of my clients. She had built a large database of over 25,000 followers on her fan page, when someone got into her Facebook page and “hacked” all of her followers in one day. This didn’t just happen once, but twice! What was even more devastating was that she believed she had a huge following, but since she had not moved them over to her website to convert them to her email list, she was NOT building a database.

Building your own database is KEY to developing a real online following. Once you turn followers into warm prospects you can market to them at any time. You can promote your expertise via a newsletter, talk about your services, products, events, etc.

Once you get followers to sign up on your website you’ll want to have a “call to action.” Again, this is where your free offer comes into play.

Now, let’s say your free offer is a guidebook. Your guidebook can be a simple list of tips that is 10-15 pages with an enticing “call to action” at the bottom of it. A strong “call to action” will lead warm prospects to the next step. For example, your action step may be to ask them to sign up for a free coaching call or to invite them to attend a free online class. This is a great opportunity for you to convert warm leads into buyers.