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What Amanda Palmer Teaches Us About Asking For and Receiving Help

I was delighted to see that TED posted Amanda Palmer’s talk from last month on its site.  Amanda is one of the main music case studies in Think Like a Rock Star, and it’s because she does an amazing job of not only connecting with her fans, but asking her fans for help and support.  She is constantly giving her fans free and secret shows, then again she is constantly asking her fans to help her, either by providing her with an item she needs, or by supporting efforts like her record-setting Kickstarter project.

But the core lesson of her talk was about the power of asking for help.  This is a topic that resonated with me because it’s one I struggle with.  As Amanda said in her talk, asking for help makes us vulnerable.  A lot of people don’t like being vulnerable or being put in a vulnerable position.  But the upside of this is that it also makes it easier for others to connect with us when we are vulnerable.

Every week during #Blogchat I will have people tell me that they get so much value from the chat.  That’s honestly a big reason why I continue doing it, because I know it is helping so many people become better bloggers.  I love that I have created a way for hundreds of people to come together every Sunday night and help each other.  But I absolutely hate the idea of bringing on sponsors for #Blogchat, because I hate asking for help.  Honestly, I rarely push for sponsors unless there is a perfect fit, or if I really need some extra money.  Otherwise, I simply hate doing it because it feels like I am trying to monetize something that we all create together.

But with my book, it’s a completely different story.  I love promoting the book, because I don’t see it as asking people to help me, I see it as asking people to support an idea.  People have asked me over the last year ‘How can I help support YOU and your book?’  I clam up when I hear that, because I don’t want these people to support me, I want them to be excited about the idea behind the book.

So in light of Amanda’s talk, I found that dichotomy interesting between my reluctance to ask for help personally, versus my wanting help spreading an idea I am passionate about.  I’m interested to hear what you think about it.

Here’s her TED talk:

[ted id=1682]

And in light of her talk, I wanted to make it the focus of our first #RockstarChat on Wednesday at 1pm Central on Twitter.  We’ll chat about how brands can do a better job of asking their fans to help and support them.  Hope to see you then!

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Announcing #RockstarChat!

RockStarChatIf you are subscribed to my Think Like a Rock Star newsletter, you got a heads-up on this announcement yesterday.  Starting next month, I will be launching a new Twitter chat, #RockstarChat!  This chat will be about helping you cultivate fans and connect with them.  It will be focused on many of the same lessons in the book Think Like a Rock Star, but the goal is to help you cultivate a fan-centric brand or organization.

Now as for the day and time, the day will be every Wednesday.  The time is probably going to be early afternoon around noon or 1pm Central.  But if another time, like 7 or 8pm Central like #Blogchat is would work better for you, let me know.  I will say that unless there is overwhelming support for having the chat at night, it will be during the day.

Next Wednesday the 6th will be the first #RockstarChat, and it will be for one hour, just like #Blogchat.  The idea behind both the Think Like a Rock Star newsletter and #RockstarChat is to create resources that can help your company or organization’s efforts to connect with your fans.  Think Like a Rock Star isn’t just a book, it’s about creating a movement of helping brands become more fan-centric.  In the next few weeks I’ll announcing additional ways that I hope to help you in these efforts.  And if you have any ideas on how I can help your company better connect with its fans or what else you would like to see offered, please email me.

So please leave a comment letting me know if you would rather have #RockstarChat at noon/1pm Central on Wednesdays, or at 7/8pm Central.  I’m SO excited about this chat, it’s going to be an absolute blast!

Also, if you are interested in having me present Think Like a Rock Star at your event, please email me to lock in your date.  I am very close to announcing multiple new stops on the Think Like a Rock Star Book Tour, and dates in April and May especially are starting to fill up.

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The Key to Creating Content That Resonates Online

social media, companies, marketing, ceo

Create content that’s written from the point of view of the person it is intended for.

That’s the simple answer.  Figuring out exactly what that means is a bit more involved, but it’s still not as difficult of a process as we make it out to be.

First, it’s great to focus on making your content more ‘shareable’ via social media.  Or to optimize for search engines.  Such tactics are very smart and they help your content become more accessible and findable.

But, those efforts shouldn’t fundamentally change the content you create.  Your underlying goal should always be to create content that’s written from the point of view of the person it is intended for.

The problem is, too often we write content from our own point of view, without even realizing it.  Here’s an example:  Let’s say we are blogging for a company that creates digital camcorders.  If I am in the market for a digital camcorder to record myself speaking, which post is more valuable to me?

Post A – “Ten Reasons Why the Zoomia 3000 Is the Perfect Digital Camcorder For Your Every Need”

Post B – “Ten Steps To Shooting the Perfect Indoor Video, in Any Type of Lighting”

The second post addresses my needs.  The problem with most content that comes from brands is it focuses moreso on the product versus the actual thing we want to do with the product!  My problem isn’t that I need to know why I should buy a Zoomia 3000, my problem is that I need to find an affordable solution to shooting a high-quality video of myself speaking.

If your brand wants to instantly make it’s content more valuable to its customers, then create content that focuses on how your customers are using your product, versus the product itself.

Graco doesn’t blog about its products, it blogs about parenthood.

Patagonia doesn’t blog about its products, it blogs about the environment and outdoor activites.

Red Bull doesn’t create videos about energy drinks, it creates videos about athletes engaging in extreme sports.

Find the Bigger Idea behind your content, and blog about that.  You can still blog about your products, but instead you’ll be creating content that focuses on the ‘bigger, cooler thing’, as Kathy Sierra puts it, that your product is a part of.

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Attention Brands: Sounding Human Makes You More Likeable

JeepTweetSo this week a few high-profile brands apparently had their Twitter accounts hacked, including Burger King and Jeep.  Burger King tweeted to Jeep that they were glad they were back, and Jeep tweeted the above.

And everyone goes apeshit saying they love it and how awesome it is that the brands are showing a sense of humor and sounding human.

Jeep2TweetPeople relate more to brands that speak in a voice they recognize: Their own.  We are all vulnerable, we all make mistakes.  The brands that win are the ones that speak in the same voice as their customers with the same flaws and human imperfections.

People buy from brands that they can relate to and relating becomes easier when brands show their human side.  Hopefully exchanges like the above will become the norm so we can stop gushing about them when they happen.

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How Maker’s Mark Avoided a Social Media Firestorm By Listening to Their Customers

Maker's MarkAlthough I am not a drinker and haven’t consumed a drop of bourbon in my life, I am a big fan of how Maker’s Mark strives to have a close relationship with its customers.  In fact I did an extensive case study on the company’s excellent brand ambassador program for Think Like a Rock Star.

Recently the brand got into some hot water with its customers when it announced that it was diluting its product from 45% alcohol by volume, to 42%.  Obviously, this is not a decision that customers of a brand that makes whisky would be excited about, and Maker’s Mark’s customers quickly took to social media and email to voice their displeasure over the move.

And not surprisingly, Maker’s Mark quickly reversed course, and announced on its Facebook page that their customers were right:

While we thought we were doing what’s right, this is your brand – and you told us in large numbers to change our decision.

You spoke. We listened. And we’re sincerely sorry we let you down.

Notice how Maker’s Mark not only apologized to their customers, but acknowledged that ‘this is your brand’.  If you were a customer that was upset about Maker’s Mark’s decision, how can you stay mad at the brand after reading this?

There’s two very important business lessons here:

1 – Remember that Maker’s Mark has a robust brand ambassador program in place.  It’s one of the largest in the world, and numbers over a hundred thousand.  This gives Maker’s Mark a direct feedback channel to its most passionate customers.  Sure, it’s one thing when ‘drive-by’ customers are slamming you on Facebook, but it’s quite another when people that have been members of your ambassador program for a decade or more, suddenly tell you that your latest move will cause them to stop giving you their business.  THAT’S when you know it’s serious.  Maker’s Mark got feedback on this move almost immediately from its most passionate supporters, and that helped the brand make an informed decision.

2 – Whether or not a social media firestorm happens is always dictated by how the brand responds to its customers.  It’s never the company’s initial action that creates the firestorm, that’s just the spark, then you have upset customers voicing their concern to the brand.  THEN it depends on how the brand responds.  If Maker’s Mark had ignored their customers, or worse yet, told them they were wrong, then the flames would have been fanned, and the anger would have gotten worse.  But Maker’s Mark didn’t do that, they listened to their customers and admitted that their customers were right.  The potential firestorm was diffused because the brand listened to its customers.

Remember, it’s never the company’s initial action that determines if there will be a social media firestorm, it’s how the brand responds to its customers.  Maker’s Mark just gave us a textbook example of how to properly respond to angry customers.  HT to Jackie for this story.

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What’s Your Motivation?

MP900438966I was just on Facebook and fell down a bit of a digital rabbit hole.  Someone had linked to a new blog post from a blogger I hadn’t read in years, so I checked out their blog.  I started looking at their blog roll, and noticed several blogs I hadn’t read in years.  I clicked on one, and noticed the most ‘recent’ post was from 2010.  I started backtracking, she had written a post every few months, one post was announcing that she was ‘back’ to blogging, and that blogging was a great way to build your reputation online, establish thought leadership, etc.  Then she didn’t blog again for several months, then again several months later, which was her last post.

Let’s be honest, if you are a blogger that wants to use your blog as a tool to build your influence/thought leadership, etc., you are going to be asked to give a lot more than you get.  That’s pretty much how you build a name for yourself, you continuously provide smart and helpful content, and over time, people start to notice.  Then in an ideal world, opportunities open up to you.  Maybe you get a job offer, or work offers, maybe a book deal, perhaps you are asked to speak at an event.

But it’s sometimes very easy to ask ‘what’s in it for me?’  It can be tough to stay motivated to spend 5 hours every week on your blog, if no one is commenting and no one is subscribing and you are getting no business from it.

I’ve known countless bloggers that have launched blogs as a tool to grow their business, or to promote themselves, and they toss in the towel after a few weeks because they didn’t see the immediate results they were looking for.

On the other hands, I’ve known many bloggers that toiled away year after year with little to no recognition, then suddenly in year 5 or 6, it all takes off and suddenly everyone notices them and loves them.

What’s the difference and why do some bloggers quit while others press on?  I think it comes back to motivation.  From what I have noticed, most of the truly successful bloggers are motivated by helping others be better at something.  When that’s your source of motivation, then you stop carrying that mental balance sheet of how much you are ‘giving’ your readers versus how much you are ‘getting’ back.  Or at least it doesn’t matter as much.

For the first two years that I ran #Blogchat, I made a grand total of $800 directly off the chat.  If I had launched #Blogchat because I wanted to make money off it, I would have likely killed it after a month or 2.  But my motivation in starting and continuing the chat has remained the same:  Helping other bloggers become better at what they do.  That’s it.  I see the chat as a way of ‘giving back’, because blogging has given me so much, I am happy to create a way to help other bloggers achieve some of the success I have.

What’s your motivation for blogging?

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Why Most People Totally Waste Their Money (and Boss’ Money) at Conferences

SXSWCrowd08

A few years ago I was at a conference, and I was doing a special session where attendees got 15 minutes to ‘Ask an expert’ about their blogging questions.  A girl came up to me, and told me about a problem she had with her blog at work.  She slumped as she told me the problem, and her body language screamed ‘I have no idea what to do!’

So she told me her problem and I said ‘Here’s what you should do:’, and she immediately perked up, sat up straight, and grabbed her pen.  I started telling her exactly what to do, and she started scribbling furiously.  I gave her the exact advice she needed, and after about 2 mins of furious writing, she announced ‘Ok…thanks!’, and got up and left.

As soon as she started writing, I made a mistake.  What I should have told her was ‘No, put the pen down, and listen to me.  Because you aren’t going to understand what I am telling you otherwise.’  This is the mistake that most people make when they attend conferences, they go, take copious notes, and come back to work on Monday with pages of hastily scribbled chicken-scratch that makes no sense to them because they don’t have the speaker there to interpret the mess for them.

The first social media conference I ever attended (and spoke at) was SXSW in 2008.  It was ah-mazing.  Actually, the conference itself was terrible.  The sessions were boring and I got almost no value from them.  But what made the trip so valuable for me was the conversations I had with other attendees, either in the hallways, or at dinners, parties, etc.  And not just the attendees, I got to speak with speakers as well.  All along the way, I was getting to talk to experts and peers about my exact problems.  I got exact advice on the issues I was dealing with, and I was able to share advice as well.

‘The magic happens in the hallways’.  That idea always stuck with me.  Attendees seem to get the most value from an event when they put down their pens, stop taking notes and actually listen to the speakers and their fellow attendees.  And the event creates more value when its less about lectures, and more about interactions among the speakers and the attendees, and especially the attendees themselves.  Then about it, if you have a blogging question, what solution works better for you, listening to me tell you how another company solved a similar problem, or having a group discussion about how we can solve your problem?

We took this into consideration when we designed the agenda for BlogHOT.  We wanted the focus to be on teaching you how to be a better blogger.  The agenda is set up so the majority of the time you will be in a session where you are interacting directly with the speaker, and other attendees.  That means you will be getting specific solutions to your blogging problems.  It also means you will be interacting directly with other people that have dealt with the exact same blogging issues that you have.  So you’ll be getting the exact solution to the problems you are facing today, but you’ll also get advice on how to avoid tomorrow’s problems as well.

The goal of BlogHOT isn’t to tell you how to be a better blogger, we are going to teach you how to be a better blogger.

What typically happens when you get back from most blogging or social media conferences?  You probably take all your notes, type them up, and distribute them to your team to discuss at the next marketing and/or social media meeting.  And then you remind everyone of the blogging issues that you went to the conference to get help with, and then ask them to refer to a particular paragraph of your notes that covers the solution to that problem.  Right?

The difference with BlogHOT is that when you return to your office after attending, you are going to show your team what you learned. You aren’t going to give them notes, you are going to teach them how to solve the problems that your team needed help with.  You are going to open up the blogging dashboard and show them how to write a more captivating headline.  You are going to go to Google Analytics and show them how to determine if the blog content is creating engagement and leads.

You are going to be the teacher, not the note-distributor.  That’s why your boss is going to thank you for asking to go to BlogHOT 😉

Now BlogHOT is not cheap, it’s a big investment.  But it’s just that, it’s an investment.  That investment is going to pay off because you are going to get the exact answers to your blogging questions, and the blogging efforts of your company will immediately improve as a result of you attending BlogHOT.  And as a bonus, if you register by Friday the 15th, you’ll get a $100 discount off the regular registration price.

Need help convincing your boss?  No problem, we’ve even created a Letter to Management, just download it, fill in the costs and your information, and send it on!

BlogHOT is March 25-27th in Los Angeles, I hope to see you there, if you’ll be attending please leave a comment so we can connect, and make sure to follow the #BlogHOT13 hashtag on Twitter to see who else is going plus keep up on the latest event news!

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Why We All Need to STFU About Trying to Be ‘Awesome’

Last Sunday’s #Blogchat topic was whether bloggers should try to post consistently, or only when they have something ‘epic’ or ‘awesome’ to share.  I’ve made my thoughts known on this topic, I believe that we can’t create awesome content until we first create a lot of non-awesome content.  Blogging is like anything else, we get better with experience.

Throughout the course of the conversation, many people offered that you need to be creating epic/awesome content, or else what’s the point?  The message was:  If you can’t blog something epic, then don’t blog at all.

Then Marcus walked in and dropped this:

And there you go.  If you are someone that’s considering launching a blog (whether for yourself or your business) and all you are hearing is ‘If you can’t be awesome, then don’t blog’, what’s your reaction going to be?  You’re probably not going to blog because you don’t know how to be an awesome blogger!

The punchline?  The people that are telling you that you have to be awesome to be a blogger didn’t know how to be awesome when they started either!  In fact many of them are probably still struggling mightily to be awesome every single day and many of them are failing every single day.  Lord knows I fall into this camp far more often than I would like.

So let me clear the air right now:  If you are a new blogger, or you’re thinking about starting a new blog, do NOT focus on only creating ‘awesome’ content.  Focus on doing the best you can, and learning as you go.  If you do that, then the awesome will come.

And for those of you that think that’s BS, that I should NEVER tell anyone not to be awesome, STFU.  If you want to see other bloggers be awesome, then stop telling them to be awesome and show them how to be awesome.

We need fewer talkers, and more teachers.  And Marcus is right, we need to stop scaring away new bloggers by asking them to reach an impossibly high standard from Day One.

A standard that many of us experienced bloggers miss every single day.

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How Rock Stars Will Forever Change the World of Marketing

Last year Nielsen surveyed 28,000 internet users to discover what sources they trusted.  It should come as no surprise to anyone that the winner was Earned Media (media created about a source by someone other than the source) at 92%.  The second result at 70% was customer reviews online.  Paid Media, media that a source pays for to promote itself, fell in trust down to 47%, falling by 24%, 20% and 25% yearly since 2009.  Earned Media, especially Word of Mouth, is up 18% since 2007.

In other words, if someone else is talking about a brand, we trust them, but if the brand is talking about itself, we don’t.  This should come as a surprise to no one.

The disconnect is that brands know this as well, yet they continue to spend billions every year on advertising and marketing in an effort to get the attention of a group of people that have little to no interest in paying attention to them.  Brands seek to grow by acquiring new customers, and they create marketing strategies built around this goal.  But getting the attention of people that have little to no loyalty to your brand (as well as little to no interest in what you have to say) is a very expensive game.  For decades, the marketing idea has been to accept that most people won’t see your message the first time, so you just repeat it constantly until they do, and then pray that it resonates.

Rock stars play a different marketing game.

Rock stars actually have the exact same marketing goal as brands, they also want to acquire new customers.  But rock stars don’t focus on acquiring new customers via advertising and promotion, ie Paid Media, they focus on acquiring new customers via the efforts of their existing customers.  And specifically, a small subset of their existing customers, they focus on connecting with their biggest fans. Rock stars find the people that are the most fanatically passionate about them, and then connect with them and empower them to market the rock star to other fans.

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The benefits are obvious:  Rock stars are connecting with the group that has the most incentive to positively promote the rock star to other potential customers.  How many rock stars paid CBS $4M for a 30-second spot in this year’s Super Bowl?  Exactly, rock stars don’t have to throw money at crappy advertising that’s designed to gain the attention of people that are purposely trying to avoid the brand’s marketing messages.  They shift control of their marketing messages to the very people that customers trust the most: Their fans.

This is how rock stars are going to change marketing forever.  Rock stars have always built their careers around remaining connected to their biggest fans.  Brands have built themselves and their marketing strategies around gaining market share by acquiring new customers and effectively building the largest promotional megaphone.  That model worked well in the 50s when there were three media sources, the newspaper, television and radio.  Then, if you could afford to get your message distributed via those three sources, you won.

Today, the game has changed.  Instead of 3 media sources, here are 300,000,000, and 99.99999% of them are customer-driven.  Anyone that has a smartphone in their pocket has a promotional megaphone that’s more trustworthy than anything the average brand can create.

This is exactly why I wrote Think Like a Rock Star, to help brands learn to navigate a marketing world that rock stars conquered decades ago.  How much differently would the world of marketing look if brands didn’t focus on acquiring new customers via advertising, but instead connected directly with and delighted their biggest and most passionate fans?

It’s a question that your brand had better figure out the answer to quickly, because that’s where we are headed, like it or not.  Because there is big money to be made by embracing your biggest fans.  That’s another lesson that rock stars learned decades ago.

When will your brand wake up?

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What Comes After Social Media?

J0289552I started blogging in 2005, and started checking out Twitter and Facebook in 2007.  While these tools have been popular topics for individuals for a while now, companies really didn’t begin to take an interest in social media as a pseudo-business tool till around 2008 or so.  So for five years, social media has been the next ‘it’ thing.

But eventually, we’ll all move on to talking and obsessing about something else.  Even now, some people are beginning to say that social media’s bubble is about to burst.  So when social media is officially no longer the ‘cool kid’ in school, what will take it’s place?

One idea that’s been gaining traction in the last year or so is that of Big Data.  In simplified terms, it’s collecting massive amounts of data about a sample (such as your customer base), and then analyzing that data in order to spot trends and characteristics about the customers that you might otherwise miss.  Currently, there are few software packages that can sufficiently analyze data on a massive enough scale to qualify as ‘big data’.  Putting that bottleneck aside, there are huge potential privacy concerns over the role of Big Data, GigaOm recently had a nice piece that outlines some of the possible negative scenarios.

But beyond those concerns, what strikes me about the Big Data discussion is that marketers are still trapped in a world where they are trying to understand the activities that customers engage in instead of focusing on what motivates them to engage in that behavior.

It’s not about understanding what behaviors your customers exhibit, it’s about understanding your customers.

Marketers don’t need to focus on Big Data, they need to focus on Big Understanding.  It’s one thing for Wal-Mart to understand that customers that shop from 8am-10am on Saturday spend 21% more than customer that shop from 10am-noon on the same day.  It’s quite another for the retailer to understand why this shift in behavior takes place.  Do the people that show earlier on Saturday simply have more money to spend?  Do they enjoy coming earlier before the crowds arrive so they can relax and spend more time shopping (and more money)?  It’s almost impossible to tell from just looking at numbers.

This is part of the reason why I posted yesterday that brands need to start committing to talking directly to their customers.  To me, this is one of the great and mostly untapped benefits of social media.  These tools give brands a way to talk directly with their customers for really the first time ever.  Brands need to commit to having more direct interactions with their customers.

Because interactions lead to understanding and understanding leads to trust.  And trust leads to advocacy.

It’s not about the tools and the technologies, it’s about what they allow us to do.  Don’t focus on the tools, focus on the connections that the tools help facilitate.