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!

One thing I have learned in managing Facebook business pages is that you can’t judge what’s really going on from the surface. The real story lies within your Insights. If you are not using these Facebook metrics, you are not taking your marketing efforts seriously.

Unfortunately, getting a clear understanding of what efforts are producing what results is not something you can do in a snap. It takes time to put all the pieces together, but that is the reality in effectively measuring any marketing campaign. If you don’t spend the time to understand what’s working, you miss the opportunity to get as much as possible from your Facebook investment.

What you need to piece together your results:

1. Facebook Insights
2. History of messages
3. Knowledge of what other efforts were influencing traffic to your page

What you should look for depends on what your Facebook goals are. If your business sells products or services directly to consumers, then page views are an important metric as you should be including product or service offers in your messaging strategy. The more times each fan visits your page, the more times they are exposed to your offers.

Certainly comments and likes are important as they influence Facebook’s perception of your page’s importance to a fan, and ultimately your place in their news feed. But don’t assume that no likes or comments means that nobody is visiting your page. Studying your Insights will show you otherwise.

If you would like some help with learning how to measure your own Facebook efforts, we offer training and ongoing page management. Please contact me for more information.

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

Lost in Space Wiki:  “Doctor Smith”

Jeremiah Owyang, Forrester analyst and social media thought leader, provides an in depth look at the wreckage that can accompany the work load of social media “Looking Behind the Curtain on the Social Media Stage: Humans Don’t Scale.” Peter Kim highlighted Jeremiah’s post as a point in an even bigger issue within social media: social media’s changing culture.

3 Reasons Why Social Media’s Culture Is Changing

According to Peter there are three points to this changing culture:

• Limitations: “People have been stretched thin, failed to scale, and are close to burnout.”  We agree and believe that understanding human limits and planning will help alleviate burnout. Don’t take on more than is possible means don’t try to be on every social network or use every tool
• Attention: “attention (e.g. links, retweets, comments) functions as currency in the socialsphere. The influentials started to realize that their money was more valuable than others.  To retain value, many influentials have become stingy with their pocketbooks.”  We believe this is the factor that is driving the poor behavior and possible shift in social media’s culture. The idea that attention to one’s blog or social network is the only goal often means the content and value of content suffers tremendously

• Unashamed Begging: “On the other side of the coin, many participants are unashamed to beg for handouts.  Messages public and private that ask “link to me,” “pls RT,” and “comments appreciated” now come from complete strangers. We can not agree enough with Peter’s point about begging. Everyday strangers ask us for Linkedin recommnedations, RTs on their tweets, to read their blog articles and comment,  to become Facebook friends and fans, and to give them recognition. In most cases, we need to understand a person’s work and to get to know them, even if just on a limited basis, before we can vouch for them

Social Media Strategy: How to Stop Begging

• Engage first and often to build a relationship with your intended audience. Do not expect people to support you until they know something about your intentions, follow through, and willingness to give value