MackCollier.com

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How to Structure a Welcome Pack For Brand Ambassadors

Recently, the Alabama Mountain Lakes Tourist Association launched its first Brand Ambassador Program. You can learn more about the program here. I gave AMLTA some feedback on the program at launch, and they sent me the Welcome Pack they are sending their Brand Ambassadors as they enter the program. I wanted to share the contents with you here as I know many of you are considering a brand ambassador program for your own company or organization and this can help you figure out what to include when you reach out to your own brand ambassadors.

AMLTA promotes the North Alabama area and its ambassadors are a new tool to help local and regional travelers and tourists learn more about what makes North Alabama such a wonderful place to visit. These ambassadors will be helping to tell North Alabama’s stories and to help put a spotlight on what makes the area so special and unique.

 

What is a Welcome Pack for Brand Ambassadors?

A welcome pack is given to brand ambassadors as they agree to enter your brand ambassador program. Typically, a welcome pack will include merchandise associated with your brand, and other items designed to communicate to the brand ambassadors that you appreciate their involvement. Additionally, a good welcome pack will include guidelines and advice for creating social media content that promotes the brand, as well items that can be given to customers such as swag or discount codes. A good welcome pack will make ambassadors feel appreciated, but also give them the tools they need to create content that better promotes your brand, as well as connect with potential customers.

With that definition in mind, let’s look at what Alabama Mountain Lakes Tourist Association included in its Welcome Pack.

The Welcome Pack given to brand ambassadors includes:

  • Three t-shirts
  • One ball cap
  • North Alabama Activity Book
  • Spiral notebook and calendar
  • Flyer for connecting on social media
  • Spiral instruction book on how to use social media

Here’s the clothes included:

Welcome pack for AMLTA ambassadors

The three shirts and hat include the #VisitNorthAl hashtag as well as mentions the NorthAlabama.org website. This also gives the ambassadors clothing to wear when they are visiting sites and attractions around North Alabama. It’s worth remembering that with a program such as this, where a tourism association is using a brand ambassador program, the tourism association is attempting to get its member attractions and sites engaged in the program. By launching a brand ambassador program such as this, AMLTA is communicating to current and potential members in North Alabama that its ambassadors will help promote tourism in North Alabama. Sites and attractions around North Alabama will be able to more easily identify the program’s ambassadors, and see the value from their work. This will likely lead to members being proactive about working with the ambassadors directly to help coordinate trips and work with them on site. As the value of the program is more clearly communicated to members, those members will be more willing to participate and work with the brand ambassadors.

AMLTA also included a spiral Time to Get Social instruction book for its Brand Ambassadors. I just love this idea, as the book is designed to not only teach the ambassadors how to create content with social media, but to do so in a way that helps promote sites and attractions in North Alabama. The book gets into content creation, brand positioning and gives the ambassadors advice on how to best promote and showcase North Alabama via social media.

Social media guidelines for AMLTA ambassadors

If you’re launching a brand ambassador program, it’s vital that you give your ambassadors training and clear instruction on how to properly communicate with the people they will be interacting with every day. This instruction book on how to use social media is a fabulous example of a guidebook you could give your ambassadors to carry with them ‘in the field’.

 

When you are working with your brand ambassadors and giving them information and materials associated with the program, you want to focus on three areas:

  • Making sure the brand ambassadors are easily identified as such to other people
  • Making sure the brand ambassadors have the materials they need to promote your company or organization in a way that’s consistent with your program’s goals
  • Making sure the brand ambassadors have a way to refer other potential ambassadors to the program

When you create a Welcome Pack for your brand ambassadors, think about how you can create that pack with each of these areas in mind.  What would you give the ambassadors so they can easily be identified as such by others? What training or resources will you give them to better perform the tasks they are assigned? What tools will you give them to refer other potential ambassadors to the brand, or to spread the word about the program to others?

Hopefully this post gives you some ideas on how you could structure a Welcome Pack for your own brand ambassadors, especially in the tourism industry. To learn more about AMLTA’s brand ambassadors and program, click here.

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How to Create Content That Builds Customer Loyalty

According to new research from CMI, 81% of B2C companies are focused on creating content that builds loyalty in 2019.

So what does content that builds loyalty look like?  First, let’s think about some of the things that make you loyal to a business or organization:

  • Consistent experience. You know that every time you shop at that store or on that website, that you will get a consistent experience. There’s a certain quality expectation that you have, that this business typically meets. And once you are loyal to a particular business, you will typically forgive an occasional sub-par experience where it could be a deal-breaker for a business you are NOT loyal to. The AMA has also found that dependability is one of the key drivers of brand loyalty.
  • You can relate to the brand. They hold values that are similar to yours. They prize and promote the same ideals and beliefs that you are drawn to. Patagonia supports the environment and sustainability. This appeals to their customers. Chick Fil-A is closed on Sunday so its workers can attend church. The brand wears its religious values on its sleeve and that appeals to its customers.
  • They make you feel appreciated. I love shopping at Publix because the workers there always seem happy to see me and happy to help. When I shop at WalMart, I see a lot of long faces, and no offers to help. If I have to ask for help, they act like I am burdening them. Smart businesses value your business and win your loyalty as a result.

So if you want to create content that drives loyalty. let’s work these same characteristics into that content:

 

Consistent Content Builds Loyalty

Refer back to the AMA study that found that dependability is one of the key drivers of brand loyalty. It stands to reason, you are loyal to brands in great part because you know that you will have a consistent experience with that brand during every interaction.

The same level of consistency should translate to the content you create. When you create consistent content, you give readers the opportunity to learn more about you through the content you create. This helps develop your readership, which in publishing terms is your equivalent of customer loyalty. So you want to do everything you can to ensure that the tone, quality and topic of your content is consistent so that you can develop and grow a readership for it.

The easiest way to do this is to pick 2-3 Topic Buckets for your blog. These will be 2-3 topics that are related to both your business, and your customers. Think of how Red Bull creates content focused on athletes performing amazing tricks and stunts, not the actual energy drink. Patagonia creates content that focuses on the environment and sustainability, not selling its clothing products. You want to create content that focuses on how the products and services you sell fit into and enhance the lives of your customers.

Also, you want to create consistent content on a consistent schedule. Unfortunately, I break this rule all the time (my blogging resolution for 2019 is to get back on a regular posting schedule). The best way to handle this is to be realistic about how often you can create new content for your blog, and go from there.   It is much easier to shoot for one post a month and then write more if you can than it is to shoot for 3 posts a week, and have to scale back to 1 a week. Shoot low and try to build up, that’s easier and will motivate you to keep blogging more so than aiming too high and missing the mark.

As for what days are best to post on, that’s really subjective and greatly depends on the audience you want to reach. In general, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday are the best days for publishing new content. But you should always experiment, it could be that your audience wants new posts on the weekend, not during the week. Think about who your audience is, and when they would likely have time to read your posts.

 

Content That Helps the Audience Relate to You Builds Loyalty

What does it mean to ‘relate’ to someone?  In general, it means that you understand their point of view. You see the world as they do or you understand where they are coming from.

How does this translate to the content you create? You can help the audience relate to your content by offering examples (real or hypothetical) of how customers could use your products or services in their daily lives.  Or by sharing how you use these products or services. The idea is to communicate to your customers that you understand them enough to know how your products or services fit into and enhance their daily lives.

Another way to create content that your audience can relate to is by sharing your corporate values. If your company supports certain charitable organisations or causes, don’t just mention that, tell why you picked those particular causes and how they align with your company’s beliefs and values. Share with your audience what makes those causes important to your company and why. Customers who share your beliefs and support those causes will be drawn to your company and will be more likely to support it as a result.

 

Communicate to Your Audience That You Appreciate Their Attention 

Showing appreciation to your audience is a wonderful way to build loyalty with them. You can do this by encouraging your audience to interact with you, and by responding when they do. If you accept comments on your posts, you can encourage customers to leave comments on your blog. This can be a great way to cultivate customer feedback via the comments section. So it just makes sense to respond to as many comments as possible from your readers as that only encourages them to leave more comments.

You can also use your content to communicate to your customers that you take their feedback seriously. Patagonia often received criticism from its customers about its packaging. Most customers wanted to see Patagonia move away from sending garments in bigger boxes and toward smaller bags with would, in theory, involve less waste and less impact on the environment. So Patagonia decided to take its customer feedback seriously, and did a test run using bags vs boxes as customers had suggested.  Patagonia then published the results of the shipping experiment on its blog, The Cleanest Line. I covered the experiment and findings in a past episode of The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show.

 

By applying these three methods, you can create content that helps build customer loyalty. It’s all about relating to the customer, being open to them, and opening up to them as well.

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Research: How to Create Loyal Customers and Reduce Customer Churn Rate

Yotpo recently surveyed 2,000 American shoppers to learn their views on brands and brand loyalty.  The results gave some interesting insights into brand loyalty in 2018, so I wanted to highlight some of the findings:

Despite the growing importance of customer experience, product is still both the point of entry and departure for brand loyalty. 55.3% of consumers are brand loyal because they love the product, and poor product quality is the number one reason why a brand would lose a loyal customer (51.3%). This echoes the success of modern direct-to-consumer brands that rose to fame thanks to “hero products,” including UNTUCKit, Quip, and Away Travel.

Second to poor product, sub-par customer service will drive away 23.5% of loyal customers, meaning that even for brands with ground-breaking products, the surrounding experience is still paramount.

No big shock here, great products drive higher levels of loyalty. Or put another way, a great social media strategy will not save you if you have a terrible product.

However, I don’t think it can be overlooked that every touchpoint between the brand and customer impacts loyalty. The product may have the most bearing on driving loyalty, but if the customer also receives an exceptional brand experience along every touchpoint, that will also greatly impact how favorable the customer views the product.

88% of Customers Say They Need at Least Three Purchases Before They Feel ‘Loyal’ Toward a Brand

The survey further revealed that the bar for brand loyalty is high — a repeat purchase or two doesn’t mean you have a new brand fan. In fact, 37% of consumers say that it takes five or more purchases for them to consider themselves loyal to a brand.

Bringing back a customer five times is no small feat as consumer demands grow: 67.3% of shoppers expect 24/7 customer service, while 71.0%  anticipate more frequent discounting and 58.4% seek out free shipping in exchange for their loyalty.

Of the respondents:

  • 37% said five or more purchases were necessary before they were loyal to a brand
  • 33% said brand loyaty took three purchases
  • 17.67% said brand loyalty took four purchases

To me, these figures seemed a bit high.  I know from my personal experience, if any brand can get me to buy its product for the third time, I consider myself to be loyal to that product enough to continue buying it. On the other hand, if my first experience with a product is subpar, and very unlikely to buy it again if I have other options.

The Benefits of Loyal Customers

The survey also had three key findings for the value to brands of loyal customers:

1 – 60% of respondents will promote their favorite brands to friends and family (creating additional Word of Mouth)

One of the things I always advise clients to do is to give your advocates the tools and training to better promote your brand. When we find a brand we love, we want to share that love with others.  It’s like discovering something cool and wanting to share it with others, not only to help them, but to feel good about sharing something useful. Happy customers tell other customers about you.  Give them the tools to more easily do so.

2 – 52.3% of loyal customers will join a rewards program

This makes complete sense. Loyal customers want to be rewarded for their loyalty, so it follows that they would be more likely to join a rewards program. However, what most brands don’t realize is that reward programs members are often good candidates for your brand advocacy efforts. Whenever I work with companies who are interested in building a program for advocates, the first thing I ask is if they have a rewards program. That’s because the most active and passionate members of your rewards program are often good candidates to participate in a brand advocacy or customer advisory group that your brand may be considering. This also makes the whole issue of finding and identifying potential advocates much easier. So if you already have a rewards program, start there in your search for your brand advocates.

3 – 39.4% of respondents will continue to buy from brands they are loyal to even if cheaper options are available

Loyal customers are trusting customers. They trust their favorite brands and want to SUPPORT those brands. Price is less important to them, they are willing to pay a bit more for a product from a brand they trust and believe in. This is why it’s so important to create a situation where customers are more likely to become loyal. For instance, combine this with the above data concerning how many purchases are necessary for the customer to consider themselves ‘loyal’ to your brand. If you know that four purchases is the magic number for your brand before loyalty is attained, then you need to think about what you can do to convince the customer during those first three purchases to commit to another one. Think of it as identifying the point at which customers leave The Loyalty Funnel. Find the hole, and plug it!

 

A lot of interesting information and data from the study, which you can find here.

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Case Study: National Geographic’s “Your Shot” Photography Community

One of the smart tactics many brands are leveraging is incorporating user-generated content into its social content streams. The idea is that you take content that your customers or fans are creating, and highlight it alongside your own. It gives the content creators a platform to get more exposure for their work, plus it helps the brand in getting more content. For example, Visit North Alabama is one of my favorite accounts to follow on Instagram. They often use pictures submitted by followers in their Instagram feed, such as this beauty:

National Geographic has taken this idea a step further with its Your Shot community. Your Shot invites photographers to submit their photos to ‘assignments’ that are posted on the site.  The assignments revolve around a particular theme, such as ‘Close Encounters’ or ‘Adventures in the City’. The submissions are reviewed by editors at National Geographic as well as the larger community on the site, and the best ones are selected to appear on the site.

When asking for customers/users/community members to submit content that you will use, there must be a clear benefit to the content creator in doing so. In this case, the benefit to National Geographic is obvious; They get a ton of gorgeous pictures submitted from talented photographers.

But what is the benefit to the photographers? Besides additional exposure for their work, these photographers also have a chance to have their work critiqued by National Geographic’s editors, as well as by the community at large:

This is invaluable advice from both the editors and the community at large. The community can comment on the work as well as select the elements of each shot that they appreciated. It can give the photographer detailed guidance on where his or her work is excelling as well as what they can improve on.

If you are going to test the user-generated content waters, make sure that the users you are appealing to have a clear incentive to share their content with you, and that there is a clear benefit to them from doing so. By agreeing to share their photos with National Geographic, the benefit these photographers get is clear, and who knows, a few spectacular shots might even land an aspiring photographer on National Geographic’s short list the next time they are hiring.

Remember, if you give your customers/users a clear benefit to share their content with you, they will be more likely to share content with you, and the content they do share will be of higher quality. The goal is to have a clear win-win for both you and your customers/users.

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Research: CMOs Say Social Media Budgets Are Surging, But Finding Solid Results Still a Struggle

Companies are spending more on social media marketing according to CMO Survey, but they also continue to struggle to see quantitative results from their digital efforts.

The survey of 324 marketers sheds light on where CMOs will be focusing their budgets and attention in 2019.

  • Spending on digital marketing will increase by 12.3% over the next 12 months, while spending on traditional marketing will fall by 1.2%
  • Currently, digital marketing accounts for 44.3% of all marketing budgets. Over the next 5 years, digital spending is forecast to increase to 54.1% of total marketing spend.
  • Spending on Social Media is expected to increase by 66% over the next 5 years

Even though spending on Social Media is surging, marketers are struggling to show the actual business impact of its Social Media efforts.

The CMO Survey found that 39.3% of respondents could not show any business impact from using Social Media. Another 36% said they are seeing a qualitative impact, with 24.7% seeing an quantitative impact.  In short, that means 25% of marketers can show the ROI for their Social Media efforts.

So obviously, companies won’t continue to increase spending on Social Media without being able to show a return on those dollars. Digging deeper into the numbers, I believe I spotted two reasons why some of these marketers are struggling to prove the effectiveness of Social Media for their companies.

First, one of the questions posed to respondents was “How Effectively Does Your Company Integrate Social Media?” The question was scaled from 1 to 7, with 1 being “not at all effectively” and 7 being “very effectively”. When it came to “integration level for linking social media to marketing strategy”, the score was 4.2.  When it came to “integration level for integrating customer information across purchasing, communication, and social media channels”, that score was 3.5. So while companies are doing better at integrating its social media strategies into their larger marketing strategies, they continue to fall short when it comes to sharing customer information and communications across the enterprise. This hurts overall marketing effectiveness and can lead to a disjointed and inconsistent service experience for the customer.

Second, only 3.9% of marketing budgets are devoted to employee training and development. This amount actually represents an 8% decline over the last 6 months. What’s worse, for B2C companies, that figure is only 2.8%.

So you can see how these two areas would be related, to a degree. First, I’m a big believer in equipping your employees with the proper training and skills they need to do their jobs effectively. It increases employee productivity, as well as their satisfaction with their work. And research has shown that just a 10% increase in the efficiency of your social media strategy nets a 2% increase in revenue. Corporate training is a smart way to increase production and employee satisfaction.

Check out the entire CMO Survey here. It’s got a ton of great takeaways on where marketers will be focusing their attention in 2019.

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How We Find Podcasts, Why AR is beating VR and Mobile Marketing Implications of iOS 12

Hey guys, I found a few links I wanted to share with you. These are articles that I found interesting, but couldn’t justify writing a stand-alone post for. So I decided to corral a few of them here and share with you as a group.

We bloggers used to do this all the time in the days before Twitter 🙂

 

1 – Augmented Reality Poised to Eclipse Virtual Reality – A big hurdle in new technology adoption is how seamlessly the new technology integrates with the technology we are already using and comfortable with. This is a big reason why AR adoption is outpacing VR. Whereas you can often integrate AR functions into your smartphone via simple apps, VR requires new headsets that honestly offer an inconsistent and often clunky experience. eMarketer says there will be over 51 million AR users in 2018, compared to just 37 million for VR. A lot of money is flowing into VR and as the tech improves, adoption will as well. But for now, AR is the more popular choice.

2 – Here’s How Listeners Discover New Podcasts – No stunning information here, but it’s good to know where the listeners are coming from.  Social media (60%) is the top driver, followed closely behind by word of mouth (57%). I did think it was interesting that half of podcast listeners say they download and immediately listen to the episode right then.

3 – Five Charts: How Marketers Use AI – This article does a research-based deep dive into how marketers are implementing AI and their reasons for doing so. Audience targeting is the top reason marketers are using AI, and ‘impact on sales’ is the most desired outcome. There’s also a podcast attached to this article on AI (mostly in Canada), so you may want to check it out as well.

4 – New iOS 12 4 Big Things Mobile Marketers Need to Know – Nice roundup of the changes that iOS 12 poses to mobile marketers. If you are a content creator, you can no longer ignore mobile traffic. For most sites, mobile traffic has now passed desktop traffic, and I am increasingly hearing from companies who are resigning their websites and how they are optimizing for mobile users first, for the first time. We’re past the tipping point and any content you deliver, whether it is marketing, thought-leadership articles, blog posts, must look good on mobile devices. There’s no way around it.

5 – Why Marketers See Gaps in Their Attribution – I’m sure for a lot of marketers, this is speaking to an issue you are constantly grappling with. Research gets into the reasons why, but the biggest takeaway likely isn’t earth-shattering: too many marketing teams are siloed, from sales, customer service and even from other areas of marketing, think digital vs traditional. Often, improving attribution and accurate sales tracking requires a bit of a culture and organizational change, but it’s worth it in the long-term.

 

Hope you enjoy these articles, BTW do you have a favorite site or aggregator that you use to stay up to date on marketing news?  Please leave a comment with your favorites, I’d love to check them out!

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What’s Next For Blogging? Delivering Personalized Content Based on Visitor Intent

Recently I’ve been discussing how blogging will have a bit of a Renaissance soon as users move away from a centralized experience (social media sites like Twitter and Facebook) and back to a decentralized experience (like blogging). I believe blogging will become popular again as we look for ways to better gain control of the data we share and the content we create. Additionally, the functionality of blogs has continued to increase and improve. Ten years ago, blogs were little more than a writing area and one sidebar. Now, you can completely customize a blog’s layout and functionality so that the line between blog and high-end website is completely blurred.

But one area where blogs have lagged a bit is in providing personalized content to each visitor. Every visitor is different and is looking for different content for different reasons. What blogging platforms and technology need to improve upon is taking visitor signals and translating that into intent and creating the content that the visitor expects. This can be done at a source level such as social media vs search, or based on search terms. Or it could change based on the landing page/post.

This is already happening a bit, I’ve been tinkering with a couple of plugins that attempt to address the content customization issue. The first is Thrive Leads (affiliate link). It lets me control where my newsletter signup popup appears. For example, I wrote a few posts in 2012 on how to write and publish a book. These posts are very popular among aspiring authors, and I get a ton of search traffic to both of them. But most of the people that would read these posts are not the potential clients that I would want subscribing to my newsletter, so Leads lets me turn off the newsletter popup on those pages, so I won’t get subscribers from those posts.

Another plugin I’ve been experimenting with is Clever Widgets (affiliate link). Clever Widgets allows you to customize the widgets that are displayed for every post or page. So if someone visits a particular sales page, you can customize the widget areas on that page to either complete the sale, or give more information about the product, or even include a live chat widget to attempt to close the sale. Or if someone visits your blog’s homepage where your latest posts are, you could serve up widgets that are designed to encourage them to become a subscriber, or view your most popular posts.

As you can see, even these content personalization options are fairly limited, but it’s a start. Definitely check out the two plugins I’m using, but also give more thought to who your visitors are, and what content they are looking for when they visit your blog. For most bloggers, at least 50% of their traffic will be from search engines. People coming from search engines are looking for specific information, and if they don’t immediately find it on the post they land on, they will leave. Check your WordPress dashboard, if you use a plugin like Jetpack (affiliate link) you can see which search terms visitors are using to find your blog. This also gives you a better sense of what information they are looking for when they arrive on your blog.

Besides focusing on visitors arriving via search, also consider that many visitors to your blog will arrive via a mobile device. This adds another layer of complexity as mobile users are far less ‘sticky’ and will quickly leave a site if they don’t get the information or experience they were expecting. It is imperative that your blog displays correctly on mobile devices including tablets and smartphones. For many publishers, mobile traffic has now reached a tipping point where it has passed desktop traffic, so you can no longer ignore mobile users. Make sure that your theme is responsive, and make a point to regularly load and navigate your blog on your smartphone. If you can’t figure out how to properly view and navigate your own blog on your smartphone, the odds are your visitors can’t either.

Soon, CMSs will seamlessly integrate machine learning to create personalized content experiences for visitors on the fly, which we can all use. Until that day arrives, think about what you can start doing now to give every visitor the content experience they are expecting.

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Reward the Behavior You Want to Encourage

Every interaction you have with a customer creates another interaction. And in this case, not engaging with the customer also counts as an interaction.

For instance, let’s say you eat at a particular restaurant and have a wonderful meal. You’re so happy with the experience that you decide to hop on Twitter and tell the restaurant directly.

If the restaurant never responds, how does that make you feel?  Unappreciated? Invisible? It probably leaves a bit of a bad taste in your mouth, right?

On the other hand, if they respond, it feels like they value you as a customer enough to take the time to thank you, right?

I am always talking about the idea of Rewarding the Beahavior You Want to Encourage. The idea is simple; when someone does something that you want them to do, you find a way to ‘reward’ them and encourage them to do it again. If someone compliments you, you thank them. If they buy your product, you go out of your way to communicate to them that they made a smart purchase decision.  If someone comments on your blog, you respond so they will do so again.

The idea is to validate the behavior that they just engaged in.

Every Sunday night I run #Blogchat, we’ve been having #Blogchat for almost 10 years now on Twitter. Every week, someone will mention that this is their first time attending #Blogchat.

I always always ALWAYS respond to this person directly and THANK them for coming to #Blogchat. This is because I appreciate them taking the time to come to #Blogchat, but also because I want them to RETURN! If you come to a Twitter chat and no one talks to you, you’re probably not coming back, right? I go out of my way to communicate to first-timers that I appreciate them showing up, and want them to return.

Julia tweeted it was her first time joining #Blogchat, I thanked her and let her know how much I appreciated her taking the time to join us.

When you respond to others, it also sends a message to everyone else. Notice that after I reply to Julia, Zarina does as well:

I made a point to welcome Zarina when she first joined #Blogchat as well, and now she’s helping me and welcoming new members as well! This sends a message to both Julia and Zarina that they made a smart decision in joining #Blogchat, that we are going to look out for them, and help them solve their blogging problems.

 

Think about what behaviors you want your readers, clients or customers to engage in. Maybe it’s commenting on a blog post, or subscribing to your newsletter, or buying a product. In fact, let’s just run through each right now and how you can ‘reward’ that behavior.

Commenting on a blog post – This the behavior you want your readers to engage in. So how do you ‘reward’ that behavior? The most obvious way, is by RESPONDING to their comment. People leave a comment because they want other people to REACT to it. By responding, you validate to that person why they left the comment to begin with.  You ‘reward’ them with a respond and that makes them feel good about leaving the comment to begin with. It also increases the chance that they will comment AGAIN, and it communicates to everyone else that if they leave a comment, they will probably get a reply as well.

Subscribing to your newsletter –  Often when you subscribe to a newsletter, you soon find out that it’s not as valuable as you hoped it would be. So there’s a sense of ‘buyer’s remorse’. What I’ve done with my Think Like a Rock Star newsletter is I help subscribers immediately see value from the newsletter. I’ve created an email trigger funnel for new subscribers, so as soon as they subscribe, over the following 5 days, they get a total of 4, daily emails that are packed with in-depth advice on how to create and cultivate fans of their brand. This is the ‘reward’ for these subscribers engaging in the behavior that I wanted to encourage. It communicates to them that they made a smart decision in subscribing to my newsletter.

Buying a product – ‘Buyer’s remorse’ can be literal here, especially as the cost of the purchase increases. You can offset these feelings and make the buyer feel smarter about the purchase by making customer support available to them post-purchase and by staying in contact with them to make sure they know precisely how to use their new products and that they fully understand how to use all its features. Often, customers simply aren’t aware how to use a new product correctly, and if they figure out how to use the product correctly, it can greatly increase their satisfaction with the product.

 

Remember, a big part of rewarding the behavior you want to encourage comes from making the person feel SMART about engaging in the behavior that you ultimately want to encourage. If they feel smart, then they will probably have positive thoughts about interacting with you and/or your company.

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Is it Better to Have a Centralized or Decentralized Social Web?

I recently came across a Fast Company article on how Tim Berners-Lee (credited with inventing the world wide web) is creating a new service called Solid that would decentralize your data and give you more control over it. This could potentially address the data protection and privacy concerns that many of us have when it comes to surfing the modern web.

But I got to thinking about this whole idea of decentralization vs centralization when it comes to social media. On the surface, centralization seems like the way to go.  You bring everyone together where they could share their thoughts and opinions and interact.

The problem is, whenever you bring everyone together, the overall user experience eventually degrades for everyone.

I’ve been online since 1988, or for the last 30 years. In that time, online activity has followed this pattern; Decentralized>Centralized and back.  Here’s what I mean:

In 1988 when I started getting online, BBSes (Bulletin Board Systems) were all the rage. These were typically smaller groups, and hyper-local. Usually the ‘geeky’ guy in a neighborhood or city had some software on a spare computer and could use it as a pseudo server that other people could call into (on dialup 300 baud modem, natch), and usually post on a message board. It was a very decentralized structure, small groups of people, but they typically had something in common, even if it was simply geography.

These grew more popular in the coming years, and then by the early 90s, online services like Prodigy, CompuServe and AOL popped up.  These were centralized networks. They were also expensive, whereas most BBSes were free to access, these online services typically cost $25 a month for 10 hours. Yeah. But they had a lot more people, incredibly crude ASCI ‘graphics’, and other ‘perks’ of the day. Oh and CHAT ROOMS! Really big deal. Prodigy eventually folded and it was CompuServe and AOL both offering a premium service. This was actually a good thing in many ways because only people that were ‘serious’ about being on these services would pay for them. And they had a lot of message boards and chat rooms that were topic-specific, so these places developed their own communities. I remember in the late 90s there was a chat room on CompuServe that was reserved for college students. At the time I was midway through my undergrad studies so I thought it was the coolest thing in the world to participate in a chat every Sunday night with other college students from around the country. Come to think of it, that habit of chatting on Sunday nights was probably one of the factors in my wanting to have #Blogchat on Sunday nights.

But around 1996 or so, AOL got the bright idea to ditch their hourly rate, and start charging everyone a flat $25 a month fee for UNLIMITED access.  If I recall correctly, at the time both AOL and CompuServe was charging like $25 for 25 hours, with $2,50 an hour for anything over 25 hours.  So switching from that to unlimited was a huge deal.

At first, it was awesome. Then, over a few months I noticed that something started to happen.  You see, when AOL switched to unlimited access, suddenly mom and dad who had before been using the 25 hours a month access, now had unlimited, so that meant they LET THEIR KIDS get on AOL. Suddenly, all these super cool message boards and chat rooms where intelligent adults had previously had engaging conversations, were flooded by teenagers and preteens POSING as adults. Needless to say, the overall user experience degraded significantly as the UNLIMITED floodgates opening meant all these ‘adult’ forums and chats were awash in a sea of fart and sex jokes from teens who were sneaking on mom’s AOL account.

Around 2000 or so, companies like Earthlink started offering straight internet access for around the same $25 price for unlimited. This really cut into AOL’s business and eventually it folded as well.

So we’d moved from a decentralized environment (BBSes) to a centralized one (AOL and CompuServe) to…….now what?

We went decentralized again. Around 2003 or so, weblogs started to gain traction. Blogs were like our own digital islands. We could create our own space where we could discuss whatever we want. And since a lot of us were still jonesing for a way to discuss our favorite topics in a post-AOL online world, it was perfect timing. Plus the great thing about blogs was that I could go read your blog, and immediately catch up on everything in your life (well everything that you were willing to share on your blog). Basically, if I wanted to reach you, I knew to go to your blog and there you were!

The problem was…not everyone wanted to have a blog. So it created an opportunity for someone to create a way for people that didn’t want to bare their souls everyday on a blog, to still have a way to create and share content. And maybe more easily interact with the content from others.

Enter social networking. Sites like MySpace and later Facebook and Twitter gave all of us centralized platforms where we could more easily connect with each other. Plus the great thing was, these platforms at first actually enhanced our blogs. It gave us a way to more easily create content for our blogs, and also to link to content we were creating on these platforms as well.  Plus, these social networking sites gave you immediate access to SO many more people! Especially hundreds of millions of people who weren’t blogging.

From 2006-2010 was the most fun and excitement I’ve ever had in 30 hours of being online. Blogging was hot and we had these wonderful communities springing up around our blogs, then sites like Facebook and Twitter launched and we had wonderful communities and discussions there as well.  It was truly the Golden Age of social media, even if we didn’t realize it at the time.

Then…..this happened:

Ashton Kutcher killed Twitter

Yep, the celebrities found social media.

This was the equivalent of AOL offering unlimited access for the first time, resulting in a flood of preteens with fart jokes. Suddenly Oprah, Britney and the Kardashians were on Twitter. Which meant that suddenly the MEDIA flooded to social media to follow them.

And within the span of a few months, Twitter and Facebook went mainstream. Suddenly, those of us who had been on these sites since the beginning and who loved the communities we had formed there, were flooded by new users who were mainly there to e-stalk their favorite celebrities.

Then the marketers followed, and that led to wait for it…..SELF PROMOTION!

When ‘everyone’ joins a centralized platform or service, the user experience for everyone degrades significantly. It happened when everyone joined AOL and CompuServe in the 90s, it happened to social media when ‘everyone’ joined Twitter and Facebook.

I’ll be honest: Social media really hasn’t been fun for me in about 5-6 years. It truly hasn’t. I’ve written previously about the problems these sites are having with transparency and trust issues. I think we are going to see Twitter and Facebook undergo radical changes in the coming year or two, if not go away completely.

Then the questions becomes, when that happens, do we revert back to a more decentralized web, and if so, what would that look like? I think we will, and I hope we’ll see our blogs become more prominent again. The interesting thing is that as a lot of people moved to social media sites, the functionality of blogs increased dramatically. Plus, people are more comfortable with the idea of blogging now, so I am hopeful that we’ll see a bit of a blogging Renaissance soon. It’s one reason I’ve doubled down on my blogging here and I’ve been advising clients to do the same for a while now.

However, there’s an even clearer pattern of this decentralized to centralized flow that we saw in the 90s and again over the last few years. When the shift from decentralized to centralized begins, that’s when the overall user experience is the best. But once EVERYONE floods into the centralized platforms, that’s when it all starts to go downhill.

Right now feels like about where we were in 2000. AOL was getting long in the tooth, and we were starting to look for other/better options. A year or two later, the mass-migration away from AOL had begun.

I think we’re in the same place now. A lot of people want to leave the popular social media sites, but really don’t see a better option. When we do, we’re gone.

I think that day is coming sooner rather than later.

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Creating Fans Through Storytelling

One of the best ways that brands can create fans is through storytelling. Specifically, through telling stories that relate to the brand, but that also tie into themes that are important to the customer. When done effectively, storytelling also helps the customer get a better understanding of what the brand is about. Think of it as pulling back the curtain and giving us a ‘backstage pass’ to see what goes on within the brand.

Last night I talked to the Advanced Social Media class at the University of Wisconsin – River Falls, and one of the examples of creating fans through storytelling was what Robert Scoble did years ago with Channel 9 videos while he was still at Microsoft. He would take a small camcorder and just go up to the cubicles of his co-workers and ask them to explain who they are and what they do. This was wonderful storytelling because it helped us understand more about the people who worked at Microsoft, and the culture at the brand. It made it a bit easier for us to relate to the brand once we could see the faces of the people that work there, and understand more about WHY they loved working there.

More recently, look at what Whole Foods did with wiping out its Instagram feed to raise awareness of declining bee populations around the world. This was powerful storytelling that tied into themes that relate to the brand (protecting the bees that help create the foods we love), while also giving us greater insights into what the brand is passionate about. Anything that a brand can do to help its customers better understand what it stands for, will always aid in creating fans.

Another instance of storytelling is what Maersk did with its archival photos. Kerry did a wonderful podcast with Maersk’s former head of social media, Jonathan Wichmann. Wichmann explained that when he took the job, he discovered that Maersk had an archivist who had thousands upon thousands of photos associated with Maersk and its shipping containers over the last century. He asked why no one ever used the photos and the brand’s response was ‘who would care?’  So Wichmann started posting the photos on Instagram and other social media sites and they were an immediate hit. These photos helped tell the story of the brand, and also helped us understand what they do, and for how long the brand has been doing it.  All of this also made it wasier to trust the brand, especially when you consider how long they have been providing the same services.

If your brand wants to experiment in creating content that helps tell the story of your brand, think about what stories you can talk about that tell what’s important to your brand, but that aren’t entirely focused on your brand.  Whole Foods talked about why we need to pay attention to declining bee populations.  Maersk by sharing its photos was also telling the story of why the work it does is so important. Yes, the pictures were mostly about the brand, but those pictures are also the history of shipping on the sea. It helps us understand what Maersk does, and what role in plays in global commerce.

And also, think about how you can lower your guard a bit and help us understand a bit more about what your brand does and who it is. Show us the people behind your brand, like Scoble did at Microsoft. GE does this with its employees, encouraging them to go on social media and talk about the work they do, as a way to increase the quality of job applicants. People better understand the culture at GE and why people love working there, and they are more likely to apply for open positions.

Above all, this is a potential competitive advantage for your brand. By engaging in storytelling with your customers, by opening your brand to them, you make it easier for your customers to better understand your brand, and relate to it.  Which makes it easier for your customers to TRUST your brand.

And when your customers trust your brand, then they can advocate for it. Interactions lead to Understanding which leads to Trust, which leads to Advocacy.