MackCollier.com

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How Do You Decide Who You Should Be Writing For On Your Blog?

GirlNotesI’ve been blogging here for just over 4 years now.  I love blogging, but one of the things that has always frustrated me about blogging is that I have never been able to draw a direct line between my blog and a quantifiable business benefit.  IOW, I couldn’t give you an exact ROI on my blogging.  I know that blogging is indirectly leading me to business because it’s directly leading to a lot of the things that ultimately lead to business, but it’s muddy.  A couple of years ago I decided to get serious about creating that straight line from blogging to business benefit.

I started really obsessing over the stats here.  One of the things that I noticed was that search traffic was rising.  So I started changing the way I was blogging and writing, and I began to write more for search engines.  If I was getting more search traffic, in theory I would be getting more traffic from people looking for help with marketing and social media.  In other words, potential clients.  So in my mind, rising search traffic meant more potential clients visiting my blog.

So I really began to focus on improving the SEO of my posts.  Search traffic over the next couple of years went from 50 visitors a day, to 500.  Search as a percentage of overall traffic here went from 25% to as high as 66% on some days.

I mention this because last night I went through the archives of my posts here, and started examining them from the first post.  I was actually looking for something completely different, but I was immediately struck by something: Almost every post had about 20-30 comments.  I realized that the posts here over the past couple of years had gotten far fewer comments the posts did for the first couple of years.

And then it hit me: When I had started writing for search engines, I had (unwittingly) stopped writing for my readers.  The people that came here and commented on almost every post.  I was then writing for people that had never visited the blog before and who were about to find it for the first time thanks to a Google search.

And yet….one of the common discussions I’ve had with other consultants is exactly who we are writing for.  Along these lines, there seems to be two camps:  The people that believe you write for potential clients only.  This group could care less if they ever get a comment on their blog, as long as they get an email or phone call asking about their services from someone that read their blog, they are happy.

The other camp wants comments.  The other camp views comments and the discussions on their blogs as almost a form of networking, and feel they get business as a result of those discussions.

I think both camps make good points.  But I do think there is real business value in creating vibrant discussions and engaging with your readers, even if those readers aren’t potential clients.  Perhaps the real goal for those of us that are blogging for our business should be to write for search engines AND our readers at the same time?  Or is that even possible on a consistent basis?

Who are you writing for?

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Jay Baer Co-Hosting #Blogchat Tonight Discussing Youtility and Blogging!

JayBaerTonight at 8pm Central, Jay Baer will join #Blogchat to co-host and talk about his new book Youtility, which launches this week!  Here’s what we’ll be discussing:

From 8:00-8:15PM, Jay will talk about Youtility and what it means for your marketing and your business (it also applies to anyone that creates content).

From 8:15-8:45PM, Jay will teach us how to apply Youtility to our blogging efforts.  This will be especially valuable if you are trying to decide what to blog about and how to create more engaging content.

From 8:45-9:00PM, Jay will talk about his book Youtility.  I’ve just started reading an advance copy and it’s very interesting, I’m looking forward to learning more about it from Jay tonight!

Here’s a great primer post on Youtility from Jay.

So the fun starts at 8pm Central, tonight!  Hope to see you there and make sure you are following Jay on Twitter!

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You Can’t Screw Up Your Marketing If You Give it to Your Fans

TLARQuote

Over the past few months I’ve been sharing with you what I’ve been learning from the process of creating my book Think Like a Rock Star, and then marketing it, etc.  Today I wanted to give you an update on how the book’s doing and also talk about my marketing efforts to this point.

First, here’s the Amazon average sales rank for each month so far this year for TLARS:

January – 713,959

February – 524,232

March – 415,237

April – 68,196 (The book was released on Amazon in paperback on April 1st)

May – 88,169

This is what you expect from the typical business book launch.  Sales peak at launch, then start going down.

But guess what?  The current Amazon average sales rank for June is currently 34,339.  TLARS is currently experiencing its best sales ever, even better than it did at launch back in April.

That’s interesting, but even moreso when you factor in that I’ve done almost no marketing for the book.  I”m not a big-name author and simply couldn’t afford to hire a publicist and a marketing team to promote the book for me.  You won’t see any banner ads for the book, and other than writing a few posts here and tweeting about it and Facebooking about it, I’ve really done no marketing for the book.

So why is it selling?  And better yet, why is it selling more copies?

First, it’s a pretty damn good book.  I think everyone knows that I’m not exactly prone to bragging, but I am incredibly proud of Think Like a Rock Star.

Second, the book has some killer marketing.

Ok so the book is being marketed, but not by me.  Originally, I wanted to create this elaborate plan to market Think Like a Rock Star.  But due to several events/misshaps (the main one being Amazon releasing the book 3 weeks early), a lot of the big marketing push that I was envisioning for the book’s launch fell away.

Then I realized that this was actually a perfect opportunity to apply Think Like a Rock Star’s core message to its own marketing.  The core lesson I teach in Think Like a Rock Star is the value of embracing your fans.  So I decided in March that since I couldn’t do an elaborate marketing push myself for the book, that I was going to let the fans of the book market it, especially via reviews on Amazon.

So what I started doing was engaging with anyone that mentioned the book online, especially positively.  I thanked them profusely, and then started interacting with them.  And part of that interaction was to ask them to please review the book on Amazon.

My thinking was this:  I knew the book was good.  So if more of the book’s fans were talking about the book, that would drive sales.  So the more reviews up on Amazon, the better!

As of today, there are 40 reviews on Amazon for the book, and 35 of them are 5-star.  The remaining reviews are 4-stars.  I am convinced that those reviews are now driving sales of the book.  Sales are going up on Amazon, but the only thing that’s changed is the number of reviews on the site has gone up.

The fans are driving sales of the book.   Seriously, check out the reviews, they are glowingly positive.  In fact two of them are so complimentary of the book that they actually embarrassed me a lil bit.  See if you can figure out which ones they are.

And to clarify, only 14 of the 40 reviews came from people that I knew on January 1st.  18 of the 40 reviews came from people that I didn’t know when I asked them to please review the book.  These were people that I saw either mentioning that they had read the book, or they had reviewed it on another site like GoodReads, and I asked them to review it on Amazon.

Want to hear the amazing part?  When I asked these strangers to please review the book, several of them thanked me for asking them to review it!  Are you kidding?!?  But fans want you to connect with them!  And it’s a lot of fun to do so!

The point of all of this isn’t to brag on the success of my book.  It’s to show you how easy it is to generate new business by simply embracing your existing fans.  All I did was connect with people that were already talking about this book.  That’s it.  If I can do this, surely you can too.

And BTW, if you have read Think Like a Rock Star (thank you!) would you please consider reviewing it on Amazon for me? 😉

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The Marketing Power of Removing Your Customer’s Fear

HorseridingTweets

I’m beginning to work on my first set of digital products to offer here, and I’m pretty excited.  It’s something I’ve been wanting to do for a couple of years now, but I’ve put off doing it because I was scared of getting started.  I wasn’t sure how to get started, wasn’t sure how to sell the products here, wasn’t sure how complicated it would be to get everything set up, etc.

The fear of getting started was due to my not being sure what would happen and that I wasn’t sure how to get started.  But recently I discovered a way to get started that simplified the process.  Awesome, but I still wasn’t sure what to do from a technical side to get everything set up here.  I assumed it was a pretty difficult process and that I would need to bring in someone to help me.

I asked a friend about this (someone that sells similar products on her site) and she told me an easy way to do it myself that I hadn’t thought of.  BAM, promise solved!  The fear was gone, and I’m moving forward!

You can empower your customers by reducing their fear.

Often I’ve talked about how you should view your blogging as a way to empower your readers.  You are giving them a new skill, a new ‘superpower’.  Maybe you are teaching them how to solve their problems, or how to simply be better at whatever it is they are trying to accomplish.  But often, potential customers won’t by from you because there is a fear factor involved.  Maybe it’s a fear of the unknown, a fear of something going wrong, etc.  In these cases you should still educate your customers, but if their fear is mostly or completely unfounded, you need to help them realize that.

For example in the tweets above, Annie mentions how her customers want to learn how to ride a horse, but are afraid to get started.  I immediately thought that she should show her adult customers how children can pick up riding a horse.  With the idea being ‘if your daughter can do this, there’s no reason for you to be afraid’.

Think about what it is that keeps your customers from buying from you, and remove that obstacle from their path.  When you walk into my dentist’s office, you are greeted by a warm and friendly receptionist.  Then you have a seat on nice and plush couches that are so comfortable that you’ll fall asleep if you aren’t careful.  There is a play area downstairs for children and you can hear sounds of Pac-Man being played.  And you can smell delicious fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies that each customer gets when they leave.  Because this dentist has gone out of his way to create a peaceful and relaxing atmosphere in his office that makes the customer comfortable.  Which helps reduce their fear of being there.

Because if you think about it, removing someone’s fear is a pretty awesome thing to do for them!

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

J0177750I have a friend that runs a small retail business and a couple of months ago I gave her a copy of Think Like a Rock Star.  She loves the book and the last two times I’ve been in to see her, we’ve been discussing ways that her business could leverage social media to drive sales, and cultivate fans.  I thought these ideas could help those of you that are running your own small business, so I wanted to share them here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Think Like a Rock Star: How to Create Fans of Your Blog

RockstarsTonight at #Blogchat we’re going to apply the Think Like a Rock Star principles to building your blog’s readership and fans.  In the book, I talk about the four reasons why rock stars have fans instead of customers.  You can apply each of these areas to your own blogging efforts to grow your readership and actually create fans of your blog.  Here’s the four things that rock stars do to create fans:

1 – Rock stars are fans themselves.  This means they are connected to their fans, and understand them, because they occupy the same space.  What this means for you as a blogger is that you need to interact with your readers in their space in order to understand them, and to give them a reason to come read your blog in your space.

One way you can interact with your readers in their space is by commenting on other blogs.  Bruce Sallan is someone that does a great job of this.  Bruce is constantly commenting on his readers’ blogs, and in doing so, he drives interest back to his blog as well as #DadChat on twitter.  When you comment on a reader’s blog, they appreciate that and want to return the favor by commenting on your blog.  The same principle applies by promoting the posts that your readers write, by interacting with them on Twitter, etc.  The point is if you connect with your readers and show them you appreciate them, they will become fans.

2 – Rock stars look to shift control to their fans.  Fans are special people.  They love their favorite brand/rock star/ blogger and want to see them succeed.  If you will reach out to them and give them ways to do so, they will work to this end by promoting you to others, sharing your content, etc.  This can be something as easy as asking your readers what topics they want to see covered, or even selecting them to write guest posts on your blog.

One of the things I do here from time to time is I will highlight someone that leaves a particularly interesting or valuable comment by either calling it out in the post itself, or by mentioning it in the post and asking everyone to read the comments.  The point is to show the readers that they play a role in helping to create the content here.  That shift in ownership is powerful, and it makes readers feel more vested in the blog to see that they have a voice in the content being created there.

3 – Rock stars focus on the Bigger Idea behind their music.  This is probably the most valuable lesson you can learn from a content creation standpoint.  Rock stars don’t sing about themselves (well, not all the time), they typically sing about ideas and values that resonate with their listeners.  This makes their songs more relevant to listeners, and makes it easier to create fans.  Why is Taylor Swift adored by teenage girls worldwide?  Because her songs speak to the lives they are living every single day.  That makes it easier for teenage girls to relate to her songs, and to become her fans.

If you want to apply this to your own blogging efforts, focus on topics that relate to what’s important to your readers.  For example, Patagonia’s The Cleanest Line blog focuses on protecting the environment, sustainability, the outdoors, etc.  Instead of focusing directly on its clothing products, Patagonia chooses instead to focus on the larger issues and ideas that relate to its products.  Because these larger issues and ideas are what’s more important to its customers.

4 – Rock stars embrace their fans.  Rock stars value their fans and literally love them right back.  This creates an incredibly powerful bond and rock stars actually thrive off being close to their fans, and look for ways to embrace them and become closer to them.

A blog that does a wonderful job of embracing its fans is Spin Sucks.  First, Spin Sucks does a great job of engaging with its readers that comment.  Second, the blog finds ways to put the spotlight on its readers.  Often, the most frequent commenters are chosen to write guest posts.  Each Friday, Gini writes a Follow Friday post that highlights someone that readers should follow, who is typically a Spin Sucks reader.  Spin Sucks does a great job of rewarding its readers through engagement and letting them help create the content on the blog.

So tonight at #Blogchat starting at 8pm Central, we will discuss how your blog can cultivate more fans.  Please join tonight on Twitter!

PS: If you haven’t ordered your copy of Think Like a Rock Star, it’s on Amazon and Kindle!

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Hire Me to Present Think Like a Rock Star At Your Event This Fall

Over the past few weeks I’ve been adding dates to my speaking schedule for the Fall, which you can find here.  I am planning on speaking 2-3 times a month for the rest of the year.  As you can see, I have one date already locked down for most of the months.

Obviously, I will be speaking in the fall primarily to promote my new business book, Think Like a Rock Star. Think Like a Rock Star is focused on how your brand can better engage its most passionate customers (its fans), and grow its business from these connections with these fans.  The presentation makes the business case for why rock stars strive to have deep connections with their fans (and the real business value from doing so), and then shows you the exact steps your brand needs to take to create similar connections with your most passionate customers.

I’ll be offering Think Like a Rock Star in four formats:

1 – An hour-long presentation.  This is perfect if you have a conference that has an hour-long format (or even 45 mins), and this can be used as a session or as a keynote presentation.  Additionally, I can do a book-signing for free after the presentation.  You can either buy the books yourself and resell them to attendees, or give them to attendees as part of their registration.  Or I can bring the books myself and sell them so there’s no cost to you.

2 – A half or full-day workshop.  This is for companies that want to get serious about creating a fan-centric brand.  This is an in-depth workshop that will walk you through exactly what needs to happen in order for your brand to create a deeper relationship with your customers.  We’ll go into creating internal and external structures and teams, how to identify who your fans are, how to connect with them, everything.  We’ll also tackle how to create and launch a brand ambassador program for your brand.  Copies of Think Like a Rock Star will be provided for your team (up to 25 copies).

3 – An hour-long webinar.  If you don’t have a conference or event coming up in 2013 but want to have me present Think Like a Rock Star, we can do a webinar instead.  Just make sure you email me to discuss your technical resources as that’s sometimes an issue when doing webinars.

4 – A series of training videos for your company.  In lieu of an on-site workshop, I can create a custom set of training videos for your company showing you exactly how to become a more fan-centric brand.

 

So if any of these options appeal to you, please email me and we can discuss your needs.  Each presentation is customized to your organization’s needs and goals.  I’ve also created this short video talking about the success I’ve had with the Think Like a Rock Star presentation:

Finally, I wanted to close by saying THANK YOU to everyone that has helped support the book Think Like a Rock Star.  I’m constantly hearing from readers about how y’all are applying the book’s principles to your everyday work at your company.  Kelly wrote an amazing post last week about how Paper.li is building a brand ambassador program by following the frameworks provided in Think Like a Rock Star.

If you haven’t bought the book yet, please check out the reviews on Amazon.  And if you have read the book, would you please help me by reviewing it on Amazon?  Honestly, your reviews and positive WOM is what’s fueling the success of this book.  Last week was the best sales week since launch on Amazon for the book, and it came 2 months after the book’s launch.  That success is being fueled by you, I couldn’t afford to hire a publicist or do a lot of online advertising for the book like the big name authors can.  I had to rely on the fans of the book to make it successful, and y’all have done just that.  Thank you!

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Three Ways Your Marketing Needs to Adapt Before it Dies

Microsoft

Over the past 5 years or so, there has been a rush by companies to understand how to use social media tools.  Customers are using these tools, so brands rationalize that they need to learn how to use these tools to better sell to those customers via those tools.  The idea is to take a marketing strategy built around using analog channels, and incorporate digital tools into the mix.

The problem with this approach is that it doesn’t consider how customers are using these digital tools.  As late as 1990, there were three main channels to reach the majority of your customers:

1 – Television

2 – Radio

3 – Print

Because the majority of your customers were using these three channels for their news, information and entertainment.  Today, any person that has access to the internet and a laptop/tablet/smartphone is a potential content creation and distribution channel.  The marketing dynamic has completely changed in that customers are no longer looking to brands to get their information and marketing about a product, they are looking to each other.

So simply incorporating digital tools into your existing analog marketing strategy isn’t enough.  You have to adapt your strategy to reflect the fact that your customers have a greater ability to create and spread information than your brand does.  Re-read that sentence until it sinks in.

So in short, your marketing needs to adapt to make it more consistent with the content being created by other customers.  Here’s how you can do that:

1 – Make your marketing less about the product and more about how your customers use the product.  Think about why your customers buy your product and what they want to accomplish with it.  What problems are they trying to solve, what are they trying to create?  They are buying your product because it is going to help them do something.  Focus more of your marketing on that something.

2 – Make your marketing more useful.  Why have we seen a huge uptick in companies creating white papers and ebooks in the last few years?  Because this content is useful to potential customers.  It educates them, it helps them solve their problems.  Tying in with the above point, it helps them do something.  Create marketing that empowers your customers, and they will spread your marketing.

3 – Make your marketing more human.  Your marketing will resonate with your customers if it is spoken in a voice they understand: Their own.  That means not taking yourself too seriously, sometimes having a sense of humor, and being willing to admit your mistakes.  A couple of years ago The Red Cross had a huge social media faux pas, but they turned a potentially negative situation into a positive for the organization by responding in a human tone.

The main point to realize is that your customers are now creating far more information and content than your brand ever can.  Which means that most of the ‘marketing’ that’s done about and around your brand is not coming from you.  Your customers are now getting their information about your brand from each other, so you need to understand this, and adapt your marketing to make it consistent with what your customers are now expecting.

I also created this short video presentation talking more about this topic.  Let me know what you think!

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#Blogchat Topics For June Plus Two HUGE Co-Hosts!

JayBaerWe’ll have FIVE Sundays in June, as well as one rock star co-host!  Here’s the lineup:

June 2nd (Tonight!) – We’ll be discussing How to Use Topic Buckets For Your Business Blog.  This will be an expansion of last week’s post on the same topic.

June 9th – How to Think Like a Rock Star and Cultivate Fans On Your Blog!  This will be discussing how to create more engagement and fans on your blog, applying the principles from my book.

June 16th – Your favorite blog plugins.  We do this every few months, it’s your chance to share your favorite blog plugins and also pick up some new ones to improve the functionality of your blog!  Most of the discussion will be on WordPress by design, but we’ll be discussing which widgets etc are good for all blogs as well.

June 23rd – Jay Baer joins us to discuss how you can apply his concept of Youtility to your blogging efforts!  Jay will discuss his book Youtility with us as well as how shifting your content strategy to focus on teaching and helping versus selling can actually generate more sales!

June 30th – OPEN MIC! We do this the last Sunday of every month, no set blogging topic, we’ll chat up whatever blogging area you want to discuss!

(Cue cheezy late-night commercial television voice) But wait…that’s not all!

Mitch JoelIn July we will be joined by another awesome co-host as the one and only Mitch Joel will be joining us on July 7th to talk his new book Ctrl Alt Delete, as well as his approach to blogging.  I think it will be fascinating as Mitch does things a little bit differently than most of us when it comes to blogging, and I am anxious to learn from him!  Finally, another special surprise in July is that  Y’all Connect in Birmingham will host the first Live #Blogchat of 2013!  Y’all Connect will be on July 23rd and the first 100 attendees also receive a free copy of Think Like a Rock Star!

Additionally, I’m currently seeking a sponsor for #Blogchat in July.  Here’s more information on what you will get.  Obviously, the big advantage is to have your brand associated with #Blogchat and given prime exposure every Sunday night.  Each #Blogchat covers a different blogging topic and I will work with you to cover topics that are relevant to your business, or if you have certain questions about blogging and social media that you need help answering, we can focus our discussions on these areas as well.  A #Blogchat sponsorship is a great way to bring more exposure to your brand, but to also get answers to the blogging and social media questions you have.

Also, the sponsor will be given one ‘Sponsored’ post here.  Currently, the blog’s daily traffic and feed readership is right at 4,000, but that is rising, May was the blog’s best month ever for traffic.  Also, you’ll get a 200X200 pixel ad that will be placed at the top right of the blog for the month of July, as well.  This sponsorship is first-come, first-served and the Think Like A Rock Star newsletter subscribers got a heads-up on this opportunity on Friday, and I am already talking to a couple of interested companies.

So if you want to lock down the July sponsorship for #Blogchat, please email me ASAP for pricing.  With the lineup we’ll have this month with Jay co-hosting, then Mitch next month, the participation levels for #Blogchat this month and next should be at record levels.  Which is another reason why a #Blogchat sponsorship makes so much sense!

Here’s what Paper.li had to say about their #Blogchat sponsorship last December.

See y’all tonight at 8pm Central!

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Guest Post: How We Think Like a Rock Star at Paper.li

PaperliRockstars

Note: This is a guest post from Paper.li’s Kelly Hungerford, who heads up Marketing and Communications for the brand.  I asked Kelly to write this post for several reasons, but mainly because she’s been a huge supporter of me and my book Think Like a Rock Star for months now.  Plus, she’s working with Paper.li’s fans to build an advocacy program and I wanted her to talk about what the brand is doing and what they are learning because it is not an easy process.  But building a strong connection with your most passionate customers is definitely a worthwhile goal and I’m so grateful to Kelly for sharing what Paper.li is learning along the way.  Please drop Kelly a comment and let her know what you think!

A few months back, before Think Like a Rock Star was available for sale, I approached Mack for some advice. I wanted to pick his brain on the beginnings of a brand ambassador program for Paper.li.

After two years I felt we were ready to move make a commitment and take the plunge into developing a structure and process to begin formally recognize our core users — our advocates. I wanted a program that would

  • officially recognize our most loyal advocates and say thank you
  • enable them to take part in shaping the service in the future
  • empower them to inspire others

After speaking with speaking Mack I realized I couldn’t answer a fundamental question, which was “what are the key elements that would excite your users in a program?. “  I could only make an assumption.

I had spent the past two years listening, responding and engaging but still didn’t understand enough to formalize a process around my fans. I needed to change my approach. Mack sent me an early copy of TLARS and I began reading and realized that I needed to bend my ear past listening to achieve deeper understanding.

Applying TLARS principals at Paper.li

I spent the next 4 months fine-tuning my listening skills, applying and adapting approaches from TLARS to my work. Four months may sound like a long time, but I purposely took extra time to evaluate our users’ needs for three reasons:

1- Resources: Paper.li is still a small company, with colleagues covering multiple rolls. NOT doing my research will impact my team and create more work for everyone

2- Goodwill:  we feel a large sense of responsibility to get things right when we roll out enhancements or launch new features. Formalizing a program is no different. Their time is valuable and we value their time.

3- No revenue pressure: my aim is to reward our most loyal users, not to increase any revenue. We recognize the benefits of formalizing a relationship for both sides, but there is was no time pressure to roll anything out before it was ready.

 

And these were the changes that were implemented:

1- Increased engagement outside of our owned channels

I noticed that when I engaged with users under the Paper.li name, I naturally put on my “helping hat”. I was always looking after issues, giving advice, solving problems. This is a great way to build trust and keep users loyal, but it is a bit similar to going to grab a beer with a colleague and only talking about work the entire time — it doesn’t lend to interesting conversations.

So I increased the engagement under my own name and out from underneath the Paper.li hood. This may seem like a natural thing to do, but when you work for a company, it doesn’t come naturally. The natural thing is to interact with your community through official channels and campaigns set-up through your company.

One of the first outside events I organized for our community was a #BlogChat sponsorship. Although it was company sponsored, I was there on my own time and under my own name. By reaching out this way, the dynamic changed and so did the information flow. I was able to listen without a customer service or marketing hat on my head, participate with my community to better understand what was important to them.

2- Quit making assumptions

There is nothing wrong with assumptions, but when you are structuring something around your users, for your users, why make any assumptions if you don’t have to?

We have the tools available today to virtually reach and shake hands. We should use them to our advantage to better incorporate our users voices into our organizations and create more experiences for them, with them.

I stopped making assumptions and started sending an email, tweet or post to get the information I needed. It took more time, but it yielded the information I was looking for.

3- Leveraged our support function

Where I didn’t have an answer, I asked. This sounds like a “duh” statement, but I am convinced that 50% of the time we don’t have the answers we require because we simply haven’t asked the right question — or any question.

Both Twitter and our support forum give us the opportunity to engage and inquire, but most users contact us via Twitter for quick responses, so this wasn’t the place to ask 20 questions. I opted for our support desk and we began increasing our conversation with our end users there.

We added a simple question like this “Would you have time for one more question?” and then asked our question.

That extra one minute invested to formulate a question not only resulted in beautiful feedback but ultimately strengthened and built a stronger mutual relationship between our team and our users.

This isn’t something that we implemented just to understand our advocates wishes better, this was a change across the board.  By going the extra mile we have seen our advocate circle organically grow and we are not just responding to requests, we are building relationships. In fact, a lot of our users just drop us a line to say hi during the week now.

 

The results:

After adjusting our listening, analyzing results and putting a few internal processes in place, we were able to structure the first phase of a very humble ambassador program — around user feedback– for our advocates.

Here’s what they asked for along with what we were able to implement to get the program started.

1-  Direct contact with our team: via email, G+, Skype or a special address in our forum, our advocates wanted to be able to tap into at any time. This is great for not only for keeping in touch or answering questions but is essential for getting feedback on features or input on new ideas.

Solution: We set up a private G+ community, gave access to key members of the team via direct email and Skype.

2- Early notification of product releases: our users want to be empowered. They want to show their audience what’s happening before it’s made public. They also want to educate others.

Solution: We hold G+ product, information and best practices hangouts. We invite users to speak and share their impressions with the rest of the group, share best practices and hear what’s new.

3- Badges/recognition: who said the badge is dead? Our core users want to show what they are a part of. They are proud to be associated with the company and would like to show their pride off. Additionally, they wanted to be easily identifiable by other publishers.

Solution: a badge that identifies them as an ambassador/super-user. They will be highlighted in blog posts, cited as distinguished publishers when asked by PR, included in presentations, blog posts and so forth.

4- Testing new product: this take number two a step further. Our users want to be a part of what’s happening and help shape the product for the future.

Solution: shared access on our pre-prod environment. We inform them when new features, improvements or enhancements are ready and let them test. The feedback has been great and they are having a blast and they are helping us resolve issue and define new ways of working and thinking about our product.

5- Receive Swiss chocolate: no kidding! Our fans would like to get their hands on authentic “can’t be found in the supermarket” Swiss chocolate.

Solution: Unfortunately, this part of the program isn’t yet in place. it isn’t easy to ship Swiss chocolate (or food) internationally. We’ll work on this.

Our ambassador program is truly a work in progress. There is no glam, fancy announcements, t-shirts or mugs being handed out. But the anticipation of how this can progress is as exciting as the feedback that we’re receiving from our advocates.

We’ve succeed in pulling back the curtain back and incorporating our most passionate users (formally) into our team as honorary members, giving them a backstage pass and total access to us. We’ve truly begun to Think Like a Rock Star at Paper.li and we’re proud of it!