by Mack Collier on August 30, 2010
Guys I’m proud to announce our co-host for September, and a couple of other goodies in this post!
First, our special co-host for this month will be Shani Sammons who will be discussing how musicians can use social media to connect with their fans! Shani has helped music artists in the past use social media to connect with their fans, most notably Country supergroup Sugarland! She’s just started her own digital/music marketing company, Bamsmash. In past lives, she’s worked in the marketing and customer service areas for Delta Airlines and Turner Broadcasting. She’ll be joining us for the next #Blogchat, on the 5th.
Now as #Blogchat regulars know, we usually cover blogging-centric topics only. But I am a big fan of music marketing, and I think that a lot of how artists connect with fans can help bloggers in their efforts to grow more interaction on their blog, and readership. So this will be one of those rare #Blogchat topics that will be more on social media as a whole, instead of just on blogging. On Sunday I’ll have up another post that will have a more detailed rundown of the topic areas that Shani and I will cover!
Also, I wanted to let y’all know of a couple of changes that we’ll be making to the #Blogchat format. The first is with co-hosts. The #Blogchats that have co-hosts are always very popular, and I am going to have at least one a month from now on. In fact, the 1st Sunday of every month will be devoted to co-hosts. If there are 5 Sundays in the month (As there are in October), then we’ll have a co-host on the 1st and 3rd Sunday of the month.
The last Sunday of every month will still be OPEN MIC.
The big change will be that starting immediately, the 2nd Sunday of every month will be reserved for a company to sponsor #Blogchat. I’ve created a new page here just for companies that are interested in sponsoring #Blogchat, so they can see what they are getting.
The content of these sponsored #Blogchats will be completely consistent with what we talk about every Sunday nite at #Blogchat. In other words, you won’t see a #Blogchat sponsored by McDonalds, where they discuss their new line of Happy Meals 
But you might see a large industrial company sponsoring a #Blogchat about how B2B companies can use a blogging strategy to better connect with their customers. Any topic that’s picked for a sponsored #Blogchat will have to have the same teaching element that we try to have present at every #Blogchat.
So again, if your company is interested in learning more about a potential sponsorship, click here. Or if you have some questions about how it would work, please email me.
So that would mean that our schedule for #Blogchat moving forward would look like this for each month:
1st Sunday – Co-Host
2nd Sunday – Sponsor
3rd Sunday – Topic to be determined
4th Sunday – OPEN MIC
That sound good to everyone? If you have any questions or suggestions, let me know!
by Mack Collier on August 25, 2010
For as long as I have been working with companies to help them improve their social media efforts, I have heard them explain how worried they are about what their customers are saying online. ”How do we make it go away?” or “How do we get this off the 1st page of Google results?” are questions I have heard all too often.
One area where this really comes into play is the issue of adding product reviews to your e-commerce site. Many companies do NOT want to do this, because they fear that letting customers post reviews on their site will hurt sales.
I was discussing this on Twitter last week, and Ian at Bazaarvoice started chatting with me. If you haven’t heard of them, Bazaarvoice works with companies to add functionality to their e-commerce sites, including Ratings and Reviews. Ian sent me a ton of useful information and data about companies that using ratings and reviews on their sites, and I wanted to share some of the key points with you.
First, Bazaarvoice has found that 80% of the people that review products with its US clients give those products a 4 or 5 star rating (out of 5 stars). For its clients in the UK, that figure jumps up to 88%.
Second, there’s the case study of how QuickBooks added the functionality of reviews to its Pro Advisors (Quick Book experts that help customers use the software). Quick Books found that Pro Advisors with reviews had their profiles clicked on 555% more than those with no reviews. Quick Book also found that volume trumped rating, as some Pro Advisors with more reviews got more clicks than Pro Advisors with higher overall ratings, but far fewer reviews.
Another key advantage to reviews that Ian shared with me is that reviews are great sources of customer feedback. If you see that several customers are complaining about a particular aspect of your product and/or service, then obviously that’s alerting you to a pain point for your customers that you need to address.
One final tip from Ian: product reviews lower the number of returns (and the associated restocking fees/costs) cause customers have a better idea of exactly what they are getting before they order it. Makes complete sense, eh?
But at the end of the day, the key lesson here is to be proactive in monitoring online mentions (even if its reviews on your site), and responding to them when appropriate. We talked recently about examples of ‘social media backlashes‘ that brands have endured. In each instance, the problem grew over time, due to the company not monitoring the situation. The company not responding in a timely fashion was the main culprit behind the problem for them.
Most customers that complain online do NOT want to ‘hurt’ your company. They just want you to listen to them, and help them with their problem. If you’ll do that, you’ll often flip a detractor into an evangelist. Hopefully these stats will help debunk the myth that any negative mention/review online hurts your company. In reality, it’s often an opportunity.
by Mack Collier on August 22, 2010
If you are new to #Blogchat and want to know what the deal is, here’s the lowdown.
Tonite’s topic, which was inspired by @JudyHelfand, is managing your blog’s sidebars! We’ll hit on two main areas:
1 – Before we discuss what content to include on our sidebars, I think we need to first figure out our blogging goals. That will help decide which information we should be highlighting. A business blog will likely want to put different information on its sidebars than a personal blog does. We’ll also talk about the importance of putting the most important information on the sidebars ABOVE THE FOLD. This topic will cover the first 30 mins or so of #Blogchat.
2 – Then we’ll move to a discussion of how much information should our sidebars have? Do we REALLY have enough information to justify two sidebars, or will one be enough? Also, are we not including some sidebar elements that we should be adding, like subscriber buttons, or a list of the most popular posts? We’ll discuss this area from 8:30 to 9:00.
After 9:00, the discussion will be more open, and we’ll hit on any areas concerning sidebars that you want to discuss!
BTW, as a way to say ‘Thank You’ to you guys for coming out and making #Blogchat so amazing each and every week, I’ll be giving out a few #Optsum passes tonite. Judy I’ve got one for you for suggesting tonite’s topic. Thanks guys, see you at 8pm Central tonite! And if you want to join at 7pm Central, we’ll be having our ‘pregame’ where everyone can say hi and share their blog and get to know each other.
First, our special co-host for this month will be Shani Sammons who will be discussing how musicians can use social media to connect with their fans! Shani has helped music artists in the past use social media to connect with their fans, most notably Country supergroup Sugarland! She’s just started her own digital/music marketing company, Bamsmash. In past lives, she’s worked in the marketing and customer service areas for Delta Airlines and Turner Broadcasting. She’ll be joining us for the next #Blogchat, on the 5th.
