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Let Your Courage Be the Master of Your Fear

In January, I decided to start reading the Bible.  Every day. And it’s been an amazing experience, and I will be sharing some takeaways from my reading here every Saturday.

Growing up, most kids have a favorite superhero they are drawn to. For me, it was also Batman and Spiderman. I know, a lot of kids love Superman.  Who doesn’t want to fly and have super strength?

But for me, it was always Spidey and The Dark Knight. And for the same reason; I could relate to them.

First, you had mild-mannered Peter Parker. The nerd in school that got bullied, till one day he was exposed to a radioactive spider and developed the ability to climb walls like a spider and had super-human strength. Ok, I couldn’t relate to any of that, but he also was able to use his brain and create web-shooters and the super strong and sticky substance that would become his signature webbing.

Then look at Batman. He had NO super-powers, unless you count being obsessive complusive as a superpower. He was a ‘normal’ guy that due to the murder of his parents, became obsessed with fighting crime. So he trained relentlessly. He became a master of hand to hand combat. He developed his detective skills till he was on par with the best sleuths in the world. Yeah, he was insanely rich and could buy any toy he wanted.  But the point was, in theory….anyone could be Batman.

That made him relatable. Superman could fly around the world at the speed of light.  That was cool, but made him completely unrelatable to me. But Batman, Batman showed what was possible.  Probably? No, but possible.  And that made him appealing.

I’ve always been drawn to the idea of reframing a negative as a positive.  Or finding potential in a place that doesn’t seem likely. It’s one of the reasons why I wanted to write Think Like a Rock Star, I wanted to help businesses think differently about their customers. Don’t think of them as a burden or just a number. Understand that your customers can be, the best drivers of your business. You just have to tap into and release their potential.  Which starts by understanding that this potential exists.

“So Mack, what in the blessed moon does this have to do with the Bible???”

Glad you asked.

Last week I wrote about how the Bible encourages faith from Christians as a way to destroy worry. I think that for many of us, worry and a fear of taking risks can go hand in hand. For years I would tell others “I need to know that when I do THIS, that THIS will happen. When I find that, I can devote all my energy into THIS in order to get THAT.”

I finally realized that was just a fancy way of saying “I don’t like to take risks”.

When I started reading the Bible, I believed that God would be in line with this thinking. I assumed that the Bible would teach that we shouldn’t take risks, that we should hand the problem over to God and let Him take the risks for us.

Instead, the Bible teaches the opposite. It repeatedly says that Christians should live courageously, and view doing so as a tribute to God:

Joshua 1: 9 : “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.”

 

Additionally, I found a passage in I believe one of the letters Paul wrote to one of the churches (I am kicking myself for not marking it because now I can’t find the exact verses), but he was imploring the people of this church to be courageous. He went on to say that as Christians, we should live courageously, so that our behavior can be an example for others to follow.

In my mind, this has totally reframed risk-taking for me. Before, I viewed being risk adverse as being smart.  You can’t lose what you don’t put on the table.

But in God’s eyes, taking risks is a sign of trust. And in much the same way that worry and faith cannot exist in the same space, I guess you could say that fear and courage cannot exist in the same space either. Or at least, courage will be the master of fear.

God doesn’t want us to be fearful because fearful behavior is distrustful behavior.  He wants us to take risks, because that shows that we trust that God will give us the wisdom to choose the right path and then we need to have the faith to walk it.

 

I wanted to say thank you SO much for the positive reaction to last week’s post on Your Faith is a Thief. I received positive comments here and in private and even on social media. I’m very happy to see that. I know that posts about the Bible on a blog devoted to marketing and business isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but I have been thrilled with the response the first post has gotten. Thank you so much, if you enjoy these posts where I share what I am learning from reading the Bible, please check back here every Saturday for a new one!

 

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The Promise (and Peril) of Artificial Intelligence for Content Creators

Artificial intelligence for content creators

Artificial intelligence is arguably the hottest growth area of business this year and could be for the rest of the decade. In early 2023, Microsoft announced a $10 Billion investment in ChatGPT creator OpenAI. Google followed a month later with a $300 Million investment in AI startup Anthropic, giving them a 10% stake in the company. So big tech’s big bucks are flowing to artificial intelligence right now, and that will sustain its growth path, at least for the foreseeable future. As you might guess, artificial intelligence for content creators will hold great promise as well.

If you haven’t already, you should familiarize yourself with these tools. ChatGPT is the most popular, and I’ve been using it since December of 2022. You can experiment with it yourself here.

At first blush, Artificial Intelligence seems like a godsend for content creators. It has the potential to address many of the most pressing problems that content creators have:

  • Ideation. This is big for me, I have always struggled with coming up with enough ideas for new content.
  • Editing. My process to editing goes like this: Publish the post, then immediately proofread it. With AI, you can have your post proofread for you quickly and easily, and have it edited in pretty much any style you choose.
  • SEO, AI can easily give you tips to improve the search engine performance and rankings for your content.
  • Visual enhancements.  AI can suggest appropriate visual components.
  • Headline writing tweaks.  AI can write your headlines for you! Many content creators and especially bloggers struggle with writing compelling headlines.

 

So as you can see, when used correctly, artificial intelligence can greatly aid content creators. But there are some potential drawbacks to consider as well.

AI Should Enhance Your Content Creation, it Shouldn’t Replace it

The best way to look at Artificial Intelligence is as a tool you can use to improve an existing output, not as a tool that creates the content for you.

Let’s look at two scenarios to illustrate the difference:

First, let’s say you have agreed to cook dinner for friends. Since you aren’t much of a cook, you decided to go with something quick and easy, spaghetti with marinara. For the marinara, you decided to choose Rao’s Homemade Marinara (which is actually quite good), but you want to pass it off as being your own homemade concoction.

So your friends arrive, but it seems Michael invited his friend Paolo to join the group, and of course Paolo would just so happen to be a world-class chef. So when your friends begin dinner, they compliment you on the spaghetti and sauce, which you claim you made yourself. Paolo compliments it as well, adds it tastes remarkably close to Rao’s that can be bought from the shelf, and asks for your recipe.  Oops.  This would be an example of having AI do the work for you, and how that can create problems.

Now let’s look at the second scenario. In this scenario, you are still making dinner for your friends, still making spaghetti, but in this example you can actually cook! And you have gotten quite good at making homemade marinara, as your friends will attest. So your friends arrive a bit early for dinner, and again, Michael invites Paolo along to dinner. When you learn that Paolo is a world-class chef, you invite him to sample your marinara as you are preparing it. He marvels at the taste, you thank him and add that you think it needs some more ‘heat’, but you don’t want to make it spicy. Paolo tastes it again and then suggests you add a pinch of black pepper. You do, and perfection! Your marinara has the exact taste of ‘heat’ you were looking for! In this example, AI, er….Paolo, took an already good homemade marinara sauce, and made it better.  The AI enhanced your work and improved the final product.

Additionally, the information given by AI isn’t always accurate. And that can quickly cause problems:

Also, the sources of information that AI tools pull from, especially visuals such as photos, may include copyrighted material, which can create additional issues:

Also, there’s the concern over spreading misinformation that’s been generated by AI:

 

So how should you use AI as a content creator?

Simply put, AI should be used to enhance content that YOU create. These tools can be quite valuable for content creators, if used correctly. What you don’t want to happen is let the AI create the content, then you tweak it. You should create the content, then use AI as a tool to help edit, enhance and improve YOUR work.

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Your Faith is a Thief

Disclaimer: This post will be about the Bible. Earlier this year, I started reading the Bible daily, and I want to start sharing some of my thoughts and takeaways here each Saturday. If this isn’t a topic you are interested in, I understand completely, and hope to see you back here on Monday when Monday’s Marketing Minute returns.  If you do enjoy this post, I will be covering similar topics every Saturday from now on.  Thanks for reading!

So, now that the fine print is out of the way: In January I made a decision to start reading the Bible every day. I had never read the Bible cover to cover, I’d read bits and pieces over the years, often during my sporadic church attendance, but there were many books that I had never even touched.

So I decided to remedy that in January. I started out by reading Genesis, then immediately went to Revelation (which was probably not a smart idea). I then went back and read Exodus, then moved to the New Testament and read it all the way through.  I’ve just restarted reading Genesis again for the 2nd time.

I had some pretty big misconceptions about what the Bible is about.  If you haven’t read the Bible before, I don’t want to do spoilers, but it’s an amazing account of the entire world. I was expecting to be all but lectured to, and shown how far from the ideal Christian I fall. I assumed the Bible was basically a collection of case studies of the most amazing Christians who lived nearly sin-free lives, and that would be the ideal that I was expected to shoot for.

I could not have been more wrong. The Bible does indeed profile many of the Kings, Prophets and leaders that shaped Christianity. It does indeed give you Christian ideals to strive for. But the Bible makes it very clear that these leaders of Christianity are also VERY human and as such, they are VERY flawed. I was honestly stunned at some of the sinful behavior that these pillars of the Christian religion engaged in.  But these people also did amazing things for their God. The overarching theme of the Bible seems to be that God will forgive those that come to Him and accept Him and ask for forgiveness for their sins.

If you have put off reading the Bible because you are afraid that you will learn how ‘bad’ or sinful you are in comparison to ‘good’ Christians, let me just say that you may have some of the same misconceptions about the Bible that I did.  If you decide to read the Bible, I think you will be as pleasantly surprised as I have been so far.

Now, let me turn to what I want to talk about today. One of the themes that the Bible keeps hitting on is the need for all Christians to have faith in God. First in the Old Testament the need to act in faith was emphasized.  Then when I started reading the New Testament, Jesus constantly taught His followers to act in faith. People would constantly come to Jesus and ask Him to heal them, to remove their afflictions. He would ask them if they had faith that He could do this, and when they said they believed, He would heal them.  In one story, a Roman soldier came to Jesus and asked Him to heal someone. Jesus told the soldier to lead Him to this person. The soldier told Jesus that it wasn’t necessary for Him to follow the soldier home, Jesus could heal the person by simply wishing it into existence. Jesus marveled at the soldier’s faith, and told him to go home, that his companion had been healed.

Now as I was reading the Bible and saw how this point of having faith was repeated over and over again, a thought occurred to me. I thought, I can see how a cynic could read this and think “Well this is pretty self-serving, isn’t it? Of course God wants us to be faithful to Him! This is just God wanting people to worship Him for His glory!”

Which, of course, is correct. But that’s not the only reason why God stresses the need for faith. In fact, I don’t think it’s even the main reason why.

As I read on in the New Testament, I came to Christ’s famous Sermon on the Mount. In Matthew Chapter 6, Jesus talks about why we should not worry:

25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27 Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life[e]?

I love these verses so much! And chapter 6 of Matthew closes with verse 34: “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

And as I was mentally digesting these verses I began to see the connection between faith and worry.  At that moment, the following thought popped into my head: “Worry and faith cannot exist in the same space.”

And there it was! God stresses faith from us because our faith destroys worry! Think of the damage that we do to ourselves by worrying about our lives. About our job, or family, or possessions. We worry about something that MIGHT happen.  Or that might NOT happen.

How much of it is necessary? Is ANY of this worry necessary?

Worry is the fear and dread of something that MIGHT happen. Faith is the belief that something WILL happen.

God tells us to avoid worry because He wants us to put our trust in Him to provide for us, but also because He knows the damage that worry causes us. He doesn’t want that for us.

As I’ve been reading the Bible, there have been numerous ‘lightbulb’ moments for me, but this was one of the biggest and I just had to share it with you. It totally helps me reframe how I view faith and why I need to eliminate worry.  It’s why I wrote ‘Faith is a thief’ as the title of this post. Faith steals your ability to worry!

If you want to start reading the Bible, here’s a fantastic reference I have been using that I think you will enjoy. The Bible Project has created animated videos that explain every book of the Bible, Old and New Testament. Each video is around 8-10 minutes, so they are really short. I like to watch the video for a book, then read the book.  Watching the video first really helps me get a sense of what the book is about, and it makes it much easier to read.  Here’s their video for Genesis. These are so good I binge-watched the entire Old Testament in just a couple of days!  I hope you will enjoy them as well.

Thanks for reading, if you enjoy this post, I will be sharing more of my thoughts on the Bible every Saturday. Have a wonderful weekend!

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The Passing of Dooce, and Why Social Media Has Failed Us All

If you joined social media in its early days, say 2005-2009 or so, there’s certain words and phrases that will resonate with you, that others who started using social media later just don’t understand.  Such as:

  • Friendfeed
  • Technorati
  • The Summer of Plurk
  • Fail Whale
  • Dooce (also “You’ve been Dooced!”)

Dooce is the online name for Heather Armstrong. Heather was one of the first ‘mommy bloggers’ and for a period of time around 2008 or 2009, she was likely the most popular blogger on the planet.

Earlier this month, Heather passed away. According to her boyfriend, the cause of death was suicide.  Heather was 47 years old.

I wasn’t a regular Dooce reader. But you didn’t have to be to immediately see that Heather had a very acidic wit. She had personality, she had flair. She could write in a way that captivated the attention of her readers. And she cussed a lot.  It seems pretty obvious that she was using her blog as a way to attempt to cope with the issues she was facing in her everyday life. I think all bloggers do this to some degree. She bared her struggles and triumphs for all to see, and that generated a lot of attention for her, a lot of fans, and a lot of success.

And with success in social media, comes criticism. The AP article I linked to about Heather’s death doesn’t specifically state this, but it heavily implies that the hate she received over the success of her Dooce site contributed to her issues. It’s an insanely weird thing to see people that have no idea who you are, criticizing you. Leveling personal attacks at you.  Based on nothing more than simple jealousy.

When I announced I was writing Think Like a Rock Star back in early 2012, the amount of criticism I got for simply announcing I was writing a book was stunning to me. I suddenly had industry peers attacking me. I wasn’t qualified to write a book, I was copying my idea from another author. I had one industry guy I was following specifically tell someone on Twitter to NOT buy my book, that I wasn’t qualified to write on the topic. My first thought was ‘Buddy, you have no earthly idea what you are talking about.  You have no idea what clients I have now, which ones I’ve already worked with or what work I’ve done for them.”

And he didn’t. All he knew was that I was writing a book, and that made him jealous cause he didn’t have one.

I’ve watched this same scenario play out countless times on social media over the last 18 years with countless people. When you are building your network, there will always come a tipping point at which you suddenly become ‘big’ enough to attract detractors.  These people reach a point where they have achieved more success than they should have.  Now they are open to criticism.  Because someone decided that they didn’t ‘deserve’ that much success, and that opens them to criticism.  From strangers that have no idea what they are talking about.

The AP article above says that Dooce.com had 8 million monthly viewers at its peak. I can only imagine the amount of criticism and attacks she would have to endure from strangers, at that volume.

From strangers. Anonymously.  On the internet.

I started blogging in 2005. What really attracted me to blogging from the start was the idea that blogging gives everyone a voice. If you have a blog, then you have a way to share your voice with the world.  When I first started blogging, every day I would track new links using Technorati (see the list at the start of the post). One day in late 2005, I saw a link from what appeared to be a Chinese site. I did some investigating, and the link was coming from a 13 year-old girl in China that had linked to my blog from hers. That alone opened my eyes to the potential of blogging. That people of all ages, locations, and backgrounds, all around the world, could connect and engage and share ideas and build friendships.

At least, that was the promise of blogging and social media. But over the years, I saw that promise increasingly give way to a reality of spite, anger, trolls and harassment. Strangers attacking other strangers just because they could.

We never fully realized that promise of blogging and social media as a way to bring the world closer together, to support each other. In fact, we missed that mark so badly that many people now question if we would have been better off if we never had social media.

But social media didn’t cause this, we did. Blogs and social media are just the tools we used to be bitter and jealous towards each other. Ironically, as I am writing this, a friend has PMed me on Facebook about an instance of them being attacked on FB because of their opinions.

We are better than this. I made a mistake in the title of this post, social media didn’t fail us.

We failed each other.

Goodbye, Heather. You are one of the pioneers of blogging and social media, and you opened doors for many more who came after you. I’m sorry for criticism you had to deal with, but I would like to think that you were aware of the impact you had on this space.

There will never be another Heather Armstrong. But right now, there is a blogger who is about to get her big break. Maybe she’s about to get her first sponsor, or her first job due to her blog, or maybe her first book deal.

When that happens, let’s be happy for her. Let’s assume she deserves it, and let’s not give in to any jealousy we might want to entertain. Instead, let’s cheer her on, and let’s try to learn from her and apply it to our own efforts.

Because with any luck, we might be the next blogger that makes it big. And when success arrives, let’s hope kindness and congratulations accompanies it.

Because we deserve it. And we deserve to be the person who is good enough to treat others as we would want to be treated.

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Elon Making Linda Yaccarino New Twitter CEO Hints at His Plans For the App

After months of speculation, Elon finally named Twitter’s new CEO, Linda Yaccarino.  The move makes sense in some regards, and is a bit of an eyebrow-raiser in others.

Let’s first look at Yaccarino’s background, then look at where Elon wants to go with Twitter.

Who is Linda Yaccarino?

Here is Yaccarino’s LinkedIn profile to give you a sense of her work history. As you can see, she has a strong work history in advertising and media. She was previously at NBCUniversal for the last 12 years.

I suspect Elon is attracted to her skills in both media and attracting corporate advertisers. In fact he sort of hinted at this when describing how their roles would evolve, moving forward:

In other words, Linda will handle marketing, Elon will handle the product and tech behind it. And it seems advertisers are already reacting positively to the news of her hiring:

I will say this; Over the last few months, I have noticed that advertising from big brands has become more scarce in my feed, being replaced with ads from smaller companies I have never heard of. So I’m sure Elon is feeling a bit of the pinch of lost ad revenue, and I’m guessing that he wanted to hire a CEO who could court those advertisers back to the platform. Early signs are that the move is working.

As an aside, it is worth noting that Yaccarino has ties to the World Economic Forum, where she has run a committee and spoken. Many people (including myself) are very worried about the global plan that the WEF has in mind for the planet. My friend Carol Roth has a new book out that will delve into this topic that I would recommend, You Will Own Nothing. Yaccarino’s strong ties to the WEF are worrisome.

 

What will Twitter look like with Yaccarino as CEO?

This is where the rubber meets the road. No doubt, a strong focus of Yaccarino will be to bring back big brand advertisers to the platform. In order to do that, Yaccarino will need to placate fears that advertisers have about the platform, and Elon himself.

If her history is any indicator, she will look to do this via stronger content moderation.

Does this thinking feel like a step backwards to what content moderation looked like under Jack Dorsey?  Yes it does.  Notice in this clip, Yaccarino is talking about how the advertisers need to influence Twitter and how new ways needed to be created to let advertisers more or less partner with Twitter to shape the direction of the platform.

Where is the discussion of the influence that the USERS can have? Where is the interest in ensuring that the average Twitter user will have a voice in shaping the direction of Twitter in the future? I missed that discussion.

So I do expect to see tighter content moderation on Twitter, at least in the short-term. Elon has said he is against the type of overbearing content moderation we saw under Dorsey, so it will be interesting to see this tug of war over free speech and content moderation play out. Also, let’s recall that as recently as a few weeks ago, Elon was openly tweeting that Twitter was headed toward bankruptcy if revenue didn’t improve. Obviously, he’s trying to unwind the mess left to him, as well as deal from some fallout of his own making. So I wouldn’t assume that the moves made by Twitter over the next few months are a completely accurate representation of what we will see from Twitter over the next say 5 years. Desperate times sometimes call for desperate measures.

What is Elon’s future plan for Twitter?

Elon has been pretty transparent about wanting to create an ‘everything’ app called X. It appears that what Elon wants to do is expand out and offer an app that provides content creation and exchange in multiple formats (text, audio and video). Additionally, it would have a dedicated eCommerce layer, in fact Twitter has already applied to be able to facilitate payments on the platform.

What’s a bit up in the air (I wonder if Elon has even figured this out) is if Twitter would be the foundation of that app, or simply one of its pillars. In other words, will Twitter transition into the ‘X’ everything app, or would Twitter be folded into a suite of other apps, that each add a separate layer of functionality to the larger X experience?

I think for the next 3-6 months, Twitter is in financial damage control mode with advertisers. The goal will be to bring back big brand advertisers, and increase revenue. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Elon trying some more monetary shenanigans with Twitter Blue or maybe to being charging for the core functionality of Twitter. Again, desperate times call for desperate measures.

But after a period of time and the monetary stress starts to pass, I think you will see Elon go back into acquisition mode. When that happens, pay close attention to how these new acquisitions would relate to Twitter. Are they additions that would blend into Twitter and enhance the platform, or are they standalone apps that could work with Twitter, but without being directly integrated. I think this will give us strong signals as to whether Twitter will become X or if Twitter will become a PART of X.

Either way, the rest of 2023 should be very interesting for Twitter. I really hope Elon can work this out, as I have been trying to spend more time on Twitter since his takeover, and it truly is a platform that I once loved and would hope I could again.

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Twitter’s New CEO, Instagram’s New Twitter Killer, Amazon Prime’s Killer Advantage

Happy Monday, y’all! I hope you are having a wonderful week and getting ready for the Memorial Day weekend. For today’s Monday’s Marketing Minute, I’m highlighting three stories that I plan on delving into deeper in future posts. But for now, I wanted to give a quick overview of each story so you are up to speed as we head into the week!

 

Elon Musk has finally confirmed who his new CEO will be, and it is Linda Yaccarino, formerly of NBCUniversal.  Here is Linda’s profile on LinkedIn so you can see her work history.  As you can see, she has a heavy background in media and advertising, which I think helps signal where Elon wants to go with Twitter under her leadership.  As I said above, I’ll have an upcoming post that focuses on what I think Elon’s plans for Twitter are and how Linda’s expertise fits into those plans.

BTW as a bonus, here is a very short clip of a fascinating interview with Elon on CNBC.  I love his answer that he will say what he wants and believes, and if the consequences of doing so is losing money, so be it. Of course, that’s easier said when you are already a billionaire!

 

Instagram is readying its Twitter competitor. Instagram will launch a standalone, text-based app this Summer, code named Barcelona to compete with Twitter.  The app will be interoperable with Mastodon and allow users to use their Instagram login and will encourage your followers on Instagram to follow you on this new app.  No definitive launch date other than ‘this summer’. I will have more on this story in an upcoming post, but for now I will say that companies shouldn’t be trying to build the next Twitter, they should be trying to build the next Truth Social. I’ll explain what I mean by that in a future post.

 

Amazon Prime continues to dominate the retail membership club space. Why does Amazon Prime have so much more success than its competitors? It identified a reason why customers weren’t purchasing (Slow and costly shipping) and offered the solution to that problem as a perk of being a member.  Viola.

 

So that’s it for this edition of Monday’s Marketing Minute. I will have a deeper dive on all three of these stories upcoming soon, as well as some other issues I want to touch on, so there’s a busy Summer upcoming! Hope you have a wonderful week!

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Think Like a Rock Star: 10 Years Later

My friend Janice reminded me on Facebook last week that it was the 10-year anniversary of the launch date of Think Like a Rock Star. I wanted to reflect on the book, and the process that went into it before, and after. Much of this I haven’t shared before.

Think Like a Rock Star was born out of a simple idea:  The best marketing doesn’t look or feel like marketing at all. It isn’t a nuisance, it doesn’t get in the way. It actually enhances the sales experience for the buyer, and creates VALUE for the customer.

The problem is, almost all brands are terrible at marketing, because they focus on how marketing benefits them (the brand) instead of the customer. But over the years I studied rock stars and noticed that rock stars market themselves in a completely different way than brands do.  The average brand has little or no desire to actually understand their customers, so they don’t know how to connect with them. Rock stars, on the other hand, immerse themselves in their fanbase. They happily embrace their fans and beg them to engage with them. That leads to the fans trusting the rock star, and opening up to them. The rock star in turns understands who its fans are, and how to market to them. I’ve always been enamored with the idea of how brands could have just as strong of a connection with their customers, if only they marketed as rock stars do. That’s why I wanted to write Think Like a Rock Star, to show brands how rock stars create passionate fans, then connect those efforts to their world.

Pre-TLAR

Starting in 2008 or so, the first social media books began to come out. It was a huge deal at first, but pretty soon, there were a dozen or so books out, and at least that many authors in the space had announced they were writing a book. Around this time, a publisher reached out to me and wanted me to write a book on YouTube, which I had no interest in doing.

By 2010, a lot of my peers had written books on social media marketing, and I was starting to get the ‘so when are YOU writing a book?’ question asked of me. Around this time, a well-known author contacted me and wanted me to write a Facebook marketing book with her. This would have been one of the first books on Facebook available, and I seriously considered it. But I knew writing a book on Facebook meant I would have to do a LOT of speaking on Facebook marketing to support the book, and I didn’t want to do that.

But that episode convinced me that if I was going to write a book (something I had been thinking about), that I had to make sure I picked a topic I loved. Music marketing had long been a passion of mine. Most of you probably don’t realize this, but my first blog was The Viral Garden, which I started in 2006. Music marketing was one of my favorite topics there, I had secured interviews with managers of both Sarah McLachlan and The Donnas, and featured them on the site.

In 2009, I spoke at Social South in Birmingham, AL.  I decided to debut a new presentation that was a bit of a break from the usual ‘how to blog’ or ‘how to use social media’ presentations that I had been giving. It was titled “What Rock Stars Can Teach You About Kicking Ass With Social Media’. I honestly had no idea how it would be received, but the session was wildly popular. I tweaked the title to Think Like a Rock Star, and continued to present it at events, always to standing room only crowds.

That told me I had hit on a topic that was resonating with people, so I decided that I had found my idea for a book. I started working with a publisher in 2011 and came this close to signing a deal, but at the end, I just didn’t feel like my book would be in the best hands. So I kept shopping the book around, and in early 2012 I signed with McGraw Hill Business to publish Think Like a Rock Star.

It was a really big deal, and I was super happy about it. It’s funny cause I had a lot of friends and family who never really understood what type of work I did, but when I told them ‘I’m gonna be an author!’ they immediately understood that was a big deal!

Sidenote: The graphic above is The Loyalty Graph. This is a drawing that I made to give a visual representation of the difference between how rock stars and companies approach marketing in completely different ways. I threw it into a deck for a TLAR presentation in 2011, mainly for my own benefit to give me something to help explain the concept to my audience. Well as soon as the slide came up, I said ‘This is The Loyalty Graph…’ and immediately the audience took out their phones and started snapping pictures of it! I had no idea it was going to be that popular, but every talk I gave, people started popping pics as soon as it comes up. So because it was so popular, I ended up adding it to the book.  I remember the first time I mentioned it to my editor, I was explaining how I really needed to have this image in the book, because it resonated with audiences, but she was like “No, no, I love it! It’s gotta be in!’

So Let’s Market a Book About Social Media Marketing

As I wrapped up writing the book in late 2012, my attention shifted to marketing the book. I decided that as much as possible, I would use the marketing strategies I had discussed in the book, to market the book.  My thinking was that I had to ‘eat my own dog food’. If embracing your customers and letting them drive your marketing REALLY works, then I had do it to market Think Like a Rock Star.

So throughout 2012 as I was writing the book, I used this blog and my social media channels to keep everyone updated on the progress. It was their ‘backstage pass’ to see behind the curtain and see what was going on.

And I was adamant that I had to let fans of the book do the marketing for the book as much as possible. That was probably the core teaching of Think Like a Rock Star; The power of embracing your fans and letting them acquire new customers for you.  So I put together a ‘street team’ of around 20 people who volunteered to help promote the book on social media and review it on Amazon and other sites. They did an amazing job, and a lot of success the book had at launch was due to their efforts.

Working with my publisher, we got Think Like a Rock Star listed on NetGalley, starting I believe in Jan 2013.  NetGalley is a site where readers can request a digital copy of a new release, and in exchange for getting a free copy of the book, they agree to review it and publish a review on their blog or other social media channels. Think Like a Rock Star was the most requested title ever from McGraw Hill, it may still be for all I know.  This also drove a lot of conversation online and helped build buzz for the book. Inbetween the efforts of the TLAR street team, the reviewers on NetGalley, and my friends online, the book was generating a lot of buzz in early 2013 as it’s publication date in March neared.

Now here is where I made my first strategic error in marketing Think Like a Rock Star. One of the big drivers of buzz for a new release is obviously making the bestseller list at launch. I was researching and trying to figure out what the best strategy was for doing this. I found an article that said that what you want to do is have as many pre-sales as possible. Because those pre-sales would all be counted ON LAUNCH DAY for your book, and that would mean your book would launch on Amazon with a huge number of sales, and its sales rank would shoot high and your book would have a great chance of making all the bestseller lists.

So during all of 2012, I waived all my speaking fees, and told event organizers that they could pre-order X number of copies of Think Like a Rock Star, instead of paying me a speaking fee. All told, I pre-sold over 1,000 copies of Think Like a Rock Star in 2012 just from speaking.

However…right before Think Like a Rock Star came out, I learned from a fellow author that this was NOT how pre-sales were counted by Amazon, and that every pre-sold copy was counted AS IT WAS PRE SOLD.  So my 1,000 copies that I pre-sold weren’t going to ‘hit’ all at the same time on launch day, they were being counted as they were placed. Bummer.

In February or so I had one of my final meetings with McGraw-Hill’s marketing team about Think Like a Rock Star. In between its performance on NetGalley and my own efforts, they were very happy with how the book was shaping up, and honestly so was I. One of the marketing managers on the call said they had just finished their internal projections for how Think Like a Rock Star would sell.  I asked her “So, how do you think it will do?” And she told me in this sort of ‘I shouldn’t be telling you this in case I jinx it, but….’ tone, “We think it’s going to sell very well!’  That gave me a lot of confidence, because I did too!

Launch Day, and WTF Was Amazon Thinking???

So in late March, the book launched and was LIVE on Amazon and most other online book sellers. From the drop, it sold very well. It was in first place in multiple categories on launch, this was my favorite, the paperback and Kindle versions were first and second place in sales!

think like a rock star sales amazon

Think Like a Rock Star was selling VERY well.  In fact, it sold TOO well.  After a couple of days, Amazon SOLD OUT all copies of the book! And it didn’t restock the book for like a week! Now the first day this happened, it was almost cool to say ‘Whoa, my book is so popular it’s sold out on Amazon!’, but a week later, I was seriously worried. I will never know how not having the book available to be purchased for much of launch week on Amazon hurt sales, but it couldn’t have helped.  I will also never understand how Amazon could have failed to order enough copies to meet demand at launch.  The book had sold consistently well from the time it was available for pre-order in the Fall of 2012. So Amazon should have had enough of a sales history to accurately forecast how many copies would sell on launch. But who knows.

Throughout 2013, the book continued to sell well. In fact, it hit its sale rank peak on Amazon about 6 months after it was published. I am really proud of the fact that it had sustained sales, because the sales that were coming 6 months after launch were coming from word of mouth from early buyers who had recommended the book to others.

And Think Like a Rock Star was VERY well reviewed, across the board. Within a month or so of launch on Amazon, it had around 60 reviews, with the average being 4.8 stars. On GoodReads, I believe it had around 4.5, which I think was more impressive than its Amazon score. My street team as well as my network on social media did an amazing job of getting reviews up on sites even before launch date, and I know that had a big impact on sales.  Again, all about turning over marketing to your fans/customers, and letting them run with it.

Momentum Continues in 2014

The book continued to sell well in 2014. I continued to get a constant stream of speaking requests for the topic Think Like a Rock Star. In addition, colleges and universities across the country began to incorporate it into their curriculums, which I am SO proud of!

At some point, either in 2014 or 2015, I was notified by McGraw-Hill that a publisher had secured the rights to publish TLAR in India! What a huge deal, as it would open the book to another potential billion customers!

As I was writing Think Like a Rock Star, I was discussing marketing for the book with a VERY successful author.  She had sold millions of copies of her books throughout her career. She told me that since this was my first book, that I should just be happy if the book ‘earns out’ at some point. Earning out in a publishing context means the book has sold enough that I could cover the advance, and actually start earning royalties on the book. She told me that if the book ever broke even (earned out), that I should consider it a success.

I will never forget the day in December of 2014, that I received a letter from my literary agent. I was expecting my first sales report on the book. And she did send me my sales figures, but also included a HUGE royalty check! My book had ‘earned out’, and in the shortest amount of time it could have! I honestly could not believe it!

And Then, the Bottom Falls Out

Think Like a Rock Star continued to sell at a decent rate into early 2015. But around the middle of 2015, for reasons that I have NEVER fully understood, sales for the book suddenly decreased dramatically. And sales have never recovered. It’s honestly baffling to me, as the book still has great reviews, I still get compliments on it all the time, but sales just suddenly dried up. After a while, the paperback version of TLAR was dropped by Amazon, and that really hurt sales.

To this day, I have no idea why sales suddenly dropped as they did.

A few years ago, I finally came up with a great idea for a sequel to TLAR, a book focused on sports and e-sports, instead of music. It would build on the concepts of TLAR, and I had a ton of new case studies from the world of sports and e-sports that I couldn’t wait to share.  This would have been around 5-6 years ago when e-sports were getting super hot, so it was perfect timing.

But every publisher, including McGraw-Hill told me the same thing: We love the concept, but TLAR just doesn’t have the sales to justify us taking the risk.

If you know me, you know I very much need to know that if I do this, then that will happen. Or if I don’t do this, that this won’t happen. That’s what has made the sudden and continued decline in sales of TLAR so frustrating for me, I have no idea what triggered the drop. On paper, I did pretty much everything you need to have a successful launch, and the book did. And a successful launch typically leads to sustained sales, which happened with TLAR. So much so that the book earned out in its first available sales window.

Yet a year later, the bottom had fallen out. And I’ve never figured out why. Oh well, it is what it is.

Despite All That, I Am Very Proud of TLAR

Some people write a book to make a career off speaking about the book. I approached Think Like a Rock Star as if I was writing the book that would show people how to build a customer-centric brand. I mentioned before that I began working on Think Like a Rock Star with another publisher. This was in 2011. As part of that, I attended South By Southwest in March of that year, and I set up numerous meetings on site with big brands and agencies to learn about how they were creating customer-centric progams like brand-ambassador programs, customer advisory panels, etc. Through my interviews, I was hoping to find multiple case studies I could use in my book.

Instead, I learned that NONE of theses companies were doing ANYTHING to connect with their customers. No ambassador programs, no loyalty programs, no advisory panels.

Nothing.

As a result, I shifted the focus of the book to include a heavy emphasis on how to create and implement customer-centric programs in a brand. If no company was doing this, then I wanted to give them the framework to get started.

A few years ago I received my favorite compliment ever for Think Like a Rock Star. A friend told me she had met with a fellow marketer. My friend was very focused on customer-centric programs, it’s a passion for her as it is for me. She said the marketer she was talking to marveled about its company’s customer-centric approach to marketing. She said the CEO had become enamored with the idea of letting customers drive sales, and the marketer said it had been a boon for the business.

My friend was smiling as she heard this story, and when the marketer finished she said since the marketer loved customer-centric marketing, she had a book for him! And she pulled out her phone and brought up Think Like a Rock Star on Amazon and told the marketer that he should buy this book.

The marketer immediately exclaimed “That’s it! That’s the book! My CEO loves that book, that’s the reason why we have completely rebuilt our entire marketing strategy, around that book!’

Honestly, that’s all I ever wanted to do, create a book that could help just one company understand the power of turning its marketing over to its most loyal customers. I will very likely never write another book, but I wrote Think Like a Rock Star. And I’m damn proud of it.

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Twitter Begins Opening its Code, WWE/UFC Join Forces, Pinterest Releases Predictions For 2023

Happy Monday, y’all!  We are now into April, we survived the Fools of the First (likely more on the way tho), and Spring is officially here! Hope you are ready to have an amazing week, here’s some business/marketing/social stories I’ve been keeping an eye on:

 

Twitter has made its recommendations algorithm (I can never spell that word correctly) open source.  Meaning that everyone can now see what goes into the code that the platform uses to determine which tweets you are shown. This is a big step toward transparency for Twitter, and it will now put a lot of pressure on other sites like Facebook and Google to open up its code. Which I doubt they will do.  To be fair, most code shouldn’t be shared, it’s proprietary information that gives a company a massive competitive advantage. At the same time, it’s very odd that I can search for the same term on Google, then use other search engines and get different results. And if I am searching for a breaking news political term, the search results can be wildly different. Clearly, the algorithms are designed on some level to suppress or highlight information based on what end of the political spectrum it is on. Which is no good. Twitter will likely continue to share more of its code.  I suspect smaller social media sites and search engines will follow, but the big dogs will not.

 

Just as Wrestlemania 39 was wrapping up, it was announced that the company that already owns UFC, will be purchasing WWE as well. Longtime WWE owner Vince McMahon will become the Executive Chairman at Endeavor, while Dana White will continue to be the President of UFC.  Seems like a bit of a promotion for McMahon and a sideways move for White, but maybe not. It will be interesting to see how the two brands could work together with talent, as certain athletes like Brock Lesnar, Ronda Rousey and CM Punk have gone from WWE to UFC and vice versa in recent years. This move will likely lead to more such moves and athletes from each brand appearing at events for the other.

 

Pinterest has released its predictions for 2023, touting an 80% accuracy rate on past predictions. I’ve always felt that Pinterest is one of the most underrated social media sites. It seems like its users spend more time there versus other social media sites, and for certain industries like fashion and home decorations, you can learn a ton about your customers from simply mining pinning activity on the site. Always good info to dig into.

 

So that’s it for this week’s edition of Monday’s Marketing Minute! Back on Weds with a new post.  Until then, have an amazing week!

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Let’s Return to Folsom Prison

Folsom Prison

When I was writing Think Like a Rock Star, one of the joys was selecting case studies from the music industry to highlight the power of embracing your most passionate customers or fans. Perhaps my favorite was the story of how Johnny Cash saved his musical career, by going to jail.

By the late 1960s, Johnny Cash’s musical career was at a crossroads. His popularity had fallen in prior years, and an inconsistent recording and touring schedule had magnified the issue. Additionally, he had spent much of the 1960s battling substance abuse, which had further sidelined his success. Yet despite his struggles, Cash had done his best to stay true to God and his family, and by 1968 Cash was sober and ready to jump start his musical career once again.

And Cash had the perfect location to start over: He would record an album at a prison.

As you might imagine, his label and management were less than thrilled with the prospect. However, Cash was an old hand at prison concerts. Since the late 1950s, Johnny had been playing in front of prison audiences. To his credit, Johnny never saw the inmates as criminals or bad people, he just seemed to view it as some of his fans happen to live in a prison. So since they couldn’t come to see him perform, he went to them.

As you can imagine, there weren’t many musical artists making the time to perform in prisons, especially not of Johnny Cash’s caliber. His series of prison concerts quickly created a very devoted fanbase among inmates for Cash, and also helped bolster his ‘outlaw’ image.

So when 1968 arrived and Cash set out to record his ‘comeback’ album, he decided it would be recorded at a prison. After finally convincing his label and management to sign off on the idea, he contacted two prisons in California that he had previously performed for; San Quentin, and Folsom State Prison. Folsom State Prison responded first and accepted.  So Cash put the plan in the works to record his album there. San Quentin responded a few days later and also accepted, and Cash would later record another album there.

Since this would be a live recording, Cash needed a lively and energetic audience response to help create a better concert. To this end, Cash’s selection of a prison was the perfect venue. The prisoners understood this was a big risk for Cash, and they appreciated the trust he put into them to help him make an amazing record. As Cash waited offstage, he listened to the warden inform the inmates that they should behave, not curse, and act appropriately. Cash then came onstage to polite applause and introduced himself. Cash then reminded the audience of how they couldn’t curse, and then proudly and loudly uttered several of the more severe curse words that they could NOT say! This lit the fuse for the audience and communicated to the inmates that they and Johnny were about to have a good time.

And they did. The concert recording was a wild commercial success for Cash, and revitalized and extended his musical career for another 40 years. Cash could have easily listened to his label and management, and recorded an album in a studio that clearly wouldn’t have had the passion and intensity that was captured in that iconic Folsom Prison concert. But instead, Cash took the ‘risky’ move, and embraced his most passionate fans. Because Cash was smart enough to understand that embracing his most passionate fans WAS the smart move. Even if he had to go jail to do it.

This was essentially where I left the story in Think Like a Rock Star. But a few years ago, I learned there was another element to this story that makes it even richer.

As I mentioned earlier, Cash began performing in prisons in the late 1950s. On Jan 1st, 1959, he performed at San Quentin Prison. A young inmate in the audience was so enamored with his performance that he decided that day to clean up his life and become a musician just like Johnny.

And he did. Over the next 50 years, this inmate would go on to record over 600 songs, putting over 100 of them on the Billboard charts, including 9 straight #1 songs on the Country Music charts. He would also sell over 6 million albums in his career, and die with a net worth of over five million.

His name? Merle Haggard.

A decade after that San Quentin concert, Haggard performed with Cash on The Johnny Cash Show, and inbetween songs, Cash mentioned performing in prisons, and specfically mentioned performing at San Quentin. Which led to this on-air exchange:

“The first time I ever saw you perform, it was at San Quentin,” Haggard said, to which Cash replied: “I don’t remember you being in that show, Merle.”

“I was in the audience, Johnny,” Haggard said.

Think about the impact of one choice. In the late 1950s, Johnny Cash made a choice to start playing concerts in prisons. Because of that one choice, he created a passionate fanbase that would help him save his career in 1968 and extend it for another 40 years. Because of that same choice, he helped launch the career of Merle Haggard.

So because one artist decided to embrace his fans, even if he had to go to jail to do it, the musical career of Johnny Cash was saved, and the musical career of Merle Haggard was made.

The lesson? When you have a chance to completely embrace your most passionate customers and fans, ALWAYS take it.

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: TikTok Goes to Washington, US Banks Struggle as BTC Thrives, Twitter to End Legacy Verification

Happy Monday, y’all!  Hope you had a restful weekend and are ready to have an amazingly productive week! Spring is here, and these are 3 business stories that have caught my eye recently:

 

I have never used TikTok.  I’ve always been concerned over the security of the app, and have never seen the risk as being worth it. Last week, TikTok’s CEO Shou Zi Chew appeared before Congress to answer many questions around security. At the center of his testimony was a discussion of Project Texas, a plan that TikTok supports to decouple US data and operations from China. US lawmakers were not impressed, and it seems we could be heading toward a ban of the app in the US. At minimum, we could see tighter scrutiny and possible regulation of TikTok, especially since keeping closer tabs on TikTok is a rare issue in DC that has bipartisan support from both sides of the isle.

 

Breaking News from late last night as a sale of embattled Silicon Valley Bank was reached for roughly $500 million.  The buyer is First Citizens Bank, based in Raleigh, NC.  March has been a terribly unstable month for banks, as a feared run on smaller, regional banks has not materialized, for the most part.

What’s interesting about this story is that at the same time smaller, regional banks are facing a massive stress test, Bitcoin is surging.  The cryptocurrency is up over 20% this month alone, and some are saying could return to $30,000 by the end of the month.  A move that would likely signal an official end to the ‘bear’ crypto market.

 

Finally, Twitter is set to start ending ‘Legacy’ verification on Twitter starting next month. This means your humble blogger will be losing my prized blue checkmark soon. I’ve been verified on Twitter for well over a decade, and I was among the first users who were verified. When I got my verification, the process was a bit more restrictive than it later would become, so it actually was a bit of a rarity to be verified on the platform.

There has been a lot of angst on Twitter among users over losing their blue checkmark.  The funniest to me has been the celebrities with millions of followers who are so upset at the prospect of losing a checkmark that they are sending hate tweets to Elon.

At the end of the day, who cares? Sure, having a blue checkmark did help me get some follows from some big accounts that likely wouldn’t have followed me otherwise.  I noticed an uptick in engagement as soon as I became verified all those years ago. But at the end of the day, do you want people to engage with you because they like YOU, or cause they think you are ‘influential’ because you have a blue checkmark?

If you want to get your own checkmark, you can join Twitter Blue and get it.  Currently, I am not planning on joining Twitter Blue, and if I do in the future, it will be for the features it offers, not a checkmark.

 

So that’s it for this edition of Monday’s Marketing Minute. Please check back on Wednesday, I am going to take one of my favorite case studies from Think Like a Rock Star and update it with some additional information that I think you will enjoy.

Until then, have a wonderful week, and thank you (yes YOU!) for reading, Your attention is a gift, and I am blessed because of it.