You're well aware that building your prospect and customer lists is crucial to your success – and something you constantly have to be doing. You also probably know that some customers like to be reached via email, some through social media and some still through good old-fashioned snail mail. (But, since this is a site for interactive marketers, I won't talk about that last group so much!)

I write a lot about email marketing since that's my passion, but for this post, I'm going to focus on getting customers to help you build those lists through their social media networks.

The first thing to do is make it easy for people to share your stuff. At VerticalResponse, we use a free sharing tool called AddThis, which gives you a snippet of code that you can put on your website (and/or individual pages) and allows readers to share your content and pages to their various social networks with one click. It also gives you analytics to see how many times your page is shared.

Here are three other places to put your new social media share code:

Confirmation Page. After a customer orders from you online, give them an opportunity to tell their friends that they just got the latest and greatest from you.

Newsletter Landing Page. When someone signs up for your newsletter, present them with a page that allows them to share the fact that they signed up, something like, "I just signed up for the XYZ Newsletter!" Don't forget to include a link to your newsletter opt-in form so their friends and followers can sign up if they want, too.

Registration Process. If you require your customers to sign up and have an "account" with you, give them an opportunity to easily share the fact that they've registered. Include a link directing their friends and followers to a page where they can get an account, too.

Don't forget to add these icons to your email marketing campaigns and newsletters, so your subscribers can share your email content with their networks. Your recipients' social networks can even re-tweet or share, too, further extending the reach of your messages. VerticalResponse and many other email service providers offer the ability to do this easily; you don't need any special code because it's built right into the email.

Happy sharing!

Janine Popick is the CEO and founder of VerticalResponse, a provider of email marketing, social media, online survey, event marketing and direct mail marketing solutions.

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