These grammatical slights are not creative. They are examples of lazy, uncreative people expressing themselves in lazy, uncreative ways. Like telling an old joke over and over again to the same person, what once was impactful for its uniqueness has become ineffectual by way of ubiquity.

As a brand – you stand for something. You have some concept that you are – or desire to be – tied to, and your messaging reflects it. Google is synonymous with search, in the common vernacular. Mercedes’ name evokes images of luxury, and quality. Harvard and Yale make you think of the best and brightest minds. Victoria’s Secret is sexy. One thing these brands share is a consistency in their messaging. They know their audience – broad or narrow – and they know how to talk to them, but not down to them.

You want to stand apart on Facebook? Stay true to your core message. Know who you are. Know who you want to be seen, as. Ensure that your status updates, wall posts, comments, and photo captions reflect this. Be true to the message you want to convey, and do it in a genuine manner. Own your voice.

I’m all for the creative use and application of language in order to communicate your point. In fact, without a certain irreverence and spontaneity, we’d be stuck with a decidedly restrictive set of words with which to conduct our affairs. Get creative; spread your word, and spread it your way. Toss out the rules that hold back the more artful aspects of your expression. Poetry pwns pedantry, every time.

Between you and me, I think most people out there don’t understand Twitter. I think they’re confused by the RT #hashtag @mention mumbo jumbo. But truth be told, it can be an insanely powerful business tool and can help spread your brand’s message like a wildfire.

Think of it like this: on Twitter you can chat with someone without being their “friend”. You’ve never been able to do that on Facebook. I’m not hating on Facebook, it’s amazing for so many things, but Twitter is a completely open arena for two-way communication.

The problem with Twitter is that people who aren’t confused by it sometimes abuse it. This is mostly by companies or people trying to sell you something. Realtors are a great example. Do you follow any real estate agents on Twitter? Don’t bother. All they do is Tweet house and apartment listings. Isn’t that what you already do on your website, Facebook page and blog? Don’t show me the same listings on 3 or 4 different channels and expect that to get my click. Say “Hi” to me or link me to an article you wrote on how awesome a particular neighborhood is. Would you ever meet someone in person and just start shouting real estate listings at them without saying anything else or even listening to them? Then don’t do it online either.

Twitter, more than any other social network, is more like a modern-day AOL Instant Messenger. Remember when people used that? The key is that it’s a conversation tool and shouldn’t be used to broadcast a one-way message. You are not a billboard, sir.

So how do you grow your following on Twitter? Well wait, why is having a big following important?

It depends on your intentions. What will Twitter function as within your business? It should definitely have a unique purpose and not just be an extension of your Facebook page or regurgitate the same information as your blog; otherwise, what’s my incentive to interact with your brand on multiple platforms? A lot of people are using Twitter for customer service. Dealing with compliments, complaints, questions, and overall brand mentions are easy to track and practically instantaneous. You want a big following in that instance, to take care of as many customers through that interface as possible. If you’re using it for feedback and customer interaction, a bigger following means a bigger data set. In both these instances, a bigger following also means a larger reach when you post the occasional promotional tweet.

Now let’s figure out how to grow your following. I’ve basically already told you, but I’ll say it again: Talk to people. Be interesting, produce or link to cool content, and sound like a human. Have a profile photo and an “about” blurb, and make them both awesome; now start using Twitter’s search feature to find people that would be interested in the content you produce. Say “Hello”. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

This may sound like common sense, and that’s because it sort of is. If you’re providing value, entertaining or educating your followers, they will love you for it, and probably spread your message to their friends as well. The problem a lot of people face is they don’t see instant results and they give up. Let’s dispel the myth of overnight Twitter success right now. This is going to take time and effort. You should be spending at least a couple hours per day on Twitter (spread out throughout the day) if you want this type of growth. For example, I spend my morning checking my feed and finding some interesting content to post throughout the day. After that I check in every 1-2 hours for about 20 minutes and have a few conversations, and explore other people’s content. It sounds like a lot of work, but the return is fantastic. When you’re active and followed by many, you can participate, influence and help control your brand’s message, even when you’re not the one Tweeting about it. What company wouldn’t want that?

Keep an eye out for a post within the next few weeks about how powerful a simple Twitter search can be for your business.

image by katerha

So you know that Facebook Page you’ve got for your brand? Remember the hours you spent thinking about what sort of custom tabs you want to put there? Remember the design comps you poured over, and the slick little graphics you threw together? Guess what – they don’t matter. Because no one goes to your Facebook Page.

Read it again and make certain it sinks in: no one goes to your Facebook Page.

This is a bitter pill to swallow, so here’s some supporting evidence to help wash it down:

• Fact: 95% of Facebook users view only their “Top News” feed
• Fact: Over 20 million people interact with Facebook from an iOS device, which doesn’t display custom tabs (and that was back in 2010)
• Fact: Just 3% – 7.5% of fans see a brand page’s posts

Overwhelmingly & unequivocally, the lion’s share of interactions with your Facebook Page – upwards of 90% – are happening in the newsfeed, and most brands either don’t know, or don’t care. Interactions are not happening on your Page’s wall. Interactions are not happening on the custom tab you spent hours developing so that people can watch a talking, animated snake-oil salesman. Nope. Interactions are happening in the newsfeed, and they are happening with pieces of content that involve simple (but thoughtful) language, and rich media (e.g., pictures and video).

Now that you know this, what do you do? Post too often, and you risk the dreaded unsubscribe link being clicked. Don’t post often enough, and watch your active user base dwindle, and disappear. What you need is The Goldilocks Principle; you need a strategy that isn’t too hot or too cold – it’s just right.

Start by learning about your Page’s fan demographics. Track your impressions against your actual fan count. What percentage are you really getting your content in front of? Where are your fans – active and inactive – located? Figure out what days and what times are best to reach them. That is, don’t post once a day, at 9am, New York time, if most of your fans are in San Francisco, and won’t do their morning Facebook trolling until it’s ~1pm in New York. What time does your audience use Facebook? Is there another audience you want to reach, that operates under slightly different rules?

Sure, there’s more to it than that – but start there. You’ll be leagues ahead of most, and well on your way to a winning strategy on Facebook.

• I drive an SUV
• I do virtually all my reading on a Kindle
• I wear mostly jeans and t-shirts, with the occasional custom-tailored, black two-button suit (even us noveau minimalists have to retain some semblance of style)

Understand, this is not some deep-rooted philosophy of engagement with life. This isn’t some quest to rid myself of “things”. What this is, is a preference to keep things uncomplicated. Clutter makes me crazy. The less stuff I have complicating my life, the more streamlined that life becomes (or, at the very least, feels). I am infinitely more effective, creative, and agile when things are kept uncomplicated. Note – I didn’t say simple. Remaining sensitive to the fact that life, inherently, is complex, it behooves one to move through it in an uncomplicated manner. Path of least resistance, ftw.

This all aside – there is at least one arena of life in which I embrace – nay, relish – the complexity ardently resisted in other spaces: the written word. In this case and in this case only, simplicity be damned. Now that my guts are spilt, let’s address the fact of this linguistic love affair, and its bearing on the effective use of your brand’s social media assets. For this, I offer three guiding principles:

1. Don’t be wordy for the sake of being wordy

Jargon is a killer, as are all manners of verbal chicanery. A simple turn of phrase, bounded only by a capital letter and punctuation mark, will almost always do the trick. (note: that sentence is only mildly ironic). I’ve seen far too many Facebook status updates/Tweets/Foursquare tips/etc trying to be overly clever. Communicate one simple thought. When you try to be witty, you fail. Do or do not; there is no try.

2. Form without function & Function without form

When crafting a post for your various social networks, remember that each mandates its own form. You wouldn’t use a hashtag and butcher the spelling of critical words on Facebook, but on Twitter it’s par for the course (if not required to even play the course). You wouldn’t – as a brand – tweet just once a day, and hope that those following you will chance upon your oh-so-brilliant 140-character romp. But on Facebook you’d likely do just that, timing that post so that you’ve reached your Active User base at the hour that ensures a high level of engagement. As in all other forms of written communication, the audience must be considered.

Your Twitter followers are not your Facebook Fans; you should not address them as such. While Twitter has its own linguistic structure (read: form), that form’s function is entirely lost on a Facebook newsfeed. While Facebook’s algorithm, and just about every statistic out there, says that the best brands on Facebook don’t flood their fans’ newsfeeds with content, any member of the Twitterati will extol the virtues of continuous tweets (often in excess of 5 times per day). Are there exceptions to this? Sure. Look at Jesus Daily (currently the crown jewel of Facebook engagement statistics). But then have a look at Starbucks, Skittles, Oreo, and Justin Beiber (who incidentally gives Jesus Christ a pretty good run for his money, on a weekly basis). The principle to follow is this: respect both the form, and function of that form. If you opt for observance of just one, versus the other, consider yourself lost to the dark side.

3. Everyone’s Got Opinions

A favorite publication of mine used to run a monthly column under this same name (with the acronym E.G.O.). In this same vein, understand that everyone – and I do mean EVERYONE – on your social networks has opinions. When these coincide with the photo you post, or the piece of text you write (or link to), remember that you’re on that network to engage – to dialogue – with that individual. Too often, the tendency on a social network like Facebook is to delete anything negative, or potentially detrimental, to a brand’s image. Why? Why not, rather, write back to this person? Assure them that they have been heard, and offer a way to remedy their frustration. Use your words carefully. Reinforce that you understand, and then offer a way to take that conversation offline (call whatever phone number or email address you give them a “direct line”, and watch their consternation abate). The upset individual is now channeled to a proper medium. Your fan base has seen that you’re not deaf to their concerns. You, young Padawan, have become a Jedi.

Are these the only three rules about effective use of language, in social media? Heck, no. But armed with these guiding principles, you are well equipped to craft, spread, and then manage your social copy. May the force be with you, always.

image by stevendepolo

As social media becomes more robust and more people adopt various platforms, brands appear to be increasingly interested in taking previously real-world activities and turning them into social media activities. Why talk to your customer on the phone when you can chat with them on a social platform? Why have an in-store event at only one location when you can have a virtual gathering? Why have an in-person meeting when you can solicit responses via some antiseptic community platform?

I’ll tell you why.

Because the REAL WORLD is important. Humans have evolved over a significant period of time to interact socially in certain ways. Our brains crave (and indeed grow from) interpersonal experiences. As much as we like to think that digital replications of those real world experiences are just as good (or better), they are not. Edward M. Hallowell talks about the importance of the “Human Moment.” He defines the “Human Moment” as “an authentic psychological encounter that can happen only when two people share the same physical space.”

The Human Moment is critical, and you can’t have one via Facebook.

Now, I am, of course, a huge proponent of the power of social media. The point of this little dish is not to bash social media and suggest a return to a pre-agrarian society. My point is simply that brands (and, indeed, all of us) should not lose site of the fact that adopting digital experiences at the expense of real world experiences is probably not in anyone’s best interest.

People that claim it’s impossible to calculate ROI in the social space are really just saying that they can’t calculate ROI in the social space, or probably in any space. The truth is, calculating ROI for social media is just like figuring it out for any other media – print, TV, radio. I’m not saying it’s easy. ROI is difficult to calculate across any medium, especially on the “return” side of the things. For example, you know how much that magazine ad cost, but how much business did you see as a direct result of it? It sounds difficult, but I assure you, it can be done! The tips below will help you get a handle on social ROI:

1) Plan and Understand How Social Fits in Your Company

Social media is like the new telephone. It’s not a department within your company like the marketing or PR team; it’s a tool that those departments can now use to communicate with consumers. Think about it, when the telephone was invented and companies started using call centers to provide customer service, those were still called “customer service departments.” There’s no such thing as a “telephone department,” and there should be no “social media department”. It’s silly. So the first thing you need to do before you even think about ROI, is understand where social media fits into your overall business strategy.

In other words, maybe your goal is to increase overall sales. And maybe you plan on reaching that goal by getting new customers through an increase in brand awareness. The right way to do this is not to set a goal of getting 10,000 Likes on your Facebook business page. The goal should be to acquire 10,000 net new customers through Facebook. As in, Facebook is the tool with which you accomplish this goal. Now that you have a goal, an objective and a tool, what’s your tactic? Before social media, your tactics may have been putting up a billboard or putting an ad in a magazine. Now you can use a highly targeted Facebook ad and have clickers land on your branded Facebook page where you advertise a 25% off sale to all new customers if they share your link with a friend. Or, perhaps, convert your Twitter page into a customer service network where you can get instant feedback and provide real-time support.

2) Know What You Can Measure

If you’re exclusively an e-commerce company, you’ve got it made in the shade. Tracking a sale through your site back to a Facebook or Twitter link is as easy as setting up a free Google Analytics account. But we don’t all have such a cut and dry business and therefore not all metrics are available to everyone.

Think logically about what you can measure. Don’t worry yet about what you should measure. Metrics are not one-size-fits all.

3) Decide on ROI vs. Correlation

There’s only one way to calculate return on investment, and that’s sales minus expenses, divided by expenses, expressed as a percentage. There is no other formula. But sometimes, getting at true ROI is difficult, especially on the “return” side.

In those instances, you might opt to instead examine how social media success ties to business success over the long haul, and make correlation studies about that relationship. What you want to see is a situation where business success (sales, donations, etc.) increased in conjunction with social success (or slightly trailing social success). While correlation does not equal causation, and one or two statistical anomalies can and should be ignored, it sure looks good when you data points consistently coincide.

4) Select Metrics

Once you’ve gone through the first 3 steps, you can pick actual metrics that make sense for your company. Picking them before you get heavily involved in social media reduces the temptation to pick metrics that support your position down the road.

There’s a lot to be said for picking just a handful of good metrics that fit into your business well, rather than selecting too many and being overwhelming or doing unnecessary tracking.

For example, if you’re trying to increase sales by getting more repeat business, tracking return visits to your site through Facebook and Twitter are great metrics to record. But in this case, it wouldn’t make sense to record your daily increase in fans and followers.

5) Share the Data Widely

If you want your whole company supporting your social initiatives, it will help if the whole company (more or less) has access to the scoreboard. Don’t treat social media results like nuclear launch codes. Sharing your results will inspire the internal discussions and ideas necessary to take your program to the next level. Two heads are certainly better than one, and by making the information available to nearly everyone, people will see the company’s success, thus motivating continued effort.

6) Embrace Stories

Anecdotes (or other qualitative measurements) are not mathematically defensible in the way ROI is, but you should try to include them in your social media metrics. Get your customer service and community management teams to document instances where you delighted a customer, turned a frown upside down, or just did something awesome in social media. A lot of times those unique case studies create more internal support than a whole stack of spreadsheets because of the actual people and dialogue behind the exchange. It’s something you can point to directly and say “we made a difference” or “this resulted in a sale, guaranteed.”

Conclusion

Metrics and ROI in social media have been typecast as unattainable for too long. Hopefully now you see that when you draw out a comprehensive plan and focus on only the numbers that make a real difference to your business and its goals, it’s a relatively straightforward process. The key is to not lose sight of what your brand is trying to accomplish. Write it down somewhere and be able to answer “How does this support my business goals?” when you do something in the social space.

Being an expert in Social Media is like being an expert at taking the bread out of the refrigerator.You might be the best bread-taker-outer in the world, but you know what? The goal is to make an amazing sandwich, and you can’t do that if all you’ve done in your life is taken the bread out of the fridge.

Peter Shankman, 20 May 2011

Ouch, Sir. Very ouch. I have never described myself as a “Social Media Expert”. Rather, I subscribe to the philosophy of Bill S. Preston, ESQ., who famously quoted an Ancient Greek of some renown when he said “The only true wisdom, consists in knowing that you know nothing.” and as Mr. Preston’s esteemed colleague Ted Theodore Logan affirmed: “That’s us, dude!” As I see it, the title of “expert” is one that is better given, rather than taken. It is a far, far, better thing to be called an expert, rather than call yourself one. And so on the issue of self-titled “experts”, Mr. Shankman and I are in accord.

Where I take issue with Mr. Shankman’s diatribe is in the misstep of lumping so-called “Social Media Experts” into one big pot. Bearing in mind that true social media expertise is easily identified, but difficult to quantify, when endeavoring to define an “Expert”, it serves to separate the wheat from the chaff. Social media demands a specific set of faculties: command of the written word, an understanding of who you’re addressing, and a zero BS modus operandi. You’ll forgive me, Mr. Shankman, but it is in fact about engagement. It’s about talking with someone, instead of at them. That’s what the arrow of social media has added to the quiver of marketing: a direct, potentially meaningful and easily mismanaged, tool with which to engage consumers.

And so with this squarely in mind, on several points, I’ll agree that Mr. Shankman is correct. Social media is absolutely about transparency, relevance, and brevity. Like Mr. Shankman, those tiny hairs on the back of my neck stand staunchly on-end whenever I encounter grammatical woes in professional correspondence. Just last week a prospective job candidate wrote to me, stating that she was “fluent in both Mandarin and England”. Good grief. But I’m a firm believer that those sensitive to issues like these recognize others of the same ilk. With very little effort, it’s easy to see who is an effective communicator, and who isn’t.

So Mr. Shankman, rather than drinking “the same damn ten-year-old Kool-Aid” (which you say is synonymous with repeating the ills of the dotcom era), take a step back and recognize that like you, there are those of us out here that get it. We understand the value that social media adds to an overall sales and marketing plan, and like you, we find it abhorrently distasteful when the Kool-Aid goes bad.  And as for making the whole sandwich – indeed, serve up a whole, amazing one (as long as you know not to serve a Double Down to the Judges of Top Chef).

Image by williamcho

Video is one of the most powerful media available to the modern marketer. Never before has it been so cheap and easy to put video content in front of billions of consumers. YouTube just celebrated its sixth birthday and released some (quite frankly) ludicrous stats:

• More than 48 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute
• YouTube serves more than 3 billion views-per-day

In the face of easy video production and uncanny levels of video consumption, I find myself pondering one question: why do marketers still make shitty videos?

I’ll probably write a few posts on this topic, but for now I want to leave everyone with some food for thought when considering video as a medium for your marketing efforts.

Before you make the video, do this little thought exercise:

Imagine it’s a rainy, cold Saturday afternoon and there is a marathon of your favorite TV show (Lost, House, Battlestar Galactica, etc.) You are more than happy to curl up and watch. In the middle of one of the episodes, you hear about a video online. If you wouldn’t stop watching a rerun of a show you enjoy to check out the video, THEN DON’T BOTHER MAKING IT.

99.9% of all brand videos fail this test.

Save yourself time and money. Don’t make videos that suck.

When I look at the ways I filter my own information streams, it’s a combination of tools provided by the social networks on which I’ve chosen to be active, and some home-made tools that were born from those most organic drivers of innovation: circumstance and convenience.

I have over 1,000 Facebook “Friends”. Many of these are people I’ve had class with, worked with, or am related to. Others are casual acquaintances, the results of “networking”, or some other professional association (among other things, I’m a member of The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, The Free Shakespeare Project, etc…). The final group of these Facebook contacts is comprised of the brands/companies/industry minds I’ve chosen to “Like” – it’s this group that is the cause of both much consternation, and doubly much enthusiasm.

My personal solution has been to use Facebook’s built-in “Friend List” mechanism to create news feeds populated with topically-grouped information. For example, I have an “A List”, which is made up of my closest friends and family. A list called “Locals” is made up of the people, places, and brands local to Boston that I’m interested in. Another is called “Brands”, which is where every brand/corporate page I “Like” gets placed. This is my irrigation system, and I’ve come to rely heavily upon it; needless to say I suffered feelings of acute distress when the latest iteration of Facebook for iOS lacked the ability to filter the news feed by Friend List – something supported in the previous version (for shame, Facebook).

On Twitter, I follow far more people than I am followed by. I use Twitter less as a soapbox, and avenue for the cataloging of errant thoughts, of which I have many during a given day. Just as on Facebook, I’ve used Twitter’s built-in “List” feature to organize the feeds I follow. I have lists titled “Friends”, “Locals”, “Shakespeare”, “Scotch”, “Dailies” etc… the constitution of which should be fairly self-explanatory, given their names. Again, I’ve effectively filtered out messages unrelated to what I’m curious about at the time. If I want to know what’s up with Shakespeare, I’m not going to the “Scotch” list; if I’m curious about what The Glenlivet is doing, I’m not going to “Friends”.

Ay, there’s the rub

From the marketer’s perspective what I’ve done is negate the ability for your message to reach me in the way that was intended. Instead, I’m a potential customer/client/evangelist who has decided that I only want to receive your message when I feel like receiving it. This is the painful realization that so many brands and businesses must grapple with when embarking upon their maiden voyage on the sea of social media. But that’s the point. As marketers, and as brands, it’s time to realize that our messaging, be it tweets, Facebook content, a Flickr stream, or anything else, has the capacity to engage with a more broad and more targeted audience than ever before. The flipside to this is that at no previous time has the audience been so able to actively – and rapidly – reject that messaging.

Shakespeare On The Common

Gone are the days when the savviest consumers are going to put up with interruption-based messaging. To refer to my previous example, though I am a passionate Shakespearean, I’m also an aficionado of single malt scotch. If I’m sitting at a performance of Shakespeare On The Common, I don’t care to receive messages about a tasting of The Macallan, happening next week. That said, when I go to my aforementioned “Scotch” list on Twitter, I’ll be thrilled to see that news. Getting that message to me at the right time, and in the right place, is critical. Facebook, Twitter, and their ilk are the right places – but getting the timing right means understanding that it’s out of your control. Marketers, though giddy about the prospect of connecting with a consumer on the same channel that consumer uses to interact with their friends and family, must understand that just like a phone call from my Mom, hitting “ignore” doesn’t mean “leave now and never come back”; rather, it means “I hear you, but I’m not ready to listen just yet.”

This is not to say that the voyage is hopeless – the waters are not so choppy that you are certain to sink. Rather, what’s crucial to realize is just how vital it is that the messaging being sent out is compelling. At Pandemic Labs, we hold fast to the axiom that “Content Is King”, and never has this been more apt a description of its nature. Unnerving though it is to suddenly have no guarantee that we’ll reach an audience exactly when and how we’d like, the shift must now be to understanding that the channels in which consumers are engaged simply don’t work that way. These channels offer multiple ways to filter content (as I’ve done with my Facebook and Twitter lists), and ensure only one thing: that when a consumer decides they want to receive your message, it had better be compelling, lest it be cast back into the stream as irrelevant to their needs.

So why is this post titled “Be Cool”? Is this some ill-advised reference to an even more ill-fated sequel? With all due respect to the former Vincent Vega – decidedly no. Nay, it’s as simple as this: too often, marketers misunderstand compelling to be defined as flashy, ornate, and aesthetically stimulating. Messaging developed with these ideas in mind doesn’t work in social media; it doesn’t work in a place where the veil of “marcom” is too easily torn asunder. The truest definition of the term – the explanation that breaks the word down to its core – is that it’s a way of describing that which is irresistible, demands attention, and commands respect. The savvy marketer’s practice is to ensure that each piece of content they put out is compelling, and understanding that the most valuable customer might be the one that never sees it until they decide to.

Image by Danndalf

This post has been rattling around in my brain for many months now, never quite finding its true form. It was not until yesterday that I realized my frustration in finding the appropriate expression was not due to my own cerebral impotence, but because the question posed in the title is, in fact, one of the most difficult marketing questions of our time.

If we are more connected than ever before, why has it become more difficult than ever to make a connection?

Please note that I am making use of the varied definitions of “connected.” We are more connected, in that we are more “joined”, or “linked,” but a true connection (“association; relationship”) is harder than ever to establish and maintain.

Thinking about this in the abstract is, admittedly, daunting. Can any one of us really distill the truth and patterns behind the modes, methods, and meaning of modern human communication? I don’t think so. So I focused only on myself; I took my own life and broke it into its component communicational parts.

First there are Pipes. These are the ways that messages can travel (phone, email, etc.) Second, there are Devices, the platforms that form the end of a pipe. So, phone (or voice) is a Pipe because it is a method of information transfer that can be utilized on a cell phone, landline, or computer (Skype). These days, almost every Pipe is accessible on more than one Device.

First I looked at the Pipes that bring me my information:

• Phone (“Voice” is maybe a more appropriate term)
• SMS
• IM
• Email
• Twitter
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• RSS Reader
• Internet Protocol (websites and such)

Then I looked at the platforms (or Devices) onto which those Pipes empty their information (three, in my case):

• Computer
• iPhone
• iPad

The results actually surprised me a bit. I am a freakishly connected person. A person wanting to contact me, send me a message, or expose me to content has nine ways to do so in near-real-time and at any given point in the day (24/7/365) I have at least one device on or near me that can receive most (if not all) of the information from those pipes.

My average day is filled with phone calls, text messages, emails, tweets, messages on social networks, and information I consume via my RSS reader. In the 18th century a message could be delivered from Paris to Antwerp (188 miles) in roughly three days. By my count, I receive roughly 900 individual messages per day (in the various forms listed above) from all over the world. The sheer magnitude of modern connectivity and communication is barely comparable to times past.

Now, I didn’t live in the 18th century, but I would venture a guess that were I to live in Antwerp and receive a letter from you (sent from Paris), I would almost certainly read it and give it my full attention. Today, however, you are lucky if your message to me gets seen, much less digested, much less appreciated.

Despite all of our fantastic methods of communication and connectivity, I am less likely to consume any individual piece of information/content than my 18th century counterpart. More to the point, it is because of our myriad methods of communication that I simply cannot consume everything. It is a paradox of our own devising. The very tools we build to facilitate human connection, in fact, make true connection all the more rare (and, I’d assert, more meaningful).

I cannot help but think of the Ouroboros, the ancient symbol of the snake eating its own tail. The snake’s head in this case is the ceaseless progress of technology that has given us all of these communication platforms. But the snake doesn’t move forward. Progress is paid for by sacrificing part of ourselves. Eventually will the loop not close completely? Will we not be so connected that we can’t connect at all? If this is the case, then I question my own use of the word “progress” in an earlier sentence.

What does this have to do with marketing (social media or otherwise)? Excellent question.

I have a theory: our race for greater and greater connection with consumers is actually having the opposite effect. Consumers are saturated. I am saturated. You are saturated. We are plugged in, connected with and without wires to the fastest, vastest, and most complete collection of information in human history. To simply maintain our sanity, we have no choice but to block out a large part of the signal. Our brains have not evolved to effectively handle the number of emails that a high-level executive receives in a given day.

The modern marketer’s solution to reaching their consumer is to employ every possible way to connect. If one Pipe is good than ten is better, right? Wrong. If you cannot make a meaningful connection with me on one medium, then trying the same failed tactic on ten media will serve only to trip my signal vs. noise filter. Henceforth, I will subconsciously file your messages/content as noise.

To give a concrete example: I was contacted earlier this year by a potential partner on LinkedIn. They did not have what I needed; they were not able to make a meaningful connection with me. Having failed on LinkedIn, they proceeded to try on other channels. Twitter was next, followed soon by phone calls and emails. Their message was the same, their value proposition unchanged. But now, instead of interacting with me in one Pipe, they were bothering me in all Pipes. They were causing a plumbing problem. So what happened? They got filtered out. Their signal no longer has any chance of reaching me. Much as Cypher in The Matrix “doesn’t even see the code anymore,” these messages pass by me without even being registered by my conscious mind.

It comes down to this—as a marketer, you must deal with two very important things:

• Connecting with your consumers
• Making a connection with your consumers

If you’ve gotten this far in the article and you think those are the same thing, then you might as well stop reading.

Making a connection has a business impact, but it is not achieved by connecting in as many ways as possible. In fact, connecting in as many ways as you can will likely preclude meaningful connection.

You must first know your consumer. Where does that consumer spend their time? From which Pipe are they most likely to receive your message/content? Once you have identified the Pipe to use, approach with your message and value proposition. If that works, then you continue to use that method of connection to deepen the relationship, always letting the consumer choose if he/she wants to expand to another Pipe. At that point, you have made a connection, perhaps one of the most rare and valuable of human interactions in our hyper-connected world. If the consumer doesn’t engage with you on the first Pipe, do not spam all their other Pipes with the same approach. You will only harm your cause.

Just because you can connect with me multiple ways doesn’t mean you should. Respect the saturated state in which we all exist and do your part to remove the snake’s tail from its mouth. Make the question posed in the title of this post a non-issue for you and your consumers and you will find yourself poised to capitalize on greater customer engagement and loyalty than has ever been seen before.