Proven Ways to Improve Response Rates

I stumbled upon an interesting blog article that detailed 50 scientifically proven ways to be persuasive.  Below are 4 key learnings that apply to social media:

#10: Hand-written Post-It Notes improve response rates on inter-office letters. 

Obviously you can't send hand-written Post-It notes through social media channels. However, the key learning here is that personalization works and additional personalization works even better. People like to hear and see their name. They also like to feel listened to and involved. Social media is an ideal channel for personalization. 

#12: Attaching no strings increases response to the message. 

These days, people expect more for less. That's why many online companies are offering a "freemium" model in addition to a premium (AKA paid) model. If you are developing a marketing campaign, remember to give something of value (such as a white paper or 60 day subscription) away with no strings attached.

#26: Admitting negatives up-front might lead to better communication. 

#28: Admitting you're wrong makes people trust you more. 

#26 and #28 are related. People know that no product/service/brand is 100% perfect and they actually seek out negative information. This is why Yelp.com is so popular. Consumers were typically not receiving this information directly from companies, so they went elsewhere to get it. This is a tough pill to swallow for companies who are used to controlling their message via one-way communications. But these conversations are happening even if the company is not involved. So it's better to own up publicly to mistakes and admit negatives...this will actually make the brand message more believable. 

Click here to read the full article.