MackCollier.com

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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?

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Why Brands Should Sponsor TweetChats or Engage, and Be Prepared to Wow Yourself

Note from Mack: This is a Guest Post from Paper.li’s Community Manager, Kelly Hungerford.  This post is technically part of Paper.li’s sponsorship of #Blogchat last month, and I told Kelly to treat it as an opportunity to talk about why Paper.Li is awesome and to showcase the service.  So what does Kelly do?  She uses it as a chance to showcase #Blogchat instead 😉  But more importantly, Kelly used this post to try to help other brands that are considering sponsoring a Twitter chat or participating in them.  And I think that speaks to the heart of the Paper.li brand, it’s all about creating content that has value for others.  

Have you ever planned a marketing campaign expecting one outcome, and then been completely blown away by the unexpected? That’s what happened to us when we sponsored #Blogchat last month.

One of my goals moving into 2013 was to create more participative marketing experiences with our community. I thought Tweet Chats would be a great place to start. I wanted to participate with our publishers as well as the community “around” Paper.li in order to better understand the wants and needs of everyone involved in the Paper.li experience; readers of papers, site owners, content creators, the people sharing the content and, of course, our publishers.

So mid 2012 I begin researching the possibility of Tweet Chats to include in our marketing strategy. These are notes I took down as to how I thought a chat could help us:

  • Budget: affordable way to attend a (virtual) events, keeping connected to the US when you live overseas
  • Community: build awareness, trust and long lasting relationships
  • Variety: provide an diversified group of users (great way to validate user personas!)
  • Research: data collection: about the service, users, features

So why #Blogchat? 

1. Because it was the right fit for Paper.li. The Paper.li community is comprised of all types or bloggers; experienced bloggers, beginning bloggers and “would like to be” bloggers. Blogging is one of our most popular topics when it comes to sharing content via Paper.li and papers on the newsstand are made from shared blog content.

2. I had done my homework and knew that #Blogchat community was home to people who loved Paper.li, hated Paper.li and have never tried Paper.li. That’s a great place to start if you want to build relationships.

3. I’ve been a fan of Mack and enjoy learning from him and respect him as an marketing and community building authority. I knew that this sponsorship would be a win-win-win for everyone involved.

 

What was our goal? 
1. Awareness: To be present, not push product but be present

2. Build trust: Let community know were there to help and we’re there for the long-term relationship

So did it work? Yes. 

Our #Blogchat experience exceed our expectations and here were two examples that took me by surprise:

Participation: because our largest user base is located in the US, I *assumed* that this sponsorship would really only interest our US community. I couldn’t have been more wrong. We had Paper.li community members from Sweden, Germany Switzerland, and Italy waking up at 3:00am to join our chats. What does this say about your most loyal customers? They will defy all logic and rational thinking to participate in something amazing if you give them the chance. (Mack covers this in his book Think Like a Rock Star and I was ecstatic to experience it myself.)

Community engagement: within the month of December, I received more than 200 emails and tweets requesting help and offering feedback. Out of the 200, I personally helped over 50 people revive old papers, create new ones and fine tune via skype, twitter, email and hangouts.

 

If I think of that in terms of investment, in a matter of 5 hours a month, I received the same amount of qualified leads as I would attending a conference.  This was also information I could share with our product marketing and development teams and well as customer support. I attribute these numbers to the fact that selling was not one of our goals!

 

How else did Paper.li benefit?

  • as a Brand it was the opportunity to learn first hand what the community thought about our service
  • as a Marketer it was a new way to generate interest and leads
  • as a Product Manager, it was opportunity to understand what is needed to evolve the product
  • as a Social Media Manager, it was the opportunity to refine skills and better understand which channels and tools the community is using
  • as a Customer Care representative it was the opportunity to meet the community and interact without a ticket, issue, or bug between us and provide a service on demand
  • as a member of PR, it was the opportunity to be involved in the conversation where it was happening
  • as a Community Manager it was the opportunity to interact with awesome people, strengthen relationships community and build new bridges

Would I recommend sponsoring #Blogchat to another brand? Absolutely. And if #Blogchat isn’t the right fit for your community, find a Chat that is. Even if that means getting up at 3am in the morning to attend!

 

PS from Mack:  And if you want more information on sponsoring #Blogchat, click here.  And if you are a Twitter chat host or a blogger and you have the chance to work with Paper.li please JUMP at the chance!  They are amazing people, and Kelly is the best of the best 😉  And yes, she got up every Monday morning at 3am Switzerland time to attend and participate #Blogchat each Sunday in December!

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The Biggest Mistake Companies Make When Engaging Their Fans Via Social Media

A few years ago I was attending a conference, and the keynote was the CMO for an extremely large brand talking about how they used social media.  At one point he said ‘What we love about social media is that it gives us a way to help our customers tell our story’.  There was much smiling and head nodding in the audience, but my jaw was on the ground.

Sadly, many companies are starting to realize the ‘power’ of connecting with their fans, especially via social media tools.  And like this CMO, they are attracted to connecting with their fans because they view their fans as an exciting new promotional channel to spread that brand’s message.

Sigh.

Let me clear the air for you: The greatest value of your fans is not as a promotional channel, but as a feedback channel.

This seems counter-intuitive, after all aren’t your fans actively promoting your brand already?  And aren’t we all on the same page that a positive endorsement from a customer about a brand is more credible than an advertisement from that same brand?

Yes and yes.  Your fans are actively promoting your brand, and doing a better job of it than you ever will.  Why?  Because your fans have direct contact with your current and potential customers.

Your fans are the passionate customers that are in the grocery store isles and the department stores, encouraging other customers to try your brand’s products.  But they are also there to hear feedback from those customers.

For example, let’s say your brand is Tide.  One of your fans is in Target and sees a customer looking at different washing detergents.  She tells the customer that they should try Tide.  Think about what the customer’s response might be:

1 – ‘Well I’ve tried Tide before, and I don’t really like it as much as Joy because…’

2 – ‘Hmmm….well the water where I live is extremely hard, would that affect it?’

3 – ‘Yes I’ve tried Tide and I love how it…’

As soon as your fan engages with the customer, they are getting incredibly valuable feedback from that customer not only about the customer herself, but about the product and how she uses it.

Think about if you had an army of just 100 fans that you worked with, and each one had say 50 encounters like this a month with other customers.  That’s 5,000 opportunities per month to get valuable feedback from current and potential customers of your brand.

The best part?  Your fans will still be promoting your product to other customers, but they’ll also be collecting incredibly valuable feedback from other customers.  Once you begin collecting that feedback regularly, you can begin to spot trends in the feedback you receive, and then make changes to your marketing as a result.  Which makes your marketing more effectively and lowers marketing costs.

Now ideally, you should have a formal program in place to stay connected with your brand’s fans, and you can coach them on how to better collect feedback from customers they encounter.  And Think Like a Rock Star goes into exactly how to do all of this.  But if you don’t have a program or Brand Ambassador effort in place, there’s several quick and easy ways to collect feedback from your customers.

One example is by checking Amazon reviews.  You can do this for your product, as well as for your competitors.  I actually did this for my book.

Think Like a Rock Star isn’t technically a social media book.  I actually walk readers through how to engage with their fans in both an online and offline setting, but a good portion of the book does deal with connecting with your fans via social media tools.  And since I knew a lot of people would compare it to other social media marketing books, I carefully studied the Amazon reviews of the most popular social media marketing books.

But I wasn’t focused on the 4 and 5-star reviews.  I was far more interested in the 1 and 2-star reviews, in other words, what were people complaining about with these books?  After checking reviews for a few dozen books, the most comment complaint I found was something along the lines of ‘The author spends a lot of time telling us ‘why’ to use social media, but not a lot of time telling us ‘how’ to do what he suggests’.  I saw this same complaint over and over again.  So as a result of this feedback, I decided to alter the proposed flow of my book and incorporate detailed how-tos into every chapter.  Basically I made myself commit to giving a ‘how-to’ for every ‘why-to’.  And while this created a lot of headaches while writing the book, it kept me honest and it forced me to carefully explain to readers HOW to do everything I was talking about.  The end result is that the book will be much more valuable to readers.

That’s just a simple example, but you hopefully get the idea.  If you are a brand that’s getting excited about connecting with your fans to help them ‘tell your story’, don’t forget that the value they can give you as a feedback channel can be far greater.

At the end of the day, your fans are far too special to simply hold a megaphone for you.

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Here’s Why I Don’t Like Most Podcasts

And it’s the same reason why I don’t like most group blogs:  I want to hear from the HOST, not the guests.

Right now I am putting together a marketing plan for Think Like a Rock Star.  A big part of that plan is obviously to have a huge launch.  The idea is to sell a ton of books right when the book launches in order to make all those bestseller lists, etc etc etc.

But another part of that plan (that’s even bigger, IMO) is how can I create a continuous stream of value-added material that compliments the book?  The idea is to find a channel that lets me create content that will not only benefit readers of the book, but that will hopefully encourage others to buy the book.

And one of the potential channels I am looking at is launching a podcast.  But what I’m noticing is that more and more people are launching podcasts, which I think is awesome.  I love it when people give their audiences multiple ways to consume content, and in ways that’s convenient for their audience.

But…the one thing I don’t like about most podcasts is they mostly follow the same format:  1-2 people are the regular hosts, and each episode they interview someone.  What I don’t like about this format is that it doesn’t give me much of a chance to hear from the hosts themselves.  The focus is on the guests, and off the hosts.  I see the same thing on group blogs, especially group blogs that start out being written by one person who then goes to a group blog format.  The blog loses its voice.

Personally, I prefer podcasts that are run by 1-2 hosts, and guests are the exception, rather than the rule.

What do the rest of you think?  Do you like podcasts?  And if so, what type do you think?  Do you love the format where hosts interview a guest every episode, or do you prefer ones with the hosts only and no guests?

Length?  5 minutes?  10?  15?  Please let me know what your thoughts are as it will help me decide if I launch a podcast for Think Like a Rock Star, and what its format will be.  Thank you!

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Rethinking Self-Promotion: Are You Promoting Yourself, or Your Ideas?

I’ve always said that there are two types of speakers:  Those that want the spotlight on themselves, and those that want the spotlight on their ideas.

Shockingly, I fall in the latter category.  I do a decent amount of speaking, but I *hate* the actual act of speaking.  I hate being in front of a room full of strangers and having to be the center of attention for an hour.  But I love speaking because speaking allows me to share ideas that I am passionate about.  Yet if the focus shifted and I had to talk about myself for an hour, I would probably pass out 30 seconds into it.

It seems many bloggers are the same way.  I have talked to many colleagues and it seems many of us hate to promote ourselves.  We know we need to tell you about your products or services or what we provide, but it just feels ‘icky’ to do so.

And yet, if you ask us to talk about our friends and tell you why they are awesome, we can do that all day, or at least I can.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this disconnect as I’ve been promoting Think Like a Rock Star.  For starters, I love promoting this book.  Which is odd, because typically I hate promoting myself or anything that I am doing.  But I love promoting this book because of what it represents:  A way for companies and brands to embrace and empower their fans.

So in my mind I’m not promoting a product or myself, I’m promoting an idea.  I’m promoting an idea that I am extremely passionate about.  Maybe that’s why so many of us hate self-promotion?  Maybe we are spending too much time focused on the ‘product’ instead of the importance of the product?  Maybe you’ve written an ebook on how to be a better blogger.  Instead of trying to promote the product itself, maybe it would be better for you to promote why being a better a blogger is so important?  What could you accomplish if you were better at blogging?  What doors would open for you?

Many of us don’t like to promote ourselves, so perhaps we need to instead shift our thinking to promote the ideas we are passionate about?  What do you think?

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#Blogchat Topic for Sunday: How You Can Use Topic Buckets to Blog More Often

One of the things I’ve always tried to do on this blog is share with you what’s worked for me.  Earlier this week I wrote a post called ‘Done is better than Perfect when it comes to blogging‘.  This post got a lot of interesting feedback, but the point I wanted to make was that when you blog more often, you become a better blogger.  That’s worked for me, as well as other bloggers I know.

Now, another reason I wrote that post was because it’s something I intend to do this year: Blog more often.  Here’s why:

As with a lot of you, my blog is technically a marketing tool for my consulting and speaking.  So really, this blog at its core is a glorified business development tool.  In theory, the more I blog and create valuable content for my readers, the more my awareness grows, and the more often I will get work from this blog.

Now for the past three years, my blogging here has followed more or less the same pattern:

1 – From January through March, I typically blog more than any other time of the year.  A big reason why is because for whatever reason, work is typically slow around the first of the year.  So I have more time to blog, plus I need to blog more to get more work leads coming in.  In 2011 and 2012, March was my biggest traffic month of the year.

2 – Around April or so, more work leads start coming in.  Which is good, because it means I am busier.

3 – By July and August, I am typically swamped.  I usually have to turn down work.  Now on the surface this seems like a great place to be, but the mistake I have made every year since 2010 is…when I get super busy in the second half of the year, I stop blogging.

4 – By November and December, work has slowed back down.  A big reason why work has slowed down is because…I’m not blogging as often!  When work picked up a few months earlier, I decided to focus on the work, and let my blog get put on the backburner.

5 – So around January or so I start blogging like a madman all over again, and by March or April the biz leads start coming back.

 

I mention all this because I’ve begun to realize that my blogging inactivity every Fall was keeping this blog from really going to the next level.  I realized this in 2011, and planned on blogging consistently throughout 2012.  But then I got the book deal for Think Like a Rock Star, and convinced myself I needed to focus on writing an amazing book versus writing an amazing blog.  So this year I decided to re-dedicate myself to blogging more often.

Then a few days ago I saw this video from Michael Hyatt explaining how he grew his blog to over 300K visitors a month:

Notice in the last couple of minutes how Michael talks about the growth of his blog. He started blogging in 2004 with only 110 visitors a month. After 2007, he was still only at 700 visitors a month, but the next year his readership spiked to 20,000 visitors a month.  One of the reasons that he credited for the huge jump in the fifth year was that he made a commitment that year to blog every weekday, or 5 times a week.  He says that was a big reason why his blog took off.  Heading into 2012 I realized that my blog was too important NOT to blog much more often than I had been.

And from participating in #Blogchat I know that many of you are having the same problems.  You want to blog more often, but coming up with ideas is sometimes tough.  Something that has helped me is organizing your blog’s focus into Topic Buckets.

The basic idea is this:  Pick 2-5 main topic areas that you want to cover on your blog.  For example for me, I currently have 4 Topic Buckets:

1 – Blogging tips and advice

2 – Case studies on how rock stars and companies can better connect with their fans

3 – Case studies on how companies are and can use social media better

4 – Promotional, either talking about speaking I am doing, work, etc.

Now the great thing about Topic Buckets is that they really help you organize your posting patterns.  You may be trying to think about how you can blog 2-3 times a week, but if you can create 2-3 Topic Buckets, then all you have to do is write one post a week for each topic, and you are set!  Also, it’s a good way to keep track of what you’re blogging about.  For example, if I look back on my posts over the last 2 weeks, I might see that I haven’t really written a post that comes from one of my buckets, so I know I need to try to address that one soon.

Now even with this approach I’ll still sometimes run out of post ideas.  A great tip I have for helping find topic is via Google News searches.  I search for terms like ‘music marketing’ and ‘brand evangelists’ and ‘social media case study’.  It’s a great way to keep up to take on news involving these topics, and typically these searches are coming from sources that are different from the same blogs and sites that are being bounced around on Twitter and Facebook.

So if you are like me and wanting to blog more often, check out #Blogchat on Twitter tomorrow night at 8pm Central.  Hope to see everyone there and hope 2013 is a great blogging year for all of us!

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Some Thoughts on Monetizing Twitter Chats and Getting Sponsors

As we close in on March, #Blogchat will have its 4th birthday, having started on March 22nd, 2009.  And over the past 2 years I don’t think any chat other than probably Jessica Northey’s #CMChat has done a better job of bringing on sponsors and monetizing.  And over the past year or so, I’ve had more and more current and potential Twitter chat hosts ask me for advice on getting sponsors for their chats, and other ways to monetize.  I hesitate to give advice because I can only talk about what worked for me, it’s not a guaranteed formula that anyone can replicate.

Having said that, the one thing that has always driven any attempt at monetizing #blogchat has been answering this question: If I do this, how will the #Blogchat community benefit?  If I was trying to monetize via sponsorships, I would ask how the sponsorship would benefit BOTH the sponsor and #Blogchat.

But if I had ever started trying to monetize #Blogchat because I simply wanted a new source of income, then that would have changed the dynamic completely.  Then the end goal becomes making more money, and it’s a very slippery slope to go down, because if making more money is your top goal, the benefit to your Twitter chat community can easily take a backseat.  Which can lead to the community resenting your efforts to monetize, and the whole ball of wax quickly backfires and you lose what allowed you the chance to monetize in the first place: Your community.

So my advice is if you want to monetize, make sure there’s a clear benefit to your community from doing so.  I have turned down several sponsorship opportunities simply because I didn’t see how the sponsor’s involvement would benefit #blogchat and make it worth the community’s time.  Likewise, I have turned down some brands that wanted to sponsor #Blogchat simply because I didn’t think it was the most effective way that brand could use its money.  There’s a potential short-term loss from doing this, but in the long-run it benefits you.  I’ve had very little pushback over the last couple of years as I started selectively bringing on sponsors to #Blogchat.  The reaction has been overwhelmingly positive to having sponsors and I hope that’s because the people that show up to #Blogchat every week understand that I’m not going to bring on a sponsor unless I think it’s a good fit for us.

For example, there’s no sponsor for #Blogchat this month.  Why?  Because I couldn’t find a sponsor that I thought was a good fit for us.  There’s no need to monetize just for the sake of monetizing.  If it works for both the sponsor and #Blogchat then awesome.  But if not, then I walk away.  BTW I could not be happier with the recent sponsorship that #Blogchat had with Paper.Li and I’ve roped Paper.Li’s Community Manager Kelly Hungerford into writing a post here soon that will go into more detail about that, and Paper.Li itself.

So if you are running a Twitter chat and want to bring on sponsors, here’s the steps I would follow:

1 – Always start the monetization/sponsorship discussion by asking yourself this question:  How is this going to benefit this community and help me take the chat to the next level?  It is FAR too easy to think that you need to start making some money from your Twitter chat in order to justify the time you spend with it.  On this issue I will side with Twitter chat organizers because I don’t think a lot of the people that participate in Twitter chats really understand the amount of work that the organizers put into them.  It can easily become a part-time job.  But as an organizer, I think you will ultimately make MORE money from your chat if you focus those efforts around how that money can help you grow the chat itself.

2 – Make sure that people know that you are wanting and accepting sponsors.  In 2011 I did 7 Live #Blogchats, and these events were my main source of income that year.  Here’s how they got started:  In early January 2011 I was crunching the numbers to see if I could afford to attend SXSW.  I realized that it was going to cost well over $2,000 for my flight, badge, hotel and food.  There was just no way I could justify spending that much money.  I was pissed, but I refused to give up on going to SXSW.  So I started brainstorming ways to come up with the money for the trip.  Completely on a whim, I threw up this post here asking if anyone wanted to sponsor a Live #Blogchat at SXSW.  Amazingly, within 15 minutes I started getting offers from potential sponsors, and within an hour the main sponsor was on board.  I. Was. Stunned.  But it goes to show that you can’t assume that sponsors will come to you, you have to let them know that you are interested.  BTW if you are interested in sponsoring #Blogchat next month, now’s a great time to email me for details.  I would advise you to create a page on your blog with sponsorship details like the one I have here for #Blogchat sponsorships.

3 – When you find a sponsor that is interested, make sure you structure their involvement so that it enhances the chat experience, instead of detracting from it.  One way I do this is by being extremely picky about the topics of the chats during a sponsor’s involvement.  Whenever I flesh out the topics for a month that a sponsor is involved in #Blogchat, we work to find a happy medium between covering topics that benefit the sponsor, but that are also interesting and valuable to the community.  The last thing you want to do is bring on a sponsor, and suddenly change the topics to subjects that benefit the sponsor, but have little to no value for your community.  That’s a big signal to the community that bringing on the sponsor changed things, and not for the better.

4 – Make sure the sponsor will get their money’s worth.  When the sponsor is interested, have a frank discussion with them about what they want to see happen as a result of the sponsorship.  And don’t settle for ‘oh we just want more exposure’.  Figure out what positive change you want to happen for the sponsor as a result of being associated with your chat.  Maybe it could be signups, maybe it could be a trial of the sponsor’s service (like Paper.Li did last month), but there needs to be something that the sponsor can measure and when their sponsorship ends, they can look at and easily decide if the sponsorship is worth their time and money.

Here’s an example of a sponsor I turned down.  They provided hosting for bloggers, and although their service is very highly-rated, I felt the price-point would be too expensive for many #blogchat members.  I told them that a sponsorship would likely get them few if any new signups, and wouldn’t be worth their money.  Even though they were ready to pay, I turned down the money.  You have to look out for the best interests of potential sponsors as well as your chat community.

5 – Always strive for a win-win-win solution.  When the smoke clears, you should be able to look at see how you benefited as the chat host, how the chat members benefited, and how the sponsor benefited.  If all three parties don’t benefit, then it doesn’t work.  Always strive for a solution where everyone wins.  Oh and if someone has to take a slightly shorter stick, make sure it’s you.  It will benefit you in the long-term.

 

So there’s some thoughts and tips on getting sponsors for your Twitter chat based on what’s worked for me.  Your mileage may definitely vary, but I hope this is helpful.

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Lady Gaga Starts Offering Free Counseling to Little Monsters at Concerts Via #BornBraveBus

In the foreword for Think Like a Rock Star, Kathy Sierra talks about how rock stars want to make their fans better.  Rock stars, unlike most brands, have a great connection and empathy for their fans and who they are as well as their wants and needs.  I’ve blogged several times about how Lady Gaga consistently communicates to her fans (her Little Monsters) that she appreciates and loves them.

Now she’s upping the ante again:  On the US leg of her Born This Way Ball tour, Gaga will have as part of the experience a bus that will provide free counseling for her fans.  As she explains on Facebook:

At the BornBrave Bus you have access to professional private or group chats about mental health, depression, bullying, school & friends. There will also be food and games, DJ White Shadow andLady Starlight will DJ with host BREEDLOVE to keep the experience fun.

BornBrave Bus Is a place where mental health + depression are taken seriously w/ no judgement, FREE real help available to all. I feel like most kids don’t look for help because they feel embarrassed so mom + I wanted to break the stigmas around “help” and make it fun.

Now this move may draw some criticism and questions about these counselors and concerns over who they are and if they are qualified to provide counseling to troubled children and teens.  That’s understandable, but what you cannot question is Gaga’s devotion to her fans as people, not just as customers.

And this is the difference between how many rock stars cultivate fans, and how many brands do so.   At best, a brand will create an amazing product that delights its customers.  Perhaps so that those customers evangelize the brand to other customers.

But rock stars go out of their way to show their fans that they appreciate their support.  They don’t try to have a strictly transactional relationship with their fans, they strive to have an emotional one.  That means they invest a lot of time and money in doing things that don’t directly generate sales.  Like signing autographs for an entire day for free, or giving their fans a free concert or free counseling.  These efforts are met with a confusing shoulder shrug by some marketers because they don’t lead directly to sales.

But that’s not the intent.  The goal for the rock star is connect with their fans and strengthen that emotional connection.

Because that leads to sales.  The rock star’s fans don’t evangelize the rock star’s music because they love it, they love the rock star.  They love the rock star for their music, but also for how they love their fans, it means their devotion for the rock star is much deeper, as is their motivation to see other people support the rock star by buying their merchandise.  When a rock star like Lady Gaga does something like offering free counseling to her fans, it communicates to them that she truly loves them, and as a result, it gives the fan a greater incentive to promote that rock star to others.  The fans become vested in helping the rock star become better, because the rock star is invested in helping their fans become better.

But all this starts because rock stars don’t view their fans as potential marketing channels.  The view their fans as special people that they truly love and strive to have an emotional connection with.  Because rock stars have long understood that people don’t support someone or something because you give them a coupon or ask them to.  They support things and people that they believe in, that they love, and that love them back.

Which is a big reason why rock stars have fans, and companies have customers.

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‘Done’ is better than ‘Perfect’ when it comes to blogging

I’m enjoying reading Ekaterina Walter’s new book Think Like Zuck, which is about the five keys to business success that you can learn from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.  In the book, Ekaterina talks about one of the sayings often heard at Facebook is ‘Done’ is better than ‘Perfect’.  Reading this reminded me of a recent blog post I read by a person in this space lamenting the fact that there were too many ‘bad’ blogs out there.  Too many people creating worthless crap, and this person announced that they weren’t going to contribute to the problem.  They proclaimed that they were only going to write when they had something worthwhile to share.  And if that meant that they didn’t blog for weeks or months, that it didn’t matter because when they did, their blog post would be more valuable to everyone, including themselves.

This person was lying to himself.

Many of us have had this same conversation with our blogging selves.  We tell ourselves that we just can’t blog every week, or for some of us, not even every month.  There’s too much going on, and besides, if we write a new blog post and no one comments or RTs it, well…I just don’t even want to think about it.

Blogging is like anything else, it’s a learning process.  The more you blog, the easier ideas come to you.  The more chances you have to see how people react to a particular topic you cover, or the tone you use.  As a result, your overall writing becomes better and the entire blogging process becomes easier for you.

As a byproduct, your platform expands.  Not only is your blogging improving, but more people are being exposed to your ideas because they are being shared more often.  And as they are being shared more often, you get more engagement on your blog, and more ideas for better blog posts.  Which leads to more (and better) blog posts, which grows your platform even more, and the cycle is created.

At first I wasn’t going to write this post today.  I have one ready to go for tomorrow, and besides, I wanted to wait before publishing this post.  I wanted to make it ‘perfect’.  What would have likely happened is I would have kept putting off finishing this post, and after a week or two, I would have deleted this draft.

But in 2013 I am going to publish more imperfect blog posts rather than saving more ‘perfect’ drafts.

 

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Randi Zuckerberg Just Reminded Us Why It’s Important to Understand Your Customers

If you use Facebook, you’ve been there.  Either you post a goofy picture that you THINK is only going to your ‘Close Friends’ and it ends up being shared with the world, or someone tags you in a photo that goes public when they didn’t intent it to.  It’s long been a problem for Facebook users, and it speaks to how incredibly convoluted and confusing the privacy settings are on the site.

Well yesterday, it seems Randi Zuckerberg, Mark’s sis, got stung as well.  She posted a pic of her family having wild reactions to seeing the Poke app on their smartphones.

She meant to post it privately to her Facebook wall, and that’s what she thought she was doing.  It turns out with the way her privacy settings are set, she apparently didn’t realize that her subscribers could see the pic.

And one of them did, and posted it on Twitter.  And then Randi went apeshit.  And then a LOT of people pointed out the irony that facebook’s privacy settings are so confusing that even Zuck’s sis can’t figure them out.  After much teeth-gnashing, finally this happened:

In social-media circles, we call this a ‘tone-deaf response’.  To be fair, we probably shouldn’t be sharing her photo, even if she did (unwittingly) make it public.  And I’ve shared it twice now on Facebook via articles that included it, so if that makes be an indecent human being, then I guess I’ll have to take the blame for that.

But I don’t think people are sharing Randi’s photo because they are indecent people that are trying to hurt or embarrass Randi.  I think they are sharing Randi’s photo to back up what they have been saying for a while now:  That Facebook’s privacy settings ARE damn confusing!

The big problem I have with Randi’s response is that she’s placing the blame on others for sharing her photo, and not on her brother for creating a site that has such confusing privacy settings.  By blaming others to the point of lecturing them on human decency, all she is doing fanning the flames of a her self-created firestorm, and making it obvious to Facebook’s users that she either doesn’t understand their concerns over the site’s privacy settings, or she doesn’t care.

On the other hand, if she had laughed this off with something like ‘Wow, guess it’s time to talk to my brother about making those privacy settings less confusing!’, it would have garnered her a lot of goodwill with FB users, and likely would have resulted in far less sharing of the photo.

Remember, it’s not the initial action that determines the social media crisis, it’s how you respond to it.

Again, I totally get why Randi is upset about her photo being shared when she didn’t want it to be.  But I don’t think she understands why people are sharing it, and that’s where the disconnect lies.