MackCollier.com

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Intuit/Mailchimp Rumors, Clubhouse Making Moves, Twitter Super Follows

Happy Labor Day, y’all! Hope you are having a safe and relaxing Labor Day, and ready for a productive week as we say goodbye to Summer.  Here’s a few digital and marketing stories that caught my eye:

 

The hot tech rumor of the moment is that Intuit is about to buy Mailchimp for a hefty $10 Billion! This move would obviously help Intuit better service its small and medium business clients with marketing and newsletter offerings. And it could be a nice shot in the arm for Mailchimp, I’ve used the service for years and feel like it’s been a bit stale the last few years. It will be interesting to see if this move happens and what possible ripples it might create in the space.

 

Clubhouse ain’t dead yet. Sure, the hypetrain has left the building and the excitement isn’t nearly where it was in January and February, but Clubhouse keeps plugging away. The latest update involves the addition of spatial audio to rooms. What that means is you could hear one person talking in one ear of your headphones, then when another person starts talking, their audio would come from the other ear in your headphones. An interesting addition that could make it easier to follow the conversations happening in the rooms on Clubhouse.

Full disclosure, I haven’t been in a Clubhouse room in months, but I still have the app and I know a lot of people are still using and loving Clubhouse. I don’t think it will ever return to the popularity it had for a few moments earlier this year, but I also don’t think it’s going away any time soon.

 

Would you pay to read someone’s tweets? We’re about to find out, as Twitter is rolling out Super Follows. For $4.99 a month, you can get access to exclusive tweets and content from certain Twitter users. If you’re wondering if you can qualify for offering Super Follows, you have to be at least 18 years old, have 10k or more followers, and have tweeted at least 25 times in the last 30 days.

As for fees, the content creators will actually keep most of the money. This is initially being offered only to iOS users.  Of the $4.99 subscription fee, Apple charges 30% off the top, or $1.50.  But of the remaining $3.49, Twitter only takes $0.10, so the content creator keeps $3.39 per subscriber. Once the content creator makes $50k, Twitter ups its take a bit, but it’s still not bad.

Twitter users that have Super Followers have the option to set their content as being for everyone or only their Super Follows when they tweet it.

 

 

Finally, this is just for fun, but college football is back! And in front of fans! So awesome to see!

 

Roll Tide, y’all! See ya next Monday!

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You Don’t Need More Customers, You Need the Right Ones

the right customerWhen I was in graduate school, I also spent some time working for a Ford dealership, in the ecommerce department. Specifically, I was tasked with handling online sales for a particular group of products that Ford sold. We sold these products online via both our website, and through eBay. When I came on board, the manager basically handed the online sales off to me, and I was tasked with improving the numbers.

At this time, around 75-90% of the dealership’s online sales came from eBay auctions. Most of the products we sold we did not have on-site, we would purchase the products from a drop-shipper. Most of our competitors on eBay did the same thing.

I quickly discovered a big problem; Our competitors used the same drop-shipper we did, and they had a higher purchase volume. This meant they paid less for the same products that we sold. So it was pointless to try to compete on price. We would drop the price of an item in our eBay auctions, and our competitors would go a dollar lower.

So I started scrambling for ideas on how we could better compete. I began to do some googling trying to figure out how how customers decided who to buy from on eBay. Specifically, I wanted to see if there was already any content or reviews on the internet for both our dealership and our competitors. It was brand reputation monitoring years before social media.

While I didn’t really find anything about our dealership, I did discover multiple forums and message boards devoted to Ford customers. Many of these boards discussed products they were using or that they were considering buying.

A light bulb went off; What if we created an account and started interacting with these Ford customers? We could answer any questions they had about products, and also use it as a way to increase awareness for the products we were selling online on both eBay and our website.

I thought this was a great idea, and took it to my boss. His reaction was basically that he didn’t see the point, we needed to be selling to all customers, not just Ford owners.

But to me, it made perfect sense. This would give us a competitive advantage versus other sellers on eBay, who worked for generic companies that had no ties to any automaker. The way I saw it, being a Ford dealership was something we needed to focus on, not run from.

So in the spirit of it being better to ask for forgiveness rather than permission, I began to alter our branding strategy. In our eBay listings, I played up the fact that we were a Ford dealership. I changed listings that would previously have a ‘works for all makes and models’ approach, to highlight the Ford vehicles that the item would work with. This item went from working on all trucks, to working on all trucks, especially Ford trucks like the F-150.

I also promoted the fact that we had a separate website where customers could shop for more Ford products. This change in strategy had an immediate impact. Over the next few months, online sales increased by almost 50%. Additionally, we began to see more sales for Ford products from our website. This was a welcome change, because it meant we could sell the same or similar items as what was sold on eBay, but by selling it on our own website, we avoided eBay’s seller fees.

All of this goes to show that having the right customers is better than having more customers. My boss thought we needed more customers. Getting more customers would have meant continuing a price war with competitors that had higher profit margins than we did. So we could never win. Our advantage was that we could appeal to Ford customers, better than our competitors could. Ford customers were the RIGHT customers for us, and the increase in sales is testament to this approach.

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Facebook Study Reveals How Brands Can Drive Engagement With Users

Facebook did a study in 2012 to determine what type of content drives engagement on its brand pages.  From the study:

“We examined four weeks of Page posts, across 23 brands and six industries and divided the posts into three types of content:

Messages about the product or service

  • Travel brand example: Our new resort just opened! Book your trip today.

Messages related to the brand

  • Travel brand example: I decided to go on my first cruise because______.

Messages unrelated to the brand

  • Travel brand example: Hang in there everybody. Monday will be over before we know it!

Posts on topics related to the brand, but not specifically about the product or service, were the sole universally significant predictor of all types of engagement.”

The study also clarified that brand content related to the brand but not ABOUT the brand was the top driver of Shares, Likes and Comments for these brands.

Does this surprise you?  It shouldn’t, people will engage with content that taps into the Bigger Idea behind a product or service.  Nike figured this out 30 years ago with the iconic slogan Just Do It.  It’s not about the shoes, it’s about what you do while WEARING the shoes.  If you want to create more engaging content and marketing, think less about promoting yourself, and more about promoting the themes/beliefs/lifestyle that ties into your brand.  Think about why people buy your product and how they use it.  Create content that’s customer-centric instead of product-centric.

For example, check out this commercial from Nike.  Nike’s content and marketing taps into the Bigger Idea about its products.  The product itself is secondary to who its customers are, and why they buy its product.  This COMMERCIAL has been viewed over 4 Million times.

What is Nike selling with this commercial?

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You Build Loyalty After the Purchase, Not Before

One of the key themes I cover in Think Like A Rock Star is to discuss and explain why most rock stars can create loyal fans so much easily than most companies can.  There are many reasons why rock stars so easily cultivate fans, but perhaps the biggest reason why rock stars have more loyal customers than most companies do is because rock stars focus on rewarding existing behavior, while companies focus on offering incentives to change existing behavior.

Let me say that again: Most rock stars focus on rewarding the existing behavior of their fans, while most companies focus on offering incentives to change the existing behavior of potential customers.  This also speaks to a fundamental difference between who rock stars and companies market to.  Companies seek to acquire new customers, so they create marketing strategies that are designed to change existing customer behavior.  Price-based incentives are a big part of this, such as coupons, rebates, discounts on shipping, etc.

Rock stars seek to develop deeper relationships with their fans, and as part of this they seek to reward their fans for their existing behavior.  In 2010 Taylor Swift had a special 15-hour autograph signing for her fans.  Taylor signed for over 2,000 fans over the course of nearly 15 hours on June 13th, 2010, only stopping long enough in the middle of the day to perform a 90-minute acoustic set.  All for free.  Because Taylor wanted to reward her fans for supporting her.

Yet this approach is also very powerful for building loyalty because for the fan it validates why they love their favorite rock star.  On the flipside, when a company offers you a coupon for purchasing their product, you understand that they want your business.  While this does increase the chance that you will change your behavior the next time you need to purchase that particular product, it does not increase your chance of being loyal to that brand after the initial purchase.  Brands build loyalty by rewarding existing customers, not by trying to acquire new customers via incentives.  For example, if you are a long-term Dish or DirecTV customer, you may have been upset over the last few years to see some of the incentive packages that the competing brands are offering new customers to sign up with them.  Often, the packages are better and at a lower price than what existing customers have!  This tactic works for acquiring new customers but it not only does not build loyalty among existing customers, it can actually lower levels of loyalty among existing customers!

Let’s again review the Loyalty Graph.  Companies are focused on acquiring new customers, so they offer incentives to this group, trying to win their business.  The problem with this approach is that New Customers is the group that’s the largest, but that also has little to no loyalty to that particular brand.  This is especially problematic if your brand offers price-based incentives to this group, because if another brand offers a higher discount, it will probably win that customer’s business.

At the other end, rock stars are focused on connecting with their fans (brand advocates), and rewarding their existing behavior.  Rock stars don’t have to offer incentives to their fans to encourage them to generate new sales because their fans are already engaging in this behavior.  Their fans are already going out and encouraging new customers to become existing ones.

So for your brand, that means you have two ways you can attempt to acquire new customers: By marketing to them directly (and paying a lot of money to do so), or you can connect with your biggest fans and delight them, with the understanding that their efforts will lead to new customers.

If you want to build loyalty among your customers always remember: Loyalty is built by saying ‘Thank you!’ for existing behavior, not by offering coupons as incentives for new behavior.

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10 Steps to Creating a Successful Twitter Chat

Creating a successful Twitter chat #Blogchat was first started in March of 2009 and since that time has been one of the most popular chats on Twitter.  It’s definitely been a labor of love for me, and I am a HUGE proponent of Twitter chats.  So I wanted to write down the ten steps I’ve taken to build #blogchat up into the success it has become.  I would hope you can use this advice to start your OWN successful Twitter chat.

The focus and structure of the chat

1 – Pick the theme of the chat.  This sounds like a no-brainer, but you need to be careful here.  I picked #blogchat on purpose because I wanted to be able to cover all forms of blogging.  These leads to a wider audience, and allows me to tweak the weekly topics to appeal to a wide or smaller group.  For example, if I had gone with #corporateblogchat, then the theme of the chat is much smaller.

I think a broader theme leads to a larger audience, while a more niche theme will lead to a smaller following.  Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it just depends on what you want to discuss.

2 – Pick the time.  Think about who you are trying to reach.  If the majority of the people you want to reach will be working a 9-5 job, then you probably need to pick lunchtime or the evening for your chat.  In general, I think lunchtime and early to mid-evenings are the best times for Twitter chats.

3 – Pick the schedule.  Most Twitter chats are weekly, but that doesn’t mean yours has to be.  If you are going with a niche focus, you might want to start out with a bi-weekly or monthly chat, then increase the frequency as demand warrants.  But make sure that you at least lock-down the day of the week that your chat will be, and stick to it.  Others can’t promote the chat to their contacts, until they know for sure when it is.  And no matter what day and time you pick, someone will say it isn’t the best for them.  I am constantly having people tell me they want to join #blogchat, but can’t because it’s on Sunday nites.  But sometimes when a holiday or special event falls on Sunday nite, I will move #blogchat to Monday for that week.  And as soon as I do, some people will tell me that they can’t join because Monday nites are no good for them.  So pick the day that works best for YOU, and stick with it.

4 – Decide on the flow.  Will you tightly moderate the chat, or will it be very loose in structure.  My thinking with how I moderate #blogchat has always been ‘get out of the way of the smart people’.  So I basically throw a topic idea out for each #blogchat, and let the smart #blogchat participants do their thing.

Now if that’s your cup of tea, fine.  But many chats go with a very structured format, with a chosen topic, then multiple questions asked around that topic.  A new question is asked every 15 or so minutes.  Some people really like this format.  In the end, it really comes down to which YOU like, but definitely pay attention to what the chat participants are telling you.

Building a following for your Twitter chat

5 – Ask your chat’s participants for their feedback, then act on it.  One of the things I often do is ask #blogchat participants to help me pick that week’s topic (seriously after a few weeks, you are probably going to be scrambling to find new topics to cover).  If I decide to go with a suggestion from one of the participants, I point out to everyone who suggested the topic, and thank them.

Another example is OPEN MIC.  Several months ago, I wasn’t able to join #blogchat one Sunday nite.  So instead of canceling it that week, I decided to make it OPEN MIC for that week, meaning everyone could talk about whatever blogging topic they wanted.  I was afraid the idea would be a disaster, but instead it was so popular with #blogchat participants that I decided to make it a monthly event.  So now, the last Sunday nite of every month is OPEN MIC.

6 – Bring in co-hosts.  As part of the listening to #blogchat participants, I could tell that many of them wanted to discuss how to improve the SEO of their blog.  I am NOT at all qualified to discuss this, so I asked Lee Odden if he would join us, and he graciously accepted.  Over the last 16 months, I’ve brought in several co-hosts to help me cover topics.  This makes the quality of #blogchat better PLUS, it provides additional exposure for #blogchat, since the co-hosts have a natural incentive to promote their involvement in #blogchat to their networks.  So it’s a win-win.  And the good news is, as your Twitter chat grows, it only becomes easier to attract co-hosts.

7 – Invite and welcome newbies.  As #blogchat has grown, it has attracted a lot of new people that want to see what the big deal is.  But the problem is, if you aren’t familiar with #blogchat, it can be completely overwhelming the first time you join.  So whenever I see someone tweet that they are joining #blogchat for the first time, I reply welcoming them, and invite them to join in, and also encourage them to let me know if they have any questions.  That’s a great way to ensure that they stick around and give #blogchat a chance, plus it lets them know that I really do appreciate them joining us.

8 – Shift ownership.  If you think you can build a successful Twitter chat by yourself, you are insane.  It’s going to take a lot of hard work and dedication, and it is going to take acknowledging and empowering the people that are helping to grow your chat.  If someone does a recap of one of your chats, RT that.  If others are helping promote when the chat is and what it’s about, send them a quick @ or DM thanking them.  Let your chat participants know that THEY are very much a part of the success that your chat is having.  That will simply give them the incentive to promote and grow the chat even more.

9 – ‘No experts allowed’.  I make sure everyone that joins #blogchat understands that NO ONE there is an expert, and that we are all there to learn from each other.  I think this puts participants at ease, and makes them more likely to participate.  I want this, because the more people that participate in #blogchat, the better the quality of the chat.

10 – Say ‘Thank You!’, and mean it.  If you’ve participated in just one #blogchat, you know that I appreciate the hell out of everyone that takes the time to join #blogchat.  I love the community we have at #blogchat, and am so grateful for their contributions that have made #blogchat the success it is.  And I think most of the people that join #blogchat realize that they are appreciated, which makes them that much more likely to help grow the chat, and promote it to others.

So these are the steps that I’ve used to grow #blogchat into the success it has become.  Hopefully, it can help you launch and build your own successful Twitter chat.  I really think Twitter chats hold a ton of potential for bringing together people and growing ideas.

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The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show Episode 17: Customer Acquisition vs Customer Cultivation

TheCommunicationGap

This is a graph I drew to give you a visual representation of The Communication Gap between most companies and their customers.  The blue shading on the left represents the desired level of communication from the company’s side.  The company wants to communicate with almost all new and potential customers.  The number of existing customers the company wants to communicate with falls sharply, and the company makes little effort to communicate with its customers that have some brand affinity, and its brand advocates.

On the right side, the red shading represents that customers that do want to communicate with the company.  It’s almost all brand advocates, some customers with brand affinity, then a sliver of existing and new customers.

But note the purple sliver at the bottom.  This represents customers that want to communicate with the company, and that the company is communicating with them.  Also note that the company tries to communicate with its customers when they aren’t looking for communication (new and existing customers) then when they are wanting to connect (when they develop some affinity for the brand and become advocates), the company stops trying to talk to them.  It’s completely backwards and creates a huge communication gap in the middle of the customer’s journey from being a new customer to becoming an advocate.

When it comes to communication there’s a massive disconnect between what customers want and what companies are giving them.  The reason why is because companies are focused on customer acquisition when they should be focused on customer cultivation.

And that’s what I’ll be talking about during this episode of The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show!

Show Notes:

0:40 – The disconnect between customer acquisition and customer cultivation.

1:00 – Companies focus on acquiring new customers, but do little to cultivate existing customers.

1:30 – An explanation of The Communication Gap graph, which is posted above.

4:15 – Most of us do not want to talk to brands that we have no affinity toward.  ‘Your brand is not my friend.’  But if I am an advocate for your brand, I do want to connect with you.

5:00 – There needs to be a balance between focusing solely on acquiring new customers, and cultivating existing ones.  Customer cultivation helps transition existing customers into advocates for your brand.

6:10 – Can your company connect with me on a bigger level than simply your product?

6:40 – Notice how the orange shaded area almost perfectly overlaps the customers that rock stars focus on.  Rock stars do the exact opposite of companies, they focus almost solely on marketing to current fans, vs new customers.

7:45 – The Communication Gap is basically a hole where customers leave you.

9:00 – The value of creating a communication plan that focuses on the differing communication needs of each type of customers, to help new customers transition to eventually becoming brand advocates.

11:00 – We trust fellow customers more than we do a brand we have no connection with.

 

Here’s where you can download the episode directly.  And if you can, please subscribe to The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show on iTunes, and I would *love* it if you could review the podcast on iTunes as well.  Also, #FanDamnShow is now available on Stitcher as well! Thanks for listening!

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Why I Now Trust HootSuite a Little Less Than I Did Yesterday

I like and use HootSuite’s basic/free version quite a lot, especially for scheduling tweets and it’s dead simple to use.  So this morning when I got an email from HS telling me how I could get 60 days of HootSuite Pro for free, I was intrigued:

HSNow normally I hate these ‘give us a tweet and we’ll give you this’ offers, but I do use and like HootSuite, and I have been curious about trying out HootSuite Pro, so I decided to send the tweet.  And as promised, I immediately received my email telling me how to get my 60 days of HootSuitePro for free:

HS1Yep, I’ve just been had.  After I send the tweet that HS told me would get me 60 days of HootSuite Pro for free, I am then told that I can only get the 60 days free if I am ALREADY a Pro subscriber.  So why not just tell me that to begin with?  From my POV, HootSuite just punished me for trusting them.  So I am now less likely to make that mistake again.

I see this sort of stunt all the time, and it doesn’t build brand loyalty, it builds brand distrust.  I get why HootSuite made this offer, they want me to sign up for Pro, and then I can apply the coupon and get the first two months free.  At least I think that’s their motivation.  If the goal is to drive Pro signups then just give me a 60-day trial.  If the service is worth paying for, then I will.

I’ve talked about this before, but as a customer, I cannot advocate for a brand that I do not trust.  So if your brand wants to cultivate fans that love you (and customers that stick around) then the trust of your customers is your most prized asset.

Here’s what HootSuite should have done instead: Since the goal is to drive new signups, then instead of 60 days free, give me 30 days, no strings attached.  And in those 30 days, give me access to training (via videos, screencasts, etc) that will show me how to get the most out of HootSuite Pro and help me understand how to use the new features so that I see for myself why HootSuite Pro is a service worth paying for.  Then tell me if I agree to stay on with HootSuite Pro after the 30-day trial is up, that you’ll give me 50% ($5) off my first two months as a ‘thank you’.  That gets me hooked into using HootSuite Pro for 3 months, which gives me time to use the features and become familiar with them.  If the service is worth my time and money, I’ll stick around.  But even if I don’t, I will still feel like I got a ‘deal’ because I got 3 months of premium service for $10 and HootSuite does get my $10.

And no, I don’t want someone from HS to read this and offer me the free Pro trial the email promised, that’s not why I wrote this post.  I wrote this post to give YOU a real-world example of how an offer such as this can drive new business if positioned correctly, and how it can do the opposite if not positioned correctly.

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How NASCAR is Building Its Fanbase With Social Media

While most sports finish its season with its biggest event (such as the NFL with the Super Bowl), NASCAR is different in that its biggest race is the season’s first, the Daytona 500.  And two years ago marked the most bizarre Daytona 500 on record.  First, rain showers moved into Florida, postponing the race’s noon start-time on Sunday to noon the next day.  Then the rains picked up again the next morning, and NASCAR made the decision to move the race to 7pm Monday, marking the first time the race had been postponed as well as the first time it would run in primetime.

The race began and for the first time all weekend, things got back to normal.  But all that changed with 40 laps left in the race.  There was a wreck, and what typically happens with a wreck is that there will be debris on the track and possibly liquid from the cars involved.  So trucks will be sent on the track to clear the track and while this is happening the race will be put under caution.  Meaning cars will stay on the track, but their speed will be greatly reduced (from 200 MPH to 50-60 MPH) and their position is frozen and so is the racing until the debris is cleared from the track and officials signal to the drivers to resume the race.

Driver Juan Pablo Montoya had reported some problems with his race car just before the wreck, and during the caution as his car was circling the track, something ‘broke’ and he lost control of his car and it spun out of control into one of the trucks on the track to clean up the mess.  When his car collided with the cleanup truck, the truck literally exploded, creating a huge fireball.  Luckily, both Montoya and the truck driver were fine.  NASCAR immediately ordered all drivers to stop their cars on the track where they were, as they cleaned up this additional mess.

And then, serendipity struck.  As the drivers were sitting in their cars on the track unable to move them, it turns out that one of them, Brad Keselowski, actually had his phone with him in the car, and took a picture of the track, and tweeted it to Twitter.  Marking the first time in the sport’s history that a driver had taken a picture and shared it during a race.

Brad Kesolowski, Twitter, Daytona 500, Fire, TideAnd just like that, NASCAR discovered social media.  Brad gained 55,000 followers just in the hour or so it took to clean up the mess, and during the downtime while waiting for the race to resume, Brad’s sudden fame on Twitter became the story.  Fox Sports showed Brad out tweeting and other drivers talking to him asking him what in the world he was doing.  Over the next few weeks, several of NASCAR’s drivers and on-air personalities started using Twitter, and the sport began pushing Twitter as a channel to connect before, during and after the race.  Typically with NASCAR races, since they are run outside, if there are any weather issues such as rain, the race will be delayed until the weather clears.  During this downtime, drivers will use social media to stay engaged with the fans, while the broadcast teams will interview the drivers on-air during the delays.  Fox has reported that some of its best rating periods for races actually come during delays when its able to interview drivers and get ‘behind the scenes’ chats and give fans a better sense of what their lives are like at the track.

On Sunday night, NASCAR kicked off its 2014 season with the Daytona 500, and again dealt with a rain delay that caused the race to be postponed until primetime for only the 2nd time ever.  But the wait was worth it for NASCAR and many of its fans, as the sports most popular driver, Dale Earnhardt Jr, won The Great American Race.

And then he celebrated by joining Twitter.

DaleJROnTwitter

What I love about Dale’s Twitter account is how he’s using it.  Even though the account has only been up for a couple of days, Dale has been giving fans like me a behind-the-scenes look at what he’s been experiencing since winning the Daytona 500, including pics from Victory Lane, and trips to do media appearances with David Letterman and ESPN.  This is exactly the type of content that fans want to see.  And to NASCAR’s credit, the organization has been very open to its drivers using social media.  They immediately saw the impact that Brad’s tweet from 2012 and how it resonated with fans, and the sport realizes the ability of Twitter in particular to drive interest in ongoing races.  Plus, NASCAR has always been a fan-friendly sport.

As for Dale’s Twitter account, the sport’s most popular driver is pretty popular on Twitter too, racking up over 300,000 followers in his first 6 hours on the site.  If Earnhardt can parlay this fast start into his first points championship this season, the business of NASCAR will get a huge boost.  And if the past two years are any indication, its fans on social media will be along for the ride.

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Race your winners, stable your losers

SocialGraph“Own Your Network”

I heard that phrase several times this week in Birmingham at Y’all Connect.  It’s something I have been thinking a lot about recently.

Are we stretching ourselves too thin when it comes to social media, and are we spending too much time trying to cultivate new networks instead of maximizing the potential of our existing networks?

For example, I keep hearing that I need to be on Google Plus.  That I need to build a network there.  The obvious problem is, that takes time and energy.  Which also means that the time I take to build a new network on Plus is going to mean less time I spend on cultivating my established network on Twitter.

Networks are like gardens, they need to be cultivated and tended to.  One of the biggest mistakes you can make is to try to plant too many gardens.

We are always being told that we need to ‘be everywhere’ when it comes to social media.  I disagree.  I think you need to pick fewer social media sites to be active on.  But if you are active there, you need to be all-in.

For the next week, I am going to focus on my network on Twitter.  I won’t be on Plus, I won’t be on Facebook.  You will find me on Twitter or here (or possibly commenting on another blog), and that’s it.

Where will you be spending your time next week?

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Are Your Owning or Renting Your Social Media Presences?

iStock_000015529331MediumThe last few weeks I have been thinking a lot about this.  It seems a lot of the free social media tools that we are ‘renting’ have come under fire, or disappeared.

Google Reader went away, disrupting how readers subscribe to and receive our posts.

Twitter suddenly changed its API rules or some such for 3rd party sites that many of us were using to follow Twitter chats such as TweetChat and TweetDeck.

Rumors are that Feedburner will go away soon.

It’s more important now than ever before to make sure that you are creating and distributing content via tools that you own versus rent.  This is a big reason why I have always preferred a self-hosted blog over Facebook or even Twitter.  Because you have control over what happens on your blog far more than you do on other social media sites.

For example, for the past few days, the #Blogchat hashtag on Twitter has been overrun with spammers.  My only option really is to ask Twitter to please do something about it.  Which I have, and still the problem persists.  Because it’s a problem that’s happening on a site that I don’t control.  I’ve already started thinking about ways that I can bring more of the #Blogchat conversation here, where I have more control over it.

With Google Reader going away and Feedburner likely following soon, I’ve shifted my focus away from trying to get subscribers of this blog, but instead to building my newsletter list.  I can own that list and have control over it.

So when you start using social media, especially as a channel to create content, think about the tradeoffs you are potentially making between reach, and ownership of that content.  It’s always a good idea to have your ‘homebase’ for your content be a space that you control, such as a self-hosted blog.

For the rest of you, what changes have you made in light of recent changes to Twitter and Google Reader going away?  Has it made you re-think where you invest your time with blogging and social media?