At least email marketers have the unsubscribe rate as a barometer. And ecommerce directors have sales funnel and conversion metrics. Social marketers have a mix of data that is far harder to parse and illustrate.

It’s this line of thinking that makes the social communication findings by ExactTarget and Cotweet both interesting and unsurprising. Net-net, if your messaging is frequent, repetitive, or light in terms of value exchange, consumers abandon you in the social sphere. To keep consumers engaged, give them relevant content at the right frequency.

As if determining the cadence and content of communications wasn’t hard enough, metrics can be muddied when customers on Facebook decide to simply ignore you (19%), or remove your posts from their wall without “unliking” you (38%). Rather than having a straightforward “click-through to transaction” calculation, you now have an opaque “friends to click-through to transaction” metric.

So, what is the Goldilocks Principle for social networking? What cadence and content rules must we marketers follow to be interesting on an ongoing basis? And what is a realistic lifecycle for a customer and your company?

Do the five rules of wedded bliss, authored by Paula Szuchman in her book “Spousonomics: Using Economics to Master Love, Marriage and Dirty Dishes” apply to social networking and brand management? Let’s see.

Rules:

1. Talk less

In addition to metering our emails, posts and tweets, we must consider the retail fundamentals found in “The Paradox of Choice.” We have confused the consumer by offering too many configurations at retail (see technology products). Apple, Inc., is synonymous with providing clear benefits for a limited set of products.

2. Lose weight

Optimize your workforce for both current and green-lit tasks versus legacy lines of business that no longer require support. One need not pivot entirely to survive, just turn to the activities that will yield the best results now and moving forward.

3. Do the dishes

Focus on what your firm does best. If you do the dishes really well, but don’t know a thing about mopping the floor, focus on the dishes – create new dish soap, sponges, and then expand into dishwashers, service contracts, etc. Let someone else sell mops.

4. Put out

In this context, is your business giving consumers the right content where and when they need it? Amazon affirms my purchases at Target retail stores by making a SKU scanner and customer reviews easily accessible via mobile phone. However, when delivery time is not an issue, I buy from Amazon.com and its Seller Central vendors.

5. Scheme

Without strategy we’re simply executing haphazardly. Placing yourself in your customers’ shoes (using personas or case studies) can help you avoid pitfalls – saving time, resources, and money.

It’s difficult to find the Goldilocks Principle for your customer base, but viewing marketing as a relationship can help determine the rules of engagement.  If your analytics tell you that customers purchase goods at lunchtime on the 14th and 28th of each month (in anticipation of payday), then it’s your job to work backward and architect a communication schedule that helps them buy.

By synchronizing data (from all business silos) to develop customer profiles and purchasing scenarios, we can devise what our customers consider “not too hot, not too cold, but just right.”

We’re not saying that the online retail environment can’t (or doesn’t) deliver personalized shopping experiences – mostly driven by those technologies mimicking Amazon.com. Wirestone is saying that the next evolution of online commerce is built from a carefully curated mix of brand and consumer interactions.

Personalization 1.0 included the advent of recommendation engines (suggested products, cross and up-sell merchandising tools), which tailor the product assortment to the consumer based on aggregate data. Then, retailers saw that content – reviews supplied by you – could help close a sale or validate a purchase.

Enter Facebook. Positive peer recommendations could be multiplied to great benefit, but so could negative product sentiment. And as with Twitter, brands had no choice but to embrace these platforms and use them to engage with consumers. Big companies late to the game, on average, have only suffered for it.

So, how do we corral these silos to create personalized customer interactions and experiences that imbue an overarching brand identity?

1. Know your brand. Employ ground rules for your voice and aesthetic and hold firm when they are challenged. Make sure that these brand guidelines are extended to every consumer communication.

2. Use automation appropriately. Database-triggered communications help manage customer expectations, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t carry your brand messaging – or be fun. Which leads to …

3. Put a human where they can positively impact customer service and sales. The shopping cart and checkout are the perfect environments for a 1-800 number and live online chat. Facilitate the conversation.

4. Meet the customer halfway. If your customer base uses Facebook or Twitter to discuss your brand – meet them there.

5. Do your products justice. Would you merchandise a $3,000 chandelier using one photograph? A single photograph might work for the “comparison shopper” – they’re already in the buying mode – but your new and affluent website visitor will demand “white glove” features such as rich images, live customer service, and perhaps audio or video. Remember to educate and entertain your shoppers.

6. Give customers something more. Tutorials, guides, and how to’s deliver both SEO value as well as thought leadership. Every customer loves the story behind a product – and they’re often willing to pay more for that story.

7. Plan for mobile commerce now. Amazon, eBay, and others already have excellent mobile apps, but you can create a mobile version of your website at a fraction of the cost.

8. Innovate and iterate. If you’re an ecommerce website, you’re also a technology company. Don’t shock users with large-scale website redesigns; instead, take a cue from Amazon.com and Facebook by iterating often – introducing new features that are informed by data and customer feedback.

9. Experiment 20% of the time. Projections and goals are key to running a successful ecommerce business, but don’t be afraid to test some well-reasoned tactics. A prior false negative could be your greatest opportunity today.

10. And finally, but most importantly, view all of these activities through a single marketing or corporate lens. Efficiencies can be found through coordinated partnerships, promotions, communications, and product development.

We’re interested to hear from you? Please comment below or contact the author at: jason@jasonmichaels.com.