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How Do You ‘Activate’ Your Brands Fans?

That’s today’s #Rockstarchat topic on Twitter, and you can join in below in this very post!  Feed readers click here.

For example, think of all the brands that you would consider yourself to be a fan of.  And it could even be extended to being a fan of a TV show or a rock star.

Now think about the ones that you tell others about, and more specifically, think about the brands/shows/rock stars/teams that you are a fan of that you don’t tell others about.  What prompts us to talk about some of the things we are passionate about, and not others?

Is it that some brands give us a more interesting and compelling story to share?  Do they give us better tools to promote the brand to others?  Do they do a better job of connecting with us personally, thus giving us an extra incentive to talk about them to others?

What do you think?  Those are the points we want to talk about today during #Rockstarchat, and you can follow along right here in this post, the discussion will start at 1pm Central!

 

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What’s the Identity of Your Fans?

Today at 1pm Central on Twitter we’ll be discussing how to find the identity of your fans at #RockstarChat.  It’s vitally important to understand who your fans are, because that helps shape the type of relationship you can have with them.

For example, Maker’s Mark literally calls their fans their Brand Ambassadors.  That helps shape the nature of their relationship.  Maker’s Mark treats their BAs as pseudo-salespeople for the brand, people who consider it their job to promote Maker’s Mark to other customers and bars.  So the brand focuses heavily on giving BAs promotional materials to help them better sell the brand to others.

With Fiskars and its The Fiskateers program, the focus is more on the Fiskateers themselves, and their love of scrapbooking and crafting.  Fiskars showcases the fans and the projects they create, with the understanding that doing so spreads a love of scrapbooking, and by extension, that leads to promotion of the products used to create those crafting projects.  Such as Fiskars’ iconic orange-handle scissors.

So if you are wanting to craft a formal program to facilitate an ongoing relationship with your fans, you need to consider two key questions:

1 – Who are these fans?

2 – What’s the nature of our desired relationship?

For example, let’s say your company makes a line of cooking products, and that you want to improve your marketing efforts in the Pacific Northwest.  From your market research you know that the majority of your customers are stay-at-home-moms.  Since your fans are SAHMs and the goal is to improve your marketing efforts, the nature of your desired relationship with your fans could be to leverage them as a feedback channel to learn more about what customers think of both your products and in-store marketing in the Pacific Northwest.

You could start by first identifying your fans in each state, let’s start with Oregon.  And you could then identify all the stores in the state of Oregon that carry your products, then based on the location of your fans in Oregon, ask certain fans to talk to customers in the stores in their regional area.  This would allow you to better learn what customers in Oregon not only think about your products, but how your company is marketing those products.  Then you can take this feedback and leverage it to improve your marketing efforts.

That’s just an example, we’ll deep dive into this topic today during #RockstarChat on Twitter.  Please do join us, and to make it easier on you, you can follow the chat right here!  See you at 1pn Central!

 

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How Paper.li is Flipping the Role of a Brand Ambassador Program to Focus on Its Fans

KellyTweetLast Wednesday during #Rockstarchat we were joined by Paper.li’s Marketing Directory, Kelly Hungerford.  Kelly was joining the chat to talk about Paper.li’s Brand Ambassador program, which the company launched a few months ago.  Kelly talked about the program, how it was formed, and what the brand’s goals for the initiative were.

What struck me most from our chat was the focus of Paper.li’s brand ambassador program: The goal is to put the spotlight on the brand’s fans.  This is an interesting disconnect from most brand ambassador programs, where the main goal is to create a way to organize some of the brand’s biggest fans so they can better promote the brand.  Paper.li appears to have flipped this model, using the program to promote its fans, with the secondary goal being promotion of the brand itself.

Kelly told us that over the last couple of years, that Paper.li began to identify publishers that were independently helping others better use Paper.li.  So Kelly decided that a brand ambassador program would be a good way to bring together and acknowledge some of its community members that were going out of their way to help others.

So basically Paper.li is rewarding the behavior it wants to encourage.  As Paper.li promotes its brand ambassadors, that helps validate their love of the brand, and gives them more incentive to promote the brand to other people.  So Paper.li’s brand ambassador program is driving additional promotion of the brand, even though that’s not the primary objective.

KellyTweet2Another interesting aspect of Paper.li’s brand ambassador program is that members get early access to new product features and releases.  Kelly said this was a perk that members specifically asked for.  The benefit to the members is obvious and goes back to the idea of giving your fans ‘special access’ and helps them feel like the rock stars (because they are).

But giving brand ambassadors early access to new product features has two huge benefit for Paper.li.  First, it allows Paper.li’s power users to give the brand valuable feedback on the features.  This is done before being released to tbe public, so its possible the brand can still make changes based on feedback from its brand ambassadors.

The second key benefit for Paper.li is that when the new features are officially rolled out, the brand ambassadors will already be familiar with the features and how to use them.  So the brand ambassadors can become teachers and help teach other Paper.li members how to use the new features!  Again, this becomes a promotional tool for the brand, because when Paper.li rolls out new features, it immediately has its biggest fans telling other Paper.li users why these features are so awesome.

So ironically, by flipping the focus of its brand ambassador program to focus on spotlighting its fans, Paper.li has created a powerful promotional tool.  I think this is a very brave move by a brand to give its fans so much control over the direction of such a program.  But I think that willingness to embrace its fans came from how Kelly and team made great efforts to personally connect with its fans.  This lead to them having a better understanding of its fans and what they wanted from their relationship with the brand.  This is why many brands don’t launch a program such as this, because they don’t understand their fans and what motivates them.  As such, they fear ceding control of a program such as this.

So by creating direct benefits for its biggest fans, this program is indirectly creating big benefits for Paper.li!  If you want to view the transcript from last week’s #rockstarchat (which had a TON of key takeaways) then click here(click Transcript on the left).

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Learn How Paper.li Created its Brand Ambassador Program Today at #Rockstarchat!

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UPDATE: Here’s the transcript from this chat!

I’m thrilled to announce that Paper.li’s Marketing Director Kelly Hungerford will be joining #Rockstarchat today at 1pm Central on Twitter to discuss how the brand created and launched its brand ambassador program!  This is a great opportunity to learn from Paper.li because I know so many of you work or brands that either have or are considering launching such a program.  Kelly will help you understand how the process has gone for Paper.li, and will be happy to answer any questions you might have.

Here’s the points we’ll cover:

1 – What prompted Paper.li to want to launch a brand ambassador program?

2 – What are Paper.li’s goals for the program?

3 – How are members selected?  Is there a cap or can anyone join?

4 – How does Paper.li measure if the program is working?  What metrics do you track?

5 – What have been some of your A-Ha! moments from launching this program?

 

And if you would like to get a bit more background on Paper.li’s brand ambassador program, check out this guest post that Kelly wrote here a few months ago.

So if you want to join in on the fun, check out the #Rockstarchat happening on Twitter today at 1pm Central!  You can follow the tweets here(Click the All tab at the top to see all the tweets), and here’s the transcript!

BTW, if you subscribe to my Think Like a Rock Star newsletter then you got a heads-up about this yesterday.  Click here if you want to subscribe!

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How Can Employers Help Their Employees Become Advocates For Their Brand?

Today’s #RockStarChat topic will focus on how companies can cultivate brand advocates and fans from their own employees.  Seriously how can a company hope to excite its customers if its own employees aren’t excited about working for the company?  We’ll discuss this at 1pm Central today, and luckily a few members of Dell’s Social Media and Digital team have volunteered to stop by and talk about how Dell does just this.

Basically, I think the process for creating fans among your employees is similar to creating fans among your customers.  First, you need to focus on ways to connect directly with your employees, and they to you.  There needs to be some way for employees to voice their thoughts, ideas and concerns to the company, and understand that their voice is being heard.

Second, there needs to be an effort made to connect employees to each other.  Many companies have started creating internal social networks that allow employees to connect with each other and ask work-related questions, help each other, or just talk about their life and interests.  These channels are vital to the employees as it lets them help each other (boosting productivity) but also hits them boost morale and their connection to their fellow co-workers.  If you already have a copy of Think Like a Rock Star, I talk about doing this in Chapters 7 and 8.

Those are just a couple of quick thoughts as I’m far more interested in hearing what y’all have to say about today’s topic.  But I do think that before any company can think about launching any type of program to cultivate fans or connect with brand ambassadors, it needs to invest in creating channels that connect their own employees.  To each other, and to the company they work for.

See y’all at 1pm Central, follow the #rockstarchat tweets on Twitter.

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Three Ways to Create Content That Creates Fans

KatyFireworkOver the past few years there has been a big surge in the use of the term ‘content marketing’.  And really, the idea that your content IS your marketing.  As social media usage has become mainstream, we’ve all become content creators.  The impact this has for marketers is that promotional content is far less effective than it used to be. Brands are competing now with their own customers for the attention of new customers.

The reason being?  Because customers are typically creating more compelling content than brands.  Customers are creating value for each other via the content they create and the content they share.

But this idea of ‘creating value’ gets tossed around a lot, and pretty loosely.  Along with its first-cousin, creating ‘awesome’ content/blog posts, etc.  Today I want to talk about three ways to create content that creates fans.  But I also want you to understand that these approaches create fans because they create a positive change for the reader.  They are making the reader better by giving them a new skill, a new perspective, or simply inspiring them to take action and ownership.  You create fans by moving them to take action.  That action can be to help others, or it can be to help and better themselves.  But it creates a positive change for the reader.  As Kathy says in the foreword to Think Like a Rock Star, “Rock stars aren’t just making better fans, they’re making their fans better.”  Ask yourself how your content will do exactly that when you create it.

Here’s three ways your content can create fans:

1 – By teaching.  This one is probably the easiest to wrap your mind around because the benefit to the reader is so clear.  If you teach the reader how to be better at something, then obviously your content has created value for them.  You’ve given them a new skillset, a new ‘superpower’.

Where this becomes interesting is when you apply it to a blogging business.  Many companies will say ‘well why would I want to teach my customers to do this stuff for themselves, then I am just blogging myself out of business!’  Actually, you’re growing your business.  Teaching your readers not only creates fans, it establishes you as the expert.  I am reading Jay Baer’s new book Youtility right now, and he opens with a great story of how Robert Stephens, the founder of Geek Squad, responded when questioned about how he was killing his business chances by creating videos showing his customers how to solve their own computer problems.  He made this same point, that he was giving his customers a skillset, but that many of them couldn’t solve their problems as effectively as the videos showed, so they ended up contacting Geek Squad to help them.  And even if the customers did learn how to solve their own computer problems as a result of the videos, that still creates positive word of mouth for Geek Squad.  So either way, Geek Squad wins.

2 – By raising awareness.  This one is tricky.  You want to create content that raises awareness of idea, theory or belief that your customers and fans are passionate about.  But at the same time, you want to give them ways that they can get involved to help affect a positive change, even if that simply means spreading the word to others.  Remember that taking ownership is taking power, so if you can give readers an incentive to become involved and take ownership, that gives them the incentive to help spread your message.

An example of this is what Innocent Drinks does with The Big Knit.  This is an annual event the UK company has that’s designed to give its customers a way to help the elderly in the winter months by giving them clothing and sources of heat.  Every year Innocent Drinks asks its customers to knit hoodies and caps that will fit over its bottles, which are then sold and a portion of the proceeds go to provide heat for the elderly in the winter.  The event raises awareness of a problem, and then gives customers a way to participate in helping to solve that problem.  Participants then take ownership in helping to create the solution to the problem.  And that’s empowering, which is one reason why the quirky drink company from the UK has so many fans.

3 – By inspiring others to take action.  This can go along with raising awareness, but the key is that the action you are inspiring readers to take can often be for themselves.  You are inspiring them to become involved in something, to make a different to someone, and that someone could be themselves.

A big reason why Tim Ferriss’ books are so wildly popular is because he is a master at creating a positive change for his readers.  Just a few days ago he had a guest post by one of Tim’s fans telling how she applied his teachings on how to eat, cook and exercise to lose 100 pounds.  This is incredibly powerful because this content isn’t coming from Tim, it’s coming from one of his fans.  She is telling her story (with compelling visual evidence) of how Tim’s teachings created a very positive change in her life, and in the process her story inspires others to take action.  As a bonus, note at the end of the post how Tim is creating a free support group for others that are attempting to reach similar goals as Briana.  That’s another way that Tim creates fans because actions such as this show that he has their best interests in mind.

 

So there are three ways to create content that creates fans.  But remember that the common thread running through these ideas is creating a positive change for the reader.  You are giving them a new skill, or giving them a way to take action, or the inspiration they need to get started.  You are helping them to move forward.  If you can create content that does this, then you will also create fans.

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#RockstarChat Today is With Billboard’s Social Marketing Manager Katie Morse!

katie mo headshots 4Today’s #RockstarChat will have its first co-host, Billboard’s own Katie Morse!  I interviewed Katie for Think Like a Rock Star, and in today’s chat she will talk to us about how rock stars are using social media and other marketing channels to connect with their fans.  Then we’ll talk about what brands can learn from rock stars in connecting with their own fans.

To prep for today’s chat, I wanted to share an interview I did with Katie several months ago while I was still writing Think Like a Rock Star:

Mack: For Rockstars, it just seems so natural for most of them to have a very close connection with their fans.  Yet for most brands, the exact opposite is true.  Why do you think Rockstars go out of their way to embrace their fans, when most brands keep their’s at arm’s length?  

Katie: I think this dichotomy exists for 2 reasons.

1 – Brands never HAD to “embrace their fans” before social media. Many brands spent millions doing the opposite, in fact – turning their customers into anonymous data points and trying to make the most amount of money possible based off of statistical models and predictions.

2 – Rock stars have a necessary connection with their fans based off their model of monetization… in these days (and even previously) you had to tour to make money. Now that’s apparent more than ever, and who goes to a show? PEOPLE! Musician’s couldn’t ignore their fans the way brands could before.

I also think that brands, for a long time, were afraid of “being human”. You see this pop up in all sorts of areas… scripted customer service calls, for an example. Somewhere along the line from the mom and pop shops of the 1800-1900’s to the monolithic corporations of today brands lost that “human touch” which musicians could never afford to lose.

Mack: Throughout your professional career, and especially now handling Social Media Marketing for Billboard, you’ve been exposed to how Rockstars connect with their fans.  What do you think is the most important lesson or two that brands can learn from the relationship Rockstars have with their fans?

Katie:  1 – Go off-script. I Tweeted the other day(Edit by Mack, this interview was done last Aug for the book ;)) that Josh Groban’s Twitter account is consistently one of my favorites to follow. Why? Because he’s not a marketing machine. He’s a real person with a personality. He even has some pretty good jokes! Brands don’t need to learn to “be human” but they DO need to learn how to better communicate with real people online. That requires adopting a more conversational and human tone and not being afraid to be honest, or deal with the unexpected.

2 – Less Wizard of Oz, more Dorothy. People want to see what’s behind the curtain more than ever these days. Musicians have taken to Instagram en masse, just as an example, and many share photos of life on tour or even daily live (Rihanna, Drake, etc). This content is GOLD in fans eyes… who doesn’t want to see what Drake’s hotel room in Cannes really looks like, or what Rihanna really gets up to on a “night out with the girls”? The same thing should apply to your brand. No, not everyone cares to see photos of worker bees in cubicles, but we DO want to take a peek into how your bottled beverage is really put together, or what the raw incredients for my favorite meal at a restaurant really look like. GE does a wonderful job of this with their Instagram account, by the way.

Mack: How can a brand measure the bottom-line impact of connecting with their biggest fans?  I think most brands accept that fans probably spend more than the average customer and speak more positively about the brand, but if a CMO wanted to convince her boss to launch a formal program to connect with its brand advocates, how would she sell the boss on spending the money to do so?

Katie: It has to tie back to revenue, so start there. First – start with proving that your biggest fans DO spend more, do your research! From there, I’d suggest asking for a small budget to launch a pilot program to connect with and reward brand advocates. They may love your company, but everyone loves getting a little something in return, too. Perhaps a small meetup (drinks on your company!) might be a good place to start. You can invite the CMO, structure it like an informal focus group and get opinions from your biggest fans. From there, show them that you used their feedback in some way! Measure the amount that they spent before and after, and also measure the buzz they helped to create for your company online over time. Those are the results the CMO wants to see and those results also give you a great parameter in asking for budget. On the up side, if your initial foray ends up creating more referrals/sales/revenue than you projected, you can ask for a bigger budget! Increased online buzz is great, but ultimately if that leads to sales, page views, or whatever your revenue driver is it’s a win. If not… try again.

 

And Katie will be joining us today at 1pm Central at #RockstarChat on Twitter to share more smartitude like this.  Hope you can join us!

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Selling Your Colleagues on the Importance of Connecting With Your Brand’s Fans

community building, online communityThanks to Kelly Hungerford for suggesting today’s #RockstarChat topic: How to Get Colleagues and Employees Involved in the Process to Better Connect With Your Fans.  #RockstarChat will be on Twitter today at 1pm Central.

This is an important topic because as you are trying to build out programs to help your brand better connect with its fans, you will probably encounter some internal resistance.  You may need to convince some of your colleagues of the value of connecting with your brand’s fans.

So to get skeptical co-workers on board, let’s show them how connecting with your brand’s fans will actually help them be more productive and better at their jobs.  If we can show them how connecting with your fans will directly benefit them, your co-workers are far more likely to help you with your efforts.

In Think Like a Rock Star(In Chapter 5), I talk about the four different ways you can work with your fans:

1 – To help you promote your brand

2 – To help you drive sales for your brand

3 – To help you provide customer service

4 – To help you collect customer feedback

So when you are trying to sell a co-worker on the value of connecting with your brand’s fans, ask yourself ‘How would connecting with our fans help this person do their job more effectively?’  For example, if you are trying to sell a marketing manager on the importance of a brand ambassador program, you might point out how connecting with your fans will mean more promotion and exposure for your brand.  If you are trying to get a customer service manager on board, you might show them how your fans can help other customers with their problems, potentially saving your brand money and time dealing with customer service issues.

We’ll have a lot more advice and ideas at today’s #RockstarChat, on Twitter at 1pm Central!  Also, if you haven’t pre-ordered Think Like a Rock Star yet, Amazon has dropped the price to an even $11.00!  The book will be released sometime within the next 3 weeks, and I am proud to say it has 5-star reviews on Amazon!  If you’ve already read the book via NetGalley, please post your review on Amazon so your insights will help other people decide if the book is right for them.  Thank you!

UPDATE:  So we just finished our fabulous #RockstarChat discussion.  Here’s the transcript.

In the chat, we came up with a three step process for helping your co-workers get on board with the value of connecting with your fans:

1 – Educate your co-workers on the value of engagement.  Teach them the importance of engaging with fans and customers.  Show them what happens as a result of that engagement.  It’s also a great idea to show them past examples of where you have engaged with fans and the positive outcome (this also helps answer the ‘what’s the ROI?’ question).

2 – Educate your co-workers on HOW to engage.  After they see the value of engagement, work with them to learn HOW to properly engage.  If you have the resources, a formal training program for the company would be a good idea here, it could be similar to and compliment any social media training programs your brand may have.

3 – Educate your co-workers on the value of building relationships with your fans.  You don’t want them to just engage with your fans whenever it benefits your brand directly.  You want them to learn the value of answering fans, and helping them when it serves the fans, not the brand.  If you create relationships with fans, that simply gives them more reason to advocate on your behalf!

Thanks to everyone that joined #rockstarchat today.  Would you add anything to this list?

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From Ranters to Ravers, How to Respond to Angry Customers Online

Today’s #RockstarChat will be looking at a topic that so many brands misunderstand: How to respond to angry customers online.  If companies handle interacting with an upset customer correctly, it can actually be an incredibly effective way to convert a dis-satisfied customer into a fan.

Perhaps the biggest misunderstanding about angry customers online that most brands have is why they are complaining in the first place.  Many brands seem to think that if a blogger or customer is complaining about them, that they are intentionally trying to hurt the brand, and cannot be reasoned with, so the brand shouldn’t even try.  Typcially, if a customer takes to social media to complain about a brand, it’s because they have tried other ways to contact the brand and resolve their issue, and feel like they aren’t getting the help they need.  So really, they just want someone at the brand to pay attention to them and actually help them with their problem.

This is why there’s such a big opportunity for brands to convert angry customers into fans, because these customers are angry because they have a problem that they feel the brand isn’t helping them solve.  If the brand will then step in and help them with their problem and give them excellent customer service, there’s a great chance that they can convert that angry customer into a passionate fan.

So that’s what we’ll be discussing today at #rockstarchat starting at 1pm Central:  How to respond to angry customers online, and convert them into passionate fans.  Hope to see you on Twitter!

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#RockstarChat Recap: Should Brands Connect With Their Fans and How Can They?

This afternoon we had the first #RockstarChat, and it was such a smart conversation!  The topic was Should brands connect with their fans?

Everyone was in agreement that brands should be connecting with their fans, but what happens if a brand can’t connect with all of their fans?

 

I love Bob’s thinking here, by taking all your fans and breaking them down into lists or buckets, it becomes a more manageable process.  But that raises another question: How do you decide how to create the lists/buckets and which fans go where?

 

Now we’re getting somewhere!  A big reason why many brands don’t connect with their fans is that they don’t really have a process in place for doing so.  There’s no roadmap.  But first, Bob says you should create sublists or buckets of fans to make the connection process more manageable.  Then Kristy builds on that, saying that the criteria for connecting with your fans should tie back to your business goals!  For example, if you want to raise awareness of a new product, or boost trial signups, factor those goals into your connection efforts with your fans.  Let that be a sort of qualifier to decide which fans you connect with.

But then again, let’s remember that our fans are passionate people that love our brand, so maybe we don’t even have to look for them?

 

I love Jennifer’s point here, often our fans will reach out to us!  Look for handraisers, these are often fans that want to help you and connect with you, which is why they are initiating contact.

And as Kelly reminds us, it always pays to be listening:

So those are a few key takeaways I saw from today’s #RockstarChat.  If you joined, what were your favorite points that I missed?  And BTW, here’s a preview of next week’s #RockstarChat topic:

 

Next Weds at 1pm Central we’ll be chatting about how to deal with dissatisfied or even angry customers and convert them into fans! Hope to see you then!