Here’s a number for anyone who still says only the young are on Facebook: According to new figures from ComScore Data Mine, the social network reaches 62% of online Americans, regardless of age. Simply put, that’s a lot of eyeballs – in demographics that are all over the board. And, if you combine that with a recent SEI poll stating that 70 percent of high-net-worth individuals use Facebook and other social sites, you could say that attached to those eyeballs can be some pretty deep pockets.

However, even the wealthy haven’t got unlimited time to spend online. In the SEI survey, only 17.4 percent of respondents said they use social media daily. With that in mind, what’s the best way to get your point across when you’ve got something to say via social sites? Whether you’re speaking or selling using social channels, you’re working with an audience operating under maximum distraction. By design, most social media sites take the form of an aggregator – that is, a “news feed” of what other users are up to, what they’re interested in and how their interests might be relevant to you. If you’ve got a full Web site designed just for you or even a shared blog as your communications platform, you’ve got at least some control of the content and visual interface that surrounds the message you’re trying to convey – although you’ve still got distraction to deal with, as summarized in a Poynter study saying online newspaper readers only read 63% of stories from start to finish. If you’re using banner ads as your medium, you’re able to control what appears in that chunk of pixel space you’ve purchased, even though you may not have a say in the content that surrounds your ad. In many social media contexts, though, you’ve got neither a consistent look and feel to call your own nor any sway over the content surrounding yours.

With this in mind, the key – now more than ever – is in paying close attention to your content. Warning! This may sound a little like Headline Writing 101:

– Control the things that you can control, even if it’s just a few words in someone’s Twitter stream or news feed. Use simple, direct language with as little ambiguity as possible – unless you’re deliberately going for the mysterious angle. (Then run with it.)
– Drive them back to your own content in an arena you can better control – link them back to your Web site, profile page or something that’s all about you or the information you’re trying to get across. Give them somewhere to go that’s as free from distraction as possible.
– Make it worth it, though. Give them a reason to click through – leave some prime morsel out of your teaser, or better still, make the content so compelling that once they click, they stay. Getting someone there is half the battle; once they’re there, they need a reason not to close that window or tab.
– Put yourself in your reader’s shoes. Whether we’re journalists or marketers, we’re pretty well acquainted with what we write about. Your reader probably isn’t; after all, that’s why he’s there – even if you’re addressing something pretty specialized. As one of my editors used to repeat ad infinitum, “Never assume anyone has any idea what you’re talking about.”
– And if it doesn’t work? Try again. That’s the fun part about social media; there’s room to try out new ideas, get near-instant reaction and make whatever changes you need to make.

Did we leave anything out? What are your strategies for cutting through social media noise? Give us a shout in the comments – we’d love to hear from you.