First we examined how to write a call to action in Susan’s Your Social Media Messages: Strategic or Waste? The next step was to understand what to say and where to find that content. Now it is time to examine how to vary your message.

The worst mistake companies make, across social networks, is to hard sell everything. These companies push their products, services, and ideas non stop like a used car salesman. The following should help you avoid this fatal marketing mistake. Let’s take a look at this from a winery’s perspective.

What is Signal?

Signal are messages you deliver, within your social networks, that provide value to your audience. Signal should never be a sales pitch. These messages have the following characteristics:

• Subject: these messages are about your industry, peers, region, or your company
• Value: these messages add value to your audience by bringing them information that teaches, informs, or is breaking news
• Ratio: signal should make up 65%+ of the total messages you create

What is Noise?

Noise are messages you deliver, within your social networks, that provide your audience a sales message.

• Subject: these messages are entirely about your wine, discounts, pricing, specials, or anything you are selling to your audience
• Value: the value is centered on your winery more than the audience. This is your time to be “selfish” and pitch your products
• Ratio: noise should make up no more than 35% of your total number of messages

Become a Go-To Source of Value

The most critical reason you must vary your message, with more Signal messages, is  to create value for your audience. By creating value for your audience, you become a go-to source of valuable information. Wineries, or any companies-entrepreneurs, that position themselves as go-to sources of information create:

• Trust for their products and services with their audience
• Return readers who are motivated to learn more including information about your winery
• Perception that you care about engaging, informing your consumers, and providing them a “voice”
• Partnership where information sharing becomes viral

“Evangelism is the practice of attempting to convert people to religion” Evangelism Wiki

One of the greatest assets a company or entrepreneur can have in their attempts to market, sell, gain exposure, and broadcast positive information is an evangelist. Social media evangelists are people who support their favorite brands, products, services, and companies by initiating discussions and placing positive messages on social media networks. Evangelists are the equivalent of unpaid lobbyists for your company who help legitimize your messages.

One of the most important social media strategies a company can incorporate in their social media marketing is to build a strong core group of evangelists for their products and services.

10 Reasons Why You Need Evangelists

1. Early Adoption: they are often early adopters of your products and services
2. Legitimize: they often legitimize new products and services by using them first
3. Broadcasting: they often lead the charge to popularize a new product or service by messaging across all social networks
4. Reviews: they always provide positive reviews of your product or service
5. Crowdsourcing: they often can provide valuable feedback that can lead to improvements in your products or services
6. Opinion Makers: they can often sway public opinion in your favor
7. Reputation Management: evangelists will often defend your company’s reputation when under attack by other consumers
8. Eyes and Ears: evangelists will often learn about important opportunities for your brand before you will. When they find something that needs to be addressed by their “favorite” company they inform them of where to look, show up, and provide answers
9. Barometer: evangelists will often be the first people to tell you when you have done something wrong. They will often message you privately, if you have engaged with them correctly, in order to help you gauge your products and services
10. Niche: according to David Armano unlike mass media “the web drives the niche” and in so doing it is perfect for evangelists who can effect a brand on many different fronts and at many different levels

In 2005 social media and Web 2.0 forefather Tim O’Reilly compiled a definition of Web 2.0: now a prophetic warning to the print media. O’Reilly’s Web 2.0 definition:

“Web 2.0 is the network as platform, spanning all connected devices; Web 2.0 applications are those that make the most of the intrinsic advantages of that platform: delivering software as a continually-updated service that gets better the more people use it, consuming and remixing data from multiple sources, including individual users, while providing their own data and services in a form that allows remixing by others, creating network effects through an “architecture of participation,” and going beyond the page metaphor of Web 1.0 to deliver rich user experiences.”

Warning to All: Print Industry in Trouble

In a microcosm example, the “April issue of Portfolio magazine set a dubious record. With 106 total pages and 21 ad pages it is the slimmest monthly issue ever published by Condé Nast.”

According to eMarketer.com’s “Magazine’s Run Online”:

• In the US 525 magazines were shut down in 2008
  
• In 2009 87 more titles have folded
• In 2008 consumer magazine print ad spending down 7.1% to $13 Billion
• A 2009 ad spending forecast predicts that ad revenue will drop -16.2%

Paradigm Shift: “Architecture of Participation”

O’Reilly’s mantra within his Web 2.0 definition should be the rallying cry manifesto for every entrepreneur, small business, and corporation: Creating network effects through an “architecture of participation.”

Us vs. Them

For companies like Intel, American Express, Clorox, and HP the power of blogging and social networks produces:

• Brand recognition
• User participation
• Measurement of message, products, and services
• Viral opportunities
• Reputation management
• Breaking news opportunities
• Communication and engagement with their audience
• Crowdsourcing for new ideas

Conclusion: The Have Nots

For companies without a social media strategy, with no participation in social networks, and for those companies that do not publish a blog your time is coming. Your De-Evolution will take place as your competitors that are social media Web 2.0 first adopters and the second wave of adopters will fill the vacuum and void left by your lack of participation.

Worse yet, the consumer population looking for your brand online, within these social networks, will assume you don’t care about them or their concerns.

These consumers, made up of your current audience-clients and potential consumers, will hold conversations about your products and services. Some will compliment and evangelize your company-but you will never know it. Some will slam your brand, tell stories of dissatisfaction, and rant about your lack of participation-but you will never know it.

The blinders will remain a comfortable fit.

I grew up in the direct marketing industry, whose efforts live and die by measuring ROI. I learned early on that before you can begin to develop a marketing campaign, you need to get clear on the one key objective that will drive all your investment decisions. Without this objective, you have nothing to steer your planning or analytical efforts.

How do you measure your primary goal?

Step 1: Determine a call to action goal. Many marketers recognize social media as a platform for engaging customers, which is great. But that needs to be taken one step further. What is your motive behind engaging the customer? What ultimate action do you want them to take?

Step 2: Determine which social media sites  will be utilized to touch the individuals or groups that will be measured. For example, Facebook, Twitter, or Linkedin.

Step 3: Determine a method for comparing the activity of the individuals or groups touched via social media tools against a same size similar  sampling not touched.

Step 4: Determine costs associated with the social media efforts.

Step 5:  Calculate P&L for the social media groups versus non-social media.

Step 6: Analyze the lifetime value contribution of the social media versus non social-media sampling.

I believe the challenge with measuring ROI lies in creating the methods for capturing and analyzing the data. It is a matter of getting your arms around what you want to measure and how to go about doing it. These answers won’t lie clearly in front of you, but that doesn’t mean the answers don’t exist. My experience is that you need to come up with creative ways and be willing to put some labor into the analysis.

Photo credit: Denis Vrublevski

Since Dean and I started providing Linkedin.com profile writing services, we’ve been hearing the same question posed by nearly every person we’ve worked with—What can I do to create a profile that really makes me stand out?

Our answer is first a reminder that Linkedin.com is a social media site, where there is less of an emphasis on selling your attributes and more focus on demonstrating your value. Sure, you need to highlight your key accomplishments as reasons why you should be hired, and define specific things that make you unique from most candidates. But the compelling power of social media lies in its multi-media dimension, so take advantage of that by adding dimension to your profile.

Here’s a simple example: Which of these profile headlines are you most motivated to click open?

If you are like me, I say the third headline pops out as the most compelling. Why? Because there is a photo attached.

• A photo puts a friendly human behind a name and job title.
• A photo adds warmth and color to an otherwise neutral box.
• A photo delivers the message that you are putting yourself out there, not standing back in the shadows.
• A photo demonstrates confidence that you feel good about yourself.

One concern about adding a photo to a Linkedin profile that I often hear is the age factor. Several people have told me that they don’t want people to know how old they are, so they refrain from a photo. My response to that is two-fold:

1. They’re going to find out anyway if you ever meet them live.
2. Without a photo, you give up the benefits listed above.

With that said, is there any reason why you shouldn’t put your photo up?