MackCollier.com

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The difference between a customer and a fan…

Depends on the company.  More importantly, it depends on how the company views the person that buys their products.

On Friday I’ll be conducting a workshop at #Optsum that will center on one key question: Why do rockstars have ‘fans’ while companies have ‘customers’? Because at the end of the day, both groups are making a product that is being sold to people.  But when we go to categorize those people, we think of rockstars as almost always having fans, and we almost always think of companies as having customers.  Not fans.

Why?  Do rockstars simply have a natural advantage in that they are selling a type of product that somehow makes it easier for them to have fans instead of customers?  Perhaps to a degree, but at the same time companies Fiskars that sell products like scissors and products like WD-40 also have evangelists.  So ‘it’s the type of product’ doesn’t tell the whole story.

I think what matters far more than the type of product, is how the company views its customers.  Most rockstars have fans and most rockstars view their fans as people that they love and WANT to embrace.  While many companies want to keep their customers at arm’s length.  Some companies seem to even take an adversarial tone toward their customers.

I think rockstars feed off interaction with their fans, while many companies fear interacting with their customers.  I’ll talk more about what I think that is in Dallas this week, and I’ll share my slide deck here on next week.

But I wanted to give you that something to think about.  How does your company view its customers?  How do you think your customers view you?  If that perception was more positive on both ends, could those customers then become fans?

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How to rawk that next social media conference

This week I am heading to Dallas for my second #Optsum conference.  I led a workshop at the one in March, and will be doing so again this week.  I absolutely LOVE speaking at and attending social media/marketing conferences like this one, and I wanted to share some tips that I’ve picked up over the last 3 years:

1 – When in doubt, dress casually.  Social media conferences are notorious for having very relaxed dress codes.  Some, like SXSW, consider attendees to be a bit overdressed if they aren’t in a tee-shirt and jeans.  Now if you are a speaker, you might want to spring for a sports coat, but even then a dress shirt for guys is about as dressy as it gets.  But above all else, wear comfortable clothing.  If you are comfortable in jeans, then wear jeans.  And make SURE you wear comfortable shoes.

2 – Pack all the gadgets you need and remember chargers/batteries!  Nothing sucks worse than arriving at your first big social media conference, then realizing you left your Flip at home.  Or scrambling to find a charger for your cell phone cause you didn’t bring yours.

3 – Confirm the location of the event and bring the address and telephone numbers with you.  This sounds like a no-brainer, but never assume anything.  For example, at one event I was speaking at, the event was at ‘The Hilton Downtown’.  Well guess what, turns out there were TWO Hiltons downtown, and I didn’t know which one.  Thankfully, my Twitter friends bailed me out while I was on the shuttle 😉

4 – Plan out the sessions you want to attend.  Figure out what your schedule will look like, and keep checking the event website to confirm the schedule.  Almost every event I have attended/spoken at has had at least one major schedule change in the week or two leading up to the event.  Which sucks when the schedule has changed to put your two ‘must attend’ sessions opposite each other in the same time slot.

5 – Check to see if the event has a meetup/tweetup the nite before it starts and ATTEND IT.  I am very disappointed that I won’t arrive in Dallas this week till Thurs afternoon, because I will miss the Tweetup happening the nite before.  As a speaker, I love tweetups because it’s a great way for me to connect with attendees and learn more about them and what they are expecting from my session.  As an attendee, it’s a chance for you to network with your fellow attendees, but also to connect with the speakers before the event.

6 – Do your best to figure out who will be at the event.  Almost all events will tell you who will be speaking, and some will also share the attendees.  Know who will be there, so you can figure out who you want/need to connect with outside of the sessions.  For example, I’ve already figured out that there are a few people at #Optsum that I need to connect with about work projects, so I am going to schedule time with them.  And there are a few friends I definitely want to catch up with.  So figure out who you need to connect with, and this might cut into the number of sessions you can attend, so it’s also a good idea to prioritize the sessions in order of importance for you.

7 – Download any session materials beforehand.  Check with the event’s website, some of the speakers will share materials beforehand that they’ll want you to reference during their session.  Doesn’t hurt to check the website before leaving and make sure you have everything you need.

8 – Follow the Twitter hashtag for the event before/during/after you arrive.  This is a great way for me, as a speaker, to tell what the mood of the attendees is.  Are the speakers great or a dud?  What do they like or dislike about the venue itself?  All this helps me plan my session.  And for attendees, it helps you to know beforehand if there are only 2 power outlets per room 😉

During the sessions, you can use Twitter to discuss the sessions as they are happening.  Although I honestly don’t do this as much as I used to.  You can carry on the conversation after the event ends, as well.

9 – Make SURE you get your questions answered.  If you going to spend a thousand or so to attend an event, then you deserve to get your money’s worth, right?  Ask that question during the session, or if you are an introvert (like me), ask the speaker out in the hallway.

10 – Have fun and introduce yourself!  Again, as an introvert I have a big problem with this, but it really is a good idea to connect with everyone you can.  And the more you connect with everyone, the easier it is to enjoy the rest of the event.  Who knows, you might even meet a future business partner!

So those are my tips, those of you that attend social media events often, what are your best tips?  What did I miss?

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#Blogchat schedule for 9-12 and some updates

Hey guys, I wanted to let you know that tonite’s #Blogchat topic will be ‘Writing For Yourself vs Writing for Your Blog’s Readers’.  This topic was suggested by @WriterChanelle, so thank you!  In recent weeks I’ve tried to give a bit more structure to the #Blogchat topics, but with this one I’m going to just throw it out there and we’ll see where everyone takes it.

Also, I wanted to update you on a couple of #Blogchat items.  First, some of you have been interacting with the Twitter account @BlogchatNews.  This is an account that I started to let users know of news about #Blogchat, but I want to also use this account to better highlight #Blogchat-related posts and also posts from #Blogchat regulars.  And unfortunately, with my trying to build my consulting business, I just don’t have as much time as I would like to devote to #Blogchat and its community.  So my sister, @Beth_Collier is going to help me by managing the @BlogchatNews account.  I will be helping her as I can, but for the most part she will be the one interacting with you.  She’s doing a great job and is honestly an even friendlier person than I am, so all of you will love her!

So that’s it for now, and please, if you have any questions or ideas for how I can improve the #Blogchat experience for you, please leave a comment here, or connect with Beth or I on Twitter.  I hope to have a big announcement soon on the #Blogchat schedule for October, including a couple of awesome co-hosts, and hopefully our first #Blogchat sponsor!  See everyone tonite at 8pm Central!

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All I know about online influence…

I caught the tail end of a discussion on Twitter today on online influence in the #smmeasure chat.  The topic of ‘online influence’ and how to determine who has influence and how to grow that influence has been discussed often this year.

Here is all I know about being influential online and growing your influence:

1 – Connect with the people that love you

2 – Give them a reason to keep loving you

3 – Repeat

That’s it.

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#Blogchat schedule for 9-05 with co-host Shani Sammons!

Guys if you haven’t heard, Shani Sammons will be co-hosting #Blogchat on Sunday nite.  We’ll be discussing how musicians can use social media to connect with their fans.  Shani just wrote a post recapping a lot of the work she did with social media for Sugarland, please check it out!

I wanted to give y’all a bit of an outline for how our discussion will go.  But also, I wanted to stress that those of you that are #Blogchat regulars that are wanting to learn how to grow engagement and interaction on your blog, should definitely check in on tomorrow nite’s #Blogchat.  I don’t want you to get fooled by the topic and think ‘Oh they are going to talk music, I’ll sit this week out’.  Most if not all of the discussion we’ll have about community building for artists will be completely applicable for bloggers as well!

With that in mind, here’s how the chat will be formatted:

1 – For the first 30 mins or so, we’ll focus on how musicians can find their fans.  We’ll have a big emphasis on monitoring here, and ‘fishing where the fish are’ 😉

2 – Around 8:30 or so, the discussion will move to a discussion of which tools artists can use to connect with their fans.  As well as how to decide which tools they should be using.

At around 9pm, the discussion will move to a more open Q&A.

That’s it!  But again I wanted to stress that a lot of the topics Shani and I will be covered tomorrow will be beneficial to #Blogchat regulars, even if they aren’t musicians or interested in the music marketing aspects.

So #Blogchat will start at 8pm Central on Sunday nite, and if you want to show up a bit earlier to meet everyone and chat, we’ll start the ‘pregame’ at 7pm Central.  And if tomorrow nite will be your first #Blogchat and you are a bit overwhelmed with how fast it is, then you may want to come back at 9pm Central.  The volume will be less then, and it will be easier to keep up.  Also, if you ask Shani a question and she doesn’t respond, you may want to try again after 9pm.  Shani will try to stay a bit past 9pm, so she’ll get to as many questions and replies as she can!

Sound good?  If you have any questions or ideas, feel free to share in the comments!

BTW if you have no idea what #Blogchat is about, here’s what it is.

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Do you REALLY want more traffic to your blog?

Chris Brogan wrote a post today on a sure-fire way to get more traffic to your blog: Write more posts.  He’s exactly right, I’ve seen it here on my blog, as have many of you if you’ve ramped up the volume of your posts, I am sure.  I also know that in general, the exact opposite happens when I stop writing, that traffic usually falls.

Here’s the thing about traffic and Retweets on Twitter or ‘Shares’ on Facebook and other sites: They can fool you.  Let’s be honest, it feels good when you write a post that immediately gets a lot of RTs and it feels good to see a traffic spike for that day.

It all makes you really feel like you accomplished something, doesn’t it?

But did you?  If traffic alone is how you define the success of your blog, then you’re probably pretty satisfied.  But what if your goal is something else?  What if you don’t need more traffic in general, but more potential clients?   Or what if you are a jobseeker that wants more potential employers to read your blog?

My point is, you shouldn’t be chasing more traffic simply for the sake of getting it.  Let’s go back to Chris’ example.  In his case, he is trying to directly monetize the content on his blog, to a degree.  So more traffic probably helps him.  But if you are NOT trying to directly monetize the content on your blog, then more traffic doesn’t help you unless that more traffic performs some other action.  It may be that you want them to email you for information about your company, or maybe you want them to download your resume, or sign up for your email newsletter.  But simply getting more traffic might not be enough.  Sure, it might stroke your ego, but unless that extra traffic is also helping you meet a larger goal for your blog, then who cares?

BTW this is just on a personal note, but I am growing very weary of blogs that publish multiple posts a day.  In fact Chris’ is one of the few that I still subscribe to that do this (and Chris is great, so I subscribe).  For example, I unsubbed from Mashable for 2 reasons:

1 – I was tired of getting 10 new posts a day

2 – I knew that my friends would SHARE the really good ones via Twitter and Google Reader, so I didn’t need to sub anyway.

Something to think about.  Chasing numbers if fine, if you understand the value of catching them.

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#Blogchat schedule for September

Guys I’m proud to announce our co-host for September, and a couple of other goodies in this post!

First, our special co-host for this month will be Shani Sammons who will be discussing how musicians can use social media to connect with their fans! Shani has helped music artists in the past use social media to connect with their fans, most notably Country supergroup Sugarland!  She’s just started her own digital/music marketing company, Bamsmash.  In past lives, she’s worked in the marketing and customer service areas for Delta Airlines and Turner Broadcasting.  She’ll be joining us for the next #Blogchat, on the 5th.

Now as #Blogchat regulars know, we usually cover blogging-centric topics only.  But I am a big fan of music marketing, and I think that a lot of how artists connect with fans can help bloggers in their efforts to grow more interaction on their blog, and readership.  So this will be one of those rare #Blogchat topics that will be more on social media as a whole, instead of just on blogging.  On Sunday I’ll have up another post that will have a more detailed rundown of the topic areas that Shani and I will cover!

Also, I wanted to let y’all know of a couple of changes that we’ll be making to the #Blogchat format.  The first is with co-hosts.  The #Blogchats that have co-hosts are always very popular, and I am going to have at least one a month from now on.  In fact, the 1st Sunday of every month will be devoted to co-hosts.  If there are 5 Sundays in the month (As there are in October), then we’ll have a co-host on the 1st and 3rd Sunday of the month.

The last Sunday of every month will still be OPEN MIC.

The big change will be that starting immediately, the 2nd Sunday of every month will be reserved for a company to sponsor #Blogchat.  I’ve created a new page here just for companies that are interested in sponsoring #Blogchat, so they can see what they are getting.

The content of these sponsored #Blogchats will be completely consistent with what we talk about every Sunday nite at #Blogchat. In other words, you won’t see a #Blogchat sponsored by McDonalds, where they discuss their new line of Happy Meals 😉  But you might see a large industrial company sponsoring a #Blogchat about how B2B companies can use a blogging strategy to better connect with their customers.  Any topic that’s picked for a sponsored #Blogchat will have to have the same teaching element that we try to have present at every #Blogchat.

So again, if your company is interested in learning more about a potential sponsorship, click here.  Or if you have some questions about how it would work, please email me.

So that would mean that our schedule for #Blogchat moving forward would look like this for each month:

1st Sunday – Co-Host

2nd Sunday – Sponsor

3rd Sunday – Topic to be determined

4th Sunday – OPEN MIC

That sound good to everyone?  If you have any questions or suggestions, let me know!

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Think negative comments/reviews online hurt your company? Guess again.

For as long as I have been working with companies to help them improve their social media efforts, I have heard them explain how worried they are about what their customers are saying online.  “How do we make it go away?” or “How do we get this off the 1st page of Google results?” are questions I have heard all too often.

One area where this really comes into play is the issue of adding product reviews to your e-commerce site.  Many companies do NOT want to do this, because they fear that letting customers post reviews on their site will hurt sales.

I was discussing this on Twitter last week, and Ian at Bazaarvoice started chatting with me.  If you haven’t heard of them, Bazaarvoice works with companies to add functionality to their e-commerce sites, including Ratings and Reviews.  Ian sent me a ton of useful information and data about companies that using ratings and reviews on their sites, and I wanted to share some of the key points with you.

First, Bazaarvoice has found that 80% of the people that review products with its US clients give those products a 4 or 5 star rating (out of 5 stars).  For its clients in the UK, that figure jumps up to 88%.

Second, there’s the case study of how QuickBooks added the functionality of reviews to its Pro Advisors (Quick Book experts that help customers use the software).  Quick Books found that Pro Advisors with reviews had their profiles clicked on 555% more than those with no reviews.  Quick Book also found that volume trumped rating, as some Pro Advisors with more reviews got more clicks than Pro Advisors with higher overall ratings, but far fewer reviews.

Another key advantage to reviews that Ian shared with me is that reviews are great sources of customer feedback.  If you see that several customers are complaining about a particular aspect of your product and/or service, then obviously that’s alerting you to a pain point for your customers that you need to address.

One final tip from Ian: product reviews lower the number of returns (and the associated restocking fees/costs) cause customers have a better idea of exactly what they are getting before they order it.  Makes complete sense, eh?

But at the end of the day, the key lesson here is to be proactive in monitoring online mentions (even if its reviews on your site), and responding to them when appropriate.  We talked recently about examples of ‘social media backlashes‘ that brands have endured.  In each instance, the problem grew over time, due to the company not monitoring the situation.  The company not responding in a timely fashion was the main culprit behind the problem for them.

Most customers that complain online do NOT want to ‘hurt’ your company.  They just want you to listen to them, and help them with their problem.  If you’ll do that, you’ll often flip a detractor into an evangelist.  Hopefully these stats will help debunk the myth that any negative mention/review online hurts your company.  In reality, it’s often an opportunity.

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Finding your rockstars and giving them the stage

The introduction to the book Creating Customer Evangelists tells the story of  Southwest customer Ann McGee-Cooper.  One month after the September 11 terrorist attacks, with the airline industry in complete chaos, Ms. McGee-Cooper send Southwest a check for $500, and a letter which included the following explanation:

We are encouraging our clients to fly Southwest Airlines.  We are buying more stock…and we stand ready to do anything else to help.  Count on our continuing support.

As for the $500 check, she explained that she sent it because Southwest needed the money “more than I do”.

If your company is lucky enough to have just ONE Ann McGee-Cooper as a customer, then no amount of advertising or marketing you could ever do, will be more effective than what she does every single day.  Customers like McGee-Cooper are fans of your company.  They go out of their way to tell others about you, and they try their damnest to convince everyone they know to give you their business.  Because they believe in who you are, and what you are doing.

I left this comment to a post on Brains on Fire’s blog:

Find the people that are already singing your song, and give them the stage, the spotlight, and a microphone. We all want to be rockstars, and we tend to love the companies that make us feel like we are.

This is what I love about social media.  Now all your customers have these new content creation tools to take the word of mouth that was formerly trapped offline, and bring it online.  Now you have the ability to FIND that WOM, and can easily identify who your fans are.

And when you do, all that’s left is to give them the stage, the spotlight, and a microphone.

Oh and a hug and saying ‘Thank you!’ wouldn’t be a bad idea, either.

PS: Helping companies connect with their online evangelists is the type of work that I love doing.  If your company is considering such a project, please email me as I’d love to work with you to help get such a project off the ground.

Pic via Flickr user Hiddedevries

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#Blogchat topic for 8-22, Managing Your Sidebars!

If you are new to #Blogchat and want to know what the deal is, here’s the lowdown.

Tonite’s topic, which was inspired by @JudyHelfand, is managing your blog’s sidebars!  We’ll hit on two main areas:

1 – Before we discuss what content to include on our sidebars, I think we need to first figure out our blogging goals.  That will help decide which information we should be highlighting.  A business blog will likely want to put different information on its sidebars than a personal blog does.  We’ll also talk about the importance of putting the most important information on the sidebars ABOVE THE FOLD.  This topic will cover the first 30 mins or so of #Blogchat.

2 – Then we’ll move to a discussion of how much information should our sidebars have?  Do we REALLY have enough information to justify two sidebars, or will one be enough?  Also, are we not including some sidebar elements that we should be adding, like subscriber buttons, or a list of the most popular posts?  We’ll discuss this area from 8:30 to 9:00.

After 9:00, the discussion will be more open, and we’ll hit on any areas concerning sidebars that you want to discuss!

BTW, as a way to say ‘Thank You’ to you guys for coming out and making #Blogchat so amazing each and every week, I’ll be giving out a few #Optsum passes tonite.  Judy I’ve got one for you for suggesting tonite’s topic.  Thanks guys, see you at 8pm Central tonite!  And if you want to join at 7pm Central, we’ll be having our ‘pregame’ where everyone can say hi and share their blog and get to know each other.