Social Media 201 | MackCollier.com

November 18, 2013 by Mack Collier

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It can be a scary (online) world out there, y’all.

For brands, this online world is particularly scary because they are very visible targets. There’s no shortage of complaints and negative comments being hurled at them. What’s worse, if they ignore the comments, they tend to multiply. What’s even worse, most brands aren’t sure how to respond. It can easily become a no-win situation.

So if we accept that your brand can’t ignore negative comments and complaints online, then we need to figure out how you will respond to them. But before you can respond appropriately, you need to properly assess who you are responding to!

The Three Types of People That Will Complain About Your Brand

When you encounter a negative comment about your brand online, you need to understand who it is coming from, because that impacts how you will respond. Negative brand comments come from one of three sources: Angry customers, passionate fans or trolls. Here’s how to recognize each.

1 – Angry customers. This is the most comment source of complaints you will see online. Typically the complaint will deal with a very specific issue that this customer is having, and nothing else. The complaint may include some larger statements about how this issue reflects poorly on your brand, but these are typically included to stress to the brand the need to pay attention to the person and fix their problem.

Example complaint from an Angry Customer: “I just bought your writing software program and I can’t get it installed on my PC, and I can’t get anyone to help me! I followed the instructions I found online (no manual included, why did I have to go online for instructions?) and it still won’t start. I called your 1-800 customer service line and it said there was a 2 hour wait! I just left a tweet to @SoftwareCustomerService on Twitter but so far no response! Look I just want to get this product working, but I can’t get anyone at your company to help me! Can you please call me at 1-800-frustrated customer or email me at need.help@acustomer.com?”

Note the complaint is only about their specific issue and how they want a resolution. That’s it. Note also that this customer is only contacting you because he tried to get the help he needed by himself, and couldn’t.

2 – Passionate fans. This one is difficult for the untrained eye to spot. The difference between a complain coming from a fan is that since the fan views themselves as owners of your brand, they feel an obligation to bring the issue to your attention. But the fan will also communicate to you how you should resolve the issue, or they will offer to help you resolve the issue. This is the easiest way to differentiate a complaint from a passionate fan vs a complaint from an angry customer. The angry customer simply wants you to resolve THEIR issue, then they could care less if you fix the larger problem with your brand. Whereas a passionate fan will focus less on a specific issue and more on how this is a larger problem for your brand, that needs to be corrected. The fan will typically offer advice and suggestions for fixing the problem or making it better. And they will frequently volunteer to work with you to help implement their suggestions. Again, fans view themselves as owners of your brand, so they feel they have ‘skin in the game’ and will act in what they perceive to be the brand’s best interests.

Example complaint from a Passionate Fan: “Hey there! I’m a frequent customer at your restaurant on 201 Church Ave and typically love the service I get there when I come in for lunch. However, over the past couple of weeks I’ve noticed that lunchtime service seems to be getting slower and slower, and the line of customers waiting to have their orders taken seems to get longer each time I go there for lunch. I do notice that there seems to be several new members working there, so perhaps it’s just a matter of them needing to get up to speed. But I have to say, I’m starting to notice that customers are leaving due to the long lines and going elsewhere for lunch, I hate to see you lose business due to slow service!”

Here, the person is careful to identify herself as someone that frequents this location, and that she is typically happy with the service there. Also, she is careful to point out how the long lines are having an impact on the brand, by driving customers away to a competitor. The tone isn’t angry, instead its sympathetic, she’s hoping that your brand will correct these issues, because she is a fan.

3 – Trolls. Trolls typically attack the brand in vague terms rather than specific issues or events. Rather than complaining about a specific issue with your brand, they might try to attack your brand based on your brand supporting certain charities or causes or political candidates. Or they might complain about your products or service in general, and not focus on specific interactions they have had with your brand. ‘You suck’ is their catch-phrase. A troll simply wants attention and engagement, whereas angry customers or fans want a resolution. Trolls just want you to keep engaging them, and they will typically try to piss you off in order to make that happen.

Example complaint from a Troll: “Is your brand still trying to act like it cares about the environment? You can launch all the ‘go green’ initiatives you want, but we both know it’s purely propaganda, your brand doesn’t care about the environment, you are only piggybacking on a popular marketing trend for your own benefit!”

Note the attack is very vague and the claims are difficult/impossible to substantiate. Again, the idea is to spark a response, ideally an angry response, at which point the troll would likely claim that they were being attacked by your brand. Remember the saying ‘Don’t feed the troll’.

Tomorrow I’ll go more in-depth into how to respond to negative comments online. But in short, here’s a quick cheat-sheet for responding to complaints online, based on the person making the complaint:

Angry customer – Resolve their specific issue as soon as possible. Try to move the exchange offline so you can get specific information from them. Also communicate to the appropriate teams internally where the customer encountered breakdowns in the customer service chain that resulted in their complaint. Make sure you followup with the customer and ensure that their issue is resolved to their satisfaction. Handling a complaint from an angry customer effectively is the quickest way to convert a detractor into a fan of your brand.

Passionate fan – Communicate to the fan that you are taking their feedback seriously, and will forward their recommendations to the proper people within your brand. Ask the fan if they would be interested in giving you more feedback related to your brand. A true fan will jump at this chance and it’s an opportunity to build an ongoing relationship with your fan.

Troll – In general, it’s best to ignore trolls. If they are trolling on your site/blog, you are typically within your bounds to delete their comment, especially if it is a vague attack. If they are leaving comments on another site, it’s still best to ignore them, but if they continually harass your brand you should contact the site administrator and ask them to look into the troll’s actions.

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June 11, 2013 by Mack Collier

Five Ways a Small Business Can Use Social Media to Drive Sales

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I have a friend that runs a small retail business and a couple of months ago I gave her a copy of Think Like a Rock Star. She loves the book and the last two times I’ve been in to see her, we’ve been discussing ways that her business could leverage social media to drive sales, and cultivate fans. I thought these ideas could help those of you that are running your own small business, so I wanted to share them here.

1 – Start tracking which of your customers are using social media. There’s several different ways you could do this, but the main thing is that you want to create a way to start interacting with your customers online, plus you want to be able to follow them as well. You especially want to do this for your satisfied customers. Whenever someone is communicating to you that they are happy with your business, that’s a great time to ask them what their Twitter handle is! Or if they bring up social media, ask them if they are on Twitter or Facebook.

2 – Post coupon codes to each social media channel you are using. And you want to make sure these codes are specific to each site. For example, one code for Twitter, one code for Facebook. This helps you track which channel works best for driving sales. Run a separate code for each site at the same time on Monday. Then by 5pm Friday if you had 15 redemptions of the Twitter code for the week, and 3 for the Facebook code, that’s a possible indicator that your Twitter audience is more receptive to coupon codes than your customers on Facebook are.

3 – Rethink the Punch Card. Many small businesses offer punch cards, especially restaurants. They give you a card, and each time you make a particular purchase, your card is punched. After your card is ‘full’ (typically 5-10 punches), you get a free item. For example, the Pizza Hut here has a lunch buffet punch card. After 10 punches, you get a free lunch buffet. But what if you gave your customers a way to earn punches besides just purchasing a meal or product? For example, let’s say you are a hairstylist that offers customers a punch card for haircuts, and they get a punch for each haircut. After 10 punches, they get a free punch. What you could do is offer them an additional punch if they would take a picture of their haircut and then post it on Twitter or Facebook or Instagram! Or maybe if they RT your tweet about this week’s promotions, that earns them a punch. You can play around with it and figure out what works best for your business, but you may find that a picture posted on Facebook might drive in more business than you’d ‘lose’ by giving up a punch on a card.

4 – Use Twitter to do ‘real-time’ local marketing. If you are a small business that’s active on Twitter, one of your best friends is a site called Monitter.com. What I love about Monitter.com is that it not only lets you search Twitter for specific search terms, it then lets you target those terms based on geographic location. So if you own a pizzeria in downtown Nashville, you can set Monitter.com to tell you whenever anyone tweets ‘pizza’ within X kilometers of any zip code you set, down to 10 km. So when I tweet ‘Lunch time! Hungry for pizza, where should I go?’, you can reply and tell me about your specials you are running on pizzas for lunch, and that if I’ll tweet you the pizza I want, you’ll have it ready for me when I arrive!

5 – Reward your fans and best customers. This ties back to the first point about tracking which of your customers are using social media. Let’s say you have built a list of 50 of your customers that are using social media. You can then go in and segment these users and then give them unique offers based on their activity.

For example, let’s say that 10 of those 50 customers are promoting your business on a weekly basis. These could be your ‘fans’. So you might want to create a special sale or event just for them. And when they arrive, make sure you communicate to them that they were chosen because they were helping to promote you and that you wanted to thank them for being your fans!

Another idea: Let’s go back to the hairstylist example for a minute. Let’s say the hairstylist has found 50 customers that are active on Facebook. Of those 50, 5 of them have over 500 friends The next time those 5 customers come in, you make them an offer: If they’ll let you take a Before and After picture of your hair and post the pictures on your Facebook page, you’ll give them a 20% discount off that haircut. If they’ll then post those same pictures on their Facebook page, you’ll give them a 20% off their next haircut.

The idea with both of these tips is to reward your biggest fans, and give your most connected customers an incentive to help promote you via their social media accounts.

Bonus Idea: I was just on the phone with the fantabulous Kelly Hungerford and she had a great idea: Salons can offer free (or paid) photos that people can use as their avatars on social media sites! What better time to get a new picture made when you have just had your hair done or makeup applied and you look gorgeous? Plus you can also post those pictures on your Facebook page to show off your happy custoemrs! If you have someone at the salon that’s a photographer, or maybe you could have a friend come in and do it part-time, whatever.

So those are a few easy ways your small business can start to immediately use social media to drive actual sales. BTW want more ideas on how you can create more customers and convert them into fans of your business? Then subscribe to my Think Like a Rock Star newsletter!

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January 11, 2013 by Mack Collier

The Case For Adding ‘Easter Eggs’ to Your Blog Posts

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Yesterday C.C. Chapman wrote a fabulous post on why we need ‘next level’ conferences. Please check it out, and there are a TON of amazing comments, I am still going through them all. I did want to take a slightly different take on this issue because as I’ve seen in the past, when someone raises a ‘someone needs to do this’ post like this, typically most people read that as ‘someone else‘. Not knocking C.C.’s post at all, it’s a great discussion starter, but human nature being what it is, most people will wait for someone else to make that move.

So instead of making it about ‘someone else’, I started thinking about how individuals as content creators and speakers can take our content to the ‘next level’. I think the best speakers and content creators like C.C. are already doing this. Most of the audiences we write and speak for are interested in more 101-level content. But not everyone, some people are wanting more, and some of those people started out at the 101-level, but thanks to our content, they are now at a more advanced stage.

Which brings me to the topic of adding ‘easter eggs’ to our blog posts. If you are a gamer, you are familiar with the concept of an easter egg. It’s a small addition to a game that really isn’t required to complete the game, and will typically go un-noticed by the ‘casual’ gamer. It’s typically hidden, so it’s a type of reward for the gamers that are willing to do more exploring and to look everywhere.

Here’s an example. In the game Batman: Arkham City, if you go to a certain place in the game at a certain time and do a certain thing, you are rewarded with a cameo appearance from Killer Croc:

Now I am going to corrupt the gamer’s definition of an ‘easter egg’ here a bit when I talk about adding them to your blog posts. To a gamer, an easter egg is a reward in the sense that it’s cool and fun, but it doesn’t typically make them a better gamer or better at the game they are playing. What I’m suggesting is what if you add ‘easter eggs’ to your blog posts that did make your more advanced readers better?

For example, my audience here is like most social media blogs, typically made up of people looking for 101-level social media help. So while I want to cater to that audience, an example of adding an easter egg might be to add a tip to the post that the 101-level reader isn’t ready for, but that the 201-level reader is looking for. How many times have you read a blog post and seen the author add a ‘Pro Tip’? This is the same basic idea, add more advanced content or tips to ‘reward’ the more advanced readers.

To be honest, this is something I probably don’t do a very good job with. I tend to forget about what happens to the readers that are ready for more advanced content because of my posts. Recently on #Blogchat we talked about the idea of creating Topic Buckets to help blog more often and to give structure to the content you create.

Maybe to add another layer to that, we should consider adding 201 level content as well?

For example, the idea with Topic Buckets was that if you could come up with say 4 main subjects you wanted to cover on your blog, then if you could write one post a week for each bucket, then you’ve written 4 posts a week! But what if you also added a learning context to those buckets, and said that 3 of your weekly posts would be 101-level, and one would be 201 level?

I will have to noodle on this for a while, in the meanwhile, what do you think about this idea of adding ‘easter eggs’ to blog posts, or even writing more advanced posts on occasion?

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March 22, 2011 by Mack Collier

Rethinking how companies connect with influencers

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One of the highlights of SXSW for me was getting to catch up with my friend Tom Martin. Tom was also kind enough to interview me for his Talking With Tom series. If you haven’t heard about this, Tom started going around the country interviewing marketers. thought leaders and influencers in the social media space with just his iPhone, and he posts the interviews on his Talking With Tom site. A new interview each week.

A few weeks ago Tom was at an event recording interviews, when he talked to Emma and they decided to start sponsoring the site. For Emma, it’s a great move, as they get to have their name associated with some of the biggest names in social media, for the entire year. And for Tom it works as well, as Emma’s sponsorship money not only covers his travel to collect the remainder of the interviews, but he also gets compensated for his time as well. A true win-win for the content creator, and the sponsor.

But here’s what really got my attention: Tom got sponsorship dollars for something that he was going to do anyway. And instead of being obtrusive, the sponsorship from Emma helps facilitate the content creation. This is very similar to one of the main reasons why I was in SXSW to begin with, because of the 1st ever Live #Blogchat. 1680PR and Dell stepped up to sponsor the event, but the event was something that SXSW attendees have been wanting to see. Every time I have attended SXSW, one of the biggest complaints from attendees has been a lack of venues/events where we could all gather and have an actual conversation. It’s ironic that SXSW brings together so many brilliant people each March, but there are so few events created for the express purpose of letting these smart people connect with each other and have wonderful conversations. That’s exactly why I wanted to bring a Live #Blogchat to SXSW. As with Emma’s sponsorship of Talking With Tom, 1680PR and Dell sponsored an event that was going to happen anyway, and facilitated the event, and made it better (In fact if you are considering sponsorship of your event or content creation efforts, absolutely contact 1680PR and Dell to see if there’s a match. Both were fabulous to work with).

I think this also is a new and interesting spin on the idea of targeting influencers. Many companies are using services such as Klout to identify influencers and offer them products and services in the hope that these influencers will then promote the brand to the people that they have influence over. At best, this isn’t the most effective model.

But what if the influencer is also a content creator? Then one way that influencer could monetize the content they create is by accepting sponsorship dollars. The important distinction here is that the influencer becomes the gatekeeper and dictates which sponsors have access to his/her network, and on what terms. I talked about this a bit in the interview Tom had with me, but in this model, the influencer can be selective in which companies they accept as sponsors and make sure that the sponsorship creates value for the network. For example by accepting the Emma sponsorship, Tom now has the funds to attend more and better events, which means he can create better content for his network, and more of it.

In the end, the content creator, the sponsor, and Tom’s network that accesses the content all benefit. I think this is a far better model than giving away toys to influencers in the hopes that they will pimp the toys to the network that they supposedly have influence over. What do you think? Is this sponsorship model something that you as a content creator could benefit from? I think the key lies in making sure that the people you are creating the content for, benefit. Normally there’s a clear benefit to the content creator, then the sponsor, but the ‘audience’ often gets the short end of the stick. I applaud Tom for finding a win-win-win, and I would like to think that the Live #Blogchats work for everyone as well.

What do you think, would you rather companies target influencers directly, or have the influencers work with companies to the benefit of the people they have influence over?

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March 9, 2011 by Mack Collier

Fans aren’t just for Rockstars: A Framework for helping companies connect with their advocates and vice-versa

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Warning: This is an uncharacteristically long post for this blog, but it’s a topic that I am pretty passionate about: Helping companies better connect with their brand advocates and customers, and vice versa. If you’ve read this blog for any amount of time, you know how I often use the Rockstar analogy to explain how Rockstars have fans, while companies have customers. This post attempts to address this point, and provide a framework for how companies can better connect to their customers and advocates. And vice-versa, with the end goal being that both the customer and the company better understand each other, and the financial benefits that the business will enjoy as a result.

The best post on social media that you have likely never read is this one from Hugh in 2005. In it, Hugh makes the case for corporate blogging (remember this was a year before Twitter was launched and the Goliath of the social media arena at the time was MySpace), and talks about the conversations that companies have internally, versus the one their customers are having externally. The idea being that a corporate blog makes it easier for the customer to bring their external conversation to the company, and the company can more easily bring their internal conversation to the customer.

Ideally, both groups would become more closely aligned, as a result of better understanding each other. As the customer’s external conversation begins to be heard and understood by the company, then the company’s internal conversation changes a bit. And that change likely moves it closer to the external one, and in theory, as each group better understands the other, the two separate conversations will gravitate toward each other. This is what I was talking about in my post on the promise of social media for businesses lies in FEWER conversations.

I was recently talking to Liz Strauss about this concept, about how businesses need to better understand the external conversation their customer are having, and how it will change the internal conversation. The idea is that businesses should be connected to their customers, especially their advocates, and bring that external conversation to the company, so they can better understand and connect with their customers. And at the same time, find a way to connect with the customer so they can better understand the internal conversation the company is having, and the company itself. Liz asked a very good question: “What’s the process for that?”

Uhhhhh…..

So I decided to come up with a process to do just that. This is rough and I’ll no doubt be editing it constantly as time goes by.

To better understand what I’m suggesting, let’s look at a fictional B2C company, Carl’s Soda. CS is middle of the pack in a crowded industry, and like most companies, can tell you their customer demographics, but doesn’t have a lot of direct interaction with their customers. They have average customer satisfaction (avg to the beverage industry) scores, yet like most companies, do have their customer advocates. Though the company does little to engage this group. The majority of its marketing and advertising is done via traditional channels, with the pre-requisite experimenting being done online, especially with social media.

In short, they are pretty much lost in the shuffle in a crowded industry. We want to see if we can change that by better connecting the company to its customers, and its customers to the company.

What we need to do is find a way to help CS get a better understanding of their customers via the external conversation that its customers are having about the brand. At the same time, we need to take the internal conversation that the company is having about itself and its customers, and take that to its customers, in an effort to not only build brand awareness, but to also help its customers better understand the brand. Because once both groups better understand each other, that’s going to facilitate more communication between both groups, which will increase understanding, which will lead to trust. Which will move CS from middle of the pack, to the front of the pack. As Steve Knox said:

As you’ll see as this process is fleshed out, it’s going to not only embrace and empower CS’s existing brand advocates, but cultivate new ones as well.

Step One: Creation of a Customer Insights Team

Responsibilites:

This group will be responsible for not only monitoring online and offline product and company mentions, but for preparing findings and providing them to relevant departments within the company, such as marketing, PR, customer services, product development/design, etc.
Additionally, this team will closely track changes in the volume of online mentions, as well as the sentiment.
Responsible for internal education of customers and interacting with them online.

Step Two: Creation of a Brand Ambassador Program for Carl’s Soda

As stated above, Carl’s Soda has its share of brand advocates, but really hasn’t done anything to engage them. That starts with this program, which will be invitation-only and cap membership at 100. This will give Carl’s Soda the ability to not only connect directly with its most passionate customers, but a mechanism to give them the tools to spread their love of Carl’s Soda to other customers. If you’re looking at an existing model to compare this to, look at what Fiskars has done in creating The Fiskateers movement.

Step Three: Creation of an Internal Social Networking Site for Carl’s Soda’s employees

This would be a way for employees to learn more about each other, and share ideas and feedback. This would also give employees a way to give feedback on the working environment, and suggestions for improvement. Unlike the brand ambassador program, this should be open to any employees that want to participate. Similar corporate models could be Best Buy’s Blue Shirt Nation, or Dell’s internal IdeaStorm for employees.

Now we need a mechanism in place to facilitate the flow of the external the customers are having to the internal walls of the company, and a separate mechanism in place that will facilitate the flow of the internal conversation that the company is having about itself and its customers, to the customers. This leads to Steps Four and Five:

Step Four: Creation of a Brand Advisory Council

This will be a 6-person council comprised of 4 brand advocates for the company, and 2 customer advocates (who are company employees). The 4 brand advocates will be chosen from the membership of the brand ambassador program.

Responsibilities:

The Brand Advisory Council will be over the Brand Ambassador Program.
The Brand Advisory Council will work with the Customer Insights Team to ensure that Carl’s Soda has the most accurate information about its customers
Will meet quarterly with key executives at Carl’s Soda to give them greater insights into the company’s customers and advocates.

Step Five: Creation of a Customer Advisory Council

This will be a 6-person council comprised of 4 customer advocates (who are company employees), and 2 brand advocates, who are also members of the Brand Advisory Council.

Responsibilities:

Will be over the internal social networking site for employees as detailed in Step Three.
The Customer Advisory Council will be responsible for bringing the internal conversation that the company is having about itself and its customers, to its customers. This could be done via meetups, or even social media by highlighting employees and their thoughts via posts, video, etc.
Will meet quarterly with key executives at Carl’s Soda to give them greater insights into the company’s employees and the internal conversation they are having about the company, and its customers.

Now as I stated above, this is a rough draft and I will no doubt be altering this several times in the future. But the entire reason for this process is based on this truth: Participating in a conversation changes that conversation. This process is about finding a way to better align the external conversation that customers are having about the company, with the internal conversation that the company is having about its customers.

The benefits of this process include:

A better understanding of its customers, which leads the company to more effectively and efficiently market to its customers. Which lowers marketing costs.
As the company better understands its customers, and vice versa, customer satisfaction improves.
As the company’s employees have a mechanism in place (internal socnet) to connect with each other and provide feedback on the company itself, employee satisfaction improves.

Why I think this is so important

Several times I’ve written here and elsewhere about how rockstars connect with their fans, and more or less have the same conversation. Some companies, such as Harley-Davidson, have many brand advocates, and as a result, the internal and external conversations aren’t that far apart. Harley-Davidson loves its products and brand for many of the same reasons its customers do.

But many companies have difficulty with this because the conversation the company is having and the one the customers are having about the company, are usually quite disjointed. This process attempts to address that, and bring the two conversations more closely together.

At the end of the day, companies cannot afford to ignore their customers any longer. Customers now have the tools available to them to mobilize and communicate with themselves far faster than the company can communicate on its own behalf. Recent PR trainwrecks like Motrin Moms and Kenneth Cole’s #Egypt tweets on Twitter attest to this. Companies have to not only be aware of what their customers are saying, but find a way to bring that conversation into their walls, and vice versa. This process helps them get started along that path.

What have I missed? And there is a TON I have missed, trust me. Does this make sense? Again, it’s the starting point, the execution side hasn’t really been addressed yet. What would that look like?

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