MackCollier.com

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The Art of Book Marketing and the One Thing Many Authors Miss

Think Like a Rock Star is now less than three months from hitting stores.  So as you might guess, these last few months have been a crash course for me in how to effectively market a book and help it be successful.

Most of the information I’ve found and advice I’ve received from other authors has focused on The Launch.  The idea is to sell as many copies of your book as possible into a small concentrated window, typically the week that your book comes out.  You want to sell as many copies as possible during that launch week because typically those bestseller lists from sources like The New York Times and others reset each week.  And focusing in sales on that one-week launch period might be the difference between forever being known as a published author, and being a New York Times Bestselling author.  For the author, it’s a really huge deal.

So as you might expect, I’ve got a ton of stuff planned to help Think Like a Rock Star have as successful of a launch as possible.  And over the next few weeks I will be asking for your help in seeing that successful launch take place.

But the thing about a book launch is that it’s mostly focused on what’s best for the author.  As I was researching this, I realized there was a parallel to my book, in that really the launch is all about acquiring new customers.  Getting as many new sales as possible so that it helps the book’s ability to hit all those bestseller lists and all that jazz.  So in a way, if I strictly focused my book’s marketing on The Launch, I was really undermining one of the core lessons of Think Like A Rock Star.

Focus on  New Customers or Existing Fans?

The thing that really separates rock stars from most brands is who they market to.  While most companies focus on acquiring new customers, most rock stars focus on delighting their existing fans.  Rock stars focus most of their time and energy on connecting with their existing customers, not their new ones.

This prompted me to rethink my marketing plan for this book a bit.  There’s no doubt that The Launch is insanely huge to a book’s eventual success.  But in my opinion, even more important than marketing to new customers is finding ways to support your existing readers.

So over the next few weeks while I prep for the book’s launch, I will also be launching some efforts to support the readers of this book.  For example, starting within the next 7-10 days, I will be launching an email newsletter to compliment the book.  This newsletter will also be a tool to help readers learn how their businesses can better connect with their fans.  It will be an ongoing effort, and it will provide the most value to people after they buy the book.  I also have a couple of other projects that I’m not ready to announce yet.

But for now, I am going to end this post by asking for your help.  If you have or did buy Think Like a Rock Star, what could I offer you after your purchase to help support your brand’s efforts to better connect with its fans?  Maybe a place where readers could connect and get advice from me and each other?  Or what have other authors done for his/her readers that you really liked, that added value to you as a reader?

I saw where someone, I think it was Seth Godin, said that one of the best reasons to write a book was to start a conversation.  That was really the driving force for me to write Think Like a Rock Star, I wanted to start a conversation about how companies can better understand who their fans are, and connect with them.  Part of that conversation is finding ways to support the people that want to find ways to do just that for their companies.

What are your thoughts?  What could I do as an author to create more value for you as a reader after you buy the book?

PS: I’ve started sending out copies of Think Like a Rock Star to a few colleagues and I recently got feedback on the book from Paper.li’s Community Manager, Kelly Hungerford.  Here’s what Kelly thought:  “Simple, jargon-free and true to Mack Collier’s authentic style, this book explains exactly why your brand need fans and not customers, and how you can turn your most enthusiastic ones into powerful brand advocates.  Mack delivers his passion for brand advocacy, knowledge of customer-centric marketing and in-depth understanding of what makes the most devoted of fans tick in a language we can all relate to: rock stars and fans.

I love this this book for many reasons, but mostly because that for every “why” in this book, there is a “how” to back it up! The case studies, tips and social media advice are perfectly aligned with Mack’s underlying mission of helping brands understand the true value of their most passionate customers. It’s a must read for modern day marketers and I highly recommend you purchase two copies: one for you and one for your team.”

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You Learn How to Be a Better Blogger By Doing, Not By Listening

I have a love/hate relationship with list posts.  On the one hand, those ’10 Steps to Launching a Business Blog’ or ‘5 Ways to Improve Your Blogging Today’ posts are always popular.  I know, cause I’ve written plenty of them.   And even though a lot of bloggers don’t like them, they do help bloggers get started tackling their problems.

And that’s where the hate part of my relationship kicks in.  I hate that too many bloggers follow ‘list’ posts to the letter, and that’s it.  Those list posts work great if you view them as a starting point and an example of how you could improve.  They aren’t the end-all-be-all of the blogging experience.

The only way to truly improve as a blogger is by blogging.  At some point you have to stop looking for everyone else to give you the answers, and you have to go out and break stuff.  I can tell you what has worked for me, and I have good insights into what will likely work for you.  But I can’t guarantee anything, and neither can you.

For example, about a week ago I posted here about whether or not blog posts should have dates on them.  There was plenty of support for both sides of the issue.  I made the point at the time that the only way each of us would know for sure how adding or removing dates from our posts affected our blog was to do it.  So I added dates back to the posts here, and started tracking changes in my search and referral traffic from Twitter.  I told everyone I’d do that through the rest of the month.  So far, traffic from both sources is down, and if this continues I will take dates back off at the end of the month.

But the key thing is, now I know.  I didn’t just read what other bloggers were writing on the topic and accept their experiences as my own.  I am testing it on my blog.

This is a big reason why we were so passionate about structuring BlogHOT as a learning environment.  We didn’t want to just create a conference where attendees were lectured at all day then went home.  We wanted them to be doing stuff and interacting with each other and learning how to do this blogging stuff for themselves.

Because when it comes to blogging, you learn by doing, not by listening.

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Hobbies, Deeper Learning and the One Thing You May Not Know About Scott Monty

If I asked you about Scott Monty, you’d probably offer up that he’s the Global Head of Social Media for Ford.  Everyone knows that. But did you also know that Scott is a huge Sherlock Holmes fan and has one of the best hobby blogs I’ve ever seen, The Baker Street Blog?

Last night during #Blogchat while we were discussing creating more advanced content on our blogs, a few of you correctly pointed out that people that run hobby blogs are extremely passionate about their hobbies.  They have the desire to find that more advanced content, because they have a passion to learn more about their hobby.

For example, I am a huge fan of the classic tv sitcom MASH.  I have a friend that is as well, but he takes it to another level.  What he does is collect autographs from the cast members.  And not just the main characters like Hawkeye and Frank Burns, he especially goes after the actors that only appeared in one or two episodes.  The more obscure the better.  He spends hours hunting down names and addresses, and knows all the autograph sites and MASH sites to find this information (started by people that are just as passionate as he is).

Our passion drives us to learn more about the topics we are passionate about.

Not only does it drive us to learn more about the topics we are passionate about, it drives is to connect with others that know more than we do.  We are constantly driven to learn more about the topics we are passionate about, and we want to connect with others that share our passion and we want to discuss that passion with others.  Because as Kathy Sierra puts it ‘people with a passion for something will not STFU!’

So how do you focus on the topics that your audience is passionate about?  Let’s say you blog about….blogging.  Most people I know are not passionate about blogging as a tool, they are passionate about what the tool allows them to do.  For example, maybe they are blogging to improve their chances of getting a job.  Maybe they are blogging to share their passion for their favorite brand.  Maybe they are blogging to connect with other people that are dealing with an extremely rare disease.  Whatever their area of passion is, it typically is not about the blog as a tool, but what the blog allows them to do.

One final thought on passion: Learning feeds passion.  As we learn more about a topic, we feel we are getting better at that topic.  Maybe we start studying the Civil War.  First we learn the causes of the war.  Then we move on and learn about the major battles, the major generals.  Before you know it we are dissecting whether or not Robert E Lee’s battleplan at Gettysburg didn’t work because it was a terrible plan, or because it was a great plan that was poorly executed due to the incompetence of his generals.

So as a blogger, if you can help you audience learn more about a topic they love, they will not only become more passionate about it, they will become more passionate about you.

PS: Just as I was finishing this post, Kelly left this comment on yesterday’s post – “I believe inspiration is a large part of the education process, regardless if it is beginning or advanced level.  I look to be inspired and even when I’m just starting out on my new journey I look to mentors who can help solve my problems or answer questions now, as well as inspire me in the future. I want to grow with them.”

Double PS: Here’s an oldie but a goodie from Kathy on creating more engaging content for your audience.

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Creating Advanced Content and the Role of Deeper Discussions on Blogs

If you think about it, one of the fastest ways to truly establish thought leadership with a blog is to continuously create high-level content around a subject.  Yet very few blogs do that, and the ones that offer high level content on a frequent basis typically have a very infrequent posting schedule.

Does that mean that most people are simply incapable of creating more advanced content?  I say no, and offer two reasons why most bloggers aren’t creating more advanced content:

1 – Saying ‘Here’s What I Think’ can be scary.  When you write more advanced content, you are often ceding the role of expert and acknowledging to your readers that you don’t have all the answers.  That can be very scary for some people.

2 – More advanced content typically gets less engagement.  THIS is the biggest reason I believe why most of the content we see in this space is 101-level, and not 301 or 401 level.  In general, basic content gets shared, more advanced content gets mulled over.  And just like the blogger can get skittish about admitting that they don’t have all the answers, so can the reader when they go to leave a comment.

 

So at the end of the day, how do we as bloggers create more advanced content on our blogs?  That’s the topic I want to discuss tonight at #Blogchat (8pm Central time, Sunday night).  But before we chat about it tonight, I want to offer one example of how we can do that on our blogs, and it ties back to a method I actually use during #Blogchat:

Create more advanced content by first creating deeper discussions. 

First, if you’ll notice the majority of the topics we cover at #Blogchat are more 101-level.  There’s a reason for this, as stated above, 101-level content lowers the participation barrier.  When the topic level is 101-level, it’s easy for more people to feel like they are an expert, and thus they feel more comfortable joining the discussion.

The simple fact is that most people, especially regular participants of #Blogchat, are completely capable of engaging in and contributing to more advanced conversations.  But many people don’t believe they are, and I think it’s the job of the host (whether on Twitter or a blog) to bring out deeper thoughts from participants.  This is something I don’t do very well.

So I will save the rest for tonight at #Blogchat, but if you will be joining us (thank you!), please be thinking about ways that we all can create more advanced content.  And at the same time, how can we create more advanced discussions around our content?

See y’all at 8pm Central!

Pic via Flickr user Appalachian Encounters

PS:  If you want to leave comments here now, please do and we can carry the conversation over to #blogchat when it starts tonight!

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You Build Loyalty and Create Fans With Rewards

It’s the timing and context of the reward that’s crucial.

If you walk into Best Buy and the door greeter smiles and hands you a coupon for 20% off any purchase over $100 during your visit, that’s not a reward.  It’s an incentive to make a purchase.  While that coupon might increase the chance that you will make a purchase during that trip to Best Buy, in the grand scheme of things it’s probably not going to make you more loyal to the chain.

If you walk into your favorite antique mall and the owner greets you and says “BTW, do you still need that final glass to complete your Pepsi collection from 1975?  Because we just bought a large collection of glassware and I found it and put it aside to ask you about the next time you came in.  Here you go!”  That’s a true reward because it comes as a result of previous purchases and isn’t directly tied to a future purchase.

Above that, this type of reward communicates appreciation to the customer for their business.  That builds loyalty because the business is literally saying Thank You.

The Best Buy example communicates a desire to have you buy something.   So even though you are getting a coupon, you understand that Best Buy is acting in its best interest.  And yes, the antique shop owner is also acting in their best interest by giving you the Pepsi glass you need, because they could sell that to someone else.  So it is worth money to the owner, but the owner also understands the value that you place on this item.  It’s the final glass you need to complete a collection that you’ve been assembling for 10 years!

So if you are wanting to offer rewards that also build loyalty, focus on ways to reward existing behavior versus trying to incentivize new behavior.

Now, what about loyalty punch cards?  You’ve probably seen these at restaurants, coffee shops and the like.  Buy 5/10 meals, get one free.  Is that what we mean by building loyalty by rewarding after the purchase?

No, because even though the reward comes after the purchase, there’s an incentive to make the next purchase.  So really, punch cards like this are building loyalty to the offer, not the brand.  For example, let’s say it’s your lunch hour and you are about to run to Subway, when you remember that you have a Pizza Hut lunch buffet punch card, and that with one more punch you card will be full and you’ll get a free meal.  That will probably swing your lunch decision to Pizza Hut, but what happens next week when your Pizza Hut punch card is empty?  Will there still be the same level of incentive to start a new punch card, or will you then decide to go to Subway for lunch?

Remember, the timing and context of the reward is crucial to building loyalty.  It determines if you are saying ‘Thank you!’ for existing behavior, or attempting to create new behavior.

Also, when a business shows you that they appreciate your business, it validates your loyalty to them.  It makes you feel better about supporting them, and it does become an incentive to make an additional purchase.

But the incentive doesn’t come from the brand, it comes from you.  We all want to support the brands that we feel appreciate us and act in our best interests, as well as their own.  There’s a feeling of ‘well they did something for me, now I want to do something for them!’

You don’t get that with coupons and incentives, because we understand that the brand is offering these to entice sales.  Which means its motivation lies in its own best interests.

You build loyalty by offering the reward after and independently of the purchase.  Not by offering it before and tying it to a purchase.

PS: In the above picture the incentive is obvious but the reward might not be.  On June 13th, 2010, Taylor Swift held a special free autograph signing for her fans in Nashville.  She started signing at 8am in the morning, and finally stopped at 10:30PM that night.  This was one of the many ways that Taylor says Thank You to her fans for their existing behavior.   And it’s one of the many reasons why they love her.

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My Posts Have An Average Lifespan of 2-3 Days on Twitter

I was digging through this blog’s stats this morning in Google Analytics, and I noticed something interesting.  As I mentioned here a couple of weeks ago, one of my goals for 2013 is to blog more often.  A big reason why is because I want to increase the traffic here, and so far in January traffic is up a bit, and that’s to be expected from a more frequent posting pattern.

So what I want to do as the traffic increases is understand which traffic sources are driving that increase.  One of them is Twitter, which is by far the social site that sends me the most referral traffic.  I started looking at the individual posts in 2013 that have received the most traffic from Twitter, and I noticed something:  They received almost all of their referral traffic from Twitter in the first 2-3 days, then almost nothing.

Here’s the number of Twitter referrals for the most popular post so far this month, ‘Done’ is Better Than ‘Perfect’ When it Comes to Blogging, which was published on Jan 1st:

As you can see, good for 3 days, then traffic volume falls off a cliff.

Here’s the traffic pattern for the 3rd most popular post (#2 was one that I linked to for multiple days as a #blogchat topic and it skewed the results a bit I think), which was The Biggest Mistake Companies Make When Engaging Their Fans Via Social Media published on Jan 8th:

Same pattern, traffic for 3 days, then it dies.  There was a bump back on the 14th, and that was the same day the post was listed as a link on a New York Times article and a few people RTed the post on Twitter, I am assuming after they found it via the NYT link.

Finally, here’s the 4th most popular post, Should You Remove the Dates From Your Blog Posts?, on Jan 14th:

Two days, then flatline.

There’s a few takeaways I have from this:

1 – These stats suggest that when we are on Twitter, links have a very short window to get our attention.  I don’t think that’s a huge revelation.

2 – If we want to leverage Twitter as a platform to draw attention to our writings, then it pays to focus on fewer topics versus more.  If we are only paying attention in short bursts on Twitter, then it helps if you are consistently giving us the same or similar topics to look at.

3 – Since our attention spans are so short, it means we can cover the same topics repeatedly.  This is where I think you can really leverage Twitter as a channel to drive big referral traffic back to your blog.  By blogging frequently, and by frequently blogging about the same or similar topics.  Notice from the above graphs that the 3 posts were published on the 1st, the 8th and the 14th.  Pretty spread out, but what if those same posts were published three days in a row?  The spike in traffic from each would overlap and by the 2nd and 3rd days, referral traffic as a whole from Twitter would be pretty high.

4 – If you plan on having Twitter be a driver of traffic to your blog, you probably need to publish a new post at least every 2-3 days.  If we assume that the average blog post has a lifespan of 2-3 days on Twitter, publishing a new blog post every month isn’t going to do much for your referral traffic from the site.

So that’s something to think about.  I think for me what I would like to see happen is to find a way to not only extend that average lifespan to say 3-4 days, but to also chain together posts that bring in higher amounts of referral traffic from Twitter on a more regular basis.

I would also be interested in hearing what the rest of you are seeing with the referral traffic from Twitter to your posts.  Are you seeing most of your traffic coming in the first 2-3 days as well?  Do you see a longer range?  Shorter?

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Fans Create Cash

Last month Jackie wrote a post on her blog with a pretty significant business nugget that I think a lot of people missed:

“Dell has been using the Net Promoter Score (NPS) to measure customer advocacy for the last three years. According to Bobbi Dangerfield, Dell’s VP of Commercial Sales Operations, the company is now able to show that improvements in NPS score directly tie to revenue growth”

Net Promoter Score is a system that attempts to ‘score’ your customer base and tell you if they are fans or detractors.  A score of -100 indicates that all your customers are detractors, while a score of +100 indicates all your customers are fans. Now NPS isn’t perfect and does have its detractors.  But what this means is that as the percentage of Dell’s customers that promote the brand increases, the company’s revenue also grows.

Fans create cash.

How many times have I said here and elsewhere don’t focus on the tools, focus on the connections that the tools help facilitate.  Understanding Twitter is meaningless if you don’t understand how and why your customers are using it.

Understanding your customers trumps understanding marketing/communication channels.  Understanding your fans is even more important.  Here’s what we do know about fans:

1 – They will look for opportunities to promote you

2 – They assume ownership of your brand and will act in what they perceive to be your brand’s best interests

3 – They have high/extremely high levels of loyalty to your brand, which means they spend more than the average customer that has little to no brand loyalty

4 – Their opinions about your brand is more reliable to the average customer than your brand’s advertising.

5 – When they encounter a problem with your brand (bad customer service, defective product or low quality) they will look for ways to bring this to your attention so you can correct the problem.

 

Let’s look at each of these individually:

Fans will look for opportunities to promote you

You know when you find an amazing blog post that really resonated with you?  You just have to run to Twitter and Facebook and share it with your friends, right?  Why is that?  Because you found value in the post, and want to share that value with others.  Your brand’s fans have the same mentality, they believe that your brand is simply better than other brands, and by extension they feel that if their friends buy your brand, they will also be better.  This is why your fans will go out of their way to promote your brand, because they love your brand and they love their friends.

Fans assume ownership of your brand and act in what they believe to be its best interests 

This honestly scares many brands because they don’t like the idea of having fans out there speaking on the brand’s behalf unchecked.  But this concern is easily overcome by simply connecting with your brand’s fans.  Communicate to them and give them instruction on how to represent your brand.  Your fans want you to connect with them and give them a sense of direction.

Your fans have high levels of brand loyalty and spend more

Your fans support your brand with their wallet.  They buy your products, and then they try to convince other customers to do the same thing.  This is exactly why rock stars don’t focus the majority of their time and marketing on their new customers, they focus their attention on their fans.  Because rocks stars have always understood that their ability to bring in new customers tomorrow, depends on how well they connect with their biggest fans, today.

Your fan’s opinion is more reliable to the average customer than your brand’s advertising

This ties in with the previous point.  Fans spend more, and they also refer business to your brand.  Your fans promote you and that carries more weight with the average customer than your advertising and marketing efforts.  This is another reason why rock stars connect with their fan because they understand that their fans drive new business for the rock star.  Brands are mostly counting on acquiring new customers via overpriced advertising.  Super Bowl spots have already sold out at $4M a pop for a 30-second spot.  All for the hope that each brand’s spot will be the hit of the night and go viral and draw millions of views.  Creating buzz is the name of the game.

Yet for a tiny fraction of that amount, each brand could create and launch a robust brand ambassador program that would provide sustained revenue, improved customer satisfaction, and lower marketing costs for years to come.

When your fans encounter a problem with your brand, they will bring it to your attention to you can fix it

Want to know the difference between a detractor and a fan?  A detractor will say ‘Your brand sucks!’  A fan will say ‘Your brand sucks, here’s how I think we can work together to fix it’.  Your fans assume ownership of your brand, and thusly have a vested interest in seeing it succeed.  They will actively look for problems with your brand, because they want to bring it to your attention so it can be corrected.

 

So what’s stopping your brand from connecting with its fans and seeing real business growth as a result like Dell has?  And if you need a plan for how to get started embracing and empowering your fans to grow your business, here it is.

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How to Think Like Zuck: a Q&A With Ekaterina Walter

As most of you know, I’ve been working on Think Like a Rock Star with McGraw-Hill since last May.  But over the last few months I’ve been closely following the progression of Ekaterina Walter’s book Think Like Zuck, since Ekaterina is not only a good friend, but she’s also with McGraw-Hill.  I wanted to do a Q&A with Ekaterina, since her book goes on sale today and as you can see, it’s already getting rave reviews on Amazon.  Here’s what Ekaterina had to say about the book and why you will enjoy it:

Mack: Think Like Zuck is about the five secrets behind the success of Facebook, including Passion, Purpose, People, Product and Partnerships.  Did you order those 5 Ps in terms of perceived importance, and if you didn’t, which of the 5 Ps would you say is most important for the average business to have in order to be successful?

Ekaterina:  “Think Like Zuck” is an analogy/philosophy of a leader who follows his/her passion, leads with purpose, builds great teams, and strives for continued excellence in his/her product (or services). It is a mentality that drives great leaders to building successful business and the approach they use to doing so.

To me the five are not separable. You see, when you are passionate about, you want to imagine, to create, to build. Passion fuels your purpose. And your purpose defines what product/service you want to offer and what business you want to build. But one can’t build a successful product (or business) alone, one needs a strong team of people who believe in the same vision to help execute on that purpose (and that is where strong partnerships come along as well).

 

Mack: One of the interesting tidbits for me came in the Product chapter where you told the story of how when Facebook rolled out News Feed in 2006, that it was immediately slammed by most users.  Can you talk about what that episode meant to the future of Facebook and also how Facebook employees viewed Zuckerberg as a result?

Ekaterina: A lot of people internally debated with him whether this was the right decision or not. He persisted. And just like with the decision of expanding beyond colleges before that and becoming a platform later, he was right. I think these key decisions solidified everyone’s belief in Mark’s vision.

The reason the NewsFeed wasn’t welcomed right away by users is because of the privacy concerns. Zuckerberg tends to be ahead of his time on his belief in radical transparency. He saw the usage on the network jump exponentially right after the NewsFeed was introduced, so he didn’t respond right away because he watched numbers, not people. It was a mistake to not respond right away with the revised privacy settings, a mistake the company made several times. I don’t think the company ever fully recovered from that. But the reality is that now we cannot imagine our lives without NewsFeed and the ability for others to serve us their news in our stream vs. going to each person’s page individually and checking out what they were up to (that seems so archaic now).

 

Mack: You no doubt spent a ton of time researching Zuckerberg in writing Think Like Zuck.  What’s the one thing you learned about Mark that surprised you the most?

Ekaterina: You mean besides the fact that he is a romantic and that he designed his wife’s ring? I was personally touched to see that side of him…

What I admire about Mark is his dedication to his purpose and long-term vision. He is very strategic in his approach to growing the company and building the product. Everything that he does supports one thing that he is really focused on – connecting people around the globe and making the world more open and transparent. Wall Street, and sometimes the users, tend to see (and criticize) things that are right under their nose, but what we sometimes tend to forget is that a lot of times we  are not only investing in the company’s P&L, but in the vision and strategic acumen of a leader. Jeff Bezos is one example of a leader who, just like Zuck, didn’t make any excuses about his decisions, he was very clear about his path and he persisted no matter the criticism. When he launched reviews on his site, people questioned his own knowledge of business. Now almost every business has reviews on their sites. And with all of the ups and downs Amazon stock continues to steadily climb.

 

Mack: Finally, of the 5 Ps in your book, what’s the 1 P that Zuckerberg gets right, that you think most leaders and CEOs miss?

Ekaterina: Culture. He built a solid culture that can sustain the growth of the business and support constant innovation. The way of the hack is very deeply ingrained inside the company. Company’s slogans are: “done is better than perfect” and “this journey is only 1% finished” and that is because Facebook employees never rest on their laurels, they stay focused and keep shipping.

There are a lot of other elements of the culture that I talk about in my book that help create this solid foundation of success. And the fact is: not every company can establish a culture that supports the mission of a business in such an effective way.  But that always was and will always remain a critical ingredient of long-term success.

 

Thanks to Ekaterina for giving us some insights into the book Think Like Zuck.  And for full disclaimer, Ekaterina was nice enough to send me a review copy of the book, and I really enjoyed it.  It is packed with business case studies and even has a few human interest stories splashed in.  It made the book much more enjoyable to me, and a quicker read.  Check it out, I think you will enjoy it even if you aren’t a Facebook fan boy, and I’m definitely not. But I do appreciate Zuckerberg a bit more as an entrepreneur  and a person, after reading Ekaterina’s book!

PS: Think Like Zuck goes on sale TODAY on Amazon, you can buy it here.

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Should You Remove the Dates From Your Blog Posts?

There are many common topics discussed during #blogchat, and one of the most popular is whether or not bloggers should include dates in their posts.

Now as you can see, I do not include dates on my posts(although the date does show up in search results).  I honestly cannot remember WHY I removed them, but I do know that I wouldn’t have done so unless there was some logic behind the move that made sense to me.  My hunch is that a certain SEO-savvy friend explained that it would help my search results, but I really don’t remember.

The topic came up again last night, and again there wasn’t a consensus answer.  Some people again said they hate when bloggers don’t include dates because they want to know how ‘old’ the content is.  A few were like me that they believed there was an SEO benefit, but no one could explain what that benefit was.

So I decided enough was enough, and took to Google to see if I could find a definitive answer on whether or not bloggers should include dates on their posts.

Sadly, I could not.  But I did find some interesting fodder both for and against having dates on posts.

The case for having dates on posts

First, I found several bloggers that lamented that they felt removing posts was akin to hiding something.  Commenters routinely agreed, and ironically, I found a post from Shel Holtz that lamented the fact that he shared a link on Twitter only to later discover that the post he shared was actually 5 years old.  I thought this was ironic because….

The case for removing dates from posts

…Shel’s post linked to a post that Jim Connolly did (which I found before reading Shel’s post) where Jim actually experimented with removing dates from his posts to see what, if anything, would happen.

Jim found that his comments and number of shares via social media sites significantly increased when he removed the dates from his posts.  Further, Jim added what I think is a very salient thought concerning dates on posts:

It appears that the date then acts as a filter, with each person having a different threshold.  So, some people may not bother reading a post that’s more than a week old, others may have a 6 month threshold, whilst others will be fine with posts that are years old.  If the date is not there, it seems more people start reading the posts and then make their mind up, based on the value of the content rather than the date it was published.

This is what has always worried me because to many people reading and sharing blog posts, newer is better.

Here’s an example, which blog post would you rather read:

1 – Ten Steps to Launching a Social Media Strategy For a Global Brand, dated March 27th, 2010

2 – Ten Steps to Launching a Social Media Strategy For a Global Brand, dated January 14th, 2013

Easy choice, right?  Newer is the clear winner.

Unless…what if that post from 2010 was written by Scott Monty, head of Social Media at Ford, and the post from today was written by an anonymous marketing intern at an anonymous marketing agency, that simply googled ‘launching a social media strategy for global brand’ and mish-mashed several older posts together (including Scott’s).

Two sides to the date/no date coin 

On the one hand, many people want to know how old a post is when they read it, to find out if the information is dated.  On the other hand, and this goes back to Jim’s findings, many people that see an older date on a post will automatically assume the information is dated, even if it isn’t.

At the end of the day, you as a blogger should ultimately do what you feel is best for your blog, and its readers, when it comes to adding or deleting the date from your blog post.  What works for me may not work for you, and vice-versa.

But I will offer this piece of advice:  If you are on the fence about either adding or deleting dates from your posts, then you should do exactly what Jim did, you should TEST to see what changes.  If you are using dates, remove them for the next 2 weeks and see what, if anything, changes.  If you aren’t using them, put them back and see what changes.

The problem that many bloggers have is that we don’t test things enough on our own.  We want someone else to always tell us what does and does not work.  Sometimes, we need to move the puzzle pieces for ourselves and see what happens.

What do you think?  Do you prefer to read blog posts with dates, or without?  Which would make you less likely to share a post, a post with no date, or a post with a date from 2009?

 

UPDATE: Based on the excellent comments from y’all as well as the desire to practice what I preach, I’ve decided to add dates back to the posts here for the rest of the month.  At that point I will report any perceived changes up or down in both search traffic and referral traffic from social sites.

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The Case For Adding ‘Easter Eggs’ to Your Blog Posts

Yesterday C.C. Chapman wrote a fabulous post on why we need ‘next level’ conferences.  Please check it out, and there are a TON of amazing comments, I am still going through them all.  I did want to take a slightly different take on this issue because as I’ve seen in the past, when someone raises a ‘someone needs to do this’ post like this, typically most people read that as ‘someone else‘.  Not knocking C.C.’s post at all, it’s a great discussion starter, but human nature being what it is, most people will wait for someone else to make that move.

So instead of making it about ‘someone else’, I started thinking about how individuals as content creators and speakers can take our content to the ‘next level’.  I think the best speakers and content creators like C.C. are already doing this.  Most of the audiences we write and speak for are interested in more 101-level content.  But not everyone, some people are wanting more, and some of those people started out at the 101-level, but thanks to our content, they are now at a more advanced stage.

Which brings me to the topic of adding ‘easter eggs’ to our blog posts.  If you are a gamer, you are familiar with the concept of an easter egg.  It’s a small addition to a game that really isn’t required to complete the game, and will typically go un-noticed by the ‘casual’ gamer.  It’s typically hidden, so it’s a type of reward for the gamers that are willing to do more exploring and to look everywhere.

Here’s an example.  In the game Batman: Arkham City, if you go to a certain place in the game at a certain time and do a certain thing, you are rewarded with a cameo appearance from Killer Croc:

Now I am going to corrupt the gamer’s definition of an ‘easter egg’ here a bit when I talk about adding them to your blog posts.  To a gamer, an easter egg is a reward in the sense that it’s cool and fun, but it doesn’t typically make them a better gamer or better at the game they are playing.  What I’m suggesting is what if you add ‘easter eggs’ to your blog posts that did make your more advanced readers better?

For example, my audience here is like most social media blogs, typically made up of people looking for 101-level social media help.  So while I want to cater to that audience, an example of adding an easter egg might be to add a tip to the post that the 101-level reader isn’t ready for, but that the 201-level reader is looking for.  How many times have you read a blog post and seen the author add a ‘Pro Tip’?  This is the same basic idea, add more advanced content or tips to ‘reward’ the more advanced readers.

To be honest, this is something I probably don’t do a very good job with.  I tend to forget about what happens to the readers that are ready for more advanced content because of my posts.  Recently on #Blogchat we talked about the idea of creating Topic Buckets to help blog more often and to give structure to the content you create.

Maybe to add another layer to that, we should consider adding 201 level content as well?

For example, the idea with Topic Buckets was that if you could come up with say 4 main subjects you wanted to cover on your blog, then if you could write one post a week for each bucket, then you’ve written 4 posts a week!  But what if you also added a learning context to those buckets, and said that 3 of your weekly posts would be 101-level, and one would be 201 level?

I will have to noodle on this for a while, in the meanwhile, what do you think about this idea of adding ‘easter eggs’ to blog posts, or even writing more advanced posts on occasion?