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What Gamers on Twitch Taught Me About Building an Online Community

I regularly check Twitter's trending topics, and a few months ago I noticed that the top trending topics were "The DOC" and "Twitch is Down".

Twitch being down grabbed my curiosity, why was it down? Now my sum total knowledge of Twitch at this point was that it was 'that site where people watch other people play video games".  I'd known about the site for years, but had maybe spent 15 mins total on it.  

So I clicked the trending topics, and quickly discovered that Twitch was down because a popular gamer, DrDisRespect had returned to Twitch after a long hiatus.

And his return had crashed the site. This definitely got my attention.

DrDisRespect is one of the most popular gamers on Twitch, and the self-appointed 'Face of Twitch'. He's a very skilled gamer and perhaps an even more accomplished marketer. Brash, flamboyant and over the top, he's a sort of a cross between Seth Godin and Ric Flair. 

And make no mistake, he's popular as hell. Check out this screenshot I took from a recent gaming session. He was playing Playerunknown's Battlegrounds, a 100-person battle royale online game, which is one of the more popular games on Twitch. Think of it as Fortnite's older brother. When I took the screenshot, he'd just won a game of PUB in spectacular fashion. Note in the chatbox that he got 15 comments in one second.  

It's not uncommon for his streams to have 25,000 or more viewers. On the day in February when he crashed Twitch, he had over 300,000 concurrent viewers, a Twitch record that would later be broken by a Ninja/Drake tag-team Fortnite session that would bring over 600,000 concurrent viewers to Twitch. His streams typically last for 6-8 hours a day, Monday-Friday. Twitch users can donate to their favorite streamers, and it's not uncommon for popular gamers to make well into the 6 or even 7 figures a year.  DrDisRespect is rumored to make up to half a million a MONTH off Twitch.  

There are many other streamers that are quite popular and making a lot of money off Twitch. But what I've noticed from watching the streams the last few weeks is that almost all of the gamers on Twitch are very cordial and even helpful to each other. Even the most popular streamers go out of their way to engage their followers. It's not uncommon to see the biggest streamers taking time out from playing to give members of their chat advice on how to build their own gaming community. And I found it interesting that a lot of the advice that Twitch streamers had for building a community apply to blogs and social media communities just as easily. Here's some of the frequent advice I've seen popular Twitch streamers share about building a community:

  • Don't start out streaming with the most popular games as your stream will get lost in the shuffle. Start with a game with a smaller number of views, so your stream can be more easily seen and so you can stand out. This is the same advice new bloggers are always given: Pick a niche and own it!
  • Be consistent. Stream on the same days, at the same times, so your subscribers know when your stream will be up. Again, bloggers are given the same advice: Pick a posting schedule and stick to it. 
  • Engage your followers. Talk to them in chat, acknowledge them when they subscribe or donate. Again, same thing we tell bloggers, reply to comments and THANK people when they do comment!
  • Don't be afraid to be yourself and show some personality. I think this REALLY works for Twitch because it's typically a younger audience, but having a personality and being entertaining counts for a lot. I'll be honest, watching DrDisRespect's stream has been a bit eye-opening in this regard. I've seen several other streamers that are as good as Doc or maybe even better, but Doc goes out of his way to also be ENTERTAINING in his streams, and I think that's a big reason why he's so much more popular than other streamers who may be as good at gaming, but who aren't nearly as entertaining as Doc is. Personality and voice matters, and it really does help your content stand out. 

Another aspect that I noticed with these Twitch users is that most of them, especially the more popular ones, go out of their way to help their followers get better at playing the games they stream. The above screenshot is from Twitch user chocoTaco. He does a great job of helping his followers by taking the time to explain how to play the game, as he is streaming. He will carefully detail why he picked a certain weapon or why he went a certain route or how he beat another player. Plus, streamers like chocoTaco often play 'randoms', where they will invite their followers to play with them, they will pick a follower at random and play a game with them together. This is obviously a big thrill for the Twitch users to get to play alongside their favorite streamers. In fact, during one of DrDisRespect's streams, he mentioned that another Twitch streamer, CourageJD will often play Fortnite with his followers at random to help them get their first win at the game. You can see why this would really be a big deal for the first-time winner! 

This also speaks to a larger point; Don't focus on understanding the tools, focus on how people are USING the tools. To me, seeing how Twitch streamers are using the site and how they build community with their followers is far more valuable and interesting than the site itself. These streamers are creating value for their followers by teaching them how to become better at the games that they love playing. All they are doing is creating useful content. I've always written here that you should strive to create content that teaches your audience a skill, or how to get better at using your product. This is what these Twitch streamers are doing, and it's at the heart of why they are so popular. 

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What You Can Start Doing TODAY to Build Community Like Twitch Streamers Do 

  • Always reply to all comments, most especially positive comments you get on your blog or on other social media sites. This encourages people to continue to comment and engage with you.
  • Pick a schedule and be consistent with it. Post content at the same times, if you create content 'whenever I feel like it', then you're making it doubly hard on yourself to build a following. People need to know when they can expect a new blog post from you, or what times and days you'll be on Twitter or Facebook. 
  • Pick a smaller niche or topic, and own it. The broader your topic, the more content creators you will be competing with for attention. For example, there are millions of 'marketing' blogs out there. I specifically focus on customer engagement, customer loyalty, brand advocacy and brand ambassador programs. As a result, my content typically ranks on the first page of Google results for the term 'brand ambassador program'. By narrowly focusing on that marketing sub-topic, I've gone from competing against millions of other sites, to only a handful, for that top result on Google. 
  • Be entertaining and show your personality. This one is tricky because we've been taught that if we are trying to reach a professional audience, that our content should be professional as well. On the other hand, we're also taught that we need to find a way to make our content stand out from the crowd. Adding some personality to your content makes it different, more appealing, and helps it connect with your audience. This is the one area where I'm going to be focusing on the most in the future. 
  • Have fun! Going along with the above point, look for ways to have fun with your content creation, that's infectious and if you're having fun creating your content, your followers will probably have fun interacting with it, and you!

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Your Content Not Converting Has Nothing to Do With Your Content and Everything to Do With Your Customer

If you want to improve the ability of your blog to grow your business, you need to focus on creating content that converts. In simplest terms, a conversion is an action that the customer takes as a result of interacting with your content. There are many actions the reader can take when interacting with your content, and your content should be tailored so that they take the action (conversion) that you want.

This is where the trouble starts...

Raise Your Hand if Your Company is Blogging to 'Build Awareness'

This is the biggest conversion-killer of all. Think about that strategy; building awareness. Literally, that means you are trying to make people aware of your business, through your blogging efforts. So if you are trying to attract people that don't know who you are and don't know what you sell, what's the one thing your content can NOT do?

Sell to that customer.

Think about it: If I am unaware of who you are and what you do, why would you waste my time and yours selling your product to me? I don't know who you are, I don't know what you do, and I don't know why I should care. So clearly, selling to me is the worst thing you could do. It wastes your time, and mine.

And yet...this is precisely what most companies do that adopt a 'build awareness' content strategy, they create content that sells.

We're Not Like Those Guys, Our Content NEVER Sells!

This is the second biggest reason why your content never converts; Because when the customer actually IS ready to buy, your content doesn't move them closer to a sale! You've been beaten over the head with the 'social media is about relationships, not selling!' club so much that you go too far the other way and NEVER sell with your content. I don't blame you for this as much as I blame the 'social media purists' that push such nonsense. Of course your content can sell. You simply have to understand where the buyer is on their journey, and create the content they need today, with a bridge to the content they will need tomorrow.

This is the Four Stages of the Buyer's Journey. I'll be going into all four in much greater detail in a post later this month. But for now, let's focus on two things; the first and last stage, and the color of each.

First, note that the color of each stage is different. The color gets 'warmer' the further you move to the right, to signify that each stage moves the reader closer to being a buyer. It's also a visual reminder to you that when the reader is Unaware of who you are and what you do, they are also completely cold to your effort to sell to them. So don't even try. 

Second, note the first and last stages. As I said, there are two main reasons why most content doesn't convert. It's because you create content that sells when the customer isn't ready to buy, then when they are ready to buy, you don't sell to them. 

If your blog's goal is to 'build awareness' of your business, then don't blog about your business, blog about the customer you want to do business with! Sounds counter-intuitive, right? It isn't, this approach works because you're creating content that attracts the people you want to do business with! 

Let's say your company sells lawncare products. If you write a post titled "Five Pests That Are Keeping Your Lawn From Being Beautiful", that post would appeal to homeowners that want a beautiful lawn. A homeowner might read that post and think "Hey! My lawn has those brown spots, so THAT'S what causes them, I had no idea!" Then they will start to investigate your site and LEARN more about your products, but it all started by creating content that was focused on the customer, not your brand.

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Note About Content That 'Builds Awareness'

This content should only focus on the customer. Specifically, you focus on your customer's life, without selling your product. A good way to think of this content is creating content that teaches your customer the skills that also compliment your product. In the above example, you create content that helps the customer have a more beautiful lawn. Ultimately, this is the problem that your product solves, so create content that focuses on the problem, and that gives the customer advice on how to solve it. That gains their attention, and can eventually give you a way to promote your product to them! 

In general, the less interested the customer is in buying, the more your content should focus on the customer. The more interested the customer is in buying, the more you should create content that's technical and focused on the product. Just remember to give them a way to actually BUY the product! 

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How to Republish Your Old Posts Like a Rock Star

Republishing old blog posts has become increasingly popular among bloggers over the last few years. I’ve been doing this for about a year now, and I’ve seen spectacular results. I use a specific system for republishing my old blog posts, and I wanted to share that system with you.

I’ve often talked about how you can greatly improve your content creation efforts by thinking like a rock star. In fact, one of the most popular posts I’ve ever written focuses on adopting a rock star’s mindset to your content creation and marketing efforts. So let’s further think like a rock star when it comes to republishing our old blog posts.

Find Your Greatest Hits

Every rock star who has been successful eventually has a ‘greatest hits’ album. Let’s say you are a fan of Soundgarden, and wanted to introduce your friend to the legendary Seattle band. You may decide to give them a greatest hits album from the band.

In much the same way, you as a blogger should have a collection of ‘Greatest Hits’ posts. If someone was new to your blog and wanted to learn what topics you write about and are known for, what 10 blog posts would you show them? These 10 blog posts are your blogging ‘Greatest Hits’. And if you haven’t been blogging very long, you can go with your best 3 posts or best 5 posts. The point is to focus on your BEST work, the posts that you want to be known for, the posts that advance the ideas, thoughts and beliefs that you want to be associated with and known for.

I started doing this last year with this blog. I went through my archives and found several posts that I thought represented my best work. I then whittled that list down to my 10 ‘best’ posts. These are the posts that I want to be known for and the ones that I want to promote and see be more successful.

Your Greatest News, Now Remastered! 

Rock stars don’t just collect their greatest hits and resell them on a new album. They spice them up.  They remaster them to improve the sound quality, they repackage them with additional information on how the songs were writtten, etc. All of this improves the quality of the songs and makes them more interesting and appealing to fans.

In much the same way, you should ‘remaster’ your best blog posts. Here’s the checklist I went through with each of my greatest hits posts:

First, I selected my list of 10 posts that I would republish. Then, I scrubbed the posts for any outdated information. Are there broken links? Old videos from YouTube that are no longer hosted there? Next I see if there’s any outdated information or stats that need to be updated. Basically, I start with making sure that everything in the post as it stands now is still useful. Anything that isn’t, gets stripped out.

Then, I see what I can add. Are there any new studies or research that’s been done on this topic? Has my thinking evolved or have I learned something new that I could add to the post? By combining both these steps, I’m stripping out outdated information that no longer has value, and I’m adding in new information. The end result is that the overall quality of the post is improved.

Finally, I ask what is the ‘bigger idea’ behind this post? What’s it about? What core topic am I wanting to discuss, and am I doing this as well as I can? Remember, these 10 ‘greatest hits’ posts are supposed to represent the core ideas, themes and beliefs that I hold dear. I also look at the post headline, and the post itself to make sure I am targeting the right keywords that are associated with the concepts I want to discuss. For example, if my post is about brand ambassador programs, then the keyword phrase ‘brand ambassador programs’ needs to be in the post headline if at all possible.

But Mack, Can’t I Just Change the Date and Call it a Day?

You can, but I wouldn’t advise it. Remember, these 10 posts are supposed to be examples of your best work. If all you can do is change the date of publication to today, is this really a topic you should be writing about? If I’ve written a post that covers a topic I am actually knowledgeable about, I can always find something new to add and a way to improve the post.

Having said that, changing the date of a post to make the post ‘newer’ will typically improve your search rankings alone. Google wants to serve the most relevant and RECENT content to its users. If I’ve written a post on creating an incredible content strategy from 2010 and you’ve written a similar post from 2015, your post will typically be higher in search results for terms related to ‘content strategy’. So it’s my job to improve and update my post, and make sure it has better content than yours.  Then I can update my post and give it a 2018 date, and guess what? My post will now show up higher in search results than yours. As it should, if my content is better and more recent than yours, it will and should be higher in search results.

And Here’s the Results….

Last year I used this process to update several of my older posts that I wanted to be known as some of my ‘best’ work.

One post I updated last Summer was this post on Red Bull’s content strategy and why it’s so successful. So to see how my efforts are working, let’s compare traffic to this post during 2018 so far, compared to Jan 1st-April 15th of 2017:

It’s a bit hard to see, but the blue lines represent pageviews this year, the orange lines represent pageviews for this same time period in 2017. That’s an increase in Pageviews of almost 400%, mostly from doing one update and refresh of this post, which was originally published in 2013. Not bad, right?

Here’s another example: this post: 10 Things to Remember When Creating a Brand Ambassador Program. Like the Red Bull post, I updated this one last Summer. Here’s the traffic this year compared to the same period last year:

This post has ‘only’ had a 233% increase in pageviews, but notice that the increase was from 1,142 pageviews last year to 3,811 pageviews so far this year. But what I’m most proud about is that fact that this post now typically ranks on the first page of search results for the term ‘brand ambassador program’. For most of last year the post ranked in the Top 20 for that term, now it’s in the Top 10. This is huge for my business as helping companies launch brand ambassador programs is one of the key consulting services I offer.

And even though both these posts are doing great, when I do my next update on my ‘greatest hits’ blog posts, you better believe I am going to again update both these posts. Every time I do, the quality and comprehensiveness of the post is improved, which makes it more valuable to readers, and helps it rank higher in search engines.  Which drives even more traffic to the post.

 

So go through your blog’s archives today, and find your 10 posts that are your greatest hits. These are the 10 blog posts that you want to be known for, the posts that cover the topics you want to be associated with. Update these posts, don’t just give them a new date, scrub the posts, remove any errors, grammatical or fact-based. Then add any new information that you think improves the quality of the post. This can include new studies, new research, etc. Also, consider adding new visual elements, such as updating the pictures used, or adding videos.

The end result should be that you have improved the quality of your content, and that will increase traffic to your blog and to that content.  As a bonus tip: Regularly promote these 10 ‘greatest hits’ posts of yours on social media. I have my 10 greatest hits posts, and I am constantly sharing links to these posts on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. The reason why is simple: I want to remind people that they should associate me with the topics of these posts.

Finally, check out ProBlogger’s recent post on republishing your old posts and why it’s a good idea.

 

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It’s Time For Your Company to Move on From Facebook and Twitter

This has been a frustratingly difficult post for me to write on multiple levels. For years, I have advised my clients to ‘plant in the gardens that they own’ when it comes to social media. Focus on your blog and newsletter, or the delivery channels that you control versus putting all your eggs in a social media basket. If you’re thinking of your digital strategy as a house, your website and blog should be the foundation, not social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.

But now I am advising clients and companies like yours to put even less emphasis on Facebook and Twitter. The reason why is simple; Because if both companies continue on their current paths, neither will be around in five years.

Let’s Start With Facebook 

Facebook has been in the news recently over complaints about how freely user data is shared on the site. Recently, reports came out about how a firm, Cambridge Analytica, had collected Facebook user data from users who had participated in a third party app/quiz, and that user data was then reported made available to the Trump campaign during the 2016 election. This actually isn’t a new practice, the Obama campaign also mined Facebook user data collected from third party apps during the 2012 election. Both instances have raised some very valid points about how Facebook needs to be more transparent with how it uses our data, and also about how Facebook users need to be more responsible with what apps they give access to their accounts. Mark Zuckerberg will be testifying before Congress this week and will no doubt be asked early and often about the site’s plans to better protect and care for user data moving forward.

Companies have also struggled for years to make sense of Facebook’s constantly changing algorithms when it comes to determining organic reach for its content. Increasingly, content for brands has seen its organic reach decrease as Facebook has encouraged companies to move to a paid strategy to maintain or increase reach with its audiences. These moves have especially hit small businesses hard, many of who have basically leveraged a brand page on Facebook as their de facto website. Additionally, it creates frustration for social media managers everywhere because just as they seem to adjust to Facebook’s latest ‘algorithm’ change, a new one is sprung on them that throws their engagement efforts into a new tailspin. The end result for companies from every change by Facebook seems to have one commonality: Less organic reach for your content.

And Then There’s Twitter 

I joined Twitter in March of 2007, and ever since then, I have had a love/hate relationship with the site. I love the site and how it gives me the ability to so easily connect and talk directly with so many interesting people. But I hate how Twitter’s founders (Biz Stone, Jack Dorsey and Ev Williams) have always wanted the site to be a broadcast platform and not a social one. Replies were never intended to be a part of Twitter. Think about that…Twitter was founded without any thought given to incorporating the functionality for users to talk to each other. The feature was later adopted due to pressure from the Twitter community, and as you can tell from Ev’s update in 2008 on how Replies work on Twitter, he’s obviously not a fan of them.

In fact, one of the earliest changes Twitter made to replies signaled how the founders didn’t value users being able to connect with each other organically. Up until around 2008 or so, you saw every reply that anyone you followed made. For instance, if I’m following Jake, and Jake replied to Mary, I saw Jake’s reply. Why was this a big deal? Let’s say I’m not following Mary, I have no idea who she is. But she’s a friend of Jake’s, and she happens to have the same taste in movies that I do. Before Twitter changed how replies work, when Jake and Mary started discussing the movie Memento, I could see Jake’s replies to Mary, and then I would know that Mary loves the movie Memento as much I do! Suddenly, I’ve found a new friend to follow who shares my taste in movies, thanks to seeing her conversation with Jake. But Twitter decided early on that if Jake (who I follow) was talking to Mary (who I don’t follow), then I can’t see their conversation. Which means I may never meet Mary or have any idea who she is or that she loves Memento as much as I do. This move to limit how you see replies seems inconsequential now especially to anyone that joined Twitter after 2008 and has no idea what I am talking about, but trust me, this was a wonderful way to organically meet new and interesting people. And the fact that Twitter didn’t see or appreciate this, was very telling.

And then there’s this recent tweet from Jack Dorsey:

This is Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey sharing a tweet from fellow Twitter co-founder Ev Williams, about a radical political article that appeared on Medium. The article on Medium, in short, calls for an end to attempts at bipartisan agreements in politics, and the elimination of one major political party so that the other party can ‘rule’ the country. Putting aside how scary it is for the CEO of a major social media site to so openly promote such incendiary political commentary, such ideas fly in the face of everything that is supposed to make social media so incredible. The great promise of social media was always this: Everyone gets a voice. For the first time in recorded history, the majority of the planet now had the ability to create content and reach the majority of the planet. We can talk to each other, we can learn from each other. And perhaps most importantly, we can talk to people with different viewpoints than our own.

Jack’s enthusiastic sharing of this article suggests to me that we have a very different view of what makes social media so great. And yes, I’ve been doing a slow burn about this tweet for a few days now.

I started blogging in 2005. Back in those days, many of us used a tool called Technorati to check our incoming links. I did as well, and since I was at the time writing for an advertising blog, the links I got were typically from other advertising blogs.

Then one day I saw an incoming link from a blog I’d never heard of. It contained what appeared to be Japanese or Chinese symbols.  I clicked on the link, and discovered it was the personal blog of a 13 year-old girl in China. Suddenly, it hit me what had just happened. I had written a post in Alabama, that I teenager in China had read and enjoyed so much that she had linked to it on her personal blog. A year prior, it would have been all but impossible for me to reach anyone in China, much less a teenager. Now, thanks to social media, I had tool called a ‘blog’ and I could reach her, and she could reach me.

The power of social media has always been about more connections and more conversations, not fewer. Facebook and Twitter are arguably the two most powerful social media sites in the world, but I fear that the founders of both sites have lost sight of what makes social media so incredible.

What Does the Future Hold For Facebook and Twitter. And Should Your Company Be a Part of It?

There is growing distrust among Facebook and Twitter’s users toward both sites. Both sites need to be more open and willing to listen to their users. This has always been a problem for both sites, I remember having conversations as early on as 2009 with other Twitter power users about how the site needed a Community Manager, someone that could be a liaison between the users and the company. Too often, it seemed like users of both sites would advocate for changes, then without warning, the sites would announce changes that seemed to be completely disconnected from the changes that users actually wanted.

In short, if both Facebook and Twitter continue on their current paths, neither site will be around in 5 years, at least not in any form resembling how it looks today. In social media as it is in life, nothing lasts forever. Just ask MySpace.

Having said all this, there is still potential value for your company on both Facebook and Twitter. If you’re already active on either or both sites and seeing results that meet your goals, then stick with it for now. But moving forward, make sure that you depend more on the channels you control, such as your blog, and less on the ones that you don’t, such as social media sites. In fact, if you want to try something new with your digital strategy, launch a newsletter before you get on Instagram or Snapchat. In other words, be more dependent on channels you own, and less dependent on the ones you don’t.

Long-term, you should ask yourself “If Facebook and Twitter went away tomorrow, how would we reach our customers?” Increasingly, your customers are either considering a move away from these sites, or they are actually leaving.  In the last fiscal quarter of 2017, Facebook actually reported a marginal decrease in US users. Twitter also struggled to hold onto users in 2017.

My advice to clients remains the same as it has always been: When it comes to digital content creation, plant in the gardens that you own.

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This is Why Social Media is Making You Scared to Talk to Your Customers

There’s that guy in your office. You know the one, the guy that always wants to talk politics.

You do not like to talk politics. You also don’t like when this guy tries to talk politics with you, because inevitably, it ends up in a loud argument that attracts several of your co-workers that you really want no part of. So you tend to avoid the ‘politics’ guy because you know if you talk to him, an argument that you want no part of is going to be the result.

In many ways, thanks to social media, your customers have become that ‘politics’ guy in your office that always starts loud arguments that you want no part of.

When businesses began experimenting with social media about 10 years ago, many of us saw this as a breakthrough. Thanks to these ‘social’ tools, companies now had the ability to interact on an individual level with customers, and vice versa. The potential implications to customer service, brand loyalty, customer engagement and marketing in general were massive.

 

Customers Control the Interactions Between Most Brands and Their Customers, and It’s Not Pretty

Unfortunately, 10 years later, most customers are far more willing to use social media to interact with brands than most brands are to use social media to interact with customers.

And when most customers want to interact with brands, they typically want to complain to brands.

Check the average brand page on Facebook for example, and the majority of the time you will see the same thing.  You will see updates from the brand trying to promote itself and its products and services, then you will see that customers have taken over the comments to complain about issues and problems they are having with those same products and services.

For many brands, Facebook has become the place where their customers come to complain about them. The irony of ‘social’ media is that customers will complain about brands on social media, because they know that brands will be more likely to respond quickly, because if they don’t, it looks bad for the brand and the other customers notice.

Let me be clear: This is not the customers’ fault, it’s your fault as the brand. You have ceded control of the conversation with your customers, to your customers. As a result, those customers are going to act in their best interests, which means they are only going to talk to you when they want to talk to you.

Which means the only time most of them will talk to you, is when they have to. Like when they have a problem with your product or services.

Last week I spoke to a group of rural telecoms and electric providers in Huntsville. I presented Think Like a Rock Star, and part of that talk revolved around how rock stars proactively seek out interactions with their customers whereas most companies only interact with their customers when they have to. I was talking to a friend of mine who leads Customer Care for a global brand that you’ve all heard of about this, and she agreed that most companies only talk to their customers when the customer is complaining about something. The brand itself has little to no desire to initiate interactions with their customers.

Since rock stars proactively engage directly with their customers, they have a better understanding of who their customers are, and what they want. Rock stars then leverage this knowledge to improve the experience for their customers. This completely changes the conversation that rock stars have with their customers. Rock stars and their fans understand each other, so the conversation is more open and enjoyable for both parties. On the flip-side, most companies don’t understand their customers, and most customers don’t understand the companies they buy from, so it’s no wonder that the conversation between most brands and customers is completely one-sided and difficult!

This is the very simple framework that rock stars use to create fans. Note that every step in this process is deliberate, and applies to BOTH the rock star AND their fans:

1 – Interaction: Rock stars seek out ways to interact directly with their customers, and invite their customers to interact directly with them. These interactions lead to….

2 – Understanding: By interacting with their customers, rock stars begin to UNDERSTAND who their customers are and why they buy the products that the rock star makes. At the same time, the customers begin to understand who the rock star is, what drives them, why they write the music they do, what their stories are. The rock star becomes more relate-able to their fans and the fans become more relate-able to the rock star. And that understanding leads to…..

3 – Trust: When you understand who your customers are, then you can trust them. When your customers know who you are and why you are doing what you do, then they can trust you. And that trust leads to…..

4 – Advocacy: When you know someone and you TRUST them, you will advocate for them. This happens with customers that know and trust your brand, they tell other people about it.

 

Take Control of the Conversation You Have With Your Customers

But this process always starts with interactions. Your brand interacting with its customers and your customers interacting with your brand. This is why I am so passionate about helping companies better connect with their customers. I don’t want the only interactions you have with your customers to be when they complain about you on your Facebook page. I want your company to embrace a culture of curiosity about who your customers are.

Additionally, I want your brand to take control of how you interact with your customers. You’re going to have to interact with your customers anyway, so why not be proactive and engage with them first, and then apply what you learn to improve your business and marketing processes? The end result is that more you proactively engage with your customers on YOUR terms, the less you will have to engage with your customers on their terms. The less time you will spend fielding complains and problems.

So how do you go from only engaging with your customers via complaints on social media or calls and emails…to something more? By giving your customers more opportunities to interact with your brand, but on terms that your brand controls. Here’s some simple starting points:

1 – Surveys. Ask your customers who they are, what they like, what they dislike and more. This can be done via your website or email newsletter or even social media. Frame the survey as a way for you to better learn about your customers so you can offer them a better experience. Then make sure you take what you learn from your surveys and apply it to your ongoing communication efforts.

For instance, look how Marriott Resorts is leveraging #ParadiseChat as a way to better learn about its customers:

Also, note the engagement numbers: They are getting a LOT of comments on these tweets. This type of content is also proven to do the best job for brands in driving engagement. Content that is from the brand but not ABOUT the brand, instead it’s about how customers would interact with the brand and its products and services.

2 – Feedback from Customer Service. Every day your customers are calling/emailing/tweeting your customer service department. Make a point to actually note and catalog what your customers are saying when they contact you. There’s a tendency in customer service to handle as many customers as quickly as possible. But in ‘handling’ your customers, don’t simply discard what prompted their contact to begin with. The source of the contact should be noted so you can identify trends and prioritize how you respond. Make sure you are using a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) package that offers this functionality.

3 – Open Rates on Newsletters. If you’re utilizing email newsletter, pay close attention to each issue’s open rate. Specifically, you want to see which topics resonate with your customers. The topics that drive higher open rates indicate topics that are important to your customers, and you can also use this to better understand what’s important to your customers.

4 – Engagement on Social Media Content. Closely watch what types of content your customers are more likely to engage with. I’ll save you the suspense: Content that’s focused on your customers, who they are and how they would use your products and services, will always always ALWAYS get better engagement than content that directly promotes your products and services. Look at the Marriott Resorts example above; They aren’t promoting their resorts directly, they are creating content focused on how its customers would behave if they were at their resorts. This results in content that’s more interesting to the customers, and it provides Marriott Resorts with better insights into how and why their customers come to their resorts.

5 – Always Thank Customers For Complimenting Your Brand. This is so incredibly easy to do yet I see companies every single day that whiff on this. Whenever a customer compliments your brand, thank them. It doesn’t matter if they compliment you via email, phone call, social media, handwritten note, or carrier pigeon. Thank them. When you thank a customer for complimenting you, it signals to that customer that you APPRECIATE them enough to take a few seconds to thank them. That also ENCOURAGES them to CONTINUE to compliment your brand AND it encourages them to PROMOTE your brand. Yes I am going overboard with the ALL CAPS because this is VERY IMPORTANT! Also, you are signalling to all your other customers that if will respond to them and thank them if they compliment you.

Additionally, you are helping to shape and change the conversation around your brand, and you’re making it more positive. Which is always a good thing!

 

The reason why you don’t like talking to your customers is because the only time you DO talk to your customers is when you have to.  And that’s when they are yelling at you. This is precisely why I work with companies to help them build programs like outreach, loyalty and brand ambassador programs that help companies better connect with their customers.

Because I want your company to take control of the conversation you are having with your customers. If you give up control to your customers and only respond to them, your conversation is doomed to be nothing more than your company constantly fielding complaints from your customers.

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How Much Money Can a Brand Ambassador Program Save Your Company?

How much money will a brand ambassador program save your company?

Too many companies avoid launching a brand ambassador program because they view it as a new expense that will live by itself within your organization. Nothing could be further from the truth. In actuality, a brand ambassador program is an investment that makes your existing business processes more effective and efficient. When your boss asks why your company should launch a brand ambassador program, you say “it takes what we are already doing and it makes it better.”

Earlier this month I wrote a post titled How to Create a World-Class Brand Ambassador Program. In that post, I stated that at a later date I would be writing a more in-depth post describing how your brand can better integrate a brand ambassador program into its existing business structure.  This is that post.

A well-designed brand ambassador program will directly impact and improve several key business and marketing functions, such as; customer service, product design, brand reputation management, sales and promotion.  Let’s look at how a brand ambassador program could save your company money in each area:

Reduction in Customer Service Calls/Interactions

Your brand ambassadors are constantly interacting with current and potential customers both online and offline. Often, they can answer questions and help solve problems that others are having.  Each time they do, it eliminates the need for that person to contact your brand’s customer service reps.

Over time, this can generate a serious cost-savings for your brand. Once you know the internal cost your brand assigns to each customer service call or email or social media question (these numbers can be different based on the channel they originate from), then you can begin to determine the exact amount saved by your brand ambassadors.

For example, let’s say your brand has determined that each call to a customer service rep costs the brand $8.32.  This means that each time a brand ambassador helps a customer and eliminates a call, your brand saves $8.32! Let’s say you have 50 brand ambassadors in your program and they average eliminating 40 calls a year per ambassador. That’s a cost-savings of $16,640 a year for your brand!

 

Customer Feedback Improves Product Design 

So what would this look like in the real-world? At a basic level, it would simply involve training your ambassadors to be better listeners to other customers and to better record their feedback and thoughts so your brand can act on it. Keep in mind, your brand should also be doing this with your customer service teams, routinely asking them to give you reports on what customers are consistently saying, good and bad, about your brand, and its products.

Another option could be creating an online group/forum/community where ambassadors or even other customers could share brand and product feedback. Dell has already been doing this for over a decade with its Ideastorm online customer feedback site. The idea behind Ideastorm is so simple, it’s brilliant. Customers submit ideas for improving existing products, or offering new ones. The community then votes on the ideas it likes, and the most popular ideas get reviewed by Dell, and possibly implemented! With Ideastorm, Dell is basically crowdsourcing its customers for ideas. It’s a great way to get very low-cost market research. Rock stars like Lady Gaga have been doing this for years, creating sites just for fans, then using feedback and ideas generated by those fans to influence tour stops and merchandise selection.

According to Dell, each idea submitted to Ideastorm (over 27k so far) has a value to the brand of $10,000, and the site has generated over $100M in additional revenue for Dell! All because Dell got serious about listening to its customers and implementing their ideas.

 

Proactively Empowering Ambassadors to Engage With Customers Improves and Defends Your Brand’s Reputation

It’s one of the nightmare scenarios for social media managers across the country: Encountering an angry customer complaining about your brand on social media. What’s worse is finding a post on your Facebook brand page criticizing your brand that was left TWO HOURS AGO! Since that time, 5 more people have piled on, and now your Facebook page is filled with complaints about your brand, front and center for all to see.

If you’ve ever had to deal with such an issue on social media, you know what a headache it can be. One way to greatly lessen the chance of having to deal with such a social media firestorm is by empowering your brand ambassadors to defend your brand online. The great thing about your fans is that they act like guard dogs. If someone comes into your yard (or Facebook page) and tries to start trouble, they bark.  Loud. If the person is a troll, the barking will often scare them away. If the person is a customer with a legitimate complaint, your brand ambassadors can often help the customer AND alert your brand so that a representative can reply as well. Your brand ambassadors can alert you to complaints that need to be addressed as well as issues they are seeing other customers mentioning repeatedly. To be clear, your brand should already be aggressively monitoring customer feedback, but having your ambassador alerting you as just means that you can deal with any potential issues quicker, which improves both your brand reputation and your ability to handle customer complaints before they grow into a bigger problem.

For example, one client told me that by aggressively monitoring feedback from customers, it effectively creates a two-week window for the brand to solve a widespread problem and address customer complaints before industry press notices and reports on the issue. This is a function of the brand being proactive in addressing complaints from customers, and a big part of that is getting information from customers as soon as possible. Having your ambassadors interact with customers daily can help your brand identify potential issues and respond in much less time. This improves your brand’s reputation, as well as letting you deal with customer complaints quickly, regardless of whether it’s an individual issue or a systemic one.

 

Your Brand Ambassadors Can Greatly Reduce Promotional Costs, Especially For a Product Launch 

I’ve always told clients that cash should be a last resort when compensating your brand ambassadors. Instead, I challenge clients to think about how they can use access as a form of compensation. The problem with paying ambassadors with cash is that you frame their work as being a ‘job’. If you’ve chosen the right ambassadors, then you’ve chosen special customers that already love and promote your brand. You’re just working with them in a formal way to help them do what they already love doing.

Customers that love your brand want more access to your brand. One easy way to do this is to give your ambassadors early access to products before they are made available to the public. This is a true perk for your ambassadors, plus it also serves multiple benefits to your brand:

  1. It allows your ambassadors to give your brand immediate feedback on the product. This allows you to get a better sense of which features/characteristics of the product they enjoy, and you can highlight these features when you promote the product to your general customer base.
  2. Giving your ambassadors early access to new products allows them to create word of mouth about the products. This drives interest and demand for the products at launch. Think of how you give the press early access to review products so they will write about them. It’s the same idea here, the big difference is, your ambassadors LOVE your brand and will be more likely to enthusiastically promote the new product to others, and passionately so!

So how does this translate into a cost-savings? By letting your ambassadors drive promotion prior to and during launch, you can potentially reduce the amount of money you would normally spend on traditional advertising to support the launch. Ford has done this in the past when launching new vehicles, they would lean on ambassadors to build buzz and interest. Here’s Ford’s EVP Jim Farley detailing how this worked for the automaker during a product launch:

“What happens is, by launching the vehicle early, getting people involved in talking about the new global Focus or the new Fiesta is the US before it goes on sale, we can lower the amount of traditional advertising we do after the vehicle goes on sale.  That’s where the massive cost savings have been.  I’ll give you an example; On the Fiesta Movement, we had higher unaided nameplate awareness than Fit or Yaris, and we spent 10 cents on the dollar, than a traditional tv ad campaign.  So by starting earlier and using social media to spread the word about the new product, we’re really reducing the amount of traditional advertising we have to spend.”

So by empowering its ambassadors to help promote these car models at launch, Ford spent 10% what it would have spent on a television ad campaign to achieve the same level of exposure!  Scott Monty, formerly Ford’s Global Social Media Lead, added:

“We had a higher level of awareness for the subcompact than for vehicles we had in the market for 2-3 years; we collected over 125,000 hand-raisers who indicated they wanted to learn more when the car became available; and the conversion of reservations to sales was 10X higher than our traditional conversion rate.

All before we began any major media efforts toward the launch of the Fiesta.”

Additionally, this speaks to how we tend to trust messages that originate from fellow customers more than those that originate with a brand.  A message coming from a brand is often viewed as being an advertisement, whereas we tend to be more likely to pay attention to and trust a message or recommendation that comes from a fellow customer. Ford tapped into that dynamic with the results it saw with its launch of the Fiesta.

The takeaway? Tapping your brand ambassadors to build awareness for your product can be more cost-effective than using traditional advertising to generate the same levels of exposure!

 

A Well-Designed Brand Ambassador Program Will Improve Your Existing Business Functions and Save You Money

Most companies plan a brand ambassador program to be a stand-alone effort. It shouldn’t be. A well-designed brand ambassador program will positively impact several of your core business functions, resulting in increased sales and lowered costs:

  • Customer service costs are lowered because your brand ambassadors are interacting directly with customers, helping them solve their problems and answer their questions. This eliminates the need to contact your customer service reps, which saves you money.
  • Customer feedback can improve product design and identify issues before they become larger problems. Since your brand ambassadors are interacting directly with your customers, they become aware of potential issues with your products in advance, giving your brand time to address them and improve the designs. This saves you money by improving customer satisfaction and potentially eliminating the need for later product recalls.
  • Your brand ambassadors will help defend your brand online, which reduces the brand’s need to engage and ‘put out fires’, which saves your social media team a lot of time, and perhaps more importantly to them, a lot of headaches.
  • Brand ambassadors are powerful promotional partners, especially when you have a new product launch. Giving your ambassadors early access to new products before they are made available to the public lets them create promotion and buzz for the products before they launch. The increased promotion can potentially reduce or even eliminate the traditional marketing efforts you were planning to support the product at launch.

There will always be costs associated with launching and maintaining a well-run brand ambassador program. But with proper planning, your brand ambassador program should not only generate profits, it should save your brand real money.

Want to learn how much money your company could save with a brand ambassador program? Email me today and let’s discuss the possibilities!

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How to Compensate Brand Ambassadors Without Paying Them Money: A Real-World Example

Poorboys SSR1 + Black Hole + Natty’s Red = Purdy

A post shared by Mack Collier (@mackcollier) on

Want to learn more about how much it will cost to create a Brand Ambassador Program for your company? Check out Mack’s Rate Sheet.

It’s almost Spring (I keep reminding myself of this through a bitterly cold January), and with warmer weather comes the chance to engage in one of my favorite hobbies; detailing my car. I fell into detailing a few years ago when I stumbled upon a forum for detailers and read how they gushed about how their ‘high end’ washes and waxes did such a great job on their vehicles. I was skeptical, I mean wax is wax, right?  Is that stuff that costs $20 really better than the $5 tin I can get at Walmart?

Finally, I decided to take the plunge, and bought one of the waxes that the ‘experts’ were recommending.  I could not believe how much better my car looked.  The paint shined and sparkled more than any new car on any lot.  I was hooked from that point forward.

So every Spring, I start going through my shopping list of items I need to buy to protect and beautify my car’s paint in the Spring and Summer.  For years I’ve been a big fan of the Klasse Twins (AIO & SG), but a couple years ago I started using the Poorboys line and have been thrilled with the results (The picture above is the hood of my car after using three of their products). I thought this would be a good chance to talk to you about the idea of compensating brand ambassadors and how you can do it without paying your ambassadors money.

Let’s use Poorboys as an example. I don’t think Poorboys has a brand ambassador program, but if they did, I’d love to join. But I wouldn’t be interested in being compensated with cash, after all, I’d just spend it on Poorboys’ products!

Whenever I work with clients on crafting brand ambassador programs, I tell them to focus on access more than cash as a form of compensation. If I were a brand ambassador for Poorboys, I wouldn’t want cash as compensation, I’d want access.  Specifically, I’d want access to try new products before they hit the market, but also, I’d want access to expert advice on which Poorboys’ products would be best for my vehicle.  One of the things you learn early on in detailing is that it’s far more complicated than simply washing a car and then waxing it to get the best results.  You have to wash.  Then clay, then polish, then maybe a glaze, then possibly a sealant, then top with a wax. That’s a lot of different products to use, and all can react differently depending on the product used before or after them, or the surface they are going on. For instance, my car has a metallic paint color.  Some waxes are designed to bring out the metallic flakes in the paint, others are designed to make them less noticeable or ‘mute’ them. I want a wax that makes the flakes ‘pop’.

So for me, it would be great if I could have an expert at Poorboys evaluate my car’s paint, take into account the look I want, and give me advice on the products I should use to get the results I want.  So for me, cash isn’t that important as a form of compensation.  Instead, I would rather have custom advice/education on how best to detail my car to get the look I want.

One of the best ways to not only compensate ambassadors but also make the program more attractive to them, is to focus on providing benefits associated with how and why they are using your products. In the Poorboys example, I use their products to protect my car’s paint, and make it look better. So a key benefit I would be interested in from a Poorboys brand ambassador program would be if the brand could provide me custom advice/education on how I can better select detailing products for my vehicle. If they could teach me how to be a better detailer, that would benefit me, and it would also ultimately lead to me buying more Poorboys products.

Here’s another example. Let’s say your company sells lawncare products. If you had a brand ambassador programs, a benefit you could provide those ambassadors could be custom workshops or webinars that would teach the ambassadors how to create a more beautiful lawn. By teaching the homeowners a skill associated with your products, you’re not only providing a benefit to the ambassadors, but you’re also teaching them how to create a more beautiful lawn, which makes them happier, and also makes them a stronger advocate for your products!

So as you can see, by compensating your ambassadors with benefits associated with your products, you not only make them more passionate about your brand and products, but you save money! It’s literally a win-win for both your brand and its ambassadors!

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How to Create a World-Class Brand Ambassador Program

Creating a World-Class Brand Ambassador Program

This post on 10 Thing to Remember When Creating a Brand Ambassador Program remains one of the most popular posts I’ve ever written. So to start off the new year, I wanted to do a deeper dive into the topic of creating and launching a successful brand ambassador program, and walk you through the process from the brand’s point of view.

So where do you start? How do you measure results? How do you choose your ambassadors? How do you integrate the program with your other marketing and sales functions? We’ll get into all that in this post, so read on…

First, I have to say of all the consulting work I do, helping companies build out brand ambassador programs is probably the most fulfilling. I love the challenge of creating a plan that’s going to help companies better build relationships with their most passionate customers. It’s so rewarding to know that you’re helping to build something that will greatly help the brand, but even more importantly, that will provide a much better product and experience for the customer.

If I were going to work with your company to help you build a world-class brand ambassador program, this would be the process:

Plan Your Brand Ambassador Program; How Does the Brand Benefit, and How Will Your Ambassadors Benefit?

Related: How to Incorporate Millennials Into Your Brand Ambassador Program

At a high level, your brand needs to ask and answer two questions when you start fleshing out your brand ambassador program:

  1. Who is our ideal brand ambassador?
  2. What relationship will we have with our ambassadors?

To further expand on the second point, you want to as clearly as possible detail how your brand benefits from an ambassador program, and how your ambassadors will benefit.

The benefits to both your brand and its ambassadors need to be clearly defined, and very obvious and desirable to both parties. Too many brands can clearly point to what they want to accomplish with an ambassador program, but they struggle to detail meaningful benefits to the ambassadors if they participate. This is why it’s so key to create solid benefits to the ambassadors. You want your ambassadors to be thrilled to join, in fact you want so many customers applying to be ambassadors that you could never accept them all.

Think of it this way: Let’s say you want to launch a brand ambassador program because you want to increase sales of a particular product line by 20%. That’s a pretty heavy lift that you’re asking of those ambassadors, so you have to do some heavy lifting of your own and make it worth the ambassador’s while to join and then be committed to acting in a way that will help you realize that 20% increase in sales.

The more clearly defined and OBVIOUS the benefits you offer ambassadors, the more likely they will be to want to join your program and help your program reach its goals.

    Benefits - Ambassadors

  • Salary
  • Greater Access to Brand
  • Early Access to New Products
  • Recognition and Promotion
  • Professional and Personal Development

          Benefits - Brand

  • Increased Sales
  • Increased Promotion
  • Product Feedback
  • Customer Feedback

As far as measuring and tracking results: Clearly define what your goals are for your brand ambassador program. Maybe you want to increase sales, or decrease calls to customer service centers, or improve customer sentiment online. Start with your core goal, then clearly define precisely what you want to see happen.  The more precise you are with your goals, the more accountable everyone will be for reaching them.  Don’t just say ‘increase sales’, say ‘increase sales by 8% for the first year of the brand ambassador program’. And your KPIs will flow from your goals and desired outcomes.

An additional note about goal-setting: Don’t be afraid to regularly revisit your goals and measurement tactics to make sure you’re on a realistic course. This is especially important during the first year of your brand ambassador program. Self-audit frequently, at least every 3 months, monthly is better for the first 6 months. There will be a lot of trial and error involved in launching your brand ambassador program at all levels. Be mindful of this, and don’t be afraid to change course if something isn’t working as expected.

Your Brand Ambassador Program Needs Internal Ambassadors

Before you do anything else as far as fleshing out your brand ambassador program, you need to know who will own it and who will fight for it internally. Ideally, you want more than one person who are customer-centric, and who can clearly communicate to their bosses the value of the brand ambassador program, especially in the early days when a direct impact on the business bottom line will be harder to quantify. These will be the people that understand how a brand ambassador program will benefit their brand, but they can also envision how such a program will improve the product and brand experience for the ambassadors, and all customers.

Your Brand Ambassador Program Should ALWAYS Be Integrated Into Your Existing Marketing, Sales and Customer Service Efforts

The quickest way to ensure that your brand ambassador program fails is to put it on an island within your organization. Left by itself, a brand ambassador program could take years to see measurable results that justify its cost. At best. Few companies will be willing to invest the money necessary to reach that point. The good news is that a brand ambassador program can begin benefiting your company almost immediately, if structured correctly.

A well-designed brand ambassador program will directly impact and positively affect most of the core functions of your business:

  • Marketing: Ambassadors will help promote your products to other customers
  • Sales: Ambassadors will drive new sales
  • Customer Service: Ambassadors will interact directly with customers both online and off, addressing their concerns and answering their questions.
  • PR: Ambassadors will not only spread positive news about your company, they will also proactively defend it against trolls and attacks.
  • Product Design: Ambassadors will collect valuable product feedback directly from customers, which your company can then implement to improve product design.

Think of it this way; You’re not reinventing the wheel by launching a brand ambassador program. As my friend Kelly Hungerford says, a well-designed brand ambassador program makes everything your company is already doing, work better.

Kelly Hungerford

" A well-designed brand ambassador program makes everything your company is already doing, work better."


Start Small, Grow Big

For most companies, the idea of launching a brand ambassador program is a completely new initiative. There’s a steep learning curve involved at first, and much of the process will honestly be trial and error in the first days. To minimize the expense and improve efficiency, it makes sense to start with a smaller core group of ambassadors. The idea is that you want to iron out the kinks with a smaller group, then once you’ve got the process nailed (and you’re seeing the results you want), then you can branch out with a larger group.

For example, if you are targeting single moms, maybe start out with a group of say 5 or 10 ambassadors, and over time as you develop your program, you can scale it out to 100 or even 1,000 single moms. If you want your brand ambassador program to drive sales at your retail locations, maybe focus on only your San Jose market at launch, with the idea being to eventually branch out into a national program.

Create Channels to Directly Connect Your Ambassadors to Each Other, and Your Brand

This can be something as simple as a Facebook or LinkedIn group or a Twitter group DM or a Slack channel.  Also, you want to have the brand representatives that they will be working with regularly present and active in these groups as well.

Why this is important:

  • It gives your ambassadors a place where they can get to know each other
  • It gives your ambassadors a place where they can share ideas, bounce questions off each other and get help
  • It gives your brand a place where they can directly communicate with your ambassadors
  • It gives your brand the ability to quickly and easily collect feedback from your ambassadors
  • It communicates to your ambassadors that you take their feedback and connection seriously, which further motivates them to be more active

Beyond this group, you want to ensure that your ambassadors have as much direct access to your brand representatives as possible, as often as they need it.  Let’s say one of your ambassadors is ‘in the field’ and talking to a potential customer about your product. The customer is considering purchasing your product, and asks a technical question that your ambassador doesn’t know the answer to. If your ambassador had a way to message a brand rep and quickly get that information, it could result in an easy sale. This works regardless of how you will be using your ambassadors and across many core functions such as sales, PR, customer service, customer feedback, etc.

Collect and UTILIZE Feedback From Your Ambassadors

No matter what your working relationship is with your ambassadors, you should always focus on how you can empower your ambassadors to do a better job of collecting feedback from the customers they interact with, and from the ambassadors themselves. There’s a couple of key reasons for this:

  1. Think of the feedback collected from your ambassadors as being free market research. They will interact directly with current and potential customers, and get unfiltered product and brand feedback. The ambassadors will also have their own feedback to provide.
  2. Current and potential customers are more likely to give HONEST feedback to an ambassador than to your brand. Your ambassador will, for the most part, be viewed as just another customer by the people they talk to, so those people will let their guard down and give unfiltered feedback. That feedback may be more critical, but it will also be honest, and it will tell your brand exactly what it needs to do to win that customer’s business.

Your brand’s ability to collect and utilize feedback from its ambassadors is one of the biggest benefits from launching a brand ambassador program. The feedback your ambassadors collect from other customers aids your marketing, PR, customer service, and even product design. It’s invaluable, and a core tenet of your ambassador program should be to design it so that a premium is placed on collecting customer feedback.

All Your Ambassadors MUST Be Compensated

Whenever I talk to companies about compensating ambassadors, I stress two points to them:

  1. All your ambassadors MUST be compensated
  2. Paying them with cash should be your last option

Let’s take a closer look at each point.  First, you must compensate your ambassadors. The level of involvement and work you’re asking of ambassadors is about the same as a part-time job. By compensating your ambassadors, you are communicating to them that you value and appreciate their hard work, and that you aren’t taking it for granted. This keeps them motivated to work hard on your brand’s behalf. On the other hand, if you don’t compensate your ambassadors, they feel as if you are taking advantage of them and their time. Because you would be.

On the other hand, you should only compensate your ambassadors with cash if there are no other options. Paying ambassadors with cash frames their work as being a job. You don’t want the ambassador’s involvement to be viewed as work, you want it to be viewed as an act of love. They love your brand, and they want to work in a way to help grow and foster it.

So if you take cash off the table, how do you compensate your ambassadors? I always tell clients that cash should be the last option and ACCESS should be the first. Give your ambassadors better access to your brand and its products. Let them talk directly with the people that bring their favorite products to market. Let them have a first-look at new products, before even the press gets a chance to review them. In fact, in many ways giving ambassadors early access to new products can be a simple extension of what your brand is already doing with reaching out to the press to let journalists review your products early before they hit the market.  Treat your ambassadors as special people, because they are. Give them early access to products, give them tours of your facility, let them talk directly to the product and brand managers that help bring their favorite products directly to market.

And above all, ask your ambassadors how you can make their involvement worth their while. You will be amazed, but one of the best ways you can compensate ambassadors is to give them better access to your brand, and to take their suggestions seriously. Listening to your most passionate customers and ACTING on their feedback is one of the best ways you can reward them.

To be honest, simply paying ambassadors is pretty lazy. If that’s your best idea for compensating your ambassadors, then you really don’t know them very well. Go back to the drawing board till you come up with a better idea.

Don’t Just Read This Post, Act on it 

Too many people will read this post, think it’s a great idea to launch a brand ambassador program, then do nothing about it.

Yes, it’s a lot of work.

Yes, it may be hard to convince your boss to commit to it.

Yes, it will take a lot of time.

But the bottom line is, your customers are worth every bit of it. A well-run ambassador program is one of the greatest competitive advantages your brand can have. And as a brand employee, there’s nothing more satisfying than working directly every day with customers that genuinely LOVE your brand.

That’s what you get to do if your brand runs an ambassador program.  Start today, building the case internally for launching a brand ambassador program. Analyze your business, and detail all the ways that a brand ambassador program could positively impact your bottom line.  Scroll back up to the section on integrating your brand ambassador program as I’ve already given you the list.

Create a proposal for a brand ambassador program and present it to your boss.  Don’t position as ‘this is what it will cost us’, instead present it as ‘here’s how our brand will benefit’.  At worst, a well-run brand ambassador program should pay for itself.  At best, it will be a huge competitive advantage for your business.

Besides all of that, you are creating something amazing for your customers. You are creating a vehicle that allows your brand to not only get a better sense of who your customers are and what they think, but that also takes that customer feedback and IMPLEMENTS it and utilizes it within your brand.

And if you need help making the case to your boss and creating your plan, feel free to email me.  I’ll be happy to answer any question you have about creating a brand ambassador program, even if we don’t work together on it. I’ll be happy to help you get started, no strings attached, just reach out and I’ll be happy to help answer any general questions you have.

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The Two Keys to Creating Amazing Content: Empathy and Relevance

I’ll Fly Away is believed to be the most recorded gospel song ever. It’s been covered by everyone from The Kossoy Sisters to Andy Griffith to Johnny Cash to Kanye West. This is one of my favorite versions, by Alan Jackson:

https://youtu.be/SDqTENtNvKQ?t=1m20s

The song’s enduring popularity is thought to be rooted in how it takes the fear we all have of dying, and it re frames death not as the end, but the beginning of true happiness and joy. It helps to calm our fears; simultaneously reminding us that the pain and suffering of this world is temporary, while the rewards that await are eternal:

“Just a few more weary days and then…..I’ll fly away
To a land where Joy shall never end….I’ll fly away!”

I especially liked how the site Trial and Error Collective described the song: “I’ll Fly Away” is a song, like many traditional spirituals, intended to be sung by anyone and everyone. I would argue that it demands the voices of amateurs, so that they too can join in the peace and joy that it bestows.”

But perhaps the true reason why the song has inspired for almost a century is the empathy it has for the listener. Its lyrics speak to those feeling powerless, and it empowers them. The sense of worry and dread in the face of death is replaced by strength and joy at a time when the listener needs it most.

 

If you’ve read this blog for any amount of time, you know that I often reference music and certain songs in my posts. The reason why is because good content is good content, regardless of the form it takes. Many popular songwriters have the ability to write in a way that shows empathy for the listener. Creating content that shows empathy for your audience is one of the easiest ways to arrest the attention of your audience. I use the word ‘arrest’ deliberately, because if your content is empathetic to your audience, it forces, it compels them to pay attention.

Another powerful way to show empathy for your reader is to create content that is relevant to them.

What is relevant content?

Relevant content is content that provides someone with the information they need, at the time they need it, in the form in which it is most useful for them. Notice that you need to focus on timing and form when determining if content is also relevant.

Last March I was in the market for a new smartphone. I wanted to stay with iPhone since I had an iPhone 4S at the time. So I did copious amounts of research on several models, ultimately focusing on deciding between the iPhone 6s, the iPhone 7 and the iPhone 7 Plus before buying the iPhone 7 Plus. But as soon as I bought my iPhone, I stopped reading the articles that compared different models, because I had already made my purchase, the same information that was completely relevant before I made my purchase, no longer was.

You also need to consider the type of content that’s most relevant to your audience. Years ago I created a very crude Speaking page to let event planners learn more about me and (hopefully!) hire me for their event. At first, the page just featured a couple of paragraphs explaining the topics I spoke about, and the only picture I had of me speaking. Over the years, I would get feedback from companies and conferences, and I would adjust the content on my Speaking page accordingly.

“Do you have any references?” led to my adding Testimonials from past events I’d spoken at.

“Do you have any videos of your speaking?” led to my adding, you guessed it, videos of me speaking.

By factoring in the elements that made the content more relevant to my audience, my speaking page converted at a higher rate.

 

Relevance and Empathy Are Your Secret Weapons

There are two things you can add to your content in 2018 that will instantly make it resonate more with your audience; Relevance and empathy. Relevant content captures our attention. Over the holiday break I was researching a topic, and as I often do, I was using my laptop while also checking something on my phone at the same time. So my attention was fractured, to say the least. I was scanning google results on my laptop while checking notifications on my phone. Then, while scanning the google results, I found an article that looked like it was exactly what I was looking for, and I clicked over and for the next 10 mins or so I was completely absorbed by this article. I had to laugh when I noticed that I had put the phone down without even realizing I had. The relevant article had completed sucked me in and captured my attention.

Relevant content is interesting content.

 

Forget Creating ‘Better’ Marketing and Content, Focus on Creating More Relevant Marketing and Content 

‘Better’ is all the rage when it comes to customer marketing. Businesses are striving to create better content for customers, a better experience for customers. The first cousin of ‘better’ in this context is a more personalized experience with more personalized content. Even B2B marketers are getting in the game, Account-Based Marketing is one of the hottest trends in B2B Marketing, designed to focus on target accounts vs target markets, with the end goal of giving ‘better’ marketing to these target accounts inside of giving less specialized marketing to a target market as a group.

Tools and marketing methodologies, when used correctly, can help your business better understand its customers. But at the end of the day, you have to WANT to better understand your customers. You have to want to understand what a more relevant piece of content would be to them. And not because you want to improve your KPIs or move a needle. But rather, because you know that providing more relevant and interesting content and experiences for your customers WILL result in more sales.

Making the customer the priority over the business means you both win.

 

The Only Content Rule You Need to Follow in 2018 and Beyond

Think about all the hundreds, if not thousands, of ‘rules’ that have popped up in recent years when it comes to content creation. There’s been numerous research studies done into what is the perfect length/form/topic to drive social shares. How to write the perfect headline, how to optimize for search engines, what day to publish your content, what time of the day.

Notice how formulaic these ‘rules’ are. Also notice that none of these rules actually take into account the person you are creating the content for.

Here’s the only content rule you ever need to follow: Create content that is relevant to, and emphatic toward your audience.

Want to improve your engagement numbers this year?  Want to increase your conversions?  Want to get more people interacting with your content? Sharing it?  Contacting you to buy a product because they liked it?

Ask and answer these three questions before you create any piece of content:

1 – Who am I creating this for?

2 – Why is it relevant to them?

3 – How is it going to help them?

 

Ask and answer those three questions for EVERY piece of content you create this month.  Then check your results vs your projections and see how you did.

The thing is, we as content creators know why WE are creating that piece of content.  We know what WE want to happen, we know what OUR desired outcomes are.

But we don’t always put as much thought into making sure that the customer’s needs are met. Which often means our needs aren’t met either.  Funny how that works out, isn’t it?

 

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The Secret to Getting More Engagement on Our Blogs That We’ve All Forgotten

From 2006-2011, I did a weekly ‘Top 25’ list of the best marketing blogs on my first blog The Viral Garden. Yesterday, I was doing some maintenance on The Viral Garden, and I found a Top 25 list I did back in December of 2007.

Ten years ago! When I saw the list, I was immediately curious to see how many of the blogs were still around and active, ten years later.  Most of them had either ‘died’ years ago, or had moved to a new URL, a couple had apparently let the hosting for the domain lapse and someone else had taken it over. BTW, props to Valeria, her blog Conversation Agent is still going strong, looks to be even more prolific today than it was 10 years ago!

I spent probably two hours clicking the links and reading the blogs, several of which I hadn’t visited in years. It was a very interesting digital trip down memory lane. Putting my Content Strategist hat on, I immediately noticed several differences in the content being created on these blogs 10 years ago versus today:

  • Shorter posts. There weren’t a lot of 1,500-word posts floating around in 2007. In fact most where a few hundred words, if that.  Short, and to the point.
  • There were few ‘How-To’ posts. There was little, if any teaching and instructive content. I have a theory on why this is the case, and I’ll get to it in a minute.
  • No ‘Listicle’ posts. You know, “Ten Steps to Building a Better Blog” or “Five Ways to Improve Your Digital Presence Today!”

But what really struck me about the content being created on these blogs 10 years ago was the tone. Most of these blogs were written as if the blogger was talking to no more than 30 people. Because they probably weren’t! I think back to my own experiences blogging around this time, and there were many days when I wouldn’t crack 100 visitors. But the flipside was, I knew most of the people who visited my blog, because they were commenting on my blog!

And when you are writing for people that you know, and people who know you, you write differently. Remember I said that most bloggers in 2007 didn’t write ‘How-To’ or ‘Listicle’ type posts.  Instead, they mostly wrote ‘Here’s what happened to me today’ type posts, with a business slant or moral behind the post. But when you write in that way, it’s much more ‘folksy’, and it makes you much more relateable.

One of the constant complaints I hear from bloggers in #Blogchat, from clients who blog, is “No one ever comments on my blog anymore!” We know why some of this happens; Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other social sites are fragmenting conversations. Most bloggers and their readers weren’t using these sites in 2007, so as a result, social conversations were still mostly happening on blogs. Over the years, as these sites grew, we started to spend more time off our blogs, which meant our social interactions followed us.

Sidenote: Back in those days I had a ‘trick’ I would use to get more blogging readers. A decade ago, Technorati would list all the blogs (or it tried to) by their number of links. And you could sort them so that the list would be ascending or descending. I would sort the list of blogs so that it was ascending, meaning that it showed me the blogs that had few or no links, first. My thinking was that the blogs with few or no links were probably brand new bloggers, so I wanted to check them out and comment as often as I could, to help them get going and also to get on their radars so they would start reading and commenting on my blog! One day, I found a particular business blog with few or no links, and I clicked over and started reading the blog. It had about 5 or 6 posts, the first five were strictly business focused, on a particular topic, all written in a very textbooky tone. None of them them got any comments. Then the ‘newest’ post was simply the blogger asking “Why in the world isn’t anyone commenting?!?  I keep writing posts, putting a lot of effort into them and no one comments!”  That was the last post on that blog, the post was about 3-4 months old by the time I saw it, and I remember thinking “I just saw this blog die”. That’s always stuck with me, for whatever reason.

But looking back at these ‘old’ blogs from 2007 and such, I’m reminded of the role that the tone of our blog posts plays in driving engagement. Or, how the tone used can stifle engagement. Remember I said that I saw few ‘How-To’ or ‘Listicle’ posts on these blogs from 2007 years ago. Now, these are all the rage on blogs, but think about why that is. These types of posts are written to EXPAND your audience. They are written to help more people, many of which you don’t know. So you write in a tone that’s more formulaic and impersonal. This makes your message more accessible to a larger audience, but it also makes your message less engaging, in a way.

I want to illustrate how this applies to one of my favorite blogs from 10 years ago, Kathy Sierra’s Creating Passionate Users. Kathy’s blog was always brain candy to me, but even though she had a massive audience, her blog always felt welcoming and engaging in a way that I never really understood. As I was reading these old blog posts from 2007, I noticed that one of the blogs had Creating Passionate Users on their blogroll (remember those?), so I clicked over and started reading Kathy’s blog. I was immediately struck by the tone! She wrote in a way that made it seem like she knew all her readers and was just chatting with us at a bookstore and having a casual conversation just with us. It made her content much more interesting, and engaging, even if I didn’t realize why at the time.

So if you want to write to expand your audience and to establish your expertise, the ‘How-To’ posts and really any content that teaches a skill is a good idea.

But if you want to increase engagement, if you want to get more comments and interaction, do like we used to do in the ‘old days’ of blogging; Write like you only have 30 readers, and you know who each of them are.

Try it! It really does change the way you write, doesn’t it?