MackCollier.com

by

PBS Tabs @ScottMonty to Live-Tweet Sherlock: The Abominable Bride Premiere Jan 1st

There’s a constant debate when it comes to driving awareness of a brand, product or event over whether it’s better to work with influencers, or fans.  With influencers you’re getting reach, but fans have more passion for your brand and message.

But the best of both worlds is to work with influencers that are also fans.  This is what PBS has done by again having Scott Monty, a huge Sherlock Holmes aficionado, live tweet the premiere of its new Sherlock event which premieres on Jan 1st.  I love what PBS is doing here and have always said that brands, especially in the entertainment industry, should be doing a better job of connecting with its fans to help promote shows, series and events like PBS is doing here.

If you want to follow along on Twitter, follow the hashtag #SherlockPBS from 9:00-10:30 PM Eastern on January 1st.

by

Building Your Blog For 2016

23409777699_7332a88c97_zEvery year I use the month of December to do a bit of an audit of how my blogging year went, and then plan out how I want to leverage the blog in the coming year.  I pick December since it’s the last month of the year, plus traffic is typically down the first 2 weeks of the year anyway as we all get knee-deep into Holiday shopping and planning.  So it’s the perfect time to take a step back and examine where you’ve been and re-assess where you are going.

When you’re planning for the coming year, it’s best to start with this question: Who is our desired blogging audience?  In other words, what type of person do you want to read your blog?  For your business blog, you’ll have answers like:

  • We want readers who are current or potential customers
  • We want readers who are current or potential donors or partners
  • We want readers who are current or potential clients

This is a good start, but the more specific your answers, the better your results.  And it’s a process, you want to drill down with your answer because the more specific your focus, the more efficient your content creation efforts.  Here’s how I would drill down if I were deciding exactly who I wanted to reach with my blog in 2016:

Q – Who is your desired audience?

A – Potential clients.

Q – Potential clients for what service(s)?

A – Potential clients for my speaking and consulting services, as well as companies looking for sponsorship opportunities.

Q – Which area; speaking, consulting or sponsorships is most important to you?

A – Hmmmm…probably speaking first, consulting close behind, then sponsorships.

Q – So it looks like potential clients for speaking and consulting are where you want to devote most of your energy.  Will you be focused on speaking on the same areas where you would like to consult?

A – For the most part, yes.  I want to speak on topics related to brand advocacy, customer engagement, and helping companies create more customer-centric content and marketing.  These are also the same areas where I want to focus my consulting.

 

Notice how just by asking a couple of more specific questions that I’m already narrowing down my focus a bit.  At first I was just thinking about wanting readers who are potential clients, now I know I need to focus more on potential clients who need speakers and consulting services, moreso than sponsorship opportunities.  Additionally, I know that I typically will be speaking on the same topics that I want to consult on, so there’s a lot of overlapping there.  This is already helping me better define my blogging focus in 2016.

A Hypothetical Example of How This Could Work For Your Company

Let’s do this exercise for you.  Let’s say you blog for a company that sells website security services.  You charge customers a monthly fee to manage their basic website security.  You’ve noticed that customers will typically contact you when they have an existing issue with their website (it’s been hacked, there’s a malware issue, etc), and they will continue to buy your services for 2-3 months after the problem has been solved, then they will typically stop buying and won’t contact you again until there’s another issue that they need help with.  So there seems to be a lot of churn starting at the 3-4 month mark, so one of the focus points for the entire company is trying to reduce that churn rate and increase the time that customers stay on.  Let’s go through the same Q&A process for this example company:

Q – Who is your desired audience?

A – Current and potential customers.

Q – Which one is more important to you in 2016?

A – Well we need both, but a business focus in 2016 will be ensuring that current customers stay with us for a longer period of time.

Q – What would typically be reasons why customers would leave?

A – Typically, companies will contact us when they’ve encountered a security issue with their website that requires immediate attention.  They will sign up for our service and then after we’ve fixed the issue, they will typically stay with us for a few months and if the issue doesn’t flare up again, often they will discontinue the service and only come back if something else happens in the future.

 

With just 3 questions, we now have a much clearer sense of the direction of our content in 2016.  We know we need to focus more on connecting with current customers and giving them a reason to stay with us longer.  This helps drive our content strategy for 2016, and gives us an idea of the types of content we need to create, such as:

  • Blog posts that talk about how customers do more business with companies that have a secure website.
  • Blog posts that talk about the potential damage to a brand’s reputation if their website is repeatedly down due to poor website security.

Blog posts such as this help make the case to current customers that it’s better for their business to stay with your company and let them continue to handle their website security.  By taking a few minutes to think through your content goals for 2016, it not only helps you better connect with your exact target audience, but it means you will spend less time on your content and that it will be more efficient.

Pic via Flickr user Giuseppe Milo

by

Observation or Word of Mouth; Which is Better For Driving Sales?

Recently I came across an interesting article from the Harvard Business Review.  It was based on a study that suggests that customers are far more likely to buy what another customer buys by simply observing the purchase action vs hearing that customer say they buy the product (Word of Mouth):

“we found that observing other customers wasn’t only very common, it was also strikingly important in shaping consumers’ views of a brand: equally important as word-of-mouth recommendations for mobile handsets and soft drinks, and even more important than word of mouth for technology products and electrical goods. Overall, peer observation was equal in importance to the brand advertising on which companies spend billions.”

This does make sense, although I think there’s an important clarification to this idea that customer observation drives sales at a rate equal to or superior to verbal endorsement from that same customer (Word of Mouth).  Mere observation only works if the customer is undecided on which product to purchase.  For example, let’s say I am looking for a cake mix, and can’t decide if I want the one from Duncan Hines, or the one from Betty Crocker.  Both seem to be about the same as far as quality and price.  But if, while I am standing there trying to decide which cake mix to buy, a customer comes up and grabs the Duncan Hines mix, that might persuade me to buy the Duncan Hines mix.  If a second customer immediately came up and grabbed the Duncan Hines mix as well, that might cinch the sale for me.

On the other hand, let’s say I am a Duncan Hines fan.  I always buy their cake mix because it creates a very moist cake.  If my mind is already made up, then it really doesn’t matter how many customers I observe buying the Betty Crocker mix, I will still prefer the Duncan Hines cake mix, because I love how moist it is.  But let’s say my cousin comes by, and she notices I am buying the Duncan Hines cake mix.  If she says that I should try the Betty Crocker mix, I would be more open to considering that since she’s my cousin and I know and trust her.  If she added that I should buy the Better Crocker cake mix because it is more moist than the Duncan Hines cake mix, that might very well convince me to buy the Betty Crocker cake mix.

At any rate, regardless of which cake mix you like (or whether observation or Word of Mouth helped decide your purchase), it should be noted that this underlies the value of customer acquisition flowing through existing customers.  We are increasingly placing less trust in advertising that comes from brands, and more trust in messages that come from fellow customers. Even if those messages are shared via simple observation.

by

You Will Share This Post, But You Won’t Read It

I check my Twitter notifications way more than I should.  Recently, I checked Twitter and didn’t see any new notifications.  I did some other work and came back just a few minutes later and was shocked at what I saw.

25 new notifications on Twitter.  That meant in just a few minutes, literally dozens of new notifications had come in.  I got excited, hoping this meant that someone had shared one of my posts, and then their followers had shared it, and then an avalanche of traffic would fall on my blog.  It would be glorious!

Sure enough, an ‘influencer’ had RTed one of my posts, and almost immediately, their followers started RTing the first RT, and within 10 mins, I had already gotten 25 people either RTing my post, or Liking it.

Excited, I rushed to my Google Analytics dashboard to check my traffic to see how many clicks this flood of RTs was sending to my blog and I was stunned at the number.

Zero.

Over 20 RTs within a 10 minute period had sent a grand total of zero people to my blog.  Something is definitely wrong.  We were all sold on the idea that sharing is caring.  That we want to see our content shared, because when its shared, that translates into more traffic.  And when you read a blog and see a post with a high share count, that means more people are reading it.

But is this really the case?

Research into the impact social sharing has on blog traffic has come up with a startling conclusion: There’s little to no relationship between social shares and a change in blog traffic:

A widespread assumption is that the more content is liked or shared, the more engaging it must be, the more willing people are to devote their attention to it. However, the data doesn’t back that up. We looked at 10,000 socially-shared articles and found that there is no relationship whatsoever between the amount a piece of content is shared and the amount of attention an average reader will give that content.

So if we accept that the relationship between social sharing and traffic is weak at best, what true value do those social sharing numbers really have?  Are they a true signal to readers that a piece of content is more popular (and thus more worthy of your attention), or is this another case of social media numbers being worthless?  Further, if we believe that social sharing numbers aren’t credible, what external factors can we use to judge if others find a piece of content valuable?  Comments seem like a likely starting point, but with more and more blogs turning off comments, that is increasingly being taken off the board.

What if you had no external signals to tell you if a piece of content was viewed by a larger community as being valuable? How would you know, would you have to (gasp!) actually read it?  Perish the thought!

by

The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show Episode 40: Writing Fan-Damn-Tastic Headlines

Hey y’all! Welcome to the 40th episode of #FanDamnShow! In this episode I talk about one of the surest ways you can improve your content; By writing better headlines.  It’s a vital tool for all content creators, but it does take some practice and know-how, and I talk about what you need to write better headlines in this episode of The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show.

Show Notes:

2:05 – There’s a continuous stream of content being shared on all social sites.  We scan and as a result, the headline has to immediately grab our attention or we won’t click.

3:10 – A lot of bloggers write the post’s headline as a short summation of what the post is about.  This is the WORST type of headline to write!  You cannot simply summarize the post with the headline, it has to immediately be impactful and tell others why the post is awesome.

4:10 – How I learned first hand the power of writing an impactful headline with the success of this post.  The headline grabbed attention and led to a big spike in traffic to my blog and shares, all because of the great headline.

8:25 – The claim you make in your headline has to be backed up by the content in the post.  What is the specific promise you are making to readers with this post?  The headline needs to reflect that.

10:50 – When writing your headlines, think about what is in the post that’s worthy of the attention of your readers.

12:50 – This post is another example of a great headline I wrote that immediately grabbed your attention, and was true to the content of the post.

[clickToTweet tweet=”‘What is the specific promise you are making to readers with this post? The headline needs to reflect that.’ ” quote=”‘What is the specific promise you are making to readers with this post? The headline needs to reflect that.'”]

Here’s where you can download and listen to the episode directly.  And if you can, please subscribe to The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show on iTunes, and I would *love* it if you could review the podcast on iTunes as well.  Also, #FanDamnShow is now available on Stitcher as well!

Also, don’t forget that sponsorships are now available for The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show. This page that has all the information on how your brand can sponsor #FanDamnShow and the rates. Please note that all available sponsor slots will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis, so please email me if you are interested in sponsoring #FanDamnShow.

We’ll talk again next episode!

[smart_track_player url=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/fandamnshow/Episode_40_-_Writing_FanDamn_HeadlinesFINAL.mp3″ title=”Writing Fan-Damn-Tastic Headlines” social=”true” social_twitter=”true” social_facebook=”true” social_gplus=”true” ]

[smart_podcast_player social=”true” social_twitter=”true” social_facebook=”true” social_gplus=”true” social_email=”true” ]

by

The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show Episode 39: How to Connect With Influencers

Hey y’all, it’s time for another episode of #FanDamnShow!  In this 39th episode, I tackle a topic that a LOT of companies want answers to: How to more effectively connect with influencers.  So sit back for 12 mins of smartitude!

Here’s where you can download and listen to the episode directly.  And if you can, please subscribe to The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show on iTunes, and I would *love* it if you could review the podcast on iTunes as well.  Also, #FanDamnShow is now available on Stitcher as well!

Also, don’t forget that sponsorships are now available for The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show. This page that has all the information on how your brand can sponsor #FanDamnShow and the rates. Please note that all available sponsor slots will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis, so please email me if you are interested in sponsoring #FanDamnShow.

We’ll talk again next episode!

[smart_track_player url=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/fandamnshow/Episode_39_-_Connecting_With_InfluencersFINAL.mp3″ title=”How to Connect With Influencers” social=”true” social_twitter=”true” social_facebook=”true” social_gplus=”true” ]

[smart_podcast_player social=”true” social_twitter=”true” social_facebook=”true” social_gplus=”true” social_email=”true” ]

 

by

How to Create More Social Media Content For Your Business

10651822923_55982fddd4_z

For years, the big focus in social media marketing was finding ROI.  It still is, to a great degree.  But as more companies bought into using social media, a new problem developed: How do we create more social media content for our business?  Scratch that, how do we create more social media content that is USEFUL to our customers, that also helps our business reach its goals.

It’s tough, it’s damn tough.  I was talking recently with a fellow consultant about balancing doing client work and creating a steady stream of content that helps us get more client work.  It’s a struggle for us, so I know it’s probably a struggle for your company as well.

The good news about content creation is that the more you do it, the easier it becomes.  So the first step, is to address content creation from a time standpoint.  We want to make the process easier and more efficient so that you can create more content in less time.

One of the main reasons that businesses explore using social media is because they want to build awareness for who they are and what they do.  Social media doesn’t excel at driving sales directly, but it can be a great channel for driving awareness.  It can also be a great channel for positioning and branding.  So if we attack our content strategy from the awareness/positioning/branding angle, we can accomplish multiple goals at once.

Remember the plant your flag approach to content strategy?  It means you ask ‘what do we want to be known for?’  If you were to explain your business and why its relevant in 30 seconds at a cocktail party, what would you tell someone?  What terms and ideas do you want to own?

Once you know who you are and why your business is relevant, you want to create and share content around those ideas.  Red Bull creates and shares content focused on extreme sports and extreme sports athletes.  Pedigree shares content focused on happy and healthy dogs.

So as you are keeping up to date on your industry and market, look for ways to share some of that content with your network.  At first this can seem counter intuitive; Why would you promote content that’s not about your business?  Because if it’s content that’s related to your business, it helps identify your business as being associated with those ideas or that industry, or that concept.

Plus there’s this: If someone isn’t aware of your business, they also aren’t aware of why they should pay attention to your business.  One way to increase the chances that they will pay attention is to associate your business with content that they DO find interesting.  For example, if your business is a hotel chain, sharing content that helps customers plan a road trip can increase the chances that they will pay attention to you.  The content on planning a road trip is interesting and relevant to them, so if you share this content, they will pay attention to it, and by extension they will be more likely to pay attention to you.

So start by identifying sources of relevant content for your intended audience.  If you want to reach single moms that need help cooking quick and healthy meals for their children, think about where they would get this information.  Then you want to find these sites, and share their content.  You are providing a service for them, and in the process you are giving these single moms an incentive to pay more attention to you.

So if you want to create more useful social media content, start by staying up to date on your industry and market.  When you can, share relevant content from sources that your audience trusts.  Just doing this can easily double the content you distribute via your social media channels.  As an added bonus, it also makes those sources more likely to want to promote your content.  I’ll talk about this more in Thursday’s post.

Pic via Robert-Couse Baker

by

My Blog Traffic and Podcast Audience Results For September

For every month in 2015, I’ve set specific goals for growing my blog readership, and podcast audience.  The end goal is that by December this blog will have at least 100,000 visitors for that month, and the podcast will be downloaded at least 10,000 times for December.  Every month I am going to write a post like this recapping how I did in the previous month, and share any lessons I have learned.  The goal is to help you learn how to build a blog readership and podcast audience as I do.

First, here were my goals for September:

Blog – At least 85,000 visitors

Podcast – At least 5,000 downloads

Blog Traffic Results For September

My blog’s traffic in September was 35,862 versus 36,154 in August, a decrease of less than 1%.  I got way behind on both the blog and podcast in September, only writing 3 posts in September.

I made a couple of changes last month to my blog that I think has at least improved my issue with falling search traffic.  The first is I went into my robots.txt file and made sure it including the path to my sitemap.  As soon as I made this update, I noticed in Google Webmaster Tools that Google immediately started indexing an additional 200 pages from my site.  Also, I noticed a slight uptick in search traffic from that point forward.  Not huge, but definitely noticeable.  So much so that I believe search traffic will actually go up for October vs September.  So this might be something for you to explore, I had manually submitted my sitemap via Google Webmaster Tools before, and that didn’t seem to register, but adding the sitemap URL into my robots.txt file seemed to do the trick.

Here’s how traffic broke down by channels in September vs August:

Organic Search – Down 2%

Direct – Up 11.65%

Referral – Down 7.71%

Social – Down 14.93%

Other – Down 12.33%

Email – Down 81.43%

Referral, Social and Email being down is directly related to writing fewer posts in September, as I only wrote 3 posts for the month.  I got too caught up with client work and didn’t devote enough time to regular posting and it bit me.  Case in point, I published more posts this week than I did all of last month.

Podcast Numbers and Overview for September

The goal for September was at least 5,000 downloads of the podcast, and The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show had 3,924 downloads in September. The drop was due to only having 1 new episode in September, and that didn’t publish until the last day of the month.  Given that, the number of downloads is actually pretty remarkable.  Here’s the number of daily downloads so far this year:

PodcastDLJan-Sept

Strong growth throughout the year but it did start to tail off the last couple of weeks of September due to no new episodes going up.  On Wednesday I published the first episode of #FanDamnShow for this month and daily downloads had continued to fall this month up till that point.  A good reminder for me to make the time to create regular content for both my blog and podcast in order to build or even sustain an audience.

Here’s the blog audience and podcast download goals for October:

Blog Traffic – At least 90,000 visitors

Podcast Downloads – At least 6,500 downloads

This are the goals I set at the start of the year.  I’ll check back in next month and let you know how I did!

by

Leveraging Social Media to Drive Greater Customer Insights

For the last 10 years, marketers have been trying to leverage social media as a sales channel.  It’s been a messy proposition at best, due to how people use these social tools.  Social media tools are used by people to create and share content about themselves.

But for smart companies, this creates an enormous sales opportunity.  The key isn’t to leverage social media as a sales channel, but to instead leverage social media as a listening channel that can better inform brands about who their customers are and what they want.  This has always been the case.  Granted, I’m no fan of how we are getting away from having truly social interactions with these tools and instead are becoming an army of social narcissists, but even that does create an opportunity for smart brands to learn more about their customers.  As customers are creating content about who they are and what they want, that content can be analyzed, and insights can be gained into those same customers and how to better market to them.

The great promise that social media offers for brands has never been about leveraging the tools as a way to sell directly to customers.  It’s always been about better understanding those customers so you can create more effective and efficient marketing…that increases sales.

Some companies have been proactively analyzing the content their customers create online and are adjusting their marketing to make it more inline with who their customers are and what they want.  The result are broadcast commercials like this from The North Face:

And this from Red Bull:

Notice in both commercials (both of which currently have over 7 Million views on YouTube), the product itself takes a secondary role to the customers themselves.  The North Face isn’t selling its clothing, it is selling the activities you engage in after you put on its clothing.  Red Bull isn’t selling an energy drink, it’s selling what you do after you drink it.  In both cases, the marketing isn’t about the product, it’s about the customers and the activities that they love engaging in.  This makes the marketing message more interesting and relevant to those customers.  And by extension, the brand bringing you that marketing becomes more interesting and relevant as a result.

This is the great promise of social media for brands: Gaining a better understanding of your customers.  By first investing the time to learn who your customers are and why they use these tools, you can then have an intelligent conversation with them that comes from a place of understanding, not ignorance.  Listen first, learn, adjust, and move forward with better marketing.  This is why I’ve always been so excited about social media from a business standpoint, the potential for better understanding customers and creating more interesting and relevant marketing communications as a result.  For decades, most marketing has devolved into nothing more than a nuisance and irritant.  This is to a great extent simply because the brands creating that marketing don’t understand their customers well enough to create an interesting marketing message for them.

Now, thanks to social media, companies finally have a way to get a better understanding of what their customers want and who they are on a grand scale.  Commercials like those above only begin to scratch the surface of what marketing could look like when it’s created from a customers’ point-of-view.

Listen. Engage. Improve.  Do those things in that order, and your marketing communications will become more effective, and the sales will come.  There’s never been a time to be more excited about the future of marketing than right now.

by

You Build Loyalty After the Purchase, Not Before

One of the key themes I cover in Think Like A Rock Star is to discuss and explain why most rock stars can create loyal fans so much easily than most companies can.  There are many reasons why rock stars so easily cultivate fans, but perhaps the biggest reason why rock stars have more loyal customers than most companies do is because rock stars focus on rewarding existing behavior, while companies focus on offering incentives to change existing behavior.

Let me say that again: Most rock stars focus on rewarding the existing behavior of their fans, while most companies focus on offering incentives to change the existing behavior of potential customers.  This also speaks to a fundamental difference between who rock stars and companies market to.  Companies seek to acquire new customers, so they create marketing strategies that are designed to change existing customer behavior.  Price-based incentives are a big part of this, such as coupons, rebates, discounts on shipping, etc.

Rock stars seek to develop deeper relationships with their fans, and as part of this they seek to reward their fans for their existing behavior.  In 2010 Taylor Swift had a special 15-hour autograph signing for her fans.  Taylor signed for over 2,000 fans over the course of nearly 15 hours on June 13th, 2010, only stopping long enough in the middle of the day to perform a 90-minute acoustic set.  All for free.  Because Taylor wanted to reward her fans for supporting her.

Yet this approach is also very powerful for building loyalty because for the fan it validates why they love their favorite rock star.  On the flipside, when a company offers you a coupon for purchasing their product, you understand that they want your business.  While this does increase the chance that you will change your behavior the next time you need to purchase that particular product, it does not increase your chance of being loyal to that brand after the initial purchase.  Brands build loyalty by rewarding existing customers, not by trying to acquire new customers via incentives.  For example, if you are a long-term Dish or DirecTV customer, you may have been upset over the last few years to see some of the incentive packages that the competing brands are offering new customers to sign up with them.  Often, the packages are better and at a lower price than what existing customers have!  This tactic works for acquiring new customers but it not only does not build loyalty among existing customers, it can actually lower levels of loyalty among existing customers!

Let’s again review the Loyalty Graph.  Companies are focused on acquiring new customers, so they offer incentives to this group, trying to win their business.  The problem with this approach is that New Customers is the group that’s the largest, but that also has little to no loyalty to that particular brand.  This is especially problematic if your brand offers price-based incentives to this group, because if another brand offers a higher discount, it will probably win that customer’s business.

At the other end, rock stars are focused on connecting with their fans (brand advocates), and rewarding their existing behavior.  Rock stars don’t have to offer incentives to their fans to encourage them to generate new sales because their fans are already engaging in this behavior.  Their fans are already going out and encouraging new customers to become existing ones.

So for your brand, that means you have two ways you can attempt to acquire new customers: By marketing to them directly (and paying a lot of money to do so), or you can connect with your biggest fans and delight them, with the understanding that their efforts will lead to new customers.

If you want to build loyalty among your customers always remember: Loyalty is built by saying ‘Thank you!’ for existing behavior, not by offering coupons as incentives for new behavior.