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Your Big Brand is Already Doing Influencer Marketing, Whether You Realize it or Not

airlines customer serviceLast week, I wrote about how social media isn’t hard, companies make it hard. The idea being that a lot of opportunities fall into the lap of companies every day in regards to their digital strategies, and often these opportunities aren’t capitalized on.

For example, right now there’s a mad rush by brands to get on the Influencer Marketing train. Brands want to know how they can work with influencers, and how they can get those influencers talking positively online about their brand. Big brands are paying millions of dollars to consultants and agencies to help launch Influencer Marketing campaigns.

And yet, they often miss capitalizing on free opportunities to interact with influencers that fall into their laps.

I was thinking about this as I read about my friend Ann Handley’s recent traveling nightmare with Delta airlines. The story was a breakdown in customer service that’s unfortunately all too familiar to those of us that fly frequently. But I wanted to pick this story up when Ann, after getting no help (or empathy!) from Delta reps at the ATL airport, decided to turn to Twitter and the @Delta account.

At this point, I want to back up for a minute. When a customer has a problem with a brand, they will typically try to contact the brand via offline or online channels BEFORE going to social media. I’ve been educating clients on this for 10 years, I’ve been blogging about it here for years, hell I even wrote a book about this. So when a company encounters what they might perceive as a ‘complaint’ from a customer on social media, they need to understand how the customer got there. Typically, as Ann did, they tried to contact the brand via other customer support channels, and did not get the help they needed. So they turned to social media, and at this point, they just want someone to LISTEN to them and show EMPATHY for their situation. In short they want the brand to say “I’m sorry you’re upset, help me understand what has happened so I can see what can be done to help you”. The point is, you have a customer that’s typically frustrated, who is upset with the treatment they have gotten from your brand, but if you show empathy for their situation and work with them to resolve it to the customer’s satisfaction, you have a chance to convert a ranter, into a raver.  Nothing creates an advocate faster than a brand that listens to the customer that has a problem, and who goes the extra mile to solve that problem.

Now that we’ve covered that ground, let’s turn our attention back to Ann’s situation with Delta. I’m not going to really comment on what happened with Ann at the ATL airport (because you should read the post) but suffice it to say that Delta’s customer service efforts in person at the airport were less than satisfactory as far as Ann is concerned.  So she’s upset, and a bit frustrated by the time she decides to try the hail mary of contacting Delta on Twitter for help.

And the second she did, whether Delta realized it or not, but they were engaging in Influencer Marketing. A quick click of Ann’s Twitter account tells you the following:

  • She has nearly 400k followers
  • She’s a bestselling author

In other words, she’s an influencer. And I’m not sure what the social media equivalent of a Q Score is, but Ann’s would be off the charts. Everyone loves Ann.

So Delta had a rare opportunity to interact directly with an influencer fall in its lap. According to Ann, here’s what happened: She tweeted to @Delta saying she needed help.  Approximately an hour later (see the problem?), she got a reply, and an exchange began. Ann was offered a voucher or free miles, but really wanted someone from Delta to explain to her exactly what had happened and how her situation was allowed to reach this point.  Delta told her on Twitter that they were dispatching a customer service rep to her location in the airport to talk to her.

Eighty-five mins later (see the problem?), she was still waiting for the CS rep to reach her when her name was called for standby for another flight and she left the airport. Still frustrated and upset, she squeezed into the back of her flight, and started writing what would become her blog post.

Again, brands like Delta will spend millions if not hundreds of millions on Influencer Marketing in 2017. Yet when they have a chance to connect with an actual influencer for free, they blow it.

And the great irony of this story? Ann is a professional speaker, and as a fellow speaker, I can tell you that one thing we love is new case studies to share with our audiences. So there’s at least one positive Ann can take from this last week.

The moral of the story is that there’s no sense in your brand chasing the Shiny Object of the day if you can’t nail basic customer service. Empower and train your employees to have understanding and empathy for your customers and 95% of your customer service issues will magically disappear.

And for extra credit: Understand that every customer is an Influencer to someone. Your brand is engaging in Influencer Marketing every day, whether you realize it or not.

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Marketing Writing Bootcamp is #Blogchat’s Sponsor For May and June!

I’m thrilled to announce that #Blogchat will have a repeat sponsor for the next two months as Marketing Writing Bootcamp from Marketing Profs returns to sponsor #Blogchat in May and June! the Marketing Writing Bootcamp launches on June 1st and features 13 classes and SEVEN hours of advanced learning that’s designed to greatly improve your business writing skills. And yes, there’s even a class devoted strictly to improving your business blog!  Click here to view the courses offered, and as a special bonus, Marketing Profs has offered #Blogchat participants a special $200 discount! Click that link to get the Marketing Writing Bootcamp for only $395!  Thanks to your continued support of #Blogchat, we can continue to attract wonderful sponsors like Marketing Writing Bootcamp who can offer special deals and value for our community.

Since Marketing Writing Bootcamp will be sponsoring this month and next, the #Blogchat topics will lean toward how we can be better writers, especially in our business blogging efforts. Sunday (May 7th) we will discuss Ideas For Making Your Writing More Interesting. When we’re discussing this topic, we’ll focus on areas such as:

  • Sharing personal stories, either our own or those from our customers/clients
  • Taking a hard stance or rant (can work but be careful)
  • Solving customer/client problems

And other areas of course.  The fun begins at 8pm Central, Sunday May 7th! We’ll have a couple of members of the Marketing Profs’ team joining us, be sure to follow @ laurencwebster and @msnods as they will be interacting and there to answer any questions you may have about the Marketing Writing Bootcamp. Click here to review the course lineup and save $200 on registration, a special #Blogchat discount just for you! 

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Social Media Isn’t Hard, Your Company Makes it Hard

I spend very little time here breaking down how to use social media tools.  I don’t do the deep dives that some other sites engage in where they show you all the advanced tips on how to get the most bang out of Facebook or Instagram or Snapchat.

Here’s the reason why: It’s not about understanding the tools, it’s about understanding the people that are using the tools. Becoming a Facebook ninja isn’t going to help your business a damn bit if you don’t understand why your customers are on Facebook and what activities they are engaging in.  Understand your customers first, then you can focus on understanding the tools.

Here’s an example: I constantly teach clients how they can better leverage social media to connect directly with their customers and improve engagement.  A dead simple way to do this is to follow this process: Respond to every customer mention of a specific interaction with your company.  If the mention is positive, thank them.  If the mention is negative, followup with them to get more information and figure out how you can best resolve the interaction to the satisfaction of the customer.  Of course there are other ways to respond and engage with customers, but companies love and even need processes, and this is a great starting point.

In short, if a customer mentions doing business with your company, you respond. For those of us reading this that sit on the customer side of the fence, this makes complete sense. Yet for many companies, its waters they are hesitant to wade into for fear of the unknown.

But it really is low-hanging fruit that companies can easily grasp to improve their digital efforts to engage with customers and increase customer loyalty. Case in point, yesterday during #AdobeChat, we were discussing how businesses in the tourism and hospitality industries should engage with tourists or customers that are creating UGC. At one point I left this tweet:

Then later, Enterprise finds that tweet and replies with…

And then I reply with…

It truly is this easy. I mentioned Enterprise (notice I didn’t even mark the mention as a reply, which proves they were purposely monitoring brand mentions), they responded and thanked me, then I pointed out their good behavior to everyone in #AdobeChat. BTW, there were dozens if not hundreds of business travelers in this particular chat, so that type of positive promotion is golden.

And it all started with Enterprise being smart enough to engage. Why isn’t your company doing the same?

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Want to Be a Content Marketing Rock Star? Focus on Your ‘Greatest Hits’

Let’s say you write two blog posts.  The first one gets 100 social shares, and you get quite a few comments from readers saying they enjoyed the post.  The second one gets 10 social shares, and no comments.

There’s two schools of thought on how to handle promoting these two posts moving forward:

1 – Spend more time promoting the first post, because that’s the one people are reacting to.

2 – Spend more time promoting the second post, because you need to get more people seeing it so it will be shared more.

 

My strategic focus is to invest more time promoting the posts that are being well-received, and less time promoting those that are not. I confine most of the promotion of my posts to Twitter, since the ‘shelf-life’ of tweets is so short.  So it makes sense to promote the same post multiple times, since most of my followers won’t see each individual tweet.

Over time, I’ve developed a core list of 10-20 posts that I consistently promote.  In rock star terms, these are my Greatest Hits.  These are the posts that always spark shares, engagement and discussion.

An added benefit from sharing these posts consistently is that I become ‘known’ or associated with the topics of the posts. Just as rock stars become known for singing their Greatest Hits, you become known for the content you create, and the content you share. But again, you have to be strategic about it. Just because a post is popular, doesn’t mean you’ll necessarily want to share and promote it.

For example, two of the most popular posts I have ever written here are ones I almost never promote or share. Why? Because the posts are related to writing and publishing a book. I wrote these posts while I was working on writing Think Like a Rock Star because I wanted to share useful content that would help others.  The problem is, this content isn’t really helpful to companies who need help with their content strategies (my potential clients). So I don’t promote these posts because they aren’t useful to potential clients, and it was also a lesson to me on not creating content that wasn’t interesting to the my desired audience.

So if you want to cultivate and curate your best content, here’s what you should do:

1 – Identify your Greatest Hits. The handful of posts that are relevant and valuable to the core audience you want to attract.  Additionally, these posts should be focused on the core topics that you want to be known for. I would suggest picking no more than 10-20 posts.  It would be better to pick 5 amazing posts than 10 ok posts. Don’t worry if you only have a few amazing posts, over time, you’ll write more amazing posts and your list of Greatest Hits will grow organically.

2 – Analyze your Greatest Hits and try to determine why they were more popular than your other posts. What topics did you cover, were the posts long or short? Did you cover breaking industry news, or were the posts all rants?  If you closely examine these posts you can probably find a few common traits that you can utilize in creating future posts.

3 – Experiment with how you promote your posts. Let’s say you’ve written a comprehensive post on the field service industry titled “Five Ways Augmented Reality Will Revolutionize Field Service”. You were convinced that this post would be a big hit with your audience, but when you share it on Twitter, you almost never get any clicks. It might be that promoting the post in a new way would make it more interesting.  For example, there might be a key research point in the post that you should promote.  If you tweet “Companies that utilize augmented reality in field service see First-Time Resolutions increase by 32%”, you may very well see more clicks vs just promoting the title of the post.  People love research, facts and numbers. These can especially be useful to your audience, especially if you are trying to connect with businesspeople. See if there are any research findings or facts that you could use to promote your posts instead.

BONUS: If you are determined to promote just the title of the post in your tweet, you could add an image to the tweet that contains the relevant facts or numbers on it.  Best of both worlds!

 

And if you need more help on how to create and promote your content like a rock star, check out this infographic:

How to create and promote content like a rock star

 

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Jessica Northey Joins #Blogchat on Sunday to Discuss Creating a Blog or Site For Your Passion!

Jessica Northey joins #blogchatUPDATE: Here’s the transcript to the #Blogchat with Jessica Northey!

NOTHER UPDATE: #Blogchat was the Top Trending Topic on Twitter last night, thanks again Jessica!

Does your company or brand want to get in on this excitement and sponsor #Blogchat in May? Click here price and details.

I’m thrilled to announce that the most popular #Blogchat Guest Host EVER, Jessica Northey is joining #Blogchat again this Sunday! Jessica is a dear friend and a truly good person, who also happens to be a social media powerhouse. She has over half a million followers on Twitter and another two million on Google Plus.

Additionally, in 2011 she started #CMChat, the first Twitter chat devoted to country music.  Since that time, the chat has hosted a who’s-who of country music: The Oak Ridge Boys, Alabama, Sugarland, Clint Black. Additionally, as #CMChat has grown by leaps and bounds, she’s found ways to push that growth past Twitter.  In fact, she has a very robust site created from the chat, CMChat.com. I love this site because it not only focuses as an extension of the #CMChat on Twitter, but it’s also a Country Music portal, with information about country music and the guests that will be appearing at future #CMChats.  It’s a great example of building a Twitter chat around something you are passionate about, then extending that into creating a site or blog to help support that passion.

Which is exactly why Jessica is perfect to join us this Sunday for the topic of Creating a Blog or Site For Your Passion. She’s done what so many of you are wanting to do with your blogs, and actually what I want to do with #Blogchat.  More on that at the end of this post.

Here’s what we’ll be discussing on Sunday (4-23-2017), starting at 8pm Central:

Q1 – How did you decide you were ready to launch a site/blog for #CMChat? How did you know you were ready?

Q2 – When you started the site, what were the first 2-3 things you tackled? Strategy? Design?

Q3 – What is the one thing you wish you could go back and do differently with launching the site?

Q4 – What is the one thing you learned about launching CMChatLive.com that totally surprised you?

Q5 – If you could give one piece of advice to #Blogchat about starting their own blog or site, what would it be?

 

I got a chance to chat with Jessica a couple of days ago and she’s got some very interesting things to share with you. I love talking to Jessica because I always come away with so many interesting ideas, and I know you will too!

So join us on Sunday for Jessica Northey discussing Creating a Blog or Site For Your Passion.  Make sure you are following Jessica on Twitter, and also check out her site CMChatLive.com!

Now, I wanted to give you a bit of a #Blogchat update. For the last few years, I’ve unfortunately spent less time cultivating the community at #Blogchat. In 2013 my book, Think Like a Rock Star came out, and my consulting business shifted and I decided to spend my time on other areas.

However, the chat has continued to remain very popular, and increasingly with college students, whose instructors are requiring them to attend #Blogchat as part of their course work. Honestly, this is probably the one thing in relation to #Blogchat that I am the most proud of. That universities and colleges across the country would trust its students with learning from the #Blogchat community, well…it’s an incredible honor.

So I’ve decided to make a few changes to #Blogchat. The first one is that starting immediately, my sister Beth will take over the @BlogchatNews account on Twitter. She actually started on this a couple of weeks ago and we’ve already seen a nice bump in engagement from her efforts. @BlogchatNews will bring you all the latest news and updates on #Blogchat. Additionally, @BlogchatNews will be more engaged throughout the week.  We want to expand #Blogchat beyond simply being a Sunday-night chat.  During the week, we’ll be more engaged with the #Blogchat community, and will especially focus on promoting the most active and supportive members of the #Blogchat community. So starting immediately, @BlogchatNews will be the new Community Manager for #Blogchat, and Beth will be happy to help you and engage with you on Twitter, so please follow her there.

Long-term, one of the plans I want to explore for #Blogchat is having its own site. This is a big part of the reason why I wanted to have Jessica on as guest this week, because what she’s done with CMChatLive.com is something that I would eventually like to do with #Blogchat. I can envision a place where we house transcripts from past #Blogchats and share posts from the #Blogchat community and serve as an additional resource for the community beyond just the Twitter chat.

Oh and also make sure you check out The #Blogchat Weekly from Paper.li.  This is a weekly collection of some of the most useful and instructive blogging articles from #Blogchat participants and select friends of #Blogchat.

So if you’re a fan of #Blogchat, hang on, things are about to get a lot more interesting very soon! And I’ve just lowered the price for next month’s #Blogchat sponsorship, so if you’d like to grab it, act fast!  See you Sunday night at 8pm Central for Jessica Northey!

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Sorry Twitter, I’m Leaving You For LinkedIn

I joined Twitter in March of 2007. It took about six months, but I eventually fell in love with the social media site. I joined Facebook and tinkered there too around this time, but Twitter won my heart. It gave us a way to instantly connect and have real-time conversations with, well….anyone that was on Twitter! The ability to discover new people and hear differing points of view on any topic imaginable was intoxicating

So for years, I spent almost all of my time on Twitter, and a bit of time on Facebook. LinkedIn was sort of the outcast. I never really saw the point as all it seemed to be was the same people I followed on Twitter, sharing the same content. Maybe a bit more focused on business, but it was pretty much a content stream, whereas Twitter was where you got the content AND the conversations around that content!  An easy win!

But over time, Twitter got popular. REALLY popular. The celebrities found Twitter around 2010 when Oprah and A+K joined. Those celebrities brought more celebrities, and that also brought the mainstream media to follow them. The user experience on Twitter changed dramatically. The era of conversations had ended, the era of broadcasting had begun. One of the most popular posts I’ve ever written here was this one in 2015 lamenting that the organic conversations have left Twitter. It’s only gotten worse since then. Since 2016, Twitter has become a tinderbox of political arguments and fights. Every day the Twitter trending topics are dominated by political articles that are attacking this side or that side. And I still want to know what the New York Times’ secret for getting a minimum of one article to trend every single day, because they’ve found something no other media source can duplicate. (Sidenote: As I am finishing this post, the term “The Benefits of Boat Rentals” is trending on Twitter, with TEN tweets in the last hour. AFTER it started trending).

The constant fighting over politics really drained me. It’s basically driven me off Facebook, I log in once, maybe twice a week now, where I used to check Facebook multiple times every day. And it’s seriously killed my interest in Twitter as well.

So a few weeks ago, out of sheer desperation, I decided to give LinkedIn another look. What I found was a site that actually understands who its audience is: Business professionals.  There was almost no talk of politics, the focus is on business. And I noticed something amazing about the newly-designed home feed: LinkedIn shows me what activity MY network is engaging in.  It shows me when Tom endorses someone, or when Kelly Likes an article, or when Jim connects with Jessica. LinkedIn makes it easy to DISCOVER new people and new information!

This is the thing that made Twitter SO amazing as a discovery tool in its early years!  For those of you that joined Twitter after say 2009 or so, you don’t know that Twitter used to let you see when people you follow interact with someone that you are NOT following.  So if Kerry is chatting with Chris (who I am not following), I could still see her tweets to Chris. It was a wonderful way to meet new people like Chris, because I could see what Kerry (who I follow) was saying to Chris (who I wasn’t following). But Twitter decided that such a feature was DISTRACTING from the core user experience. In fact, Twitter has said all along that Twitter was never intended to be a platform for conversations, it was designed to be a broadcasting tool.

LinkedIn is changing into the discovery tool that Twitter used to be. That, plus almost all of the political nonsense is checked at the door. The focus is business, and connecting with and discovering new business contacts and information. LinkedIn even curates a Daily Rundown, which gives you a quick overview of the BUSINESS stories you need to know. Oh, and they now have over half a billion users worldwide.

It’s funny because when I started using and enjoying Twitter, I wanted it to get the attention I thought it deserved. I wanted companies to spend more time there, I remember being upset because it never got mentioned in the mainstream media. “Be careful what you wish for.”

LinkedIn is currently my favorite social media site, and the one that I find the most useful. Which social site do you enjoy the most?

UPDATE: It’s been very interesting to see the reaction this post has gotten on social media. I only shared it on LinkedIn and Twitter, and only once on LI.  As you can see from the share counts, it’s far more popular on LI, but I guess that’s somewhat expected since it seems to be more favorable toward LI than Twitter. What’s fascinating to me is the vitriol I’ve seen on Twitter over this post. People have insulted me, told me I don’t know how to use Twitter, accused me of clickbait, etc. The clickbait charge I can somewhat understand but the title was more an analogy to dating, like Twitter isn’t my ‘steady’ anymore, now I’m seeing LI.  And what I’ve really noticed on Twitter is most people are commenting on the title without actually reading the post. This happens far too often on Twitter. On the other hand, the reaction on LI has been far more measured and has actually sparked several deep and interesting conversations. The reaction on Twitter has mostly been that I am wrong and not using Twitter the ‘right’ way, and that I don’t know how to drive engagement. If anything, the reactions have helped solidify my decision to spend more time on LI versus Twitter moving forward.

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The Rise of the T-Shaped Influencer

T-Shaped Influencer

About 10 years ago, it was incredibly cool to call yourself a ‘social media consultant’. Social media in a business context was new and exciting (and in too many ways still is 10 years later), and those that marketed themselves as social media consultants were coveted.

Yet even as social media consultants were enjoying popularity, a few were sounding potential alarms. Eventually, the market would mature, and companies would need more specialized skills from their consultants. Over time, this has indeed happened. Companies no longer need to hire as many social media consultants and agencies as they once did, now they hire employees and conduct much of their social media and digital strategies in-house. Social media consultants have gone from being generalists to more specialized.  In the last few years we’ve seen the rise of specialized social media positions in analytics, content creation, and community management, among others.

As the market matures, needs become more specialized. The same thing is beginning to happen with Influencer Marketing. I first started working with clients on influencer campaigns in 2010. Then, the rationale for picking influencers was simply ‘biggest number wins’. Sure, it was best if we could connect with influencers in the specific industry that was relevant to the campaign, but if not, any influencer with a few hundred thousand followers on Twitter would do. I tried my best to explain to these clients that it wasn’t about the overall numbers, it was about how connected and influential the influencer truly was over their followers. The smart clients understood this, and their campaigns were successes.

Digital Ad Spends Are Way Up, Everyone is Using An Ad-Blocker

Two interesting stats that dovetail: digital ad spending is set to hit $100 Billion by 2020, while at the same time, ad-blocker usage spiked by 34% since 2015, with 70 million Americans now blocking online ads. This is another reason why Influencer Marketing is so appealing to many brands. Consumers are increasingly distrustful of any advertisement. Influencers give marketers the ability to reach an audience through a more trusted source: The influencer. Instead of running ads on a blog that will be ignored, a brand can instead partner with the blogger directly to have them create original content that promotes the brand. Ideally, the influencer will be smart enough to create the content in a way that creates value for both the brand, and the influencer’s audience.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t always happen. Companies that invest in influencer marketing are often seeing nebulous results that are difficult to distill any meaningful value from. Some of this is due to poor planning and execution, as well as partnering with influencers that either weren’t a good fit for their campaign, or who didn’t perform as necessary.

Big Money Means the Need For Bigger Results

Now that we’ve moved past the ‘shiny object’ stage of Influencer Marketing, companies that are still investing in this tactic are increasingly demanding real results for their dollars. As they should. With this, comes re-examining how influencers are chosen. The idea that ‘biggest follower count wins’ is being challenged. Companies are realizing that if an influencer has a big follower count, that just means they have little connection with any of them. And the whole idea behind Influencer Marketing is that brands want to work with people that will influence behavior. If an influencer has little sway over her audience, then it really doesn’t matter if that audience is 100 or 100,000.

In fact, what many brands are beginning to realize is that smaller followings typically mean an influencer has more influence over their audience. The reality is, authentic, personal engagement cannot effectively scale past a certain point. The one-to-one interactions that build trust and result in one person having true influence over the actions of another require a lot of attention. If an influencer has a following of 100,000, it’s frankly impossible for them to have enough time to have personal interactions with even a fraction of that audience.

Which is why T-Shaped Influencers are suddenly in demand by brands. T-Shaped Influencers are influencers that have a narrow focus and following, but a deep connection with that audience. The audience they have influence over is highly specialized, but if they have a connection with the audience you want to reach, it makes more sense from a brand perspective to connect with a T-Shaped Influencer instead of someone with a much larger following, that really has little influence over any of them.

Think of it this way: The traditional influencer with a large following typically has a connection with a lot of people, but a DEEP connection (the type that results in true influence) with only a few people.  So their influence footprint would be wide and shallow.

On the other hand, a T-Shaped Influencer has a very narrow area of people they influence, but their level of influence over that small group is very DEEP. So if you wanted to connect with the small group that the T-Shaped Influencer has a connection with, it makes more sense to work with them versus working with the ‘traditional’ influencer that has a large following, but a loose connection with that following.

Here’s an example: Let’s say your brand is bringing a gas/electric hybrid sports-car to the market, and you want to launch an Influencer Marketing campaign to help support the launch.  Here’s two influencers you could connect with:

1 – Tim, the generalist influencer.  Tim has a following of 350,000 on Twitter and Instagram. He is focused on business and technology, so there’s some overlapping between electronics and hybrid cars.  On average, he charges $350-$700 for an Instagram post or blog post.

2 – Sarah, the T-Shaped Influencer. Sarah has a following of only 5,000 on Facebook and Instagram. But approximately 90% of her following are people that are highly interested in automotive information. On average, she charges $25-$60 for a Facebook update or Instagram post.

 

While Sarah has a much smaller following, she also has an audience that’s far more relevant to a brand that’s launching a hybrid sports-car.  Another beneficial byproduct of Sarah’s smaller following is that she can have much higher levels of engagement with that smaller following.  In fact, when it comes to engagement when working with influencers, smaller number wins.  Influencers on Instagram with a following under 1,000 saw over 15% engagement on their posts, whereas influencers with a following of over 100,000 saw their engagement rates fall to 2.4%.

 

Years ago, an agency contacted me because they wanted to launch an influencer campaign to support a new offering from a client. The agency had already built a list of a few candidates, and they wanted me to see if I could come up with a few more possible influencers to round out their list. Remember this is long before Instagram and Snapchat, in fact Twitter and Facebook were much smaller.  The agency was primarily wanting to see content created on blogs, and promoted on social media.

So after a week or so, I gave them a list of several influencers they should consider. They immediately questioned my choices. “Wait, she only has a few thousand followers on Twitter, why didn’t you get this guy, he has over 100,000 followers!”

“Go look at her blog”, I explained. While she did indeed only have a few thousand followers on Twitter, every post she wrote had engagement that was off the charts. Each post had 50 or so comments, and half were from the blogger.  Her readers loved her, and she loved them.

Then I showed them the blog of the guy that had over 100,000 followers.  We went back months before we could find a single post with a comment.  We went back to his Twitter account, and no one was replying to him, and he wasn’t replying to anyone.  Then I showed them the Twitter account for the girl that only had a few thousand Twitter followers.  Non-stop conversation, and most of the interactions were between her and her blog’s readers.  I told the agency “If you pick this guy, he’s going to cost you a lot of money and his blog post is going to be totally ignored.  If you pick her, she’s going to blog about you on her blog and her readers are going to love it, and you.”

Thankfully, they decided to shift their Influencer Marketing approach away from big numbers, to a more T-Shaped Influencer model.  The agency picked influencers that had a smaller following, but a deeper connection with a specific audience.  And as an aside, this approach led to results that surpassed all goals the agency had set for the campaign.

Your brand should do the same with your Influencer Marketing campaigns. Seek out T-Shaped Influencers that have a smaller following, but a deeper connection to a specific audience.  Remember, you want to work with people that will influence behavior in your favor. Bigger isn’t always better.

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The A-Ha Moment When Credit Karma Discovered It Had a Powerful Marketing Department It Never Knew Existed

Fans love your brandKerry recently forwarded me this case study post from First Round on the early success of Credit Karma. More specifically, the article talks about how CEO Kenneth Lin made a daily habit of skimming Reddit. One day, the article explains, he found something that changed his life:

A thread about credit monitoring kicked off by a user suspicious that his company’s free credit check service was a scam — including a passionate response from a user defending and extolling Credit Karma. “Oh my god,” Lin thought. “That person doesn’t even work for us.” It was a purely organic moment — foreshadowing the word-of-mouth trend that would win the startup millions of users in the months to come.

Ten years later, Credit Karma has established market dominance, with more than 50% of all customers hearing about the site from other users. It’s Googled more than Geico — considered the standard bearer for companies that have managed to build sexy, personality-driven brands in patently unsexy industries. Which makes it all the more surprising that Credit Karma pulled this off with a staff 1% the size of Geico’s, a paltry budget, and no PR agency help in those early, critical, brand-establishing years.

One of the conversations I often have with companies in regards to digital marketing is about new customer acquisition. Companies want to leverage social media and content marketing as a way to drive new sales, but they want to do so often with limited resources.

One of the most effective ways to drive new sales and build awareness is to embrace your current, happy customers. As the above example proves, all companies have current customers that are out extolling and sometimes even defending their favorite brands.

The best part? A recommendation from a happy customer carries far more weight with potential customers than an advertisement from the brand itself.  Think about it: What would have happened in the above example if Credit Karma CEO Kenneth Lin had started a Reddit post promoting Credit Karma? He would have quickly been shouted down by other Reddit users for leveraging the site to advertise his company.  But when a current, happy Credit Karma user defends the company, people listen.

Years ago, I worked with a large, global brand on a brand advocacy initiative. Part of the project included sitting down with customers that were identified as being loyal advocates or ‘fans’ of the brand, and talking to them honestly about the brand and how it could best move forward.

At one point, one of customers noted that “You guys have to give us better tools to tell other people how awesome you are”. The other customers in attendance quickly agreed, chiming in with stories about how they were constantly interacting with other customers and having opportunities to promote the brand more effectively to other customers.

As this was happening, I made a point to glance around the room and look at the brand representatives in attendance. They were stunned at what they were hearing. “Wait, so you’re saying you WANT us to give you information to better promote our brand to other customers?”  “YES!” was the enthusiastic reply from the customers.

This is what you have to understand about your brand’s fans: They are proactively promoting you to other customers every single day. Right now while you are reading this article, somewhere, a happy customer is doing their best to convince another customer to buy from your brand.

Why in the world would you ignore this? Every single brand on the planet should have a program in place to identify, engage with and help its most passionate customers. These happy customers are already promoting your brand, and they WANT you to interact with them and WANT to work with you to grow your brand, so why would you not engage directly with them? You should be working with your fans constantly to not only collect feedback from the customers they engage with, but also work with them to help better promote your brand to those customers they encounter.

After all, they are the most effective marketing department you have, that you probably didn’t even know existed.

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If I Ran a Social Media Conference…

Photo credit: Michael Sparks Keegan Photography

When my first book came out in 2013, I started getting a lot more speaking inquiries. Many of these requests came from industry-specific events. Such as automotive, tourism, financial, etc. Up till this point, I had pretty much only spoken at social media and digital marketing events. So I assumed these industry-specific events would be similar, the only difference being that the attendees would all come from the same industry.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. The environment at these industry-specific events was completely different. Everyone was there to work, and by work, I mean everyone was there to solve their business problems.  There was zero fluff, and very little discussion about the tools. Instead, the focus was on strategy, not tactics.

Basically, everyone attended these events to learn one thing: How is this going to help me get shit done?

I loved it. I absolutely loved seeing all the attendees on the same page and focusing on the bottom line instead of tweeting out a cool sound-byte. In fact, that’s a big reason why I have attended fewer ‘social media conferences’ over the last few years. Although these events are a lot of fun, while I see everyone rushing to take selfies with a speaker (and sometimes it was me), in the back of my mind I was thinking ‘How are 57 selfies taken going to justify the cost of this trip for you?’

It’s Not About the Cewebrities, It’s About the Learning

Over the years I’ve also been involved in helping to select the speakers for multiple events. Whenever I had a say in who the speakers would be, I always suggested speakers that were also good teachers.  Speakers who knew how to communicate a point to an audience, and how to put it in terms they would understand.  I was told long ago that were two types of speakers in the world: Those that speak to put the spotlight on themselves, and those that speak to put the spotlight on their amazing ideas.  I want the latter to speak at my event.

The problem with too many social media or content marketing events is that they have basically become a social function. Speakers are invited based on how many Twitter followers they have, then asked ‘What would you like to speak on?’  That approach tells you that the focus isn’t crafting a top-notch agenda, it’s getting a ‘cewebrity’ speaker there cause that’s who attendees want to take a selfie with.

And let me be clear: Popular speakers sell tickets. This is absolutely correct and events are smart to seek popular speakers ASSUMING they can also give attendees actionable ideas that they can take back to their company or agency and use to improve the bottom line. The best speakers can do this and strive to do this.

Keynotes Set the Tone, and Bring It Home

Keynotes are special. They are supposed to wake up attendees and set the tone for the event. As Ann Handley told me years ago, the choice in keynotes says a lot about the event and what it wants to accomplish. It’s a special slot and it should reserved for special speakers.

Unlike a lot of events, I don’t agree with having a keynote every day.  I think there should be an opening keynote, and a closing keynote.  The opening keynote should excite the attendees and open their mind to different possibilities.  And the closing keynote should take the natural excitement that’s been building with attendees and bring it all home.

Two Days, Maximum

Two full days is plenty for any event. There seems to be an almost ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ mentality going with many social media and digital events to stretch out as being longer and longer. If your event is 4-5 days, then the content and the experience becomes very watered down.  And often, these events will have multiple tracks going all day, every day. When you have 6 sessions covering the same topic, you probably have 5 sessions too many.

Think about it, when is the last time you thought ‘Wow, I could have spent another day or two there!’ about an event?  If you can remember doing that, you probably remember attending that same event the following year.  Because when you attend an event that offers that much value, it becomes very easy to justify the expense of going. On the other hand, if you paid $2,000.00 to attend a 4-day event that you felt was 2 days too long, you probably didn’t go back the next year.

Event planners: Force yourself to limit your event to 1 or 2 days.  This will also force you to get better content because you will be greatly restricted in what you can fit in.  This is how you go from contacting speakers and saying “hey, speak on whatever you like!’ to ‘I need someone to lead a session on this topic…can you do it?’

Fewer Sessions, More Workshops

There’s a dirty little secret about ‘thought leaders’. Anyone can explain how something worked for them, but only those that truly understand the concept can explain how it will work FOR YOU. This is why many books are full of case studies, but often lack abstract examples that explain the same concept. It’s vital to have both, because the brain needs both concrete AND abstract examples in order to fully understand a concept, and more importantly, how to implement it at their business.

For example, instead of a 50-min session on business podcasting, I want Kerry Gorgone to lead a 3-hour workshop on podcasting where she shows you exactly how to research guests, flesh out the questions, then record an episode live for you, then show you how to do post-production and editing.

Instead of a session on crisis management, I want Ike Pigott to lead a workshop on crisis management where he does a mock triage on how to handle incoming complaints from customers and has attendees come up with appropriate responses.

 

So I want fewer or no sessions at my event, and more workshops.  Workshops should have three elements:

1 – Concrete examples (case studies)

2 – Hypothetical examples (abstract)

3 – Group/Individual exercises where the attendees flesh out the concept in their business framework.

So for a 3-hour workshop, you’re looking at 60-90 minutes of interaction with the attendees.  We learn by doing, so less talk and more activities.

 

Look For New Speakers

If you look at the rosters for most social media conferences, you’ll see the same 10-15 speakers at almost every single one. Honestly, this is just sheer laziness by event planners as there are plenty of solid speakers that could easily replace some of these speakers so that events aren’t recycling the same speakers year after year. When your attendees see the same speakers at every event, it makes it harder for yours to stand out.

Here’s a few freebies, contact these speakers today:

Jessica Northey – Leveraging Social Media to generate PR for your business or clients.

Geno Church – Anything Word of Mouth. Probably my favorite speaker that you never see at social media/digital events.

Kelly Hungerford – Creating customer-advisory boards or brand ambassador programs

Joe Martin – Using insights from social media to create better content for your brand

Kami Huyse – Anything about PR, measurement or proving the ROI of SM/Digital

 

I will happily recommend any of these guys as they are gems, feel free to email me about them or if you need any other recommendations.

 

Here’s how I would set the agenda for a 2-day event:

Day One

9:00-10:30 – Introduction and Opening Keynote

10:30-11:00 – Break

11:00-12:00 – Sessions (2-3 tracks maximum) (Session topics should ideally be an overview of a workshop topic covered in the afternoon, preferrably by same speaker)

12:00-1:30 – Lunch

1:30-3:00 – Workshops (first half), 2 tracks maximum

3:00-3:30 – Afternoon break

3:30-5:00 – Workshops (second half)

5:00-6:00 Reception/Mixer

 

Day Two

8:30-10:00 – Workshops (first half), 2 tracks maximum

10:00-10:15 – Morning break

10:15-12:00 – Workshops (second half)

12:00-1:00 – Lunch

1:00-2:30 – Workshops (first half)

2:30-3:00 – Afternoon Break

3:00-4:00 – Workshops (second half)

4:10 – 5:00 – Closing Keynote, Goodbye

 

Social Media Conferences Need to Stop Being Social Events and Focus on Teaching

Too many speakers agree to speak at events just to ‘hang out’ with other speakers and attendees. Too many attendees decide to go to events for the same reason.  When you go to an industry-specific event, you see people wearing business attire and bringing briefcases. The attendees approach the event as being another workday, and they come in with the mindset that they are there to get work done. The social part comes at the evening mixer.

Social media and content marketing events need to adopt the mindset that they are offering training to attendees. Nuts and bolts, strategy and processes. They need to stop bringing in the speakers based on Twitter followers and start bringing them in based on their ability to connect the dots for attendees in a way that makes a meaningful impact on their businesses.

And guess what?  You can charge more for an event that gives more value to attendees. You should also fairly compensate speakers, but that’s another argument for another day.

And in closing, let me be clear that this post isn’t directed or about any one particular event. And it has nothing to do with my attending Adobe’s Summit user conference last week.

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Adobe Summit 2017 Review: The Experience is the Message


For the second year I was lucky enough to join Adobe’s Insider Group and attend the Adobe Summit. At its core, Summit is a user conference for partners who use Adobe’s suite of products such as Experience Cloud. The main conference is a three-day event, and it’s massive. Last year’s attendance was around 10k, and this year saw a 20% increase up to 12k.

The highlight of the first two days are its morning keynotes. The first day is typically focused on key product announcements from Adobe, and this year CEO Shantanu Narayen announced the Adobe Experience Cloud suite of products. The first day also included talks with NatGeo CMO Jill Cress (my fav) and the 2nd day’s keynotes were more on the entertainment side, opening with a performance by Penn and Teller, a talk with Peyton Manning and Ryan Gosling. It also included short talks from key executives from Facebook and the NBA.

And thanks to Adobe, you can view all these keynotes for free. Just click and watch!

The main focus of the event was Adobe challenging attendees to provide better experiences for customers, and using that as a way to differentiate from the competition. Also, one of the subpoints that dovetailed with this was the rise of emerging technologies such as AI, VR and AR. How can these technologies be leveraged by marketers to provide amazing experiences for customers?

One case study session that I really enjoyed was Taylor Guitars talking about how it leverages digital to better connect with customers and give them better experiences.

The buyers journey is personal for Taylor Guitars customers #adobesummit

A post shared by Mack Collier (@mackcollier) on

One of the ‘problems’ with emerging technologies is that so many brands are swept up in a FOMO and decide to jump on the bandwagon because of hype. The smart companies are the ones that don’t set out to use a particular technology, they set out to solve business and customer problems. In doing so, they may find that using a particular emerging technology solves their problem.

Case in point: A few years ago, Taylor Guitars started tackling a problem they discovered in their retail stores. The brand was finding that customers would be interested in a guitar, then check the price tag, then go to their phone to do research on the fly. Often, these customers would decide that they needed to leave and do more research before committing to the purchase. So Taylor Guitars decided to build research functionality into its smartphone app.  Taylor accepted that if its customers were going to do in-store research, that Taylor wanted that research to go through an app that the brand had more control over.  So Taylor customers can use the app to get the research they need on the fly, and they can even text Taylor to get specific product information in seconds, while in the store.  Often, this research can give a customer the last assurance they need to complete the purchase.

The point here is, Taylor didn’t start out trying to figure out how they could start using the emerging technology of SMS and app marketing, instead they set out to solve a business problem: Too many customers weren’t completing the purchase in-store. Taylor discovered what was keeping customers from committing to the purchase, then leveraged emerging digital technologies to solve this problem for its customers.

BTW, while I was at the Adobe Summit, CMO.com interviewed me on this very topic..

So if you are using Adobe products currently at your company or agency, you should seriously consider attending Summit next year. It has amazing content that’s tailored to your exact needs, and the networking is phenomenal. Remember, you can view the keynotes for free, to give you a sense of how awesome this event is.  Additionally, check out my Instagram feed to see the pictures I took last week at Summit.

And registration is already up for 2018, it’s again at The Venetian, which is one of my favorite hotels. Just make sure you bring comfortable walking shoes!

Disclosure: I attended Summit as part of Adobe’s Insider Group. I was compensated by Adobe to attend Summit and work with the company. My content and POV is my own.