At this point, you hopefully have a lot of visitors who are engaged with the content on your website. Now it’s time to convert them into a customer, and stay connected with them using all the latest tools and techniques out there.

There are multiple ways to keep the dialog going with your visitors but first you need to know how to get in touch with them. The only way to do this is ask them to share their contact information with you. In the past, your main option for doing this was to create a form asking for their email or mailing address, but with the emergence of social media your choices have greatly expanded. The following tools are some of the most popular and effective ways to reconnect with your visitor.

Despite the emergence of social media, capturing your visitors’ email addresses and sending them an email newsletter is still an effective way to keep them informed. Discussing best practices for this would require a blog post of its own, so I’ve only listed a few of the most important ones here:

• In the signup form, don’t ask for too much information beyond their name and email address, since the longer the form is, the less likely they will take the time to fill it out.
• When sending the newsletter, keep the content brief with links to full details on your website. This will help people skim over the content faster and see if there is something they like.
• Make sure you know what your newsletter looks like when the images aren’t there, since a lot of people’s email clients don’t automatically download images anymore.
• Use a service like www.constantcontact.com or www.activecampaign.com to send out your emails, they are great at making sure you follow the latest best practices.
• Always review your mailing statistics, especial link tracking, to see what people were interested in. Then tailor your next email accordingly.

Social media is a well established way to reconnect with your visitors at this point, and something you need to be considering for your web presence. With the emergence of the Facebook “Like” and Twitter “Follow me” buttons, your site visitors can now quickly connect their personal profile to your business, and allow you to interact with them in the social media world.

Social media comes in many shapes and forms, and for a business it can be tricky to decide what’s worth investing in. Unlike a website, which (although not recommended) can sit untouched for weeks at a time, social media requires consistent updating and interaction. Among other things, this usually takes the shape of posting content, asking questions, answering questions and responding to feedback. Two of the most popular social media options are Facebook and Twitter, but there are plenty more worth considering depending on your business including YouTube, Linked In, GroupOn, Digg and many more.

If your content is really newsworthy you can also set up an RSS feed, which basically sends your latest content posts directly to people who use RSS readers to collect news and updates from their favorites sites.

Next up, Part 4: MEASURE.