MackCollier.com

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Have You Pre-Ordered Think Like A Rock Star Yet?

Right now, Amazon is running a sale on Think Like A Rock Star, for only $14.36!  That’s the lowest price Amazon has had for Think Like A Rock Star, and the best part is if you’ve already pre-ordered the book, you’ll now get it at this price!  Amazon will price-match the lowest price on any item you pre-order, which means the price you pay for the book can only go down!

BTW Amazon Prime members will also get free 2-day shipping!  If you’ve been thinking about buying Think Like A Rock Star, please go ahead and pre-order it, you will be greatly helping the book be a success.  More pre-orders impact how much shelf-space retailers will give the book, as well as its placement on bestseller lists, which also impacts how many copies retailer buy.

Plus, its a pretty kick-ass book 😉  Final edits are going to my editor this week, as well as Kathy Sierra’s foreword.  Then the manuscript will go to a copy editor, and the process will be done in a couple of months!  After the manuscript goes to my copy editor, I’ll give y’all a more complete breakdown of exactly what is in the book.

So please pre-order your copy of Think Like A Rock Star!  Thank you SO much!

 

PS:  Also join #Blogchat tonight at 8pm Central, we’ll be joined by my friend Tom Martin!  Tom is an absolute whiz at using his iPhone to create social media content, and he’ll be sharing a lot of his secrets tonight!  So if you want to know how to use your smartphone as a content creation tool, join #Blogchat on Twitter at 8pm Central!

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Sponsored Post for OverBlog: Five Sundays in September

Note from Mack: This post is part of OverBlog’s #Blogchat sponsorship from September and is written by OverBlog user (and one of the stars of #Blogchat) Linda Bernstein (@WordWhacker).  

How many times did the “factoid” that a month with five weekends happens only once every 823 years appear on your social media feeds this fall? Though Snopes makes mincemeat out of that legend (October 2011 had 5 weekends – how quickly we forget!), September 2012 was certainly special for #blogchat. Overblog, a leading European blogging platform that is re-launching (like, from scratch) itself in the USA, sponsored all five chats. Additionally, three vibrant co-hosts added to the already über-stimulating, aerobically-paced chatter typical of the Sunday night discussions. It took me a couple of weeks to digest all this, but I wasn’t surprised to realize that my main takeaways all looped back to Overblog.

Overblog caught my attention at Jeff Pulver’s #140 Conference (“The State of Now”) June 19th-20th 2012 in New York City. I co-adjunct a social media course in the continuing education program and Columbia University’s School of Journalism, and one thing we always emphasize to our students is that different social platforms are different ecosystems. What’s appropriate and interesting on Twitter, let’s say, may not belong on Facebook. I advocate that unless the check-in or pin is really good, people should not push their FourSquare or Pinterest onto Facebook or Twitter.

When I saw how Overblog aggregates a person’s social into one space AND provides the ability to curate, I though, hmmmm. Let me try. Long story short, for several weeks I was stuck with pink. I had chosen a pink “theme” just to see how it looked, and I couldn’t get out. Happily, Overblog did not give up on me, and I now have a site for what I am calling “My Social Media Stuff.”

Anyway, I learn a ton of stuff each week on #blogchat, but here are six things that hit home with me about blogging during the month of September.

  • We should get organized. I love Nick Kellet’s Listly. I’ve been a magazine journalist for years, and I am a big fan of bulleted or numbered lists. They enable readers to get to the main points more easily. Lists work fantastically in blogs too – not just in the reading, but in the writing as well. But as Nick Kellet was tweeting, an idea was sparking in the back of my mind. Overblog similarly can help us keep our social selves organized. When my entire social is aggregated onto one page, I get to see how much I’m repeating myself. Luckily, I can curate and edit out all the reruns. Every time I see the same photograph or link pop up in my Overblog, I am reminded that with social I need to practice what I preach. Importantly for my blogging, with Overblog I have in front of me in one place what has caught my attention enough so that I’ve put it on social media. Blog topics galore!
  • We should own who we are. Neil Glassman from CMP.LY did a great job of explaining why those of us (and we all wish) who are being paid by brands to blog need to disclose this information on our blogs. But, tra-la-la, this slides over to other meanings of “owning.” We need to be responsible for and about what we say on our blogs. That doesn’t mean we can’t be controversial, but we should always try to fact-check ourselves. Yes, opinions can’t be fact-checked. But they need to be based on something. Even faith can be sourced! And now for the Overblog connection – just about the only thing we can own on the Internet is a URL. That’s why so many bloggers use WordPress and buy hosting for the URL(s) they have claimed. It really doesn’t cost much to own and self host – the equivalent of a few cups of java. Many bloggers, however, don’t feel “up” to the maintenance and expense a WordPress, Drupal, or Joomla site entails, and so go with something like Blogger. Here’s the amazing news. Overblog has many nice themes that require no coding (though they are all fully customizable with HTML and CSS) – and you can tie your Overblog to a self-hosted URL. YOU CAN OWN YOUR BLOG. And it’s pretty no fuss. You can add a blog to the page that has your social, or you can put your blog on a different page under your account.
  • Blogs ≠book chapters.  The chat with Lisa Petrilli was elucidating. Blogs are one thing; books are another. Not everyone is a book writer, but some bloggers have great book ideas. The Overblog connection? This platform makes it easy to practice and see how “chapters” might look.
  • Collaboration is great. Many of us in #blogchat are lone bloggers, but during every “open mic” chat, more than one person raises the topic of how best to collaborate on blogs. Yes, sharing is never easy. (My kids are young adults and I still tell them they have to share better!) But what if you were using a blogging platform that actually facilitates a collaborative blog? Voilà, Overblog. Check out how the folks who put together Social Week NYC (October 15-19) used Overblog collaboratively.
  • Customer service is king, that is, after content. Oh, the buzz on #blogchat about brands who erase negative comments! Such a no-no. We all love brands with great customer service, those who respond to their consumers, and for #blogchat-ters who represent brands, a reputation for good service as well is good content remains a primary goal. I must say that Overblog’s customer service is really blowing me away. Having problems setting it up? They’ll get on Twitter with you. Or email. Or even the phone.
  • We need to keep up with the fast-paced world. Yes, here’s another frequent #blogchat topic: whether email is still important. I could name names because I know where you all, my fellow chatters, stand on this. I also know that we’re concerned about how our blogs look on mobile devices and how and when we should add video. Overblog again to the rescue: You can livestream to Overblog. Yes you can. And Overblog is set up to look good on all kinds of devices. Yes it is.

Overblog isn’t for every blogger. People attached to beautifully designed websites probably might find it redundant. And many bloggers have time constraints that make blogging hard enough. The last thing they need is a recommendation to try something new. Still, give Overblog a look over. You might find it pretty cool. Me, I’m always an early tester and cautious adopter for all kinds of new tools and technology. I’m still in the testing stage, but I’m pretty sure Overblog has me hooked.

For a in-depth look at Overblog, follow this link to Jason Fall’s whitepaper on choosing a blogging platform: here.

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Graphic Recording of the Live #Blogchat at B2B Forum by Veronica Jarski!

I love this!  Veronica was at the B2B Forum last week in Boston doing a ‘graphic recording’ of some of the sessions, and she did a great job of recording some of the key takeaways from the Live #Blogchat!  Click the image to see it full-size.

Here’s Veronica’s blog, and her page with many of her graphic recordings.

Thanks Veronica!

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Engagement Without Action Is Just Noise

Comments.

Likes.

Followers.

Pins.

These are all ‘engagement’ metrics that many companies track to decide if their social media marketing efforts are successful.  It’s completely understandable, because these metrics are very easy to find.

And that’s typically the problem.  Too often we place too much value on the social media metrics that are the easiest to track.  You shouldn’t be tracking metrics such as comments and likes because they are easy to find, you should be tracking them because you understand that they lead to a desired outcome for your company.

What happens after that comment or Like?  When someone follows you on Twitter, what change in their behavior does that lead to?

If you can’t answer these questions then why are you tracking these metrics?  And to be clear, all of these metrics have value, I’m not knocking engagement or measuring metrics that attempt to measure them for social media tools.  My point is that you need more than simply Likes and Comments.  You need to build engagement with people that leads to some desired outcome for you company.  You need to be able to show that people that comment on your blog are more likely to do X which increases their chance of doing Y, which has a positive impact on your business’ bottom line.  If you can make that connection from point to point, then you have proven the value of blog comments for your company, and you should be doing everything you can to encourage them, and you should be tracking them.

But if you aren’t at that point, then you need to invest some time and energy in figuring out exactly why you are measuring metrics that you can’t prove have a positive impact on your business.  And the odds are that you can prove these metrics impact your brand, you just need to do the work to find the connection.

Create Content —–>  Get engagement —-> _______?

When you can fill in that blank and show how it helps you reach your end business goal for using social media, then you’re set.  A lot of people say it’s easy to use social media, but the only people telling you its easy to see the results you want are the ones trying to sell you something 😉

Businessman holding megaphone making noise image from Big Stock.

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Think Like A Rock Star is Done and Available For Pre-Order!

Whew!

After 5 months of writing, the manuscript for Think Like a Rock Star has been handed off to my editor at McGraw-Hill, and the book is now available for pre-order on Amazon!

There’s still the editing process to go through, but I wanted to give you a bit more information on what the book will include and why you should buy it.

  • Tons and tons of case studies and insights from some of the top rock stars and brands in the world.  The book will have dozens of examples from the world’s top rock stars and brands showing how they connect with their fans.  Rock stars like Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Amanda Palmer, Sarah McLachlan, Blink 182, and brands like Billboard, Dell, Ford, Patagonia, The Red Cross, Red Bull, YouTube, and many more.
  • Specific How-Tos throughout the book that show your brand how to cultivate and connect with your fans.  Perhaps the biggest rule I had for myself when writing this book was that if I told you why you should do anything, I had to then tell you HOW to as well.
  • Step-By-Step instructions.  Want to know how to launch a brand ambassador program?  I walk you through the steps that need to happen.  Want to know how to respond to negative customers online and convert them into fans of your brand?  I give you the exact steps that you need to follow.
  • Everything your brand needs to know to become a truly fan-centric brand, even down to staffing requirements and what internal and external teams will look like.  Every position will be broken down and their specific responsibilities will be described.  You officially have no more excuses!
  • This was a fun book to write and it will be a fun book to read.  My pet peeve when it comes to most business books is that they read like a textbook.  Not Think Like a Rock Star, it has a ton of wonderful stories woven throughout and it’s the business book for people that hate reading business books.
  • If you want more Likes on Facebook or RTs on Twitter, this is not the book for you.  This book won’t teach you how to use social media to spread your message or how to turn your customers into mindless billboards.  Instead, it will teach you how to see the true value in your fans and to understand how to cultivate a relationship with them that benefits you both.

Thankfully, Amazon has finally updated its system and Think Like A Rock Star is available for pre-order!  The book won’t be released until April 19th, 2013.  Here’s how Amazon’s pre-order process works:  If you order the book now, your credit card isn’t charged until the book ships in 6 months.  Additionally (and this is the best part!), if the price drops AFTER you pre-order the book, you get it at that price.  For example, as I am writing this post, the current price on Amazon for Think Like A Rock Star is $22.00, which is the list price.  A couple of days ago it was $14.96, which means if you had ordered the book a couple of weeks ago when it was still $22.00, you’d actually get it for only $14.96.  The price has been going up and down for the last couple of weeks and my guess is it will eventually settle in at around $14.96.

If you are considering ordering Think Like A Rock Star, I would ask you to please pre-order it now.  There’s a couple of big reasons why pre-orders will help:

  • More pre-orders signals to Amazon and other online booksellers that they need to order more copies of the book from the publisher.  Which also signals to McGraw-Hill that they need to print more copies of the book.  This increases the marketing support that my publisher will give the book, which only improves its chances of being successful.
  • Pre-orders are counted toward book sales on the day the book is first available for sale.  This is important because it means the book will have a much higher sales rank when it is published, which greatly increases its chances of making those nifty bestseller lists.  Which also means more copies will be ordered and stocked by booksellers!

So if you have been considering ordering Think Like A Rock Star anyway, please do go ahead and pre-order it.  That would be a great help to me and $15 or so for the book isn’t that much.  I’ve heard from a few of you that you’ve already pre-ordered the book.  Thank you SO much for your support, it truly means the world to me!

If you want to pre-order Think Like A Rock Star from Amazon, click this link.  Thank you!

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Never underestimate the impact search traffic has on your blog

So this blog has been effectively dormant since early May when I started working on my book.  I’ve left a few posts here and there, but my volume has definitely fallen off a cliff.

Which would lead you to believe that my blog’s traffic should have been down this summer as well, right?  Surprisingly, it was not:

This graph is the weekly traffic here for 2012.  The blue X marks the week at the end of April/beginning of May where I announced I was working on Think Like a Rock Star.  There was a sharp decrease the following week in traffic, but after that traffic has been more or less flat for the rest of the summer.

Which doesn’t make sense, because obviously if I have been posting less, then referral traffic from social sites like Twitter and Facebook should be down as well, right?

Here’s referral traffic from Twitter this year:

And here’s referral traffic from Facebook for this year:

Both Twitter and Facebook referrals spiked a bit in July because of this post, but other than that both sources have been slowly decreasing in the amount of traffic they send here.

So if overall traffic here has been flat this summer, and referrals from social media sites are down, that has to mean that another source of traffic has increased, right?

Yes, here’s how search traffic has done here this year:

As you can see, search traffic has had slow and steady growth throughout the year, and that continued throughout the summer even though the number of new blog posts I published here decreased dramatically.  In fact, the increase in volume of search traffic was enough to effectively negate the loss I saw in referral traffic from Twitter and Facebook.

But here’s the thing about search traffic:  It can take a long time to cultivate a blog that can give you a solid volume of search traffic.  Here’s the monthly volume of search traffic over the lifetime of this blog:

The total volume of search traffic here for my first full month of posting in June of 2009 was 85 visits.

Last month I had 8,261 visitors arrive here from search.  That’s over 8,000 new monthly visitors in 3 years from ONE traffic source!

But the kicker is, notice that it took me approximately a year of blogging here before I started to see any real gains in search traffic volume:

June 2009 – 85 visits

June 2010 – 694 visits

June 2011 – 3,681 visits

June 2012 – 6,553 visits

The real search traffic benefits started kicking in after I had been blogging 12-18 months.

So if you are trying to figure out if your blogging efforts are paying off, don’t just look at raw traffic numbers, drill down and see how each traffic source is moving.  For example, I now know that my search traffic is going to continue to rise even if I post less.  But now that I will be posting more in the Fall, that means referral traffic from social sites like Twitter and Facebook will increase as well, which means overall blog traffic will grow as a result.

If you’ve been blogging for over a year, what have you seen from your search traffic?  Has it increased?  And if so, how long did you have to blog before you started to see that increase?

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@NeilGlassman Joins #Blogchat Tonight to Talk Blogger Disclosure

Tonight at #Blogchat starting at 8pm Central we’ll be discussing what bloggers should be disclosing on their blogs plus how they can use disclosure to improve their reputations.  Joining us will be special co-host @NeilGlassman, who is the CMO of CMP.LY.

Tonight we’ll be covering three areas:

1 – From 8:00pm-8:20pm central we’ll discuss when disclosure should be made by bloggers.

2 – From 8:20pm-8:40pm central we’ll discuss how to disclose on blogs.

3 – From 8:40pm-9:00pm central we’ll discuss disclosure on other social sites with an emphasis on Twitter.

 

That’s it!  If you are a blogger that either is reviewing products on your blog or have considered it, make sure you tune in tonight to get some expert advice from Neil on how you should handle disclosure.  To prepare for tonight’s #Blogchat make sure you are following @NeilGlassman on Twitter and also please follow #Blogchat’s sponsor this month, @OverBlog!

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OverBlog is #Blogchat’s September Sponsor Plus the Topics For All Five Sundays!

I’m very excited to announce that OverBlog will be sponsoring #Blogchat in September!  OverBlog is a service that pulls together your social media content from multiple sources (your blog, Twitter, Facebook, etc) and organizes it together on one page!  For an example, here’s Robert Scoble’s Overblog page.  I am looking forward to playing with it and think it could be great for a brand or marketer that wants to establish thought leadership around a particular topic.

Additionally we will have not one, not two but THREE co-hosts in September!  Here’s the entire lineup for this month (see this is another advantage to bringing on sponsors, it forces me to set the topics ahead of time ;)):

September 2nd – Topic: Getting your blog and social media content organized and filtered.  Co-hosted by List.ly co-founder Nick Kellet!  This will be great for those of us that are struggling to manage all our social media presences all over the net.  How much is too much?  Nick will help us figure out how to get organized!

September 9th – Topic: How small and medium-sized businesses can effectively use blogging to built its brand and we’ll also address time management (how do I make time for blogging and social media?)

September 16th – Topic: How bloggers can and should handle disclosure on their blog. Co-hosted by CMP.LY CMO Neil Glassman!

September 23rd – Topic: How to turn your blog posts into a book or ebook. Co-hosted by Lisa Petrilli!

September 30th – OPEN MIC!

So there you have it, the entire lineup for September PLUS thanks again to OverBlog for sponsoring!  I’m excited to meet their team that will also be one of the sponsors for the Social Brand Forum in October where I will keynoting Think Like a Rock Star.

Hope everyone has a great weekend, see you Sunday night at 8pm Central!

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Heading to MarketingProfs B2B Forum & Social Brand Forum in October

Wanted to let y’all know about a couple of events I’ll be speaking at in October.  The first is the MarketingProfs B2B Forum in Boston on October the 3rd through the 5th.  On the 4th we’ll cap off the first full day with a LIVE #Blogchat!  The LIVE #Blogchat is only open to B2B Forum attendees, so if you want to attend, use code BLOGCHAT to get a $200 discount on registration!  If you’ve never attended a LIVE #Blogchat, they are a blast.  It’s all the #Blogchat, without all the Twitter 😉

BTW Marketing Profs is also looking for a sponsor for the Live #Blogchat.  If your company is looking for a way to get involved in the B2B Forum this is a killer opportunity to not only be associated with a stellar event, but to help make the Live #Blogchat possible.  Remember there will be a ton of brand marketers and small/medium business owners in attendance, so if you want to reach those crowds, a LIVE #Blogchat sponsorship makes a ton of sense.  If you’re interested in learning more about terms and pricing, please email me and I’ll connect you with MarketingProfs so they can help you out.

Marketing Profs always puts on a great event, and once again has a killer speaker lineup.  Hope to see everyone there!

The second event I’ll be speaking at in October is the Social Brand Forum in Iowa.  I’ll be delivering Think Like a Rock Star for the first time as a keynote, and it looks like for the first time since completing the book.  Ann Handley and DJ Waldow will also be keynoting plus there will also be a LIVE #Blogchat at the Social Brand Forum as well!  Perhaps the best part is the rate is just $195 for the first 100 registrations plus that will get you a copy of Think Like a Rock Star PLUS Ann’s book Content Rules PLUS DJ’s new book Rebel’s Guide to Email Marketing!

As for Think Like a Rock Star, I am thankfully almost done writing it!  The manuscript is due to McGraw-Hill on September 10th, and I am finishing up the final chapters now.  It has been an incredibly rewarding/inspiring/frustrating/exhausting process, all at the same time 😉  So look for semi-regular blogging here to resume in the next couple of weeks, I’ve missed y’all!

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Kathy Sierra Is Writing the Foreword For Think Like a Rock Star

Oh it’s been damn hard to keep this a secret for so long!  Anyone that knows me and that has followed the progression of the Think Like a Rock Star concept over the past 3 years knows that Kathy has had a bigger impact on my thinking than anyone else.  She’s just unbelievably brilliant when it comes to teaching brands how to create passionate users/fans/customers and what’s so awesome about Kathy is that she makes everyone else feel like they are smarter.  There are so many people that you read their writings and think ‘Wow that guy/gal is pretty smart!’  With Kathy’s writings, you read them and think ‘OMG she just connected the dots for me and now it all makes sense!‘  I am over the moon excited and cannot tell you how proud I am that Kathy will be involved with this book.

So when I asked Kathy if she would write the foreword and she told me she would be happy to review my manuscript and give me some advice, I was thinking that she had no idea what she was getting into 😉  It turns out *I* was the one that was in for a surprise.  Over the next month, Kathy must have written me 20 emails, each one probably 2,000 or so words with insanely helpful advice on how to structure the book.  In short, it all went back to this bit of advice:  On every single page, ask yourself ‘Is this going to help the reader kick ass?‘  Classic Kathy Sierra 😉

Before talking to Kathy, I thought Think Like a Rock Star could be a very good book.  Thanks in large part to Kathy’s tremendous help and advice over the last month, I now know Think Like a Rock Star is going to be a great book.  And Kathy deserves a lot of the credit for that because she’s really helped me flesh out and structure my ideas, and present them in a way that will help the reader grasp the core lessons…and help them kick ass.

BTW if you aren’t familiar with how awesome Kathy is, here’s some of my favorite posts that she’s written:

How your product can inspire The Nod

Inspiring your user-evangelists

Conversational writing kicks formal writing’s ass

Reverse-engineering user reviews

Changing the user-experience without changing the product

And finally…here’s the cover design for Think Like a Rock Star!  What do you think?

The official on-sale date is April 19th, 2013, and Think Like a Rock Star is slated to be available for pre-order on sites like Amazon and Barnes and Noble later this month!

Pic of Kathy via Flickr user dottavi

PS: Kathy I apologize for the amount of !!!s in this post, but as I said, I overuse them when I am excited about something 😉

BONUS!  Here’s a talk Kathy gave last year on how to write a book that helps readers kick ass.  If you are considering writing a book PLEASE watch this.

If you are getting this post in a feed reader, click here to watch the video.