CONVERSION
Once your activity with social media attracts people to you . . . via your blog posts, your tweets, facebook fan page updates, etc. one of your goals must be to convert them from an unknown visitor into a recognized person or fan.  Why?  Because if you don’t learn who cares to engage in a conversation with you, it’s going to be difficult for you to sustain an ongoing connection, isn’t it?

Also, unless someone reveals who they are to you, they also aren’t giving you permission to engage with them.  If nothing else, remember this . . . “Permission = Attention”.  If someone isn’t telling you who they are, they aren’t likely to sustain their attention on what you’re saying online.  You need something to do this . . . it’s called an OFFER OF VALUE . . . and valued CONTENT (e.g. a ‘whitepaper’) works great for doing this!

COMMUNITY RELATIONSHIPS
Call them fans or followers, the real value of social media is the creation and maintenance of a community of people who care to hear what you’re saying online and who (presumably) care about what you do in your business.

Finding and keeping a group of engaged fans . . . via facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter or any other social media is an effective way to market your business and an efficient way to grow it, too.  Why?  As your follower or fan-base grows, you’re being exposed to their network connections too.  If you have 1,000 fans on facebook and each averages 50 fans of their own, you’re being exposed to 50,000 people — with each post and a simple click of your mouse.  That . . . is why your community is such a valuable asset.

KEY POINT:
Learning who ‘knows’ and ‘likes’ you and then building a relationship of ‘trust’ with them . . . is truly priceless marketing!