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How Figures Toy Company is Masterfully Using Social Media to Build Product Demand, and Giving Me Back My Childhood At the Same Time

If you grew up in the 1970s as I did, the odds are you owned a toy created by the Mego Corporation.  The company made its hay with dolls (today called Action Figures) and its most popular line was The World’s Greatest Super-Heroes, giving children everywhere their first exposure to characters like Batman, Spiderman and Superman.  The figures were incredibly well made and detailed for the time, including cloth costumes that could be removed (and then lost).  One of my earliest childhood memories is as a 6 year-old taking my $6 and going to TG&Y and happily spending six week’s worth of allowance on a Robin doll.  Those were the days.

And a company called Figures Toy Company is now helping me relive those days.  Last year the company announced that it had acquired the DC Comics license and would be recreating these magical Mego figures of my childhood in near perfect replicas of the originals.

I’m not sure exactly how you ‘squee’, but I think I did it back in January when I first discovered this news.  I immediately started checking out FTC’s website and social media presences  for more information on the figures, and that’s when I realized that FTC is doing a wonderful job of leveraging social media to build demand for these figures.

First, let’s consider the market for these figures.  At $25 and up, these figures aren’t for priced to sell to children, they are primarily for adult collectors, and more specifically adult collectors that are fans of Mego figures.

One of the points I make in Think Like a Rock Star is that fans want special access.  They want to go behind the scenes and get a backstage pass.  FTC has been releasing these figures in ‘Waves’ of 4 characters at a time.  In most cases, they announce the upcoming wave 6-8 months before the product officially goes on sale.

So how do you keep fans excited for 6-8 months?  By giving them special access and a look behind the scenes.  Here’s what FTC has been doing:

1 – After the initial figure wave announcement, they then show pictures of the sculpt of the figure’s head.  This gets fans excited and gives them a better idea of what the final figure could look like.

2 – Next, they’ll reveal the prototype for the completed figure, giving fans a much better idea of what to expect.

3 – The first two steps take place over several weeks, so by now it’s about a month or two prior to the expected on-sale date of the figures.  Next, FTC will post pictures on its Facebook page that show the figures being assembled in its factory:

FTCPhoto

 

4 – Finally, the figures go on sale!  Then when they arrive, delighted customers take pictures of them and send them to FTC, who then turns around and posts the pictures from its fans on its Facebook page:

FTCFans

And along the way FTC is using its Facebook page to answer any and all questions from customers, often giving them nuggets about future releases.

From a marketing standpoint, this level of transparency is exactly what fans of these figures are clamoring for.  There’s been no shortage of geeking out on blogs and forums about these figures, and fans across the board are thrilled with FTC for being so open about the process.  Giving fans better information about how the figures are made and detailing the process helps build demand for the figures.

And it’s leading to big sales for FTC.  The first wave of 4 figures were released in November of last year, and barely six months later the entire wave has sold out and the products have been retired.  The lesson here is if you have passionate fans for the products you make, give them MORE information and behind the scenes information about the products they love.  It could have a BIG impact on your business’ bottom line, as it is for FTC.

PS: Yes FTC is getting my money as well!

FTCBAts

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Amazon Introduces #AmazonCart, Social Buying Just Got a LOT Easier

This morning Amazon introduced a pretty interesting new feature called #AmazonCart.  The idea is dead simple: If someone tweets a link to a product on Twitter that you want, reply to the tweet with the #AmazonCart hashtag and it gets added to your cart on Amazon!  Of course you have to have an Amazon account and authorize Amazon to connect to your Twitter account, but that’s it!  Here’s a screenshot of me using it this morning:

AmazonCart

See how easy it is?  Now granted, Tac will still have to complete the sale on Amazon, but actually getting the item in your cart is one step closer to making a sale.

Now here’s the part that’s got me excited; Think about putting this tool in the hands of your biggest fans.  For authors especially, this could be a game-changer (unfortunately, the program doesn’t work with ebooks at this time, believe me, I tried!  If you reply with #AmazonCart to a tweet with a link to an ebook, Amazon will mail you a sample from the ebook.  Not ideal, but better than nothing!)

Here’s the video from Amazon explaining the concept:

Impulse buying meets Twitter!  Would you use #AmazonCart?

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How to Make Sure Your Online Messages Live in All Customer Conversations

Business NetworkingNote from Mack: This is a sponsored post from Jim Karrh, as part of his #Blogchat sponsorship for April.  You can learn more about Jim at his site and also check out his blog, Managing the Message.

 

“There’s no consistency in what our people are saying to customers. It seems like everyone is just rolling their own.”

The tech-company executive who told me this was bemoaning a common problem: their blog posts, white papers, case studies, and other thought-leadership efforts weren’t landing in the most common customer interactions. He was weary from the disconnects (and griping) among the marketing, product development, sales, delivery, and service teams.

But it was the sheer volume of missed opportunities that was most frustrating. How many face-to-face meetings, virtual meetings, phone calls, call-center exchanges, networking opportunities, and emails occur across your organization every week? If they were more crisp, consistent, and relevant to buyers (or members, or donors, or whomever) what would be the impact on revenue, margins, customer satisfaction, or morale?

I do not believe that this common silo’ed reality is due to bad intentions, inept people, or boneheaded strategies. Rather, there are powerful forces that drive a wedge between customer-facing teams and effective conversations:

  • Comfort—over time we often settle into saying the same things to the same people
  • Consistency—different team members want to say and show things “their way”
  • Complexity—people, especially experts, drown their messages in lingo and acronyms (when they should be able to convey complex ideas via a simple picture)
  • Culture—many organizations lack the structure, resources, or habits for sharing wins and best practices
  • Coaching—managers often lack the time or knowledge necessary to build conversational fluency within their teams

No one is immune and perfection is impossible. In a prior professional life as a chief marketing officer, our company was recognized as having a “best in the world” integrated marketing and PR program—yet it was still frustrating to carry those messages consistently, succinctly, and accurately through our sales teams and distributors.

These days I serve clients by helping them transform their real-time customer conversations, via Karrh and Associates as well as messaging engagements through DSG. Most client organizations, regardless of size or industry, have found it difficult to produce consistently good customer conversations on their own. So, how can you change things?

We engage an executive sponsor in the client company, establish a cross-functional team of A-players for whom customer conversations are important, and together develop a “playbook” with simple talking points, questions to ask, audience profiles, and other field-ready tools (including visuals) for leading a conversation. It’s important to focus on what real people will actually use. The result isn’t a tagline or logo that an ad agency produces to be distributed “out there,” but rather a guide to how everyone should prepare for and act during customer conversations.

That reality makes any effort to bring consistency to customer conversations both political and personal. It requires intense collaboration. But it pays dividends, often in less than a year–without a company having to change strategy, product features, pricing, or distribution.

Even better…because almost everyone in your organization is well equipped to carry the conversation a transformed customer conversation can be a unifying and rallying effort.

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Here’s the Four Blogs We Will Review on Sunday at #Blogchat

Thanks to everyone that submitted their blog to be reviewed!  On Sunday we’ll be reviewing 4 blogs during #Blogchat, one every 15 mins.  Here are the four blogs we’ll be covering, and the order in which we’ll be covering them:

1 – Janice Person – A Colorful Adventure.  Here’s what Janice said about her blog: “It’s a personal blog so it is where I can post whatever I want but one of my real drivers has been sharing information about agriculture that I’m lucky enough to see and experience first hand, especially things about my beloved cotton! Travel is another huge area of my life that I love sharing.

I have been thinking about doing some reworking on the design. Its amazing how fast designs feel dated. The site doesn’t feel as clean as I would like. I don’t want it to feel sterile, just get it a cleaner, more up-to-date feel and yet provide good mobility within the site. Some of the blogchat crew would be great at helping me think through a new look for the site.

Another thing I think the blogchat crew could help me understand is what sort of information would they find interesting about farming & agriculture? What do you think of things like the cotton 101 type of posts http://janiceperson.com/cotton-101/ or the various types of agriculture informationhttp://janiceperson.com/category/agriculture/? of that content what grabs your attention & what makes you think “no thanks.”

I know, that’s a lot to ask, but why not shoot for the stars with the BlgoChat crowd just in case I get picked!”

2 – Velo Crush! Pedal Into the World of Bicycles.  Here’s what  Abbishek said about his blog: “My blog is to promote cycling it in India. I would like to connect to the cyclists in every country but more of India and also the common man. as my goal is to get them all cycling.

I’d kindly request you to focus on it entirely. its a mix of everything which has interviews, tips etc. but at the moment my page views have gone below average and I don’t know what to do about it.”

3 – Deb Costello’s Blog.  Here’s what Deb said about her blog:  “I write an education blog under the premise “what if someone opened a window into a classroom” I am a math teacher and share math questions, commentary on educational issues, funny/interesting stories about kids and my school, and cool tech tools that are useful for math, life, or fun.

My audience has been mostly teachers, not surprisingly, but I am interested in things I could do that would make the blog more interesting to a wider audience.”

4 – Jim Karrh’s Blog (Jim is the Sponsor for this month).

Now if you will be joining #Blogchat on Sunday, please take a few minutes to visit each of these blogs so that you can give each of these bloggers constructive advice about their blogs.  Make notes of what you like, what you dislike, and maybe the things that you aren’t sure of (“Why did you put your picture there?”  “Why did you use that color on your homepage?”).

And please remember it is VERY scary to submit your blog to being reviewed by #Blogchat so if you have criticism please try to temper it and share advice with the blogger on how you think they can ‘fix’ any ‘problems’ you see on the blog.

That’s it!  Congratulations to Janice, Abbishek,  and Deb.  And thanks to Jim for sponsoring this month, he’s a big reason why Blog Reviews are back this month!  BTW if you would like to ask any of these bloggers a question before Sunday please leave a comment here for them!

And please have a Happy Easter weekend!   See y’all on Sunday night at 8pm Central!

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Want to Have #Blogchat Review Your Blog?

This Sunday we’ll be doing Blog Reviews again, which is one of the most popular #Blogchat topics ever.  The way it works is that every 15 minutes we’ll review a different blog submitted by a #Blogchat member.  The #Blogchat community will tell you what they like, what they dislike, and give you advice on how to improve your blog.  It’s an invaluable chance to get advice from a community of the most savvy bloggers around!

So if you want to submit your blog for one of the THREE available slots for Blog Reviews, here’s what you need to do:

1 – Leave a comment on THIS POST.

2 – Give us the link to your blog in the comment itself.  Add the URL manually. 

3 – Tell us what your blog is about, and who you want to connect with

4 – If there’s any particular area of your blog that you want us to focus on, let us know.

5 – Make sure you can be at #Blogchat on Sunday night at 8pm Central, US time.  Because we’ll want to discuss your blog with you and you can give us feedback.  This is most important.

 

That’s it!  I’ll accept submissions through 5pm Central time on Friday, then I’ll announce the 3 selections back here on Saturday.

I am far more likely to pick your blog if you do two simple things:

1 – Give me as much information about your blog as possible.  If your comment is ‘Dude here’s my blog, check it out: www.myblog.com’, then that doesn’t help me much.

2 – I am going to do everything I can to select regular #Blogchat members.  All things being equal, I will pick the gal that comes to #Blogchat regularly over someone who doesn’t.  I want to use this as a way to reward regular contributors to the chat.

 

So that’s it!  If you want to be eligible for having your blog reviewed this Sunday please leave a comment below!  If your blog is selected we’ll discuss your blog for 15 mins Sunday night at #Blogchat!  Good luck!

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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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All #Blogchat Topics and the Sponsor For April Plus Blog Reviews!

I’m thrilled to announce that Karrh & Associates will be sponsoring #Blogchat in April! Karrh & Associates is run by my friend Jim Karrh who I’ve known since my early blogging days.  Please check out Jim’s site and blog to learn more about his marketing, training and consulting services.

And we’ve got a pretty solid list of topics for April, along with the return of an old favorite!

April 6th – How to Create Content That Organically Reaches Customers.  With the recent changes to Facebook’s algorithms that have reduced the visibility of updates from brand pages, it’s more critical than ever that brands create compelling content that now only reaches our audience organically, but that they share with others as well.  Well talk about some of the things that are keeping people from reading, sharing and acting on your content, and also the keys to creating compelling content.

April 13th –  Making Sure the Voice of Your Blog is the Voice of Your Organization.  Consistent brand voice is incredibly powerful and its incredibly obvious when a brand is missing this.  We’ll discuss ways you can discover that your brand voice is out of synch and how to get it in tune, especially making sure that your blog’s voice and tone is consistent with that of your larger organization.

April 20th – Blog Reviews are back!!!   We’ll review four blogs (Jim has already volunteered his for the 4th slot) over the course of an hour.  So there will be 3 slots available for #Blogchat members.  I’ll share more details on this the week of the 20th and how you can nominate your blog if you would like to have #Blogchat review it.

April 27th – OPEN MIC!

So there you go, all topics for April, and thanks again to Jim and his team for sponsoring #Blogchat.  Please make sure you are following Jim on Twitter.

Want to sponsor #Blogchat in May? Here’s price and details.  See y’all Sunday night!

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The Social Media Free Ride is About to End

FreeAbout six months ago Popular Science made a pretty significant move on its website that a lot of people missed.  It turned off comments on its articles.  A few days ago, Copyblogger followed suit, and suddenly everyone paid attention.

This is just the start.  Other sites with sizable audiences will likely do the same in short order.  Some sites will nix comments simply because they see other influential sites doing it.  Earlier this week I wrote about how Facebook is putting the squeeze on brands and attempting to push a ‘pay for play’ model where brands will have to pay to get visibility for its content that had previously been free.

All of these moves are a sign that the social media industry is maturing.  Blogs that started out as a 1-person show have grown into publishing empires with entire staffs churning out content every day.  Facebook went public last year, Twitter recently did as well.  New shareholders mean new demands for new revenue streams.

So what happens next? How about paying for blog content? Did you just faint?  It would not surprise me at all to begin to see popular sites go to a subscription-based model.

Here’s the thing, there is far more content out there than any of us can consume, and more being added every day.  And a lot of it is very bad.  Since there is so much less useful content available, it increases the demand for good content.  In some cases, that demand is high enough for the content from some creators that there’s an opportunity for them to sell their content.

Paying for content results in better content.  If a blogger suddenly starts charging for her content, she can then afford to spend more time on content creation.  Which will likely improve the quality of that content.

And  no, I have zero interest in charging for my content, at least not now.  But I know a lot of bloggers/writers/publishers that would love to.  Bold moves like turning off comments or charging for content rarely happen because no one wants to be the first one to make such a potentially unpopular move.  Which is exactly why I think you’ll soon see more sites dropping comments.  It’s a big story because Copyblogger is the ‘first’, but that makes it much easier for the second and then third sites to follow suit.

The dominoes are about to topple it seems.  2014 looks to be a very interesting year.  

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Facebook is Screwing Your Brand, and You Should Thank Them For It

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For brands that rely on using Facebook to reach customers, the hand-wringing just went up a notch.  Time and other sources have recently reported that Facebook’s plan is to restrict a brand’s ability to organically reach followers down to 1 or 2%.  That means that eventually, only 1 or 2 percent of your followers will see the average update your brand posts.

Unless…your brand agrees to pay Facebook for more exposure.  Apparently social media is free…until your company goes public and has stockholders to answer to.  It’s not a coincidence that Facebook is looking for new revenue streams now that it’s a publicly-traded company.

Newsflash: Twitter is now a publicly-traded company as well.  Don’t be surprised if the San Francisco company doesn’t also try to generate new revenue at the expense of brand activities that had previously been free.

While I have never been a huge fan of Facebook, I also recognize its right to monetize as it sees fit.  Let’s be honest: Facebook has been letting your brand effectively advertise for free for a while now.  You could argue that they have been letting you get ‘hooked’ on using its service for free and then they charge you, but its still your brand’s choice to use Facebook.  This is why I have been cautioning clients and companies for years now to not plant all their seeds in digital gardens that they do not own.  Facebook in particular has a history of changing the rules and making things more difficult for brands.  Now it is algorithm changes that affect organic reach, before that it was constantly changing rules on running contests on brand pages.

The bottom line is that you never want your brand to be in a position where all its content eggs are put in a basket that someone else owns.  If your social media efforts depend on Facebook to reach your customers, then effectively you have ceded control of said social media efforts to Facebook.

The reality is that Facebook is screwing with your ability to reach customers for free.  And that’s a good thing.  This move is going to force companies to do one of two things:

1 – Start paying for exposure on Facebook

2 – Start creating content via tools that the company controls

Many companies will go the first route.  Budgets devoted to SEO and other digital marketing channels will likely be diverted in a quest for paid Likes.

The smart companies will be the ones that invest in learning how to create and distribute content via channels that the company owns.  Guess what?  The corporate website is about to become relevant again.  The same corporate website that was bemoaned as being an archaic waste a few years ago has been seeing its own Renaissance recently.

Let’s be clear: Your website should be the central home or base of your social media efforts.  All your efforts should feed back here versus going through Facebook or Twitter.  Because while you don’t control Facebook, you do have control over your website.

I am a fan of this move because it is going to force brands to become better content creators.  It’s also going to require that brands get serious about social media: Either by paying for exposure, or by investing in learning how to create content that’s valuable enough to customers that they will seek that content out via channels that the brand owns.

For brands like Red Bull and Patagonia that have been nailing content marketing for a while now, this move won’t have a huge impact, because customers will actively seek out content from these brands.  If no one is reading your content on Facebook now, that’s not on Facebook, it’s on you.

Now’s your chance to get serious about social media and content marketing, and start seeing serious results.  Want to learn how to create effective content that gets seen by your customers? Make sure you follow this one simple rule.

Pic via Flickr user BobLinsdell

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In the Future Your Customers Will Completely Control Your Marketing

I recently saw a study into the content consumption habits of millenials that claimed that individuals ages 18 to 36 spend an average of 17.8 hours a day with different types of media.

Some forms of media are more important to millennials than others. Social media is a top priority, as 71 percent say that they engage in social media daily. User-generated content — which encompasses social-media posts, photos, blogs, email, texting and talking to others about media — occupies about 5.4 hours of the average millennial’s day. That’s 30 percent of their total daily media consumption.

The only rival to user-generated media is the old standby of traditional media — print, radio and television – which accounts for 33 percent of millennials’ media consumption.

Think about that for a minute.  Better yet, those of you that are over the age of 36, recall when you were children, in a pre-internet age.  How much time did you spend each day consuming media and what percentage of it was from traditional sources?  Contrast that with the 18 hours a day total and 6 hours of traditional media that millenials consume today and it’s clear to see how media consumption habits are changing.  More media is being consumed every day and increasingly it is coming from a source that is not paid for by brands.

This trend will only accelerate.  A couple of weeks ago when I went to get my haircut, the women that cuts my hair brought her 2 year-old nephew with her to the office.  How did she keep him entertained?  By giving him an iPad.  Here’s a child that cannot form coherent sentences yet, but he can use a computer.  By the time he’s 18, almost all of the media he consumes will come from people just like him, and little if any of it will come from your brand.

In the future your marketing messages will be spread via your customers.  They already are to a great degree, but your ability as a brand to create messages and send them directly to customers is increasingly being diminished.  Last week I keynoted at Strategy 2014 in Huntsville, and at the end of the day I participated on an ‘Ask the Experts’ panel (I call these ‘Stump the Chump’) with a few other speakers.  An attendee asked us which social media tool would be the next ‘hot’ thing.  What would be the next Twitter or Facebook.

It’s a question many brands want to know the answer to, and it’s completely the wrong question to ask.  Your focus shouldn’t be on understanding how to use social media tools, your focus should be on understanding why your customers are using social media tools.

That understanding only comes from increased interactions.  You need to focus today on increasing the number of direct interactions you have with your customers.  This will lead to you better understanding your customers, and they better understanding your brand.  Here’s why this is important:

Interactions

If you start interacting with your customers today, that will lead to understanding. So when we reach a not-so distant future where your customers completely control your marketing message, they will understand your brand, they will trust your brand and they will be able and willing to spread your marketing messages for you.

Your focus shouldn’t be on understanding social media tools, your focus should be on better understanding your customers so that you can create a more valuable experience for them today, so that you can earn their trust tomorrow.