In the couple of years that I have been involved with social media marketing, I have seen much correlation between what what works for driving engagement and what works to drive a direct marketing response. I have become convinced that there is one area of focus that is sorely overlooked by brands seeking to build a vibrant and constantly growing Facebook community. There lacks an attention to the influence of copy.

Over the years I have pushed hundreds of millions of offers out to consumers and learned that what drives response holds true to the old folk wisdom—

“It’s not what you say, but how you say it.”

I have seen numerous tests where a different set of words or something else said or not said can produce a variance that can amount to a huge pile of cash to the bottom line.

Translating this idea to today’s social media world, most Facebook marketers haven’t quite realized that the Wall is a vehicle for generating response and that post copy should be formulated with care. Don’t let the real-time nature of the platform fool you into thinking that your messages should not require some planning.

5 tips for writing effective Facebook updates:

1. Speak to your fans in a style that makes them feel like you are addressing them individually. Develop the message to read like you were speaking 1:1.
2. Keep it short. No more than 4 lines in the post wherever possible. Make every word play a role in the message. Eliminate those that don’t.
3. Say something designed to inspire enthusiasm or emotion. Keep in mind that many Facebook users are hunting for posts to like and comment. Give them a reason to stop at yours.
4. Create sentences that flow smoothly. Awkward wording can lead to abandoned eyes.
5. Always have a photo or a link with an image attached to the post. Pictures are more engaging and heart-inspiring than flat text.

I’d love to hear any tips you have to add!

In our conversations with potential clients, the most frequent goal we hear is the desire to monetize social media. To this end, we at Inner Architect have begun to take a unique approach that enables email to monetize social media.

Think about it this way. Your goal with social media is to build relationships that positively influence customers’ lifetime purchasing with your brand. Rather than look to social media to make the sale, leverage your social media relationships to influence sales in email, postal or telesales efforts. By doing so, you:

• Personalize the outreach
• Strengthen the relationship
• Increase the potential to make a sale

Let’s face it. Facebook and Twitter have changed our culture. Customers who engage with your brand on Facebook or Twitter want to be recognized. If you are not sending those customers personalized messages that acknowledge your Facebook or Twitter relationship, you miss the opportunity to leverage the social relationship. You defeat the whole purpose of social media by sending messages that are not personalized.

We are recommending strategies that segment customers into targeted groups that enable you to send relevant messages. This level of  segmentation also helps you to capitalize on opportunities to outreach when purchasing history indicates a likeliness to buy.

Want to learn more? We’d love to hear from you.

Last week we met with a small retail business whose direct sales dollars depends heavily on direct marketing efforts. We were on the topic of email marketing and I learned that they had never done any testing. I described the concept of A/B testing, and while they understood the potential value, they perceived it as “too complicated”.

Trust me on this one. Over the course of a 20+ year career, I’ve tested pricing, lists, subject lines, offer copy, packages, creative, engagement devices, premiums, even stamps! Here’s what I learned:

1. Slight variances in performance can easily add up to tens of thousands of dollars. Over the course of time, a better performing effort can amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
2. There is psychology involved in motivating a customer or prospect to buy. Testing enables you to learn about what works and what doesn’t, which can lead you to develop your own theories that guide you moving forward.

Where should you test? Every channel where you are delivering marketing messages should be considered fertile testing grounds. Despite popular fallacies, you can measure ROI on social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

Tips for testing:

• Keep your laboratory as clean as possible. Make sure you’re comparing apples to apples with regards to list and delivery times. Any variances between the two samples will fuzzy your results.
• Create test panels of equal size in channels which allow for list segmentation.
• Think in terms of having a “control” and “test panels”, with your goal always to beat your control to increase your sales.

Let me close now by passing on my mantra: Always be testing!

Over the past decade, companies who market directly to customers added email as a vital element to their contact strategies. Capturing email addresses has become a higher priority than postal addresses for many businesses. Here we are now in the early age of social media marketing, yet few companies have adopted a practice of capturing relevant social network data for their customers.

In a future article I will discuss the resources that are now available to purchase data that enables you to know what social networks your customers are on and the URL of their profile. While I consider myself an evangelist for these kinds of resources, I also heartily encourage any company who recognizes social networks as a serious direct marketing channel to start capturing social data on your own. Here’s why:

1. Communication preferences are changing as more options in which to communicate become available. Depending on demographic, the emails you send to your customers’ non-work email addresses may pile up unseen as they rely more and more on Facebook for their personal communication.
2. Measuring the impact of social networks at the customer level is only possible if you apply  social network activity to your customer records.
3. Targeting customers with social efforts can only be done if you can identify where your customers can be reached.
4. Being the initiator of the social relationship shows your customer that you care about engaging with them. Don’t sit back and wait for them to fan or follow you. Ask them for their social contact data and start cementing your relationships!
5. Don’t give your competitors an opportunity to engage with your customers before you do! When a loyal customer is followed by your competitor and you’re not on the scene, what message does that deliver?

I’d love to answer any questions you might have on this evolving topic.

I am not the only person who sees the potential for social media to make a more significant contribution to a company’s business goals this year. But just like a toddler blossoming into childhood needs interaction and support from the family, social media will best develop as a significant contributor to the business by integrating it with already established marketing efforts.

Here are 5 steps any direct marketer can take to influence results across all channels:

1. Use Twitter as a vehicle for identifying and engaging with prospects.
2. Once engaged, invite your new follower to become a fan of your Facebook page.
3. Provide incentives on your Facebook page to add your new fan to your “traditional” marketing lists.
4. Support your email and offline efforts through your Facebook and Twitter messaging.
5. Invest in ways to measure ROI as a function of lifetime value.

Just like your any well-engined marketing strategy does not surface overnight, develop the expectation that your integrated social media strategy will evolve over time. A good place to start is understanding what’s happening on your Facebook page.

One last thing. Don’t ever forget the marketer’s credo—

Always be testing!