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In the ever becoming noisier world of marketing, it is quite difficult for brands to get their message across. However, once you get something that is capturing the attention of the average user, then the same noisier world makes it become a viral hit.

We often see the signals getting lost in our noisy real world of ‘what’s in it for me?’. That is usually because the signal wasn’t clear about what is in it for the target audience.

People are ‘busy being busy’ and if the messenger doesn’t play it nice with their often mixed up priorities, the message, no matter however valuable it is, will be lost and the messenger will get shot, eventually.
So, if you are that messenger and you want an endless holiday, I mean, if you want to get your signal through to your targets most of the time, then read on.

Starting from the profile picture we use, to the headline and latest status update, we are all thrusting our stories on to the network of billions. We don’t just like or share or comment. We generate a ton of activity data while we are at it. We follow, we watch and we click. We help the networks generate Ad revenue. We help the telcos charge for bandwidth and companies pay for clicks. (Yes, this is how we contribute to the social economy)

No matter what we do, someone else is making money out of that noise. So, noise is a fundamental force in the social world. It is like gravity in our universe. We need it. (Well someone has to pay for those overpaid execs)

The important thing to understand is, the “noise” is actually a bunch of other people’s signals that gets in your way.

Everyone is in the game of signal generation and targeting their audience. Just like the cell phone companies and broadcasters, we are all generating signals and sending our marketing messages. Thanks to Social media we are doing it 24 x 7 x 366 and good lord it is free. (Free? well that is a topic for another blog post)

The good news is there are ways to manage what we do and how we do it in a way to make sure we get through to our audience.
It is actually very effective once you get it. Getting there is a journey and it comes with some challenges due to the dynamism inherent to technology. But, the bang you get for the buck is huge.

In many industries, we are still seeing a slow take up of social within our target audience. But, most of their friends, family and foes are already on it. This means they will get on to it eventually. When they do they will do some rookie mistakes. Which could be of advantageous to us. because we have been there made that mistake. So, we now have an opportunity to educate them. If we do that proactively we could get to them and get our message across much easily than our competitors.

By using a variety of social networks, there are plenty, we can get to various segments of the audience and their social graphs. Using the image core message with the twists tuned to target audience and how they behave within different networks, we now have a way to retarget our messages.

This may sound hard work or costly. But neither is true. What you need is a plan. This plan has to be tailored to your campaign.

Take the popular social networks. Take Pinterest, Insta, FB, Linkedin, Twitter, Periscope and snapchat. There are ton of others too. But thees are all somewhat same and are also very different. If and when you learn to see it that way, things will fall into the places for you.

If you take a twitter message and post it verbatim on to Linkedin you are really missing the point. Linkedin and Facebook has groups. Insta is all about pictures. Youtube needs good and catchy videos. Sound cloud needs audio. So the format of the message is clearly different.

Snapchat only allows you to take photos and videos and keep them on the network for 24 hours max. This creates constant active engagement while FB, Linkedin and Twitter can be heavily automated.

Take Ads as another example. FB allows you to use native videos. They now play Ads within videos. You can’t skip them like youtube. Linkedin used to rely on externally hosted video content – youtube or vimeo. Their App now allows for short videos to be uploaded. Twitter is becoming more like Facebook and periscope & meerkat seem to have been killed by Facebook’s live streaming feature.

Linkedin has influencers and Facebook has mentions. Twitter has verified profiles and FB copied it too. Company pages and Fan pages are different but some what the same. Sponsored updates and sponsored posts are mixed into your news feed, using them can help you get your message across.

But, are they converting? Isn’t that the ultimate goal? Copy is crucial. If you get it right then you will know how to push the right buttons and get your audience to do the same.

Learn it and do it. Then you can be on a holiday by the beach and sipping endless cocktails. All you need is a smartphone to keep the signals going. Good luck.