MackCollier.com

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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?

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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.