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

One of the biggest and most image tarnishing mistakes people make in social media is the blind collection of numbers. Whether it is collecting meaningless followers on Twitter or blatantly soliciting people to “friend” a Facebook page, the idea behind such hard sell activities is to artificially increase the number of people “using” a particular network. The motive behind these activities is the idea that the larger a person’s follower base, friend base, or Linkedin connections are (no matter who they are or where they are from) the more valued or validated that person is as an expert or authority on their subject matter.

Collecting numbers, you can buy 4,000 followers on Twitter for $12.95, is simply just that-a collecting of numbers. The worst scenario of all for “false expertise” through collecting of numbers is the collection of Linkedin recommendations.

Quality Over Quantity

The number of people that recommend a person is not a perfect indicator of that person’s abilities, expertise, or authority in their niche. It is more meaningful to acquire, without blatantly soliciting, solid recommendations from people with expertise, industry authority, or well respected people

3 Steps to Quality Linkedin Recommendations

1. Don’t Blatantly Solicit: The worst approach to receiving  a recommendation is to ask for one. This approach puts undue pressure on your friend, leaves them with a decision, and it can make for awkward communications and weaken your connection to that person
2. Write Recommendations: With a top down approach to clients and collaborators (start with the most relevant or important), begin writing recommendations for people. The benefits are goodwill with your network, top of mind reminder of your work, and status updates with your name attached
3. Request: Write a well thought out and powerful recommendation. Before sending it, attach a message asking:

• Does the recommendation meet their expectations and is it accurate?
• Ask them for their feedback on the recommendation
• Close by asking them if they would consider writing a recommendation for you if they feel they have benefited from your relationship together

My goal as I set out to write today’s article was to spotlight a company using Web 2.0 tools that isn’t a household name. After all, it’s more challenging for lower profile businesses to build an online following than those who already possess a lot of juice. One business that hit my radar and caught my attention was AccuQuote Life Insurance. Why does AccuQuote stand out to me? Because they are attempting to integrate numerous Web 2.0 tools in their engagement strategies. While some of their individual strategies may need some tweaking, they’ve built a foundation using the key tools and that’s more than most service providers are doing.

What AccuQuote is doing well:

1. The AccuQuote blog does a good job of providing readers with a solid education about life insurance.
2. The blog’s sidebar contains easy-to-find links to AccuQuote’s presence on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, as well as the Linkedin profiles for key staff members.
3. Podcasts on the blog take the communication up a level from written word to audio.

AccuQuote is using these tools to:

• Build and maintain relationships
• Generate leads
• Manage their reputation
• Deliver valuable information
• Provide customer service

While AccuQuote has done a good job with getting equipped with these tools, they can improve the effectiveness of how they’re using the tools with a few tweaks:

1. Integrate their web and blog sites to enable readers a seamless experience and ability to access all pages from each.
   

   AccuQuote website banner

   

   AccuQuote blog banner

2. Expand their content strategies on Twitter beyond the topic of life insurance. Inspire their followers to engage by bringing some personal tweets into the mix.
   

   AccuQuote tweet stream

3. Do more with the Facebook Page than stream in blog articles. Get fans interested by sharing content that links life insurance to their lifestyle. Introduce resources from other well-respected sites and commit to maintaining a level of energy on the Page that attracts fans.
   

   AccuQuote Facebook Page

4. Keep the website links on staff Linkedin profiles current to ensure that profile viewers click through to the current web or blog site. With 39 million registered Linkedin users, Linkedin is a viable source for business development.

Would you like to share your experiences of what’s working to engage customers and prospects in your Web 2.0 strategies?

My business partner, Dean Guadagni and I speak to groups about social media on average twice a week. Invariably the question comes up with each group, “How much time do you spend on social media?”

This question was raised again this morning from the back of the room, and a voice near the front of the room yelled out, “It’s a time suck!”

My reply:  It is if you let it be. You can avoid the time suck by having a strategy.

Clara Shih, creator of the first business application for Facebook,  refers to Facebook as the new CRM and describes social networking sites as relationship tools that allow us to be both more aware and better able to engage with our outer networks.

I spent 20 years in the world of CRM, first in magazine circulation, then in catalog. It was a direct mail world where the costs to connect were in our face. We spent many hours strategically planning who we’d mail, when, and what to meet our particular business goal. If the projections we ran on a particular customer or prospect didn’t appear to meet our objectives, they were eliminated from the mailing. After all, we couldn’t afford to waste our resources.

This is how any business needs to approach social media. Time is just as much a commodity as the checks you write to printers,  list brokers and the U.S. Postal Service.

How to invest smartly in social media:

• Identify one goal that will drive all your efforts
• Define your target audience and where they can be reached
• Develop a strategy for reaching out to them
• Develop ways to engage your audience
• Develop ways to measure your efforts
• Don’t allow your efforts to stray from your strategic plan

Photo credit: fjny