MackCollier.com

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Study Says Twitter Tops Facebook, Email in Creating Advocates and Sales

A new study by ExactTarget claims that people that follow a brand on Twitter are more likely to buy that brand’s products than people that ‘Like’ a brand on Facebook, or that subscribe to its email newsletter.  The same study also found that Twitter followers were more likely to recommend a brand to their friends than Facebook users or Email subscribers.

And I found this quote interesting from the EMarketer article (linked above):

These factors make Twitter followers attractive to marketers, but as the ExactTarget report notes, because of Twitter’s much smaller user base just 3% of US internet users follow a brand through the microblogging service. Those who do follow brands on Twitter are likely to be influencers in general, while Facebook users are more like the average consumer.

Interesting perspective, and I think there could be some truth to more ‘influencers’ being on Twitter than Facebook, at least by percentage.

So do you agree with this study?  Are Twitter users more likely to influence your purchasing decisions, or is it Facebook or Email, or another tool?  Or is it not about the tools, or rather which tools your network uses?

What do you think?  When you need an opinion on a new movie or restaurant, for example, do you turn to Twitter or Facebook?  Or elsewhere?

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Would you follow your customers to prison?

Last week in Dallas I led a workshop at #Optsum called Think Like a Rockstar, that looked at how rockstars connect with their customers and turn them into fans.  And what companies can learn from rockstars in cultivating their own brand advocates.  I included several examples of how rockstars connect with and embrace their fans.

But a couple of days ago I realized that I left out one of the best examples of a rockstar embracing his fans.

By the late 1960s, Johnny Cash’s career was on its downward slide.  His constant problems with drugs, as well as the fading popularity of country music, had conspired against Cash to leave his star shining at a flicker of what it had once been.  That’s when fate intervened in 1968 in the form of a California prison.

In 1955, Cash recorded the song “Folsom Prison Blues’, a song that was immediately popular with inmates across the country.  In fact, many of them would write to Cash asking him to perform at their prison, and Cash actually did this several times over the next decade.

“John looks as mean as they do, and they identify with him”, Cash’s wife June would later explain.

Still, a decade later by 1968, Cash’s career needed a jumpstart before it drifted away.  This was when Cash made the bold move of requesting that his label allow him to perform another prison concert, but this time he suggested that the label record the concert as an album.  His label at the time, Columbia, agreed, and Cash along with The Statler Brothers, Carl Perkins and the Tennessee Three as well as June, went to California to rehearse for the trip.

One of the main focuses of the rehearsal time was to learn a song called Greystone Chapel, a song written by Folsom inmate Glen Sherley.  Cash performed two sets at Folsom Prison on the morning of January 13th, 1968.  Both sets closed with Greystone Chapel, and featured Cash performing for hours just a few feet away from hundreds of screaming fans, some of who also happened to be murderers.

Yet when this concert was released to the public, it instantly became a huge success.  The energy at the prison on that day was electric, and Cash fed off that and gave the performance of his career.  The performance and album revitalized Cash’s career, and resulted in what many rock historians view as one of the greatest performances of all-time.  All this happened because Johnny Cash was willing to embrace his fans, even if it meant going to prison to do so.

But companies aren’t always so willing to embrace their fans if they don’t approve of their behavior.

In 2006, Fritz Grobe and Stephen Voltz became the darlings of the internet with a series of videos where they dropped Mentos candies into Diet Coke, then filmed the geysers that resulted.  The videos went viral and brought instant internet fame to Grobe and Voltz, and sparked imitators all across the world to start buying Mentos and Diet Coke for their own ‘experiments’.

But the two companies that make Mentos and Diet Coke had decidedly different reactions to this sudden fanfare.  While Mentos completely embraced this playful activity (and the surge in visibility that it gave their candy), Coke all but chided their customers for ‘playing’ with their product, when they should be drinking it.  Eventually, Coke realized that their customers weren’t going to stop ‘playing’ with Coke, and tried to launch their own version of these videos in the form of a contest on their own site.  Of course, the popularity of this move paled in comparison to the original videos created by Grobe and Voltz.

Yet on the other hand, Mentos scored a big payday as a result of the videos, seeing sales spike 20% in 2006, the largest such increase for the company at the time.  Mentos realized that ultimately their customers were buying and enjoying their product, so they embraced them for doing so.

How far would your company go to embrace its fans?

Pic via Flickr user PearlyV

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#Optsum Review: Social Media isn’t the only cool kid in town anymore

At one point on Thursday during her session at Optimization Summits in Dallas, CK mentioned a type of technology and how marketers could utilize it effectively.  Then she mentioned another, and the audience was so enthralled that an hour-long discussion on just these tools commenced.

Was she talking Twitter?  Facebook?  Blogs? Hell no, she was talking QR codes and Geo-Fencing.

Want more? Chris Penn was talking email marketing, Geno Church was talking creating customer evangelist movements. Even those of us that did discuss social media, did so in the context of combining it with other areas.  Jason Falls talked about improving the SEO of your company blog, I talked about learning from rockstars to use social media to cultivate brand advocates.

This is one of the things I loved about #Optsum, Tami put together a stellar speaking lineup.  Yes, I am probably biased since I am friends with most of these speakers, but I learned something new in EVERY session I sat in.  And you have to remember that most of these speakers I had already heard before.  But they brought something completely new to the table for attendees, and gave them a completely new way of thinking about improving their marketing efforts.  In fact I would rank the speaking lineup at this event on par with Social South 2009 and the first Digital Marketing Mixer in 2008 as being the best group of speakers at any event I’ve attended.

The sessions were all engaging, and the speakers made a point of getting the audience involved.  Most of the sessions were fairly well-attended, even though there were up to 8 tracks available for some slots.  More on that in a moment.

The content was top-notch, and the speakers were excellent.  At the end of the day, that’s probably the most important factor in determining if an event was worth your time.

Here are the things I didn’t like about #Optsum, and I want to mention these to help other event planners in organizing similar events.  But I should point out that Tami has been interacting with attendees and based on their feedback, will likely improve most or all of these points for the next event.  Which is another reason why Tami rocks!

First, #Optsum was running alongside Brainstorming, which is a much larger event aimed primarily at the Apartment industry.  #Optsum usually had 4 tracks going at once, and if Brainstorming did as well (as it did for much of Thurs), then attendees had to choose between EIGHT tracks, assuming they bought tickets to both.  I noticed higher attendance in the sessions on Friday, and I am sure this factored into it.

Second, I hated the layout of the hotel.  It was absolutely huge, so big that it covered two adjacent blocks.  Which meant that knowing that the session you wanted to go to was on the 1st floor wasn’t enough, you also needed to know which side of the street on the 1st floor it was!  Which made for a LOT of running around.  And the directions posted in the hotel weren’t very helpful and the maps were very hard to read.  This wasn’t really Tami’s fault, it was a byproduct of the Sheraton just being too damn big and confusing.

Other than those two areas, the event itself was wonderful and at $500 or so for admission, it was an absolute steal of a bargain for attendees for 2 days of learning.  And I have to say that Tami and her team did a fabulous job working with me as a speaker to get me to the event on time, on coordinating all my travel, and everything.  In fact it was probably the best experience I have had so far with event organizers.

Below is the deck from my Think Like a Rockstar workshop.  I was proud to say that the session was very well-received, and the deck itself was the biggest I’ve ever made.  If you attended, thank you SO much for doing so, I was thrilled with the turnout, I believe the room was full by the time the session got started.

All in all, I would heartily recommend #Optsum to anyone that is considering it, and if Tami asks me to speak at the next one, I would accept in a second.  It was a wonderfully informative and valuable event, and I honestly didn’t hear one negative word about any of the speakers or sessions, which is actually quite rare.

If you attended #Optsum, what did you think?

View more presentations from Mack Collier.

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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!