Imagine the following statements as a part of any marketing message:

  • Visit our website!
  • Call us on your phone!
  • Come to our store!

None of these would be very helpful to me as a consumer unless I knew the web address, the phone number or the physical address of the business. They’re not worth much without at least a little additional context. Pretty easy to understand, right? Of course.

Yet this is exactly how many marketers are promoting their presence on various social media channels, with Facebook and Twitter at the top of the list.

Excited About Going Social

Recently I’ve been seeing a lot more promotion of social media channels in other forms of advertising and marketing collateral, including TV commercials, radio, brochures and business cards. (I wouldn’t call it integrated marketing yet, but hey, it’s a start.) Golden Corral‘s latest TV spots are one example that comes to mind. If you watch the end of the commercial, all you see are logos for Facebook and Twitter. Fortunately, Golden Corral was able to secure the usernames, but they still require the consumer to search and/or guess the best place to connect with them. That might not be the best idea, especially considering the recent changes to Facebook’s Community Pages. (As of this writing, Golden Corral has over 16,000 subscribers on Facebook and just over 400 followers on their primary Twitter account.)

I found another example where a local company was promoting their presence on Facebook and Twitter by asking consumers reading their brochure to search for a specific term related to their brand. However, a search for the brand on Twitter didn’t lead to anything related to their brand, and a similar search on Facebook returned so many results that it was hard to identify the official business page.

Compare those to CB2. Here’s what they share on their ordering information page:

CB2 Goes Social

They provide clear, prominent links that tell you exactly where to go if you want to connect with them across multiple online channels. Granted, CB2’s Facebook page only has 5,600 subscribers and their Twitter account is hovering just over 600 followers, but I’d argue that they’re doing a more effective job of providing clear direction to make it as easy as possible for fans of the brand to connect with them.

Print Out the Directions

While these examples don’t indicate that there’s a direct correlation to the size of your audience (which actually makes sense), as a best practice, I still think it’s to your benefit as a marketer to be as clear as possible. Eliminate any possible confusion by telling people exactly where they can find you. Why say Find us on Facebook when you can just as easily say facebook.com/30lines. On Twitter? Twitter.com/30lines or even @30lines should suffice.

Be clear. If you’re going to communicate through social media channels, make sure people know how they can connect with you. And while you’re at it, make sure you include your phone number, too.