MackCollier.com

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Ten Elements Every Company Blog Should Have

Understanding the Ten Elements Every Company Blog Should Have

Social media sites come and go (Remember Google Plus and Friendfeed?), but a company blog remains one of the best tools available to drive organic traffic to your website. A company blog lets you promote your business, introduce yourself and your employees to the world, and gives you a place to provide valuable information to your customers.

Thinking about launching a company blog? Great, now if you want to avoid being “that guy,” then here’s the essential elements that you should incorporate into your blog.

1 – A strategy. Why are you blogging? What are you attempting to do with your blog? Establish your company as an industry leader? Boost your brand awareness? Provide customer service? Know what you want to accomplish with your blog, and make sure that your goals are consistent with your overall business strategy.  This post goes in-depth into creating a solid content strategy for your blog.  Once you’ve created your blogging strategy, make sure every member of your content team understands what that strategy is. Every content creator you work with will need to intimately understand your blogging strategy. It will make their jobs much easier, and they will create better content as a result.

2 – A dedicated group of bloggers. If you only have one blogger, or if you have five, every blogger needs to know what is expected of them, and what their role is. If each blogger needs to write 2 posts a week, they have to be willing to give you 2 posts a week.  Keep in mind when setting your team and expected goals, that it’s better to start with less and then grow as the skills and familiarity of the team improves. For example, it makes more sense to start with asking 3 new posts a month from each writer, then after a couple of months you may want to increase the rate for each writer up to 5 new posts a month. Starting small and growing makes more sense than taking on too much right out of the gate.

3 – A posting schedule. This ties in with #2. Ideally, a company blog should have at least 1 new post a week. Make sure each blogger knows how many posts a week/month they are responsible for, and have the posts up on a set pattern. Don’t have the bloggers put them up whenever inspiration strikes, that’s how you end up with 2 posts a week; one on Thursday night at 10:46pm, the other on Sunday at noon. Set up your posts to run in the middle of the week, and then move outward. Tues, Weds, and Thursday are usually the best days for traffic, so schedule posts to run these days, usually around 10am-noon.

Remember, it’s more important to keep to a set schedule, than it is to post more often. Creating and keeping a regular schedule trains readers to know when to expect new content from your blog. This helps drive engagement and traffic.

4 – A comment policy. Do you moderate? If so, how long does it take to approve comments. When Shelia leaves a comment at 3am Saturday morning, will it be noon on Monday till it’s approved? You need to know this. For extra credit, list it on the blog itself.  Keep in mind that you are under NO obligation to let stand ANY comment that personally attacks any of your writers or any of your writers. Challenging ideas presented is fine, but if any comment attacks or attempts to bully either a writer or reader, feel free to delete the comment without prejudice. Your house, your rules.  In fact, if you want to turn off comments entirely, that’s totally fine.

5 – An ‘About Us’ section. Tell me who you are, what you do, and how I can get in touch with you. It’s best to include an email address AND a phone number.  Yes, people still like to reach you via a phone call. For extra credit, add a section explaining what your blog is about.

6 – Pictures and bios for EVERY blogger. Again, this is non-negotiable. I need to be able to SEE who every blogger is, and I need to know their background. Simply seeing the face of the bloggers writing for your blog makes it much easier to trust and relate to the writers. Really.

7 – A clear Call to Action. You want to direct your readers to engage in some type of action.  Maybe you want them to download your new white paper, or signup for a product trial. Perhaps it’s simply asking them to call you, but you should have some type of Call to Action. Notice at the top right of this blog I have Calls to Action asking you to hire me to speak, or check out my LinkedIn profile, or read my recent posts. You need to give your readers an action to take.

8 – Ask for subscribers. Give your readers a way to subscribe to your blog, via a feed reader, or email. Feedburner can help you set up both, go to Feedburner.com and set yourself up a free account, if you haven’t already.

A small section explaining what RSS is and the advantages of subscribing would be a nice touch as well.  Also, if your company has a newsletter, you can promote it to subscribers as well.

9 – A section for Recent Comments. This isn’t a ‘must have’, but it’s a really nice way to put the focus on your readers, and it also gives them an idea of which posts are getting the most attention. If you aren’t really interested in getting comments on your posts then you could focus on something else like your most popular posts or promote your company website.

10 – A personal touch. Be human. Refer to commenters by name. Say ‘thank you’ early and often. Ask for feedback, and opinions. Remember that ultimately, people don’t want to connect with companies, we want to connect with people.

What did I miss? If your company blogs, what are some other elements that you believe are vital to your blogging efforts? Which of these are most important?

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How The Container Store’s POP! Customer Loyalty Program is Driving New Business With Data

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A couple of weeks ago Adobe invited me to attend its Summit as part of its Adobe Insiders Program. The Adobe Summit is a user conference primarily for customers of the Adobe Marketing Cloud, and has become a massively-popular and important industry event, reaching an attendance of 10,000 this year. I also did a Live #Blogchat as part of the event and was compensated by Adobe for my involvement before and during the event.

The event itself was heavy on case studies from Adobe clients with a focus on how Adobe’s Marketing Cloud services are helping clients grow their businesses.  This is to be expected from a user conference, and the information shared was very compelling. Over 3 days I learned how Adobe clients like the NFL, ESPN, Comcast, McDonalds and dozens more were leveraging emerging marketing technologies to better connect with their customers.

The use of storytelling and data was a focus of many of these case studies and success stories. One of the case studies that I attended was a closer look at The Container Store’s customer loyalty program called POP! or Perfectly Organized Perks. The POP! program was launched in 2014, and its goal has been to utilize data about the members to customize their perks, whether that is discounts or gifts or just thank yous. The Container Store uses data about its members to track what areas of their company they work for, where they are located, if they are buying online, or offline.  Additionally, it tracks number and type of sales and uses this data to identify its ‘best’ customers, and then further customizes offers and perks based on being part of this group. And perks go beyond simply discounts or birthday gifts, POP! members get early access to new products and free concierge services during in-store visits.

What are the results? The POP! customer loyalty program drives one incremental visit a year per member for The Container Store. I talked to Nicole Coburn, The Container Store’s Director of Customer Engagement and Loyalty after the session, and she clarified to me that the average customer visits a location twice a year, and that POP! members increased their number of visits by an average of 1 a year after joining the program. She did add that POP! members tend to visit a Container Store location more often than the average customer, so the POP! program is driving an increase of one incremental visit versus increasing from 2 to 3 visits a year. I didn’t think to ask Nicole, but I would assume that the average amount spent per year is higher for a POP! member than the average customer.

I did ask Nicole if The Container Store has an existing brand ambassador program and she said it did not, but said with the success of the POP! program, it may be possible in the future. If you’re a customer of The Container Store, it sounds like the POP! program is definitely something you should check out.

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My Guide to Writing Totally Awesome Blog Posts Every Single Time

5003010775_55c8701deb_zOne of my pet peeves in #Blogchat is when we are discussing how to create engaging content or how to grow readership and someone will tweet ‘just write awesome posts!’

Yeah, because it’s that easy.

It’s like saying that the solution to losing weight is to ‘eat less, exercise more’.  Want more readers?  Write awesome content.

But we still haven’t addressed how to do this.  How do you write totally awesome blog posts that readers will love?

That’s what this blog post is for, to share with you all the things I’ve learned from blogging for the last 12 years.

Prep before you start writing the post

Before you start writing your post (and this is something you should do for every post you write), ask and answer these three questions:

1 – Who am I writing this post for?  Be as specific as possible.  Is it for companies wanting to learn how to better leverage social media marketing in the hospitality industry, is it for cross-stitchers in New England or single dads that own dachshunds in Oregon?  Know who you are writing for.

2 – What do they get from reading this post?  Are you trying to inform them?  Teach them a skill?  Entertain them?  Shock them?  Know who your readers are and know why the post you are about to write is of value to them.

3 – What do YOU get from writing this post?  How does this post benefit you, the writer?  This is important because while you need to make sure the post has value for the reader, you also need to make sure that you know what you want from it as well.  For example, I am writing this particular post in a very specific manner to test a new online content marketing tool.  Know what you want to accomplish with each post you write.

Elements you need for a totally awesome blog post

First, you have to nail the post headline.  This has become increasingly important in recent years since so much activity on Facebook and especially Twitter is now simply linking to other blog posts.  We are all sharing our favorite blog posts, and typically all we are sharing is the title of the post and its URL.  On top of that, we are all scanning our Newsfeed or list of tweets from the people we follow.

So at best, your headline has about 2 seconds to grab the attention of others and get them to click on the link.  So you need to craft a killer headline that immediately gets attention.

But writing a great post headline is an art in and of itself.  Here’s some tips:

Make sure the headline doesn’t simply summarize the post.  This is probably the biggest mistake bloggers make, they simply let the headline summarize the post, almost as if the headline is an afterthought.  For example, let’s say you write a very detailed blog post on a 10-step process for building more engagement on a blog.  Which headline is more likely to get you to click on it:

1 – Building blog engagement (Summary of post)

2 – 10 Steps You Can Use To Start Building More Engagement On Your Blog TODAY! (Specific)

It’s probably going to be the 2nd choice, because it’s more specific, and you have a better sense of exactly what the post covers.

Make a specific claim with your headline.  In the 2nd example above, the headline tells you that it will not only show you how to create more engagement on your blog, but it also promises to give you a 10-step process that you can begin implementing immediately to build engagement on your blog.  In other words, you have a better sense of what the post is about, based on the specific headline.  Tell potential readers exactly what they are getting if they read your post.

Make a specific claim with your headline then back that claim up in your post.  Nothing is worse than clicking a link based on an awesome headline, then the post ends up being 250 words of fluff, or worse a thinly veiled sales pitch.  I made a specific claim in the headline because I wanted to force myself to have to write a comprehensive and complete guide.  For example, right now we’re already at the 700+ word count for this post and we haven’t even got into the writing of the post itself yet.

Writing the totally awesome blog post

First, let’s discuss the proper length for an awesome blog post.  There’s no one right answer to this, many people will swear by shorter posts, but it’s more difficult to truly make an impact in 200 or 300 words.

So my advice when it comes to ideal blog post length is to use as many words as you need, but edit relentlessly.  If you want to write a 2,000 word post fine, but keep in mind you are asking a lot of your readers to hold their interest that long.  So edit, edit, edit.

Proofread your post.  See if you have repeated any points or ideas that can be removed.  Make sure you are using clear language.  The idea is to strip out all of the filler so that you are left with a lean post that’s value-packed.  You don’t want to go into writing your post thinking “I can’t go over 500 words!’  Write the post you want to write and with the words you want to use.  Then go back and see if it needs to be shortened via editing.

What type of post should you write?

1 – The How-To Post.  This is my personal favorite (this post is an example of this type), because you are teaching others a valuable skill.  The more valuable that skill is, the more likely that your content will be shared.  Additionally, teaching others a valuable skill helps establish your expertise.

The key with these types of posts is to make the information easily digestible and organized in a clear manner.  Basically you need to give your readers a roadmap.  This is why ‘X Steps to’ type posts are so popular, because people want to know the exact steps that they need to follow in the exact order.

There’s two approaches to the How-To post.  The most obvious is to teach readers a skill that they want to learn.  The problem here is that more than likely there are many posts about this same topic.  So you need to do a better job than the competition.

The second type of How-To post is to teach readers a skill that they don’t know they need.  Sites like Lifehacker are great for teaching you how to do things that are useful, such as filling up a bucket with your sink faucet and a clean dustpan.

You can also curate how-tos into a larger post or series as well.  Length is again an consideration, but as long as the additional tips are valuable you’ll be fine.

2 – Raising awareness about an idea or a belief.  With this type of post, the idea is to share your passion and to make sure that your readers share that passion, or at least are moved to respond based on their passion for you and your passion.  You need to clearly articulate to your readers why this idea is worth their attention.  Also, it helps to give them a clear and easy way to become involved.  An example might be to show your readers that a problem exists, and then explain to them how solving that problem would lead to a better outcome for them.  Then show them how their involvement can help you solve that problem.

3 – The Research-based post.  These types of posts are often very time-consuming, but the payoff can be huge if you can create a research/fact-based post that is valuable for your readers.  The most popular post I have ever written here was this post on how much social media costs companies.  It currently has over 100,000 page views, but it also took me over three months to write.  I interviewed over a dozen social media consultants, agencies and companies to learn what they charged for social media marketing services, plus I researched what similar consultants, agencies and companies were charging for their own services.  I wrote this post because I knew from talking to clients and companies that there was great demand for guidance on how much basic social media marketing services cost.  You can do the same thing by first identifying a question that a lot of people have, then finding the answer and sharing it with your readers.

4 – The Rant.  This type of post is pretty self-explanatory, and for me at least, has been completely hit or miss.  The key to an effective rant is to hit on a topic that’s relevant to a lot of people.  You want to elicit an ‘Amen!’ or ‘I know exactly what this guy means!’ type of response.  That prompts others to share your post.  Often, a blogger will say that their ranty posts are the ones that they never thought would be popular, but often are.  And then leads to a final point about writing an awesome post….

Whatever you write, write it with passion.  Passionate writing is always more interesting.  We want to read your emotions in your posts.  If you can’t get excited about the topic then you can’t expect your readers to either.

Bloggers are always lamenting that “All the topics have been covered to death, what is there left for me to write about?”

It’s not about writing about something new, it’s about writing in your voice and with your passion.  That’s truly the key to creating awesome blog posts.

 Wait, you need an awesome visual!

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An awesome visual to go with your awesome post is imperative to ensuring that your content spreads.  Ideally, the visual will expand on and enhance the post itself.  But there’s no substitute for a killer visual when it comes to attracting attention.  If you have an eye-catching visual and an attention-grabbing headline, then you’ve already won half the battle.

When using pictures, you first need to consider copyright and if it’s legal for you to use someone else’s work.  Luckily, I’ve already written a post on using other people’s pictures, so just click over here to read everything you need to know.

There are plenty of sources you can use for legit pictures but my favorite is the Flickr photos that are licensed with the Attribution License via Creative Commons.  These are pictures that the owner has said you can use and even adapt, as long as you attribute who the owner of the work is.  And Flickr currently lists over 55 Million photos with this license, so the odds are you can find an awesome image for your photo.

Another way to incorporate visuals into your post is to include charts and graphs that support the idea of your awesome post.  This ties in with the idea of the research-based post.  Often research firms and agencies such as Forrester or HubSpot will release their own research study, and with it include charts and graphs that you can use for free.  Obviously they want you to blog about their report, but you can take those charts and graphs and use them as visuals for your own posts.  Also remember that this helps your readers understand and process the information you are sharing with them, and in a new form (visual).

Finally, don’t forget about video!  It’s now painfully easy to embed a video from YouTube and other video-sharing sites.  Plus the additional benefit to you (assuming you pick an interesting video) is that readers will at least spend the amount of time on your post that it takes them to watch the video.  And the more time they spend with your content the more likely they will enjoy it (again assuming that you’ve written useful and valuable content for them!).

If you can give your readers information in multiple contexts and forms, it can help them learn the core lesson you are trying to teach them.

The Formula For Writing an Awesome Blog Post Every Single Time

1 – Do the prep work beforehand.  Figure out who you are writing for, why the post will be valuable for them, and also determine why the post will be valuable for you.

2 – Write an amazing headline.  The post’s title needs to immediately grab the attention of potential readers, and be as specific as possible.

3 –  Post length is optional, but in general don’t make the post any longer than it needs to be.  Make sure you proofread and edit your post before publishing it (I often forget to do this!).

4 – Decide what type of post you want to write, and make the information easy for your readers to digest and absorb.  Again, my personal favorite is the How-To post because you are teaching your readers a specific skill.

5 – Pick awesome visuals to go along with your awesome post.  Remember that your content is being shared on other sites like Facebook and Plus, where the picture you add to the post will be shown.  If the image is eye-catching, that simply increases the chances that your post will be read.

6 – Write with passion.  If you aren’t excited about the topic then your readers won’t be excited about the post.  Passionate writing is more interesting writing, you want the readers to be able to feel the passion you have for that particular topic.  Because passion inspires us.

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When Popularity Turns Bad: 5 Things to Remember When Dealing With Criticism of Your Content

kony 2012, online criticism, jason russell, invisible children

In 2012, the Kony 2012 video was at the time the most viral video ever. That’s meant a lot of sudden exposure to the organization behind the video, Invisible Children, and a lot of criticism.  Critics have said the video oversimplifies the current state of affairs in Uganda, and there’s also been questions about how the organization/charity spends its money.  And there have even been rumors that the video’s creator, Jason Russell, has suffered a mental breakdown due to the criticism the film has received.

“Because of how personal the film is, many of the attacks against it were also very personal and Jason took them very hard,” Jason’s wife Danica explained in a statement.

To be fair, Kony 2012 is an extreme example.  No one, not even the video’s creators expected, or were prepared for it to receive 80+ million views.  But it did, and that’s the funny and amazing thing about creating digital content: You never really know when your message is going to strike a cord and spread like wildfire.

And when that happens, that means your message leaves the ‘safe’ bubble of your devoted friends/family/readers, and a completely new audience is exposed to your content for the first time.  And that means YOU are open to criticism as well.  When it comes, here’s how to deal with it:

1 – Remember that the criticism is NOT personal.  It can’t be personal if it’s coming from Joe Jones in Washington that had never heard of you before he read your post this morning.  Even if the criticism is harsh and attacking, it’s aimed at your ideas, not you.

2 – Remember that criticism means your idea is spreading.  Receiving criticism on your blog post or video or picture almost always means you’ve struck a cord with someone.  And when that happens, your content is more likely to be shared, and that means more people are exposed to it.

3 – Remember that criticism means more debate.  Nothing spikes a conversation more than someone jumping into the middle of a comment thread where everyone is agreeing, and saying ‘yeah I think everyone here is full of crap!’  Differing viewpoints breed more interaction and comments.  Which feeds back into the above point: It means your idea is spreading.

4 – Remember that how you HANDLE the criticism greatly determines if you will get more or less of it.  In the first point I mentioned that the criticism you’ll receive initially isn’t personal.  But if you attack your critics, then you open the door for far more criticism.  And you also pull the rug out from anyone that was defending you.  But if you keep your wits about you and keep the interaction focused on the ideas and not the people, then the chance of receiving further criticism falls dramatically.

5 – Remember that if everyone agrees with your idea, then it’s not reaching enough people.  Seriously, if every blog post you ever write is only viewed by your friends and family, you’ll likely never hear a bit of criticism, and you’ll be told every day that you’re the best blogger in the world.

When your idea leaves your safe little bubble, that’s when it begins to make an impact.  And I think that’s what most/all of us want.  We want to create content that others find value in.  We want others to interact with our content, and be moved to action.

We want to make an impact.  And making an impact means upsetting some people, and drawing criticism.  Accept this, and understand that criticism isn’t a bad thing, it usually means your idea is winning.

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#Blogchat Will Be LIVE During the Adobe Summit in Las Vegas!

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I’m thrilled to announce that #Blogchat will be a part of this year’s Adobe Summit in Las Vegas! A special LIVE version of #Blogchat will be a part of the Summit on Tuesday, March 22nd.  This #Blogchat will be held on Twitter and you can follow along with the #Blogchat and #AdobeSummit hashtags starting at 5pm Pacific, 7pm Central.

The topic of the LIVE #Blogchat will be The Future of Content Marketing.  Here’s the questions we’ll be discussing:

Topic: The Future of Content Marketing

Q1-Q3, The Future of Content Creation:

Q1 – How do you decide what type of content you should create?
Q2 – How do you scale your content creation efforts from a small team to company-wide?
Q3 – Whose job should it be create content in an organization?

Q4-Q6, The Future of Content Distribution:

Q4 – When you distribute/promote new content, how do you increase its organic reach?
Q5 – How do you decide what content is worth putting paid dollars behind?
Q6 – With every brand becoming a publisher, how do you stand out from the noise?

We’ll ask a new question every 10 mins.  Remember, this special #Blogchat begins at 5pm Pacific time on Tuesday, March 22nd! Please follow the #Blogchat and #AdobeSummit hashtags!

Additionally, Adobe will feature a special #GetRealChat from Pam Moore and Jay Baer will bring his Social Pros podcast to the event, you can find all the details here. And if you would like to follow along at home, here’s the link for the Live Stream of the Keynotes and other events from Adobe Summit.

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.

If you want to add a LIVE #Blogchat to your conference or company event, click here to learn more information.

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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Why You’re Not as Good at Customer Service as You Think You Are

hyh-book-2Note from Mack: This is a guest post by my pal Jay Baer.  Besides being recognized as one of the top experts in digital marketing, Jay also has a new book called Hug Your Haters (check it out on Amazon) and this post is drawn from that book.  Enjoy! 

Whether you work for a mom-and-pop store or a global brand, you do have haters — and you can’t afford to ignore them. By embracing complaints, you put haters to work for you, and turn bad news good.

So few companies hug their haters today that those that make this commitment are almost automatically differentiated and noteworthy when compared to their competitors.

Customer service and customer experience matter. And they’re going to matter even more in the future. The world is inextricably linked now, by transportation and technology that was unthinkable twenty years ago. This global interconnectivity mutes the advantages of price and location that businesses formerly used to create market inefficiencies and gain a disproportionate share of customers.

Why I always order from the same pizza place

Take Bloomington, Indiana, for example. There are more than one dozen banks in this modest-sized college town where I live. All of them offer almost precisely the same core services, at fees that are not appreciably different from one another. From the perspectives of product and price, they are nearly indistinguishable.

There are even more pizza places nearby, and they all offer roughly the same thing at the same cost, partially because they are buying ingredients at the same price from the same global suppliers, and are tapping into the same labor pool, where what you pay a college student to make pizzas is essentially the same for each restaurant. Likewise, my accountant and your accountant and my barber and your barber are doing almost the exact same things for approximately the same fees.

In today’s world, meaningful differences between businesses are rarely rooted in price or product, but instead in customer experience. How does each provider make you feel when you interact with them? It is in the provision of standout, noticeable customer experience (the real-world embodiment of the brand promise) where great companies shine and mediocre companies shrink.

Why do I always order from the same pizza place in Bloomington? Because I live on the outskirts of town, and they cheerfully deliver to my house. Most of the other pizza places give me the terse “outside our service territory” story and refuse to bring me pizza.

Customer experience will be more important than price by 2020

The winning companies of tomorrow will be those that make their customers feel the best, even if those customers are paying more for the privilege. This isn’t just a circumstance that’s true in consumer products, travel, and hospitality either.

The customer intelligence consultancy Walker released a research report that stated that in business-to-business scenarios, customer experience will be more important than price by 2020.

“The B-to-B companies that will win are beginning to prepare now by recognizing the shift that’s taking place, aligning the right resources, and focusing on the right metrics. Enlightened companies must view the customer experience as a strategic initiative. And, in the future, the responsibility of a ‘chief customer champion’ will become more common, serving one purpose-to create an unrelenting focus on the customer,” states the report.

Outlove your competition

John Di]ulius, a well-known customer service consultant and adviser and author of The Customer Service Revolution, describes this differentiating factor as “outloving your competition.” As he writes in his book, ‘”Outlove your competition’ is one of my favorite sayings. Think about it. Nearly everything can be copied: the products or services that you sell, your decor, website functionality, menu, and prices. Can you really outwork your competition? Outthink them? Maybe not, but the one way you can get a distinct competitive advantage is by outloving the businesses you compete against. The only way to do that is to stop the typical squawking that goes on about how difficult customers can be, and just start appreciating them.”

Realize, however, that to truly differentiate your business with customer experience, you have to clearly outpace your competition in this regard. Making a commitment to “be better at customer service” isn’t going to get the job done. Instead, as Walker suggests, you need to “create an unrelenting focus on the customer.”

Embrace complaints

There are many elements of a comprehensive customer experience program. The first step in differentiating your business with customer experience should be to be demonstrably better than each of your competitors in how you embrace complaints.

Start there, and if you can successfully hug your haters, you’ll be on your way to a full-scale customer experience advantage that can literally be the difference between a flourishing business in five years, when price and location are no longer deciding factors, and not existing at all.

Customer service is the new marketing

Dan Gingiss, formerly of Discover, says, “We firmly believe here that customer service is the new marketing. Discover put its flag down on customer service since it started in the 80s. Discover was the first credit card company with 24/7 service. It pays attention to service and it’s good at it. It talks about it on TV—the last two main television campaigns have been about service. And to me a complaint online is an opportunity for us to show off amazing customer service in a public setting that can’t be done on TV and can’t be done in any other channel. If somebody is having an issue with their product or their card that I know can be fixed, to me it’s an opportunity.”

 

 

Drawn from Hug Your Haters: How to Embrace Complaints and Keep Your Customers, about which Guy Kawasaki says: “This is a landmark book in the history of customer service.” Written by Jay Baer, Hug Your Haters is the first customer service and customer experience book written for the modern, mobile era and is based on proprietary research and more than 70 exclusive interviews.

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The Only Graph You Need to Know For Creating More Brand Advocates

InteractionsWhen I started writing Think Like a Rock Star, I began to research how it is that rock stars can so easily create and cultivate fans.  I wanted to know how they do it, but more importantly, I wanted to know if they had a system or methodology that could be applied by brands to create passionate customers and fans.

The above graph shows the exact steps that need to happen, and in order, to create brand advocates.  The problem is that most brands have little to no interactions with customers in order to start the process.

And to be fair, most customers don’t want to talk to most brands anyway.

But we know that we can’t understand our customers if we aren’t interacting with them and learning from them.  Which also gives them the chance to learn from and understand us.

So how do you learn from customers that don’t care to learn about you?  If customers won’t engage with you, you can at least listen to them.  You can be aware of the online conversation happening about and around your brand.

That will give you a chance to engage with customers that are discussing your brand and the greater context that it plays in.  Which means you can interact with these customers with a higher level of understanding about the customers you are engaging with.  Who they are, what they want.

The more you interact with your customers and they with you, the more willing they are to lower their guard and interact more with you and on a deeper level.  And if you communicate to them that you are willing to go deeper, they will lower their guard even further.

It’s about being committed to learning about your customers.  Not just learning how to sell to them, but learning who they are so you can understand how they want to be sold to.

It requires you communicating to your customers that you care enough about them to take the first step:

PearlTweetI’m an Alabama fan so I am required to hate all things Auburn.  But I love how Auburn basketball coach Bruce Pearl has embraced Auburn’s fans since being hired a few months ago.  Bruce has especially gone out of his way to reach out to Auburn’s students.  Pearl knows that it’s vital to the program’s success that he has buy-in from the students.  They will be the most passionate fans at the home games and will bring the most energy.  So he goes out of his way to engage the students, doing everything from handing out t-shirts on campus before games, to buying them lunch.  Call it bribery all you want, but what Pearl is doing is communicating to the students that he appreciates them and understands how valuable they are.  Trust me, a lot of basketball coaches do not do this, and Auburn’s students love Pearl.

Why can’t your company do the same thing?  Why not bring in 10 of your customers to spend the day with you at your headquarters?  Get to know them and let them get to know you.  The insights you’ll gain directly from these customers will more than pay for the travel and associated costs.

Another key takeaway I had from studying how rock stars create and cultivate fans is that rock stars go out of their way to communicate two very important messages to their fans:

1 – I appreciate you.

2 – I love you.

In other words, they don’t have fans because they are rock stars, this is a huge misconception about rock stars.  Rock stars don’t have fans because of who they are, they have fans because of what they do.

Your company has to want fans to have them.  And you definitely want them.

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10 Things You Can Do TODAY to Make Your Blog Better

Skiing Towards the Sun

Ready to take your blog to the next level?  Here’s 10 things I have learned about making my blog better over the last 13 years.

Blog Maintenance

1 – Sign up for Google Analytics.  This will give you valuable information about the health of your blog.  I use it every single day to see how traffic is doing here, specifically Real-Time and referral sources.  It’s great to track what content is resonating with your readers.  Plus, if you ever want to bring on ads or sponsors for your blog, they will want to know your blog’s stats tracked via Google Analytics.  Plus it’s free, so get it today.

2 –  Get the right plugins that add functionality for you and you readers.  Here’s three of my favorites and make sure you add Akismet to block spam.  And most importantly, make sure all your plugins and WordPress are updated as soon as available.  Outdated plugins are the first thing hackers look for on your blog, so simply keeping everything updated will make your blog far more secure and if you are vigilant about it, that alone could be enough to keep your blog from ever getting hacked.

Blog Strategy 

3 – Nail down your audience. No more of this ‘I’m just writing to share my voice’.  That’s lazy, figure out WHO you want to share your voice with.  The exact person.  Do that and you can give them the message that’s relevant to them, and you’ll be more likely to earn their attention.

4 – Figure out your reader’s journey.  Mapping the ‘customer’s journey’ is a buzz-term in business right now, similarly, you need to think about the path your reader takes on and off your blog.  Think about the actions they are taking, and the actions you want them to take.

5 – Factor in content placement and blog design.  With the former point, think about the actions you want the reader to take, and organize your blog so it is easier for your readers to take those actions.  For example, my primary audience here is people working in marketing and social media for brands.  The primary actions I want them to take is to sign up for my newsletter, and read my content on brand advocacy.  So notice that my newsletter signup and recent posts on Brand Advocacy are both featured at the top of the blog, where they will be the most visible.

Content Creation  

6 – Nail your headlines.  Of all the tips in this list, this is the one that can instantly boost your readership the most.  I’ve written before about the importance of writing a great headline and how to do so.  Don’t think about how your headline will read here on this blog, think about how it will read on Twitter or Facebook.  That’s the test, consider if you glanced at your headline on Twitter for 2 seconds, would the headline alone prompt you to click the link?  If not, then it’s a bad headline.  However if you do click and then the post doesn’t back up the headline, that’s even worse.  So you want to have a headline that instantly grabs attention and makes me want to click the link, but also the content has to back up the claim or statement made by the headline.  Don’t summarize the post, make a specific claim or statement with the headline that grabs my attention.

7 – Create reader-centric content.  Don’t focus on blogging about your business (or the business you want to build) instead blog about ideas and themes that are relevant to your desired audience.  For example, Patagonia has a fabulous blog for their customers.  But at The Cleanest Line, Patagonia doesn’t blog about its clothing, it blogs about ideas and themes that are relevant to its customers.  Such as sustainability, protecting the environment, and being active outdoors.  Patagonia does this because the brand understands that creating reader-centric content means creating more interesting and relevant content for its customers.

8 – Get on a regular posting schedule.  All things being equal, the blog that publishes more content will have a higher readership.  So if you want to create and publish more content, a great way to do this and cultivate your readership is to get on a regular posting pattern.  If possible, start out shooting for at least one new post a week, and pick the same day to publish that post.  Wednesday, Saturday, it doesn’t matter as long as you make it the same day.  Then try to grow from that to 2 posts a week, then maybe 3.  But if you can only write 4 posts a month, I would rather see you spread out those 4 posts as one each Wednesday versus publishing a post the 1st week of the month then none for the next 2 weeks then 3 posts in the final week of the month.  Getting on a regular posting schedule trains your readers to know when to expect new content and helps grow your readership.

9 – Engage your readers.  ‘How do I get more comments?’ is one of the biggest challenges most bloggers have.  The quickest way to get more comments?  Actually REPLY to the ones you get!  Now granted you don’t need to reply to every single comment but if you did, you just doubled the number of comments on your blog.  And your replies will lead to more comments.  More importantly, if your readers know you will reply if they comment, that makes them more likely to comment.

10 – Pay more attention to your audience than the ‘experts’.  Case in point, you’ll hear all day that people hate list posts like this.  The more advanced bloggers will look down their noses at them and tell you to stop writing them that they want content that’s more advanced.  That’s because they are more advanced.  Every one of them LOVED the ‘listicles’ when they started blogging because they needed posts exactly like this.  So if you are writing for more advanced bloggers, then you need to provide them more 201 and 301-level content.  But if you are writing for beginning bloggers, guess what?  You need to give them 101-level content, and don’t listen to the more advanced bloggers that want more advanced content.  Because they aren’t your audience.

 

 

What did I miss?  Add them in the comments, please!

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What Every Company Should Consider When Working With Influencers

TwitterInfluencers

Last month I wrote a post on the value of measuring engagement vs numbers when selecting an influencer for your company to work with.  That post resonated with a lot of you so I wanted to expand on it and talk about the key considerations for your company when working with influencers.  Working with influencers and ‘sponsored content’ is a very popular option for companies these days, and done correctly, it can be a real benefit for your business.  Here’s some of the things you should consider before working with influencers:

1 – Why does your company want to work with influencers?  Influencers can work well in certain situations, especially if you are trying to draw attention to a new product line or initiative.  It’s best to understand the role that influencers can play to see if they make a good fit for what you are trying to accomplish.  As always, start by asking what your expected outcomes are, then work backwards.  For example, if your goal is to increase sales by 15% in the next quarter, working with influencers alone might not accomplish that.  But if your goal is to increase your brand’s share of the online conversation around certain product lines by 15% in the next quarter, then maybe it makes sense to work with influencers to help accomplish this goal.

2 – Work with influencers that have a history of working with companies.  These influencers are more familiar with the process, and have a better sense of what your expectations will be and how to meet or exceed those expectations.  They will also work with your company to create a specific plan of action based on your expected outcomes.  And for those of you that want to work with companies, this is exactly why you should spell that out on your site or blog.  I am constantly talking to people that want to work with companies, but when I go to their blog, there is no information on what they can offer companies or that they are even interested in working with companies.  You have to let companies know if you are available to work with them in an influencer marketing program.

3 – It’s always better to work with influencers that understand your company, industry and products.  Try to work with influencers that have a history of working with companies in your industry.  Many influencers specialize in working with companies in select industries or product categories.  Ideally, your company would be better served working with influencers that have experience in your industry as they will likely have a better understanding of your space and how to help companies in your industry succeed with their influencer marketing efforts.

Influencers

4 – Numbers alone won’t tell you which influencers you should work with.  I talked about this in January, but the biggest mistake companies make in working with influencers is picking them based on the size of their following.  For example from my own experience I know that Twitter users with 5,000-20,000 followers typically send me more referral traffic than a RT from someone with 20,00-100,000 followers.  Why?  Because a lot of Twitter users with over 50,000 followers use bots and reciprocal or ‘followback’ techniques to pad their follower numbers in an effort to appear more influential than they actually are.  The size of an influencers’ network is important, but also look at how engaged the influencer is with that network.  Engagement is action, and you want to work with influencers that will compel their followers to take action on your behalf.  Look at how many replies, Likes, RTs, comments, etc the influencer gets.  In other words, how often are the actually engaging with their networks?  It matters.

5 – Influencers or fans: Which is more important?  In general, influencers have a larger following, but your fans have a closer and more passionate connection to fewer people.  Ideally, it would be the best of both worlds to work with influencers that are also happy and passionate customers of your brand.  If that’s not possible, then keep in mind that if you are trying to build buzz, typically influencers work better.  But if you are trying to build and sustain passion for your brand, working with your existing fans is better.

6 – Respect the relationship that an influencer has with his or her network.  You want to work with influencers that have developed a level of trust with their network.  So be mindful not to ask influencers to put themselves in a position that would abuse that trust.  Consider the influencer’s point of view, when you approach them about working together, they will be thinking ‘how can this create value for my readers/followers/network?’  You should incorporate this into your expected outcomes as well, think about how working with a particular influencer will help your company AND how it could help the influencer’s network.  Maybe give them special access, a special discount, or something that creates value for them.  If you do that, the influencer will be far more receptive to your pitch.  On the other hand, if you only consider how you want the influencer to promote you and your products with no thought given to how it affects the influencer’s network, that can easily put off the influencer and kill the partnership.

7 – View working with an influencer as a partnership.  Carrying over from the last point, don’t view working with an influencer as they are doing something for you, view it as a situation where both your company and the influencer (as well as the influencer’s network) benefit.  You want to view it as a partnership which encourages the influencer to not only do a better job for you, but it also encourages them to work to work with your company again.

 

These are a few tips I’ve picked up over the last decade while working with clients on influencer marketing initiatives and having companies work with me as an influencer.  But there’s always other perspectives, so I reached out to a few of my influencer friends and asked them each to tell me what is one thing they wish companies knew about working with influencers:

Kerry Gorgone: In last week’s post on how Ford works with influencers, Kerry mentioned that “Engaging digital influencers is a smart way to amplify your reach, but is that where your aspirations end? It shouldn’t be! Give influencers personalized links to landing pages, so you know exactly where your traffic came from. Give them discount codes so you know when people convert because they’ve come across an influencer’s content.”

Jay Baer: “I wish brands would actually do their homework and look closely at the type of content people typically create and either adapt their ask accordingly, or select influencers to work with accordingly. I see way too many brands asking influencers to do stuff that they’ve never done before, with no evidence that they ever would.”

Calvin Lee: “I wish brands would build a better relationship with influencers and continue to work together on future campaigns, instead of just the one shot deal. Approaching real fans, influencers of their product and services. It’s not always about the numbers.

Looking beyond the numbers of followers, likes and reshares influencers have. Brands need to really research influencers they want to use. It’s so easy to buy followers, likes and reshares.  Many brands are clueless of who they have hired. I’ve seen so many fake influencers brands are using in their campaigns.

Adel de Meyer: “I think companies should approach influencers with better offers than free swag or discounted software usage. True influencers worked hard to build their community and should be awarded for their time, expertise and reach accordingly. I am also hoping businesses will do better research in finding true influencers in the different industries. I see too many brands working with influencers that have low engagement rates, or that do not align well with their brand image and values.”

 

Keep these tips and advice in mind when you plan your next, or first, influencer marketing effort.

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Ford’s Philosophy on Influence Marketing: Always Be Nurturing

I don’t know what you’re into, but I’m into cars. Muscle cars, to be specific. Dodge Challengers, Chevy Camaros, Ford Mustangs—any vehicle with some power under the hood really gets my attention.

That’s why I accepted Ford Motor Company’s invitation to attend a 2013 event for women bloggers. (You can read the whole story in my previous post on this blog.)

Little did I know that luncheon would be the start of a partnership that would last for several years, and take me places I never imagined I’d go (like Dearborn, Michigan).

For 2015 and 2016, Ford Motor Company invited me (and more than 100 other “digital influencers”) to Detroit to attend the North American International Auto Show (“NAIAS”), the premier show for car enthusiasts and automotive industry insiders.

For three days, our group got access to Ford’s “Behind the Blue Oval” area at NAIAS, primo seats at Ford press conferences, and special events that brought us behind the scenes at Ford, like the Rouge Factory tour.

You might be wondering what the return on marketing investment is for something like this, and it’s a smart question.

First, let’s talk reach. During the event, Ford racked up thousands of social media mentions on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Periscope, etc., and the Twitter coverage alone reached millions of followers.

By inviting a diverse group of influencers, Ford managed to dominate in terms of event coverage. They invite not just auto industry journalists, but parenting bloggers, Periscope personalities, social savvy businesspeople, and car enthusiasts.

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“We are looking for folks who are enthusiastic, who create great content, who really have audiences and know what works best for them,”explains JT. Ramsay, digital media manager at Ford. “When we bring them to something like Detroit Auto Show, we know we’re going to have great content for them to share.”

And beyond NAIAS, Ford keeps in touch with influencers throughout the year, hosting regional events, like “Quality Time with Ford” at the Aveda Institute Orlando (manicures were involved).  Ford also gave attendees tickets to the Central Florida International Auto Show so we could see Ford’s new line of cars up close and personal.

“These are relationships that we maintain all year long,” says Ramsay. “Whether that’s ‘Driving Skills for Life’ or Ford’s Smart Mobility Tour that we did this last summer, there are all kinds of different touch points that we have with our influencers that I think have been profoundly successful for us.” (Check out the full interview I conducted with JT. for MarketingProfs for more about Ford’s approach to influencer marketing and content.)

As a result, Ford maintains buzz about the brand and its line of cars throughout the year, with bloggers posting across social media and on their own sites. For example, check out Lynette Young’s post on Go Further With Ford, and Bess Auer’s post on lessons other brands can learn from the way Ford involves online influencers.

But does it sell cars? Probably some, although it’s difficult to know how many.

“Attribution is tricky,” acknowledges Ramsay. “However, I think that with some of our influencers they’ll even tell us, ‘I went to this event, I told a friend, and that friend bought a Ford.”

For what it’s worth, my last three cars have been Fords, and when I’m in the market for another, I’m very likely to choose a C-Max after my experience driving one for several months. (And that’s worth about $30,000!)

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Here are some tips for nurturing influencer relationships (and measuring the contribution these bloggers and social media stars bring to your bottom line):

Don’t forget your influencers in between major events.
As Ramsay observes, “[Ford is] working very closely with our regional teams to keep in touch, and not simply parachute in for a national event or two per year.

”Those smaller events might seem insignificant, but they deepen your relationship with your influencers and keep a baseline of buzz going all year long.

Know what you want out of the influencer relationship.
Engaging digital influencers is a smart way to amplify your reach, but is that where your aspirations end? It shouldn’t be! Give influencers personalized links to landing pages, so you know exactly where your traffic came from. Give them discount codes so you know when people convert because they’ve come across an influencer’s content.

Give them direction in terms of what you’re hoping to achieve: what product lines you’re interested in promoting, what upcoming events you’d like people to attend, what corporate charity initiatives you want people to know about.

If you want influencers to share your story about sustainability (like Ford’s “Farm to Car” initiative) or charitable giving (like how Mullinax Ford dealerships in Central Florida give all employees $250 per year to contribute to any charitable organization they like), you have to tell them so.

Otherwise, influencers will do their best to promote your brand, but might miss the points you’re trying to emphasize. This ties into the next tip.

Give influencers the information they need to share your brand story.
Influencers appreciate gaining an insider’s view of your brand (if they’re truly passionate about what you do), and they’ll want to help you get our brand message out. That’s easier to do if you give them event press kits and real-time press releases as you hold conferences and make announcements.

Remember to build relationships with each individual influencer, not “digital influencers” as a group.In between group events for area influencers, occasionally reach out to individual influencers when you have something going on you know would interest them in particular.

For example, before driving the C-Max, I had expressed interest in hybrid vehicles, so after my successful experience with that car, Ford gave me the chance to test drive a Fusion hybrid. They asked only that I provide them feedback about how the two vehicles compared.

This kind of personalized outreach ensures that influencers feel like partners, rather than shills—a critical difference to people who love your brand, but don’t post product reviews for a living.

Finally, choose your influencers carefully.
You want people who are passionate about your brand (or at least your industry), and who will represent you in a professional manner.

The last thing you want as a brand is to have someone stand up and poke his head out of the sunroof of your roped-off prototype vehicle, then wave away show staff while saying “it’s okay, I’m an influencer.”

I’m a muscle car girl, but I’m also a marketing industry professional—nice fit for an auto brand!

Which brings us full circle: muscle car girl makes friends with Ford, gets to attend NAIAS and see the sexy cars.

Who will your brand’s best friends be?

Sexy @Ford Shelby! #FordNAIAS

A photo posted by Kerry O’Shea Gorgone (@kerrygorgone) on