MackCollier.com

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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.

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Sorry Brands, Like It Or Not You’re Going to Have to Start Talking To Your Customers

In Think Like a Rock Star I devote an entire chapter to giving brands a step-by-step process for responding to customers online.  It’s honestly the most instructional chapter of the entire book, but I wanted to do this because in general companies have no idea how to respond to customers.  Not only do they not understand how to respond to customers, they don’t understand how other customers view customer feedback.

For example, emarketer ran a study that was recently done that found that 26% of US internet users distrusted a fellow customer’s online review if it was too negative.  As customers, we have pretty sophisticated BS meters.  I can tell if a company is trying to BS me, but I can also typically tell if a customer is going overboard in attacking a brand.  At some point, a customer’s criticism stops reflecting poorly on the brand, and starts reflecting poorly on the customer.

You can’t understand a conversation that you aren’t a part of.  

This is exactly why the smart companies are the ones that are connecting with their customers online.  Because by doing so, they are getting a better understanding of their customers as well as the online conversation around their brand.

One of the main recurring themes in Think Like a Rock Star is the importance of why companies need to better understand who their customers are.  In most cases, there’s an alarming disconnect between who the brand thinks its customers are, and vice-versa.  That disconnect in understanding exists in great part because the brand and customer have no real interaction with each other.

Perhaps the one thing I love about social media more than any other from a marketing standpoint is that now customers have the tools available to them to quickly and easily create content about a brand, and respond to a brand.  So brands are being forced, for the first time, to answer those customers.  They are being dragged (some of them kicking and screaming) into an era where they have to interact directly with their customers.

Which is scary as hell for many brands today, but it will lead to big benefits tomorrow.  Because interaction leads to understanding, which leads to trust, which leads to advocacy.

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Subscribe to the Think Like a Rock Star Newsletter and Get the Introduction For Free

RockstarEnables

Over the next few weeks I’ll be rolling out a few things to help make the launch of Think Like a Rock Star as successful as possible.  But a successful launch is really a small piece of the puzzle.  The goal in writing Think Like a Rock Star was to create a reference that not only helps brands understand their fans and who they are, but how to connect with them as well.  So much of the ‘marketing’ for the book is actually going to be about ways to support the readers of the book and their efforts to cultivate fans.

That starts tomorrow, when I launch the Think Like a Rock Star Newsletter.  This weekly newsletter will be a tool to support both current and potential readers of the book, and to help companies better connect with their fans.  I’ve designed it to compliment the teachings of the book, but you won’t have to buy the book to benefit from the newsletter.

And the best part? If you subscribe to the newsletter, I’ll send you the Introduction of Think Like a Rock Star for free!  This will give you a taste of what you’ll get in the book, and will be a good ‘Introduction’ to what we’ll cover.  If you want to subscribe, just submit your email below.  You’ll get one email from MailChimp confirming your email, then I will email you personally with your copy of he Introduction.  If you subscribe and don’t see the confirmation email from MailChimp then please check your spam folder.


I hope you’ll be a part of the movement to help more brands embrace and empower their biggest fans.  And if you haven’t pre-ordered your copy of Think Like a Rock Star yet, please do, it comes out in just two months!

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Patrick Murphy Excels At Winning Games and Winning Fans

Alabama softball fans that ordered season tickets had a bit of a surprise when their tickets arrived yesterday.  They were expecting the tickets, but probably weren’t expecting to see the person that hand-delivered them.

Head Coach Patrick Murphy.

Every year, Coach Murphy and the Alabama softball players make a point to go out and hand-deliver tickets to the fans that order season packages.  Recall that last month we talked about how you create loyalty in your customers by rewarding them after the purchase.  Alabama softball fans were expecting their season tickets this week, but having the head coach and team deliver them is the reward.

It’s also an example of how Coach Murphy and the team created something amazing for the people that love them.  To the fan, this moment of surprise and delight also validates why they support the program.  The fan feels better about supporting the program but also in a way feels better about themselves for supporting a head coach that would do this.

And to clarify, Patrick Murphy is only the 2nd softball coach that Alabama has ever had.  Murphy was named the coach in 1998 and was named assistant head coach when the program launched two years earlier in 1996.  So he had to literally build not only the program from the ground up, but its fanbase as well.  He knows the value of connecting with the program’s fans, and how important they are.  The first year of the program’s existence, the average attendance at softball games was 50 people.  Today, Alabama’s softball team is among the national leaders in attendance, and in 2011, the program set an NCAA record for single-day attendance at a softball event.

Oh, and winning helps.  Last year Coach Murphy led Alabama to its first softball National Championship in school history.  Showing your biggest supporters and fans that you appreciate them doesn’t hurt either.

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Three Plugins to Add Today to Immediately Make Your WordPress Blog More Awesome

SunniSuperPowerWhen it comes to blogging (much like any form of social media) there really is no ‘silver bullet’, but these three plugins will instantly create a better experience for your readers.  Which is always a good thing.

1 – Comment Redirect.  Easily the best plugin I have ever added here.  What this plugin does is when someone leaves a comment for the first time here, it redirects them to a page of your choosing.  For me, it sends first-time commenters here to this page and thanks them for commenting!  You can read the comments for yourself to see what everyone thinks about the idea.

2 – WPTouch.  This is a plugin that I wish I had added at least a year ago.  It makes a mobile-friendly version of your blog!  From a useability standpoint it makes a night and day difference when viewed on a smartphone.  Here’s a recent review I did of the plugin with before and after screenshots.  Anyone viewing your blog on an iPhone will LOVE you for adding this!  Now there is a caveat that a few people said the plugin didn’t play nicely with their particular theme, so check the comments in that post for more information on that.

3 – Popular Posts.  This creates links to your most popular posts for the life of the blog, and parks them in a widget on your sidebar.  Several times, this one plugin has sent me a flood of traffic as a major site will pick up one of the posts from the sidebar under Popular Posts (look to the far right sidebar and you’ll see it).  It’s a great way to pull out some of those classic posts you wrote 2-3 years ago and have forgotten about.

 

So there’s three plugins that you can quickly add and immediately improve the experience on your blog for your readers, especially #1 and #2.

Which plugin are you using to create an amazing experience for your readers?  What would you add to this list?

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The ‘How Do I Get More Sales’ Dilemma and Why Its Not Always Social Media’s Fault

cost of social mediaYesterday I read an article that Amber-Lee shared here in the comments from a gentleman that was basically saying that Social Media was worthless in driving sales. This was my favorite quote from the article:

Like anything else, if you want even a 1 percent chance of succeeding with social media, it requires a strategy and a commitment. Bet you either don’t have a strategy or you have a strategy created by a person or people who have never been successful with social media…because no one really has been.

Then later yesterday I was running some errands and as I was out driving, I heard a local hotel advertising their Valentine’s Day special for couples.  They told you all about the wonderful room you’d get, the amenities at the hotel that were provided, a meal at the on-site restaurant, etc.  Really selling you on how amazing this offer was, then at the end of the commercial they give you…their street address.

No telephone number, no website address, they don’t even clarify the city in which the hotel is located (and it’s in an area affectionately known as ‘The Quad Cities’).  They used the radio spot to do a great job of selling you on why this hotel and its Valentine’s Day offer was wonderful, then when it came time to close the sale, they only gave you a street address as a way to contact them.

The lesson here is:  You can’t blame the tool when you don’t use it correctly.  This makes about as much sense as driving a Hummer into the lake and when it sinks, cursing it as being a terrible boat.

The question isn’t ‘can social media effectively drive sales for my business?’, the question is ‘do I know how to effectively use social media to drive sales for my business?’  It’s been well established that social media CAN be used as a tool to drive sales.  It’s also been well established that many businesses have great difficulty in using social media as a tool to directly drive sales.

See what I did there?  I added that many businesses have great difficulty in using social media as a tool to directly drive sales.  Social media simply doesn’t function very well as a direct sales channel.  It does functions exceptionally well as a channel to build networks and relationships.  And frequently as a result of those relationships, you can generate sales.

But as with any form of marketing or contact you have with your customers, your ability to use the tool successfully depends on your understanding of its proper use.  Often the blame falls on the shoulders of the carpenter, not the hammer.

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Think Like a Rock Star Book Tour Update Plus Pre-Order Offers For You

It’s been literally nine months since I first announced that I would be writing Think Like a Rock Star.  Yes, I probably announced it too early, but I was too excited to keep the news to myself!  Today I wanted to share with you how you can have me present Think Like a Rock Star as part of the book tour but I also wanted to share a few pre-order offers I’ve created for you.

First, let me explain why pre-orders are valuable to me, the author.  More pre-orders do three important things:

1 – They signal to booksellers that they need to order more copies of the book to meet demand.

2 – They signal to my publisher that they need to give more marketing support to this book due to increased demand.

3 – It helps the book reach those magical Bestseller lists because all pre-orders count toward sales for the 1st week the book is available.

Now so far, my publisher is thrilled with the the pre-order numbers for the book, but as part of the learning process for me (and as a way to reward you for pre-ordering the book), I’ve created a few pre-order offers for you.

First, you can pre-order the book now, and both Amazon and Barnes and Noble are carrying it currently for $12.27.  I’m not sure about B&N, but Amazon will give you the lower price if the book drops in price after you pre-order it but before it comes out.  For example, some people pre-ordered Think Like a Rock Star when Amazon first listed it in October for $22.  Those people will pay no more than $12.27 for the book since the price has dropped.

So here’s my pre-order offers for you(All of these offers expire on March 1st, or when they are filled, whichever comes first):

1 – Pre-order two(2) copies of Think Like a Rock Star and I will write a free guest post for your blog on how companies or bloggers can connect with their fans (minimum of 500 words).  The post will tie into the themes of Think Like a Rock Star, and along with the guest post you can do a giveaway for the 2nd copy of the book that you pre-ordered!  It will be a nice way to get your blog some extra exposure, your readers will appreciate the giveaway, plus it will help me raise awareness for the book.  The guest post must run on your blog between April 1st and April 15th, 2013.  I will also promote it on Twitter for you.  This offer is limited to the first three(3) people that email me a copy of their receipt from either Amazon or B&N that shows they have pre-ordered two(2) copies of the book.  You can pre-order Think Like a Rock Star here from Amazon and here from Barnes and Noble.

2 – Pre-order five(5) copies of Think Like a Rock Star and I’ll do an interview on your blog about how companies and bloggers can cultivate fans (3-5 questions, emailed to me beforehand).  In addition, I will give you a free 30-minute phone consultation (A $150.00 value).  This can be about whatever you want, how your company can better connect with its fans, how you (or your company) can improve its blogging efforts, whatever.  The interview post must run on your blog between April 1st and April 15th, 2013.  I will also promote it on Twitter for you.  This offer is limited to the first three(3) people that email me a copy of their receipt from either Amazon or B&N that shows they have pre-ordered five(5) copies of the book, and residents of the United States.  You can pre-order Think Like a Rock Star here from Amazon and here from Barnes and Noble.

3 – Pre-order ten(10) copies of Think Like a Rock Star and I will give you two one-hour phone consultations, the first hour will be in May 2013, the second hour will be in June 2013.  This is a $500 value, just for pre-ordering ten (10) copies of the book.  This offer is limited to the first three(3) people that email me a copy of their receipt from either Amazon or B&N that shows they have pre-ordered ten (10) copies of the book, and residents of the United States.  You can pre-order Think Like a Rock Star here from Amazon and here from Barnes and Noble. (UPDATE: This offer is no longer available!)

4 – Pre-order fifty(50) copies of Think Like a Rock Star and I will give you six one-hour phone consultations, one a month for every month from July 2013 through December 2013.  This is a value of $1,500.00!  This is for companies that are serious about connecting with their fans and building a fan-centric brand.  This offer is limited to the first two(2) people that email me a copy of their receipt from either Amazon or B&N that shows they have pre-ordered fifty(50) copies of the book, and residents of the United States.     You can pre-order Think Like a Rock Star here from Amazon and here from Barnes and Noble.

Now, if you want to have me present Think Like a Rock Star at your company or event, here’s the details.  I will give you a 45-60 minute presentation on Think Like a Rock Star.  The presentation can be tweaked to your particular industry or event’s focus, etc.  The total time of the presentation itself will be 45-60 minutes, including Q&A.  I will waive my speaking fee if you agree to pre-order 100 copies of Think Like a Rock Star from either Amazon or Barnes and Noble.  There are some stipulations to this offer.  First, it’s only available for speaking engagements within the continental United States from May through October, 2013.  Second, you must cover all travel costs for me, including round-trip flight, 2-night hotel stay, and any associated taxi fares to and from the airport/hotel/event site.  All dates are subject to availability.   I will be happy to do a book-signing of up to 30-minutes immediately after my presentation, or if that isn’t possible I will be happy to sign the books prior to presenting so the attendees can have their copy signed.  If you would like to book me to present Think Like a Rock Star at your company or event, please email me to discuss details.

Finally, for the first time I wanted to share the Table of Content from Think Like a Rock Star, to give you a better sense of exactly what’s covered in the book.  This is subject to change, but we’ve been tinkering with the flow for weeks and I think we now have it set as it will appear in the book:

Foreword by Kathy Sierra

Preface

Introduction

Part 1: The Four Reasons Why Rock Stars Have Fans (and Your Company Has Customers)

Chapter 1: Rock Stars Are Fans Themselves

Chapter 2: Rock Stars Look for Ways to Shift Control to Their Fans

Chapter 3: Rock Stars Find the Bigger Idea Behind the Music They Create

Chapter 4: Rock Stars Embrace and Empower Their Fans

Part 2: Understanding and Connecting With Your Fans

Chapter 5: Who Your Fans Are and How Can You Connect with Them

Chapter 6: How to Handle Negative Comments and Convert Angry Customers Into Passionate Fans

Part 3: Building a Fan-Centric Company

Chapter 7: Organizing Your Employees So They Can Better Connect with Your Customers

Chapter 8: How to Organize and Mobilize Your Customer and Brand Advocates

Chapter 9: Empower Your Fans and Employees

Chapter 10: Helping Your Brand Ambassadors Connect With Your Customers

Chapter 11: What Comes Next

 

In leading up to the production of the book, one of the things I’ve been doing is showing a select few brand and social media marketers the book so they can review it for us.  Here’s what Katie Morse, the Social Marketing Manager for Billboard had to say about Think Like a Rock Star:

“There’s a theory in music that if a musician has “1,000 true fans” (credit: Kevin Kelly), they’ve created a sustainable and full-time music career due to the passion, buying power, and advocacy of those 1,000 fans. Think Like A Rock Star takes that principle, and shows companies the exact steps they need to take to connect with their fans, and the business value from doing so. I highly suggest this book to anyone who wants to figure out how their business (or the one they work for) can stop treating their customers as customers, and start connecting with them as fans.”

If you want to pre-order Think Like a Rock Star, you can do so here at Amazon, and here at Barnes and Noble.  Thank you and if you have any questions please email me!

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Why Red Bull and Patagonia Are Winning the Content Race

Digiday had a nice article today profiling Patagonia’s content strategy.  I found this quote from Patagonia’s Creative Director Bill Boland to be very interesting:

 “Our content stays away from the hard sell,” said Bill Boland, Patagonia’s creative director. “But we are finding that our customers are interested in talking about our products. Even with the climbers out at Patagonia, customers want to know what gear they are wearing, what works for them and what does not, so that is something we are looking into for the future.”

By focusing on the activities and themes that are relevant to Patagonia’s customers, the brand earns their trust and a role reversal takes place.  Instead of Patagonia trying to sell to its customers, the customers are coming to them and asking for more information about the products they sell!

This is the new model of digital content creation.  Don’t focus on your products, focus on the ideas and themes that relate to your products.  Red Bull also does a masterful job of this in its commercials:

That commercial now has over 4 million views.  But note that you never see the energy drink itself until the last few seconds, and barely see the brand’s logo.  The spotlight is on the athletes and the activities they love to engage in, not the product itself.

Patagonia and Red Bull have discovered what your brand needs to:  That you can create relevant and compelling content for your customers by focusing on what their interests are and how your product relates to those themes and ideas.  It’s exactly why both brands are used as case studies in Think Like a Rock Star, because they understand how to create content that’s so popular with its fans that they seek out not only the brand’s content, but its products as well.

If your content strategy isn’t working, maybe it’s time to ask yourself if you’re focused on your products and services, or how those products and services relate to the ideas and themes that are most important to your customers.