MackCollier.com

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The Power Of Creating Something Amazing For the People That Love You

One of the things that rock stars do amazingly well is they create something amazing for the people that love them.  They find ways to bring their biggest fans together and create a uniquely amazing experience that’s totally unexpected.  The end result is that their fans are shocked, amazed, and love that rock star even more.

We saw that last night during the American Music Awards.  Psy was slated to close the show performing his internet sensation Gangham Style.  But halfway through, something unexpected happened…

http://youtu.be/qlUyF6q0zKg

Now I have to admit, I was a huge MC Hammer fan in the early 90s.  Down to even buying every VHS tape of his music videos and studying them to perform dance moves in clubs.  Sigh…

But Hammer joining Psy isn’t why I love this performance.  Watch it the first time just to appreciate it, then watch it again and pay close attention to the audience.

Notice that the audience is having an absolute blast as Psy is singing.  It’s a party, but notice what happens when Psy says STOP…Hammertime!  You can immediately hear the audience go NOOOOOO!!!!!! because they know what’s about to happen.  Then when 2 Legit 2 Quit starts playing and they see Hammer is on stage, the audience goes apeshit!

Psy and Hammer just created an amazing experience for their fans that they weren’t expecting.  The sheer joy on the faces of the members of the audience is infectious, isn’t it?  A big reason why I wanted to write Think Like A Rock Star was to help companies understand how to create a relationship  where they delight and amaze their biggest fans in this same way.

Because there’s nothing more powerful than giving your fans something amazing that they weren’t expecting.  How is your brand delighting and amazing its biggest fans?

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A ‘Like’ Is Not ‘Engagement’ On Facebook

Over the past few months I’ve been spending a lot more time on Facebook, actually I’ve been spending more time there than on Twitter.  As a result, I’ve seen how a lot of different brands and organizations are attempting to build engagement with the people that are following their page.

Typically, brands are trying to get people to Like or Share their posts.  An example of what I’m talking about might be a brand sharing a picture of someone lying on the beach and then saying ‘Its Friday!  Like this if you are ready for the weekend!’

Folks, that is not engagement.  How much effort is involved for me to see that in my News Feed, click Like, and move on?  It takes one mouse click.  That’s all the ‘engagement’ that picture earned you for your brand.

And yes, I understand the impact Likes and Shares can have on your page’s EdgeRank.  But wouldn’t it make more sense to actually create engaging content?  Because engaging content not only engages people, it gets Likes and Shares!

The good news is, it’s a lot easier to create engaging content on Facebook than you might realize, it just requires that you think a bit about how to be more engaging.

For example, how often have you seen a brand or page post a picture of a cute puppy and then ask you to Like if you think this puppy is just impossibly cute.  Seriously, it happens all the time, right?

But check out how a slight tweak in this approach can work wonders:

Aw….impossibly cute puppy alert!!!  But notice what they did, they didn’t simply ask you to Like the picture, they asked you to share a story with others about your dog!  And when you do share your story, you’ll also read all the other stories that other dog owners are sharing in the comments.  You’ll probably laugh, have a few ‘my dog does the same thing!’ moments, and who knows, you might even make a new friend just from interacting via the comments!   And you’ll also have a deeper affinity for this page, because they found a way to actually engage you.

Now, let’s say you are tasked with building engagement on a page about a TV show that hasn’t been on the air in 27 years.  That’s right, you need to build engagement around a TV show that most Facebook users have probably never seen.

So how do you do it?  By appealing to their fans, of course!  Check out how TVLand engages fans of 70s Sitcom classic M*A*S*H:

Every day TVLand posts a picture from one of the episodes of M*A*S*H that it’s airing that night, and asks fans a trivia question about that episode.  I am a huge fan of the series, so I freaking love these.  In the above episode, Frank is wearing a pair of hunting socks, which are heated.  Which is a big deal, because everyone else is freezing and there’s no heat!

So what happens is everyone leaves a comment answering that Frank has hunting socks.  But then something happens, people start answering the question by repeating lines from the episode.  Such as:

1 – Radar tells Colonel Blake “They’re hunting socks, sir!” and Blake replies “At this hour?”

2 – Or when Klinger says they are socks that get warm, and then adds “I have a bra like that!”

And before you know it, we are all laughing and remembering what a hilarious episode this is!  Which means we will probably remember how funny this episode was, and decide to watch it that night on TVLand.  But that happened because TVLand is smart enough to engage its fans, and to create a way for them to interact with each other.  The M*A*S*H updates from TVLand are honestly a highlight of my day on Facebook, and I often Like the update, comment on it, plus Like comments from other fans.

So when you are trying to build engagement on Facebook, think of ways to actually build engagement.  Creating a way for people to share stories, as you see in these two examples, is an incredibly powerful way to build engagement.

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The Power of Embracing Your Fans As A Feedback Channel

In the last year or so, brands have been increasingly aware of the power of connecting with their fans.  Unfortunately, most brands are excited about the potential of connecting with their fans as a way to help their customers ‘tell our story’.  The thinking is that brands can leverage their fans as a way to share the brand’s message to other customers.  Because we all generally accept that interactions we have with our friends and family are more trustworthy than those with brands, right?  So Brand A thinks ‘Hey, if we could get our fans to promote our brand to their friends and family, that would be awesome!’

What most brands are missing is the massive potential that their fans offer as a feedback channel.  Not only for their own experiences with the brand and its competitors, but with other customers.

For example, let’s say you’re a fan of Vizio, and the brand is training you on how to connect with other customers.  If a friend says they are thinking of buying a new 32-inch television, which question should you, as a fan of Vizio, ask?

1 – Have you considered a Vizio?

2 – What features are you looking for in a new television?

Many brands want their fans to ask the first question because they think it will generate more sales, but the second one is far more valuable for the brand.  The first question helps Vizio determine if customers are considering its brand, while the second question helps Vizio determine what customers want from a new television.

Another what-if scenario:  Let’s say Vizio has 100 fans that all meet another customer that’s in the market for a 32″ television.  If after asking these 100 customers what features they are looking for, they find that 64 customers say they want a new television that has 1080P resolution, and 57 say they want a new television with a 120Hz refresh rate.  39 customers want their television to have both these features.

If Vizio is focused on manufacturing 32″ televisions with 720P resolution and a 60Hz refresh rate, this information might could as a bit of a surprise to the brand!

One of the core lessons I cover in Think Like A Rock Star is that your brand cannot truly cultivate fans until you make a sincere effort to understand your customers and they understand you.  Your customers will not advocate on your behalf until they trust you.  And they will not trust you until they understand you.

Your goal as a brand is not to solely leverage your fans as a channel to market on your behalf.  Your goal is to better understand your fans, and to create a relationship with them that benefits your fans and creates value for them.  A wonderful byproduct of such a relationship is that it will lead to sales for your brand.

Oh and in case you were wondering, Think Like A Rock Star shows you exactly how to connect with your fans, as well as how to structure your staff internally and exactly what you need to do to grow a deeper connection with your fans.  As well as how to leverage that connection into growth for your business.  Amazon currently has Think Like A Rock Star on sale for its lowest price so far, only $14.21!

 

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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!