Building an email list is one of the best ways of growing your business. But these days, email spam is rife, and people are justifiably reluctant to give out their email addresses. So how do you convince them to enter their details? One of the best ways of building your list is to give away a free report.

A free report can be used in a couple of ways. For one, it can be used to pre-sell your products. With a report related to the subject of your products, pre-sell the reader on the idea of buying your product. Also, you can use it to promote affiliate offers by placing affiliate links in appropriate places within your report.

As beneficial as selling your products and affiliate offers is, the main purpose of your report is to get the customers contact information so you can build a list focused on your market.

The idea is to write a report with information about your niche. By offering it to the reader, you are in effect trading information the customer wants for their contact information. Once you have the information, you can begin building a relationship with your list and start a systematic campaign of providing valuable information and offering your products and affiliate products to your list.

Once you have a list, you have a valuable asset because you can market to your subscribers over and over again, whenever you want. Without a list, a subscriber has to visit your page for you to offer them something for sale.

One of the main success factors in viral marketing of your report is quality. If your readers find your information worth sharing, and you encourage them to do so by giving them the right to give your report away for free, you will be able to have your name, status and links within the report passed around without any effort on your part – simply because others are willing to do so for you.

Building a targeted email list is all it takes to start any business empire. It will be your most valuable asset.

The two biggest websites in the social networking world at the moment are Facebook and Twitter, and you should be on both.

If you’re like most people, you love Facebook, but don’t quite see the point of Twitter. And I used to be one of you – for a long time, I resisted Twitter’s social siren song. I wrote it off as glorified text-messaging; just another source of distraction.

But now I get it. And now, it is my pleasure to give you:

The Top 5 Reasons to Sign Up to Twitter Today

1. Find out what’s happening NOW

Think about it: the 6pm news is a wrap-up of all that’s happened during the day. What if you want to find out about something right now? Earthquake? Plane crash? Smoke on the horizon? Just search for it on Twitter. If something is happening in the world, chances are there’s someone “tweeting” about it. And we’re not talking about the biased and edited media – just real people.

2. Follow important people in your field

When you “follow” someone, your news feed is updated any time they post something new. So whatever your field – economics, life coaching, brain surgery even? – you will find updates relevant to you.

3. Talk to companies directly, in a public, open way

Big companies are on Twitter and they take it very seriously. Because each “tweet” is public rather than private, the way emails would be, there is pressure on these companies to respond to every query or complaint. Got a problem with your favorite Telco? Hit them up on Twitter and see what happens.

4. Keep up to date with the latest news and updates

You can use Twitter as a news feed by subscribing to news services like CNN’s Breaking News. As events occur, you get instant notifications. Follow your favorite sports team or celebrity for up-to-the-second updates.

5. Reach new, potential customers

Most important of all, from a business sense, people can follow you. Work out your business niche, and then start posting updates about that niche. Post links to interesting articles you’ve read; engage in trending topics of discussion; and answer questions asked. In no time, you’ll find you have an audience following your every update. Then watch what happens when you post a special offer!

Twitter is what you make of it. It can be a very useful tool for business, or it can simply be another distraction.

As author of the site Free Website Click Here, I can show you how to set up your very first website in less than an hour.

Once you’re website is online, use Twitter to build an online following. Check out our resources section for tools to generate followers on Twitter.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=O_Andrew_Marks