MackCollier.com

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#Blogchat Will Be LIVE at the Adobe Summit Again This Year!

For the second year in a row, #Blogchat will be LIVE at the Adobe Summit next week in Las Vegas! The special LIVE version of #Blogchat will occur at 10:00 am Central/11:00 am Eastern time on March 22nd. This #Blogchat will be held on Twitter and you can follow along with the #Blogchat and #AdobeSummit hashtags.

The topic of the LIVE #Blogchat will be How New Technology is Impacting Content Creation and Curation

Here’s the questions we’ll be discussing:

Q1 – How is the growth of mobile devices and access changing how you create content?

Q2 – How will faster mobile and internet networks change the type of content created and consumed?

Q3 – How will the emergence of AR, VR and AI change the way content is created? (Instead of writing for search engines, you’re writing for Alexa and Siri)

Q4 – How is new technology changing the way we consume content? 

Q5 – What new digital technology has had the biggest impact on how you share and curate content?

Q6 – What’s the biggest opportunity in the coming year for content creators in regards to emerging technologies?

We’ll ask a new question every 10 mins.  Remember, this special #Blogchat begins at 8am Pacific time on Wednesday, March 22nd! Please follow the #Blogchat and #AdobeSummit hashtags!

 

But wait, that’s not all! We’ll also have a special guest! The fantabulous Kerry O’Shea Gorgone will be joining us for #Blogchat at the #AdobeSummit! This will be the ONLY #AdobeSummit appearance Kerry will be making, so make sure you attend to meet Kerry!

Which leads me to more good news…we’ve moved the location of the #Blogchat to the CMO.com lounge, which is located on the 5th floor of The Venetian at the Sands Expo and Convention Center. This means any #AdobeSummit attendees can now join us! Just stop by the CMO.com lounge and join in the fun!

#AdoebSummit Kerry Gorgone

I’ll be participating in the Adobe Summit as part of the Adobe Insider Program, along with Adobe’s other insiders. In addition to the Live #Blogchat on March 22nd, I’ll also be live-tweeting sessions during the Summit on Tuesday and Wednesday. Please follow me on Twitter and follow the #AdobeSummit hashtag.

BTW if you want to attend the Adobe Summit, use code SMDP17 to get a $200 discount! Click here to register.

Check out the Think Tank discussions which will happen on Monday, March 20th. Thought leaders such as Charlene Li, Daniel Newman and Theresa Lamontagne will be participating so it will be a great learning opportunity!

Finally, be sure to check out the live-streaming of the Day One and Day Two keynotes, including top Adobe executives as well as celebrities such as Peyton Manning and actor Bradley Cooper!  Also follow me on Twitter and Instagram as I’ll be creating a ton of content documenting #AdobeSummit!

 

If you want to add a LIVE #Blogchat to your conference or company event, click here to learn more information. Since 2011, #Blogchat has been LIVE at some of the top marketing and tech conferences in the world, including South By Southwest, Adobe Summit, Content Marketing World, Blog World and New Media Expo and Marketing Profs B2B Forum. I’d love to bring it to your event so please email me so we can discuss making that happen.

Disclosure: Adobe is compensating me for my involvement in the Adobe Insider Program as well as having #Blogchat be a part of the Adobe Summit.

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The One Thing You Can Do Today to Make Your Webinars Better

Make your webinars better

Webinars are an incredibly powerful tool to train your employees, to cultivate leads, and provide valuable content for subscribers. They are also very popular because they offer a chance to learn from subject matter experts from the comfort of your home or office.

Unfortunately, there’s a lot of things that can go wrong with webinars. With many webinars, you’re dealing with three sources that all need to be coordinated live:

1 – The webinar platform

2 – The webinar host

3 – The webinar subject matter expert

 

If there’s a technical issue with any of these sources, the webinar will hit a snag. Here’s a worst-case scenario I had to deal with a few years ago: I was contacted by an organization to do a webinar for them. They were using a webinar platform that had to setup and facilitate the webinar for them. On the day of the webinar, the organization hosting the webinar learned that the webinar platform that was facilitating the webinar had made an error, and hadn’t scheduled the organization to be able to use their system on that day. So we had to resolve that. Then the person that was going to introduce me was late and no one could find her. Then when the webinar finally started, the platform kept crashing as I tried to move through my slidedeck. Needless to say, it wasn’t a very good experience for the attendees, for me, or for the host organization.

Another problem with most webinars is the live Q&A that starts immediately after the webinar in most cases. Typically, attendees will submit questions during the webinar, then afterwards, the subject matter expert will answer a few that have been selected. The problem arises in the screening process. Since the subject matter expert is performing the webinar live, he or she can’t screen the questions coming in. So that duty typically falls to the people at the host organization, who often aren’t familiar with the topic of the webinar, and as a result they are forced to guess at what questions should be answered.

Here’s the One Thing You Can Do to Greatly Improve Your Webinars

As you can see, there are a lot of things that can go wrong with the average webinar. But here’s one simple thing you can do to greatly improve the quality of your webinar as well as the survey results you get from attendees: Let the speaker record the webinar and don’t force them to deliver it live.

Here’s why it makes so much sense to let your speakers deliver a recorded webinar vs a live one:

1 – Live technical snafus by the speaker are eliminated. Instead of relying on the speaker’s computer to work properly, and their internet connection to remain stable, you just hit Play on a video, and it’s done.

2 – The speaker’s quality of delivery is greatly enhanced. By giving the speaker the freedom to submit a recorded webinar, you let them polish their delivery and better explain the topic. Also, it avoids the possibility that something might happen during the speaker’s live delivery to cause a disruption. Such as hearing the speaker say “And in the process, this leads to higher customer retention rates, and that…Fluffy! Don’t drink out of my coffee cup! NO! NO! NO!”

3 – If the webinar is recorded, the speaker can screen questions while it’s playing. This allows the speaker to select better questions and also gives the speaker time to research her answers to improve feedback given.

4 – A recorded webinar means the speaker is free to interact directly with attendees in the webinar as well as promote it to others. The speaker can address questions or confusion with the attendees, or even work directly with them on a specific issue. Trust me, this makes a HUGE impression:

5 – Better engagement from the speaker during the webinar means higher satisfaction from attendees. Let’s be honest, when we attend a webinar, we don’t expect the speaker to engage us DURING the webinar. It’s a big surprise, and often a big thrill. It makes us feel better about the webinar, better about the speaker, and better about the host. It also makes us more likely to attend future webinars from this same speaker and host.

 

I’ve recorded my webinars for years, and I’ve been free to engage directly with the audience during the webinar.  This has resulted in much higher satisfaction scores for my webinars and much happier clients who hire me. If you want to learn more about why my webinars are so successful, click here.

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Want More Customers? Here’s the Two Keys to Improving Your Company’s New Customer Acquisition Rate

How your company can acquire new customersNew Customer Acquisition is often the top marketing priority for the average company. And the marketing costs associated with reaching that goal are often among the largest marketing expenses that company will face. Today I want to talk about two things you can do to improve your company’s new customer acquisition rate, and greatly decrease the associated costs.

Sell the Benefits, Not the Product

You can’t sell a product unless the customer is ready to buy it. One of the biggest marketing mistakes most companies make is they try to sell their product to the customer before they are ready to buy it. When trying to acquire new customers, most companies make the mistake of making the first marketing communications they deliver be product-focused. On the surface, this makes complete sense, you can’t sell the product unless you market it, right?

The problem is, a new customer by definition is a customer that hasn’t bought from you before. Which means at minimum they aren’t familiar with your company, but often they also aren’t familiar with the product you are selling. So if you try to sell new customers on a product that they don’t understand or know why they would want, that marketing message is going to be completely ignored. You are literally trying to sell a product to new customers that they aren’t ready to buy.

So if they aren’t ready to buy your product, what do you sell them?

You sell them the benefits associated with owning your product. New customers won’t know they need or want your product, but they will be interested in the benefits that your product provides.

If you think about it, this makes perfect sense. You don’t sell the product, you sell the benefits the owner gets from the product. And many of the most successful brands in the world have been adopting this approach for years:

Red Bull doesn’t sell an energy drink, it sells what happens after you drink it.

Nike doesn’t sell shoes, it sells the activities you’ll be engaged in while wearing its shoes.

Pedigree doesn’t sell dog food, it sells happy and healthy dogs.

 

New customers often won’t know they need your product, but they will know they need the benefits associated with owning it.  So that’s what you sell them. 

Consider this example: Let’s say your company sells spark plugs. If you want to acquire new customers that don’t know why they should buy your spark plugs (or even what a spark plug is), then how do you speak to them?

One option is to create product-focused marketing. You talk to new customers about what your spark plugs do. You talk about how your spark plugs create a hotter spark that leads to less carbon build-up. You talk about how your spark plugs are tipped with platinum instead of copper. You tell the new customer that you are trying to acquire how your spark plug is made from the best materials.

And the reality is, you might as well be throwing your money away. Because the new customer has no idea why less carbon build-up is important, or why a hotter spark is important. So your marketing message is completely irrelevant to them.

The way to win the new customer’s business is to instead sell them on the benefits of owning your spark plugs. You tell them that buying your spark plugs will make their car more reliable. You tell them how it will increase gas mileage by creating a more efficient burn of the fuel. You tell them how it will result in the car running smoother and with more power.

Those are the benefits that new customers are ready to buy. So you sell them what they are ready to buy. Then, after you’ve gotten their attention by communicating the benefits to them, at that point you can talk to them about the product features because at that point, they will be interested in learning more about the product itself.

Remember:

1 – Sell the BENEFITS of the product first to New Customers. That gets their attention and makes them interested in learning more.

2 – When they are ready to learn more, THEN you sell them on the product itself.

Still not getting it? Check out this post.

 

Excited? You should be, but hold on, there’s an even better way to improve the rate at which you acquire new customers…

 

Your Best Customers Are Your Best Marketing

The best salespeople for your company are your current, happy customers. Period. There’s four reasons why:

1 – Your current customers understand new customers better than you do. While you may not have an existing relationship with new customers, your current customers do. Because those new customers are often their friends and family. As such, your current customers can promote your products in a way that is relevant to their friends and family. They understand what’s important to their friends and family, and that’s why when they promote your products, they speak in terms of the benefits associated with owning the products. They use their understanding of what’s important to their friends and family and customize their promotion based on what their friends and family are looking for. And that makes their promotional efforts more effective than yours.

2 – Your current customers are passionate about your company and its products. By human nature, we want to share the things that help us and make us happy. This is especially true when we find a product we love, that makes our lives better. We want to tell others about that product because we want to see others have the same enjoyment from owning the product that we do. When you are in a store considering buying a product and a stranger comes up to you, unprompted, and says “I have that, and I love it!”, it makes an impression on you. Because you realize that they didn’t have to say anything, and did so because they truly do love the product. You’ll likely ask their opinion, which the stranger will happily provide. If you were even slightly considering purchasing the product beforehand, a ringing endorsement from a stranger would probably be enough to convince you to buy it.

3 – Your current customers lower your customer-service costs. As current customers interact with new customers, they are able to answer questions and address complaints head on. They can also speak from the perspective of an owner, and speak to their experiences associated with owning the product being discussed. This can help overcome questions and worries the new customer may have, and can improve the chances that the new customer will become a current one. And this is an obvious cost-savings to your company, as every question that your current customers answer for you, that potentially eliminates an email sent or phone call made to your customer service department.

4 – New customers trust their friends and family more than they do your company. While your current customers know and understand the new customers you want to reach, those new customers also know and trust your current customers. So when a current customer recommends your product to their friends and family, or even to strangers, it carries a lot of weight. Perhaps more importantly, if a new customer is considering your product and a friend tells them NOT to buy it and instead buy a competitor’s product, that new customer will probably listen to their friend.

 

Here’s How You Get More Customers:

1 – When targeting new customers that have no attachment to your brand or knowledge of your products, you sell the benefits associated with the product. These customers aren’t in the market for your product because they aren’t familiar with it. So you sell them on what they gain by owning it. They will understand the benefits and how they are important.

2 – Let your current customers market for you. Your current customers are more trusted by their friends and family. Additionally, your current customers have a better understanding of how to connect with their friends and family than your company does. You should work with your existing customers to give them the tools they need to tell others about your company and its products. Research has found that customers that purchased 5 times from your company also referred 5 new customers, and current customers that had purchased 10 times from your company had referred 7 new customers. Your current customers are literally bringing you new customer at almost no cost to you. This is the type of behavior that you want to encourage.

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Verizon Just Gave Your Business Another Reason to Embrace Mobile

Rural internet access is important to your digital ecommerceI started blogging in 2005, and started consulting companies on their digital marketing strategies in 2006. From 2006-2009 my world changed a lot. I got to work with some of the top brands in the country, and started speaking at top industry events like South By Southwest and Blog World Expo. But while my consulting career was taking off, I was hiding a deep, dark secret.

I only had dial-up internet access. And believe me, trying to load websites and social networks all day on dial-up is just as exciting as it sounds. In 2010 I stepped up to a Mifi card and today have a wifi network that allows me to do any of the work I need to.

The reality is that for many rural areas in the US, dial-up internet access is the only viable option. Cable companies have to run the lines to an area to allow internet access, and when they see only a few dozen people living per square mile in a rural area, well that’s not a lot of potential customers. As a result, rural areas are typically left without access to wired internet connections, and even in 2017, a $9.95 a month NetZero account can often be the most affordable internet access option.

But a very surprising move by Verizon earlier this month to bring back its unlimited plans may change that.

Consider this: In 2013, 9% of rural US residents had one source of internet accesss; Their smartphone. By 2015, that percentage had increased to 15%. With Verizon and AT&T now engaged in a price war, that number could soon increase dramatically. Both Verizon and AT&T are now offering phone lines as low as $45 with unlimited data, talk and text.

As someone that lives in a very rural area and who understands how limited internet access can be in the country, I am thrilled with these announcements. It’s going to mean a lot of people living in rural areas will now have a new option for more affordable, and faster, internet access.

And that also means they will be doing more shopping on their smartphones. Which means it’s more important than ever to make sure your website has a responsive design and can easily handle orders on a mobile device. Over 70% of the United States is considered to be ‘rural’, and in 2015 the percentage of people in these areas that had a smartphone as their only source of internet was 15%. If that trend continues, that percentage will be over 20% in 2017. So that’s a lot of potential customers that you are ignoring if your website doesn’t display correctly on smartphones.

An additional consideration is the more limited retail options available in rural areas. Shoppers in rural areas are hungry for more choices, and will happily buy from retailers that will let them buy online. Also, being in a rural area means being further away from those limited shopping items. If a rural customer wants to buy a new book, does make sense to drive 30 minutes ‘into town’ to buy it from Barnes and Noble, or order it with a couple of clicks on her smartphone with her Amazon app? And with free shipping with Amazon Prime!

The reality is that shoppers are increasingly moving to mobile devices for convenience, and for rural shoppers, it’s often out of necessity. If your website isn’t set up to meet the needs of rural customers, you can best believe your competitor’s website will happily to their mobile business.

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Study: 4.7% of Your Customers Generate 100% of Your Online Word of Mouth

Word of mouthIn 2013, EngageSciences analyzed online interactions with and from over 400 brands and drew a conclusion that’s not that surprising: A small fraction of your customers are driving all of the online word of mouth about your brand.

The startling figure from our research was that typically only 4.7 percent of a brand’s fan base generates 100 percent of the social referrals. So to put it another way, it is 4.7 percente of your social media following that generates all of the word of mouth results, and by results we mean conversions, not just reach. These are the advocates that can actually influence their friends to convert directly onto your campaigns, to connect with you as a brand or take up an offer.

Not that we are ignoring the other 95 percent, there is still plenty of value in this large segment. They’re connecting to you as a brand, the active fans are consuming your content and they are 20-30 percent more likely to buy from you as a result. But if we are looking at social media through the eyes of marketing and we want to improve our acquisition metrics, then it is the top 4.7 percent  that generates all of the earned media results and organic growth

This is exactly why it’s so important to engage with your fans.  So many companies view their marketing campaigns as the chief channel for customer acquisitions, when in fact its your fans that are driving new customer referrals.  The end result is that companies end up spending massive amounts of money on creating marketing messages that are designed to connect with potential new customers.  People that have little to no interest in hearing that marketing message.

The Loyalty Graph

The biggest takeaway for me in writing Think Like a Rock Star was studying how rock stars create fans and learning that they all pretty much have the same marketing strategy guiding their efforts.  While companies create marketing messages designed to acquire new customers, rock stars across the board purposely ignore new customers, instead focusing on their biggest fans with the understanding that those fans will acquire new customers for them.

The problem is most brands don’t know who those 4.7 percent are and don’t have programs in place to work with this elite group of advocates. Marketers are often seduced by trying to pay for access to influencers – celebrities, bloggers and industry analysts. However everyone else is trying to do the same thing, which negates the value of this approach.

I also noticed this when writing my book.  I interviewed dozens of top brands, and asked them about their programs for connecting directly with their fans and advocates.  Every brand told me the exact same thing: We don’t have any program in place to do that.  So much of the marketing focus is on customer acquisition that brands don’t realize that their existing fans are a far more effective mechanism for customer acquisition than any series of commercials they can create.

Your fans are special customer that thrive off interacting with you.  When you connect with them, it simply validates why they love your brand and encourages them to create more positive word of mouth about your brand.

The most positive, long-term impact you can make on your business is to build a program within your brand that allows you to connect with your most passionate customers and they with you.

Period.

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Three Emerging Technologies Will Revolutionize Your Digital Marketing Strategy

Emerging Technologies Impacting Your Digital Marketing Strategy

So many digital marketers focus on understanding every shiny new tool that pops up. And so many CMOs are scared to death of missing out on the next Facebook or Twitter. So every time a new social tool pops up, every marketer rushes there in a sort of cyber land-grab, which often ends up turning into a ghost-town within weeks.

This is why I always say don’t focus on understanding the tools, instead aim to understand how and why people are using the tools. Understanding customer behavior is far more important than understanding tools that may be totally irrelevant in a month. Here’s three emerging technologies that will impact your digital marketing strategies in 2017 and beyond.

 

WiGig – The next generation of Wifi, known as WiGig, promises to greatly widen the internet bandwidth available to devices that access its networks. Theoretically, speeds on WiGig networks could surpass current Wifi by up to 300%. Of course, there will be rollout issues as the market won’t begin to see a plethora of WiGig-capable devices until Summer or Fall of 2017. The good news is that gives you time to plan how this will impact your digital marketing strategy.

WiGig will impact the types of content that customers will consume on their devices. A bigger pipe opens the door to streaming content such as video and more live-streaming from apps such as Periscope. Also, keep in mind that the line between smartphones and tablets is blurring quickly. An iPhone 7 Plus has a viewing screen size of 5.5 inches, whereas the iPad Mini’s screen size is 7.9 inches.

What You Should Do Now:  Start by examining your existing digital marketing strategy and deciding how or if WiGig could impact it. First, WiGig is effectively a bigger pipe for connected devices, especially mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. So a more robust network means you can more easily deliver content that requires more bandwidth, such as video. If you’ve already seen success from your existing content(such as podcasts) being consumed on mobile devices, it could be time to shift to video, as it is going to be huge for digital marketing in 2017.

 

AI (Artificial Intelligence) – One of the more controversial Super Bowl ads of 2017 was a spot for Google Home that accidentally set off customer devices across the country when the commercial aired. While funny (or annoying if you were affected), this is another sign that such digital assistants are becoming more commonplace. Amazon has been experimenting with devices such as Echo for years, and moving forward these devices will continue to improve, and eventually go from being inconsistently weird tech toys to valuable parts of our everyday lives.

Keep in mind that the rise of digital assistants such as Google Home and Amazon Echo means a change in user behavior. If a customer uses their laptop and goes to Google to perform a search, the terms they use will likely be more exact and precise. But if that same customer interacts with a digital assistant they will ‘search’ for the same item, in a different way. Devices such as Amazon Echo and Google Home are being marketed as ‘assistants’ moreso than devices, because these companies want customers to be more conversational with the devices. This leads to more conversational search terms.  The user could search for the same thing in slightly different ways based on the device being used.

EX: Search while on laptop: “Best Italian food in San Diego”

Search with Google Home: “Ok Google, what’s the highest-rated Italian restaurant within 3 miles?”

What You Should Do Now: Consider the impact that devices utilizing AI is having on your business now, or could in the future. A good starting point is to get a handle on your existing mobile traffic. What percentage of your search traffic is from mobile devices, and what type of keywords are people using to find your content. If you feel customers will be using digital assistants to search for terms related to your business, then you want to incorporate that into your SEO efforts. As mentioned above, customers use more conversational commands when using digital assistants, and this translates into more conversational search terms being used. As always, a big part of SEO success comes from incorporating user habits into your content creation. The rise of digital assistants is no different.

 

Augmented Reality: Pokemon Go was one of the hottest crazes in 2016, and it introduced many of us to the world of Augmented Reality. AR utilizes a device’s camera to show you objects with additional content overlaid that has relevance to the user. A consumer example could be looking down a downtown street with your camera and having a coupon app that overlays notifications that show which stores currently have sales. A B2B example could be a company utilizing AR with its field technicians when they perform service calls.

For digital marketers, augmented reality offers a way to improve the shopping and research experience for customers, especially on mobile devices. Customers are increasingly using their smartphones to conduct research at the point of purchase that can often decide whether or not a purchase is made. AR apps can provide content that aids in that research phase, and helps close the sale.

What You Should Do Now: As always, the best marketing solves a customer problem. Before you rush off to research creating your own AR app, instead research the customer problems that an AR app could solve. Here’s an example, last year I was shopping for a new car. I would go to car lots and look at the cars by myself, then when I found a few I liked, I would go back and talk to the salesperson about those vehicles. When I found a car I liked, I would pull out my iPhone and bring up reviews and ratings for the car. It would have been much easier if I had an AR app on my phone that would allow me to look at the cars on the lot with my camera, and superimpose the ratings next to each vehicle. This would be a great idea for a car review site like Edmunds or Kelly Blue Book.  It would have solved a problem for me and it would have simplified my research. And it would have made it easy for me to endorse the app to other car shoppers.

In addition to researching AR app options, also consider the type of content that could be delivered via these apps, and the type of customer that will be using them. For example, B2B buyers may want access to more in-depth technical information than a B2C customer would. A B2B customer may want to see the technical manuals, whereas a B2C customer would rather see user reviews. As always, consider the core problems that you will be solving for the customer by leveraging AR.

 

Remember that it’s better to focus first on the macro-influences on your digital marketing efforts, then hone in on the tactics that are only relevant to your strategy. If you have additional questions about how these and other emerging technologies will impact your digital marketing efforts, feel free to leave a comment or email me for a specific answer to your questions.

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Wendy’s Social Media Manager is Having Entirely Too Much Fun on Twitter

And I think it’s awesome.

Some people like Jay Baer, think Wendy’s is crossing the line and we shouldn’t be celebrating any brand’s ‘snaps’ game even if they are hilariously putting trolls in their place.  In short, Jay is saying that playing it safe is smarter than being ‘edgy’.

And he might very well be right. But I don’t think whether or not Wendy’s should play it safe is the key issue here.

I think the key issue is, how easily brands can be confused about how to use social media by listening to ‘thought leaders’.

We tell them that ‘safe is risky’, then when one of them tries something risky like this, we tell them that they should play it safe.

We tell brands that they should ‘be more human’.  The above tweet from Wendy’s is as ‘human’ as it gets.  But when Wendy’s acts like a human, we tell them to stop.

We tell brands to stop creating boring content and to create something that stands out. Then when a brand like Wendy’s creates content that suddenly gets everyone talking, we tell them to stop.

Which is it?

Personally, I don’t have a problem with a brand putting a troll in its place with social media. It can easily be a slippery slope and a short ride from putting a troll in its place to slamming a customer with a legit complaint, and the PR backlash that entails.  That’s a risk you take when heading down the path Wendy’s has started down.

What I do have a problem with is a brand that never experiments. Playing it ‘safe’ can be very risky. Jay makes the point that using social media to put customers in their places is a losing strategy for a brand.  I agree completely. But if someone is mocking and insulting a brand unprovoked on Twitter, and it’s not based on a specific interaction, then I think it’s safe to assume that the brand isn’t dealing with a customer, they are dealing with a troll.

I don’t believe we should hold brands to the same standards when dealing with trolls versus dealing with a disgruntled customer. And it can be tough for brands to sometimes understand the difference. I cover how to deal with trolls vs angry customers in Think Like a Rock Star: How to Create Social Media Marketing Strategies That Turn Customers Into Fans.

Here’s a quick and dirty way to tell the difference: A troll’s attacks will be vague and typically about the brand itself.  An angry’s customers attacks will be specific and often focus on a single instance or interaction with your brand.

For example:

“I heard you support the President, you suck!” – Troll

“I eat at your restaurant every week but today the food and service was horrible! You suck!” – Angry customer.

 

The bottom line is this, brands need to be braver when it comes to using social media. And more importantly, they need to listen to their own experience and intuition moreso than blindly listening to the ‘experts’.

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Print, TV Ads Are Better at Driving Purchases Than Sponsored Social Media Content

Using influencers to create sponsored content A new study by Marketing Sherpa (as reported by eMarketer) found that print, TV and radio ads were all found to be trusted by over 70% of consumers when making a purchase, while sponsored content on blogs were trusted by 43% of consumers and ads on podcasts were trusted by 37% of buyers.

Given how marketers are increasingly shifting digital budgets to influencer marketing, these findings are significant, and worth a closer examination. As I’ve stated here before, working with influencers can have a place in your marketing mix. However, it is typically best utilized to raise awareness, not to convince customers to make a purchase. But regardless of how you will be working with influencers, you want to tailor that relationship based on what your goals are.

If you are working with an influencer to build awareness, then content that introduces the influencer’s audience to your product/brand works better. More specifically, you want to have the influencer create content that helps explain the possible connection between their audience, and the product you are trying to build awareness for.  The content isn’t exclusively focused on your product, it’s more about helping the influencer’s audience understand how your product could fit into their lives.

If you are working with an influencer to drive sales, then content that helps close the sale is better.  Check out the Eagle Creek Tarmac 22 video below for a great example of this.

Regardless of how you will be working with an influencer, make every effort to make sure they understand your product as completely as possible. If the influencer can’t understand how your product works or why it is relevant to their audience, then they can’t create content that explains this to their audience. And here’s a Pro-Tip: It’s more important to work with an influencer that is familiar with and who USES your product than it is to work with an influencer with a larger following, that has never heard of you. An influencer that is familiar with and who uses your product can always do a better job of explaining why your product is awesome to their audience.

 

An Example of Content From an Influencer That Drove Sales

Several years ago I was in the market for a carry-on luggage bag. I saw this video from Chris Brogan and immediately bought the Eagle Creek Tarmac 22 featured in this video (still have it to this day, it’s absolutely bulletproof and I love it).

Here’s why this video convinced me to buy a $300 carry-on:

1 – Relevance. I was in the market for a carry-on and had just begun doing research on which one to buy. This was the exact content I needed at exactly the right time.

2 – I trust Chris. Chris positioned the video as a product that he uses as a frequent traveler. He also referenced the fact that Mitch Joel (also a frequent traveler) also used the bag, which further added credibility to the video. Sidenote: Since I bought and love the Eagle Creek Tarmac 22 that Mitch endorsed, I’m now about to buy a laptop bag that I saw Mitch praise on Facebook.

3 – The video clearly demonstrates the product in action. Chris shows me exactly how the bag will easily hold enough clothes for a multiple-day trip, and for good measure shows you how it has enough room to take home a few books with you, which I always seem to collect when I speak at or attend events. In fact, I just confirmed with Adobe that I will be attending the Adobe Summit in Las Vegas in March as part of their Influencer program. It will be a 5-day trip for me, and the Eagle Creek Tarmac 22 will handle it with ease.

 

BTW, it’s worth noting that this was not sponsored content, Chris just created this video to be helpful, which he always is. My point was if you want to work with influencers to drive sales, keep this video in mind when you are crafting your efforts.

As with any other part of your digital marketing efforts, working with influencers requires proper planning and a good strategy. Your brand should benefit, the influencer should benefit, and perhaps most importantly, the influencer’s audience should benefit. Create a way for all three parties to benefit, and you’ve got a winner.

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It’s Time to Get Serious About Understanding Social Media and Content Engagement

driving engagement with social media contentA report released last September found that 5% of brand-created content accounted for 90% of all engagement.

Is that significant?  To hear that 5% of all content accounts for 90% of all engagement, well…it sounds significant, right?  If you could see that 5% of the content your brand created drove 90% of all the social media engagement, would you find that to be significant?

Maybe, but that’s not the whole story. The importance that social media engagement has as it relates to your brand’s content greatly depends on if your content and social media strategies are built to encourage and capitalize on that engagement. If you are creating content with engagement as a goal, and you are leveraging that engagement to drive a more significant business outcome, then engagement can be a very good thing.

The trap that too many companies fall into with their content strategies is that they place too much importance on gaining social shares. Smart companies don’t optimize their content for social shares, they optimize it for their customers.

 

Private Engagement Trumps Social Media Engagement

Too often when it comes to social media and content marketing management, what can easily be measured, is what gets managed. Content is often judged harshly on the number of social shares (engagement) it drives because that can easily be measured. The problem has become that social shares are no longer meaningful as a measurement of content being read. In fact, research has shown that the vast majority of social shares drive little or no actual engagement with the content being shared.

Then what does matter? Whether I’m working with a client or executing my own content creation and strategy efforts, the metrics I value aren’t found in social shares and comments, but rather in Google Analytics. I look for private engagement versus public engagement.

What’s the difference? I call things like social shares (Likes on Facebook, RTs on Twitter) and comments as being public engagement.  You can easily see this type of engagement.  You can look at this blog post and at the top see how many times it’s been shared on Facebook or LinkedIn.  Those are public engagement numbers.

The private engagement numbers are ones that only I have access to. Like number of search visitors that a post sends to my blog, or the number of emails that a post generates. Or the number of newsletter signups that a post drives, or the number of trial product signups.

Keep in mind that these are all forms of engagement. We’ve become almost trained to think of engagement around our content being either comments or social shares. If I read your post and as a result sign up for your newsletter, that’s engagement. In fact, that’s probably a more meaningful form of engagement for you than a RT or Like.

 

So I Engaged With Your Content, Now What?  

There’s definitely value in social media engagement. But what’s your plan for dealing with that social media engagement around your content? If someone shares your content, do you thank them?  If someone takes the time to write a 3 paragraph comment on your post, do you take the time to write a meaningful response, or do you just peck out a quick “Great thoughts, thanks for sharing!” response? If you’re going down the road that social media engagement has value for your content strategy, then you also need to have a plan for how to address engagement when it happens. You reward the behavior you want to encourage, and one of the best ways to reward people that engage with your content is to respond to them. That communicates to them that you appreciate their taking the time to respond to your content or to share your content. It also encourages them to move from being a first-time commenter, to being a regular reader and consumer of your content. My point is that if you are going to place a value on getting social media engagement around your content, then you need to work with your digital team to have a plan in place for how they will react and respond to that engagement.

 

Your Content Strategy Should Be Built to Drive Specific Types of Engagement

Every time someone interacts with your content, you should be trying to convince that person to engage in a certain action. Maybe you want them to comment, maybe you want them to share the content.  Or maybe you want them to sign up for your newsletter or email you.  The point is that you have to decide which forms of engagement are the most valuable to you, and create a content strategy that is built toward those forms of engagement.  I have worked with many companies that never got a comment or share on their content and could care less, they were more concerned with the long-tail keywords that their articles were helping them rank for in Google.

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Social Media Doesn’t Have a ‘Fake News’ Problem, it Has a Transparency Problem

Social Media, Fake NewsEarlier this year, a troubling report came out where former Facebook contractors claimed that they were given orders to manipulate the trending topics and articles that Facebook presents to its users. More specifically, these contractors claimed that Facebook wanted them to not only remove some political articles from conservative sources, but additionally they were told to inject some articles into the trending section even though these articles hadn’t generated enough interest to trend organically.

The idea that social media sites like Facebook and Twitter might be ‘curating’ their Trending Topics instead of letting them trend organically isn’t new. Personally, I’ve noticed that many topics and links seem to trend on Twitter without seemingly having the engagement levels they would need to trend organically.  This seemed to intensify as we neared the election in November, I noticed multiple political articles from The New York Times trending almost daily, while no other news source could get even one political article to trend regularly.  Other topics would be trending with only a dozen or so tweets, which seems impossible.

All of this helps create the suspicion that maybe the ‘trending’ topics we are getting on social media sites are actually being curated for us by not the users, but the people running those sites.  Add to this issue the latest flack over ‘fake news’.  Whenever you see the term ‘fake news’ it typically refers to websites that run stories making claims that either cannot be substantiated, or are ‘sourced’ by websites or organizations that don’t actually exist. Sometimes the claims are outright lies, all are designed to get clicks. Even this phenomenon can have grey areas.  If a supposedly political website makes a bizarre claim about Trump that they source via a fictional newspaper, that’s pretty clearly fake news.  But if CNN takes a Trump quote from a rally out of context to present a point of view that they know Trump didn’t intend, is that fake news?  It can get murky sometimes to know what ‘news’ is news, and what is ‘fake’.

Recently, Facebook announced that it was going to start leaning on outside sources to help it decide what is and is not ‘fake news’. Facebook wants to first make it much easier for its users to flag and report news that it feels is ‘fake’. If an article gets enough flags, it will then be sent to an editorial board for review.  Facebook has recently said that representatives from groups such as Snopes, the Associated Press, Politifact, and ABC News would then review the articles and decide if they should be banned or not from Facebook.

This potentially creates a new problem: “Who checks the fact-checkers?”  Many conservatives would argue that all of the above listed sources tend to lean toward the left in their political biases.  Basically, seeing that the AP, ABC News or Snopes will be helping Facebook decide what is and is not ‘fake news’ raises the same concerns for conservatives that it likely would for liberals if Fox News was doing the vetting.

All of this, whether it is ‘fake news’ or questions over trending topics, has created a bit of a trust problem for social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.  It’s difficult, if not impossible to tell how topics do or do not trend. A lack of understanding leads to a lack of trust, and right now, most of us have no idea how or why Twitter and Facebook decides what topics do or do not trend. Most of us assume that the topics that the most people are talking about will be the topics that trend.  Facebook and Twitter both attempt to tailor trends by taking into account what the people in your network are talking about.  All of this is fine, in theory.

But if major social media sites like Twitter and Facebook want its users to trust the trending topics it shows us, they need to do a better job of being transparent about how they arrived at that list. Now, more than ever, people are more suspicious of ‘the media’ and are more likely to assume that information is being altered to further a particular slant, versus simply reporting the news and letting us decide. At this point I’m more worried about the validity of the ‘trending topics’ process, than I am the validity of the sources of information that are trending.