MackCollier.com

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The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show Episode 38: Deeper Learning Via Cooking, Presidential Debates and 1980s Pro Wrestling!

Hey y’all!  Welcome to another episode of #FanDamnShow! Today I talk about deeper learning and why your fans want more intricate content that helps them learn more about the topics they love, especially the ones that relate to your products and services!

Show Notes:

1:55 – People that listen to podcasts want deeper insights into a topic, from my experience.  They want to go beyond the basic steps and want to actually learn how things work

4:15 – Consider your product or service and think about content you can create around this that dives deeper.

4:45 – Why I watch the Presidential Debates and listen to podcasts about 1980s Pro Wrestling to learn how to become a better speaker.

8:00 – Fans want deeper level content because they ARE fans.  They want deeper level content focused not on your product or service but the bigger themes and ideas that your product and services relate to.

9:40 – What is it that you can help your customers become better at?

10:10 – What are the bigger passion points that encircle your product or services?

11:20 – Podcasts can be a great way to deliver deeper level content for your fans.

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!

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5 Ways I Use Google Analytics to Improve My Blog’s Content

First, if you haven’t added Google Analytics to your blog, do so now.  It doesn’t matter if your blog is your business or nothing more than your online diary, you need to know more about the people that visit your blog.  GA is a great way to give you those insights, and it’s free.  Here’s 5 ways I use Google Analytics every day to better understand the traffic that visits my blog and to make my content strategy more effective:

1 – I compare today’s hourly traffic vs last week’s hourly traffic for the same day.  For example, on Sunday, I will bring up the traffic for the current day, set it to hourly, and compare it to the previous Sunday’s hourly traffic.  This lets me know as the day progresses how the hourly traffic levels are comparing to the previous Sunday.  Here’s what it looked like for this Sunday (blue) vs the previous Sunday (orange):

Week2WeekTrafficGA This gives me a quick and easy snapshot of how traffic did on this Sunday vs the previous Sunday.  As you can see, a very good day, hourly traffic was up almost every hour versus the previous Sunday and traffic for the day was up almost 15% and Avg Session Duration was up over 40%, another huge number.

Here’s how you can get this same view for your blog:  Click on Audience, then Overview, both on the left side of the screen.  The default view is to just show you the previous 30 days before this one.  You want to change that view so click on the Down button next to the date range on the top right of the screen.  This will open up a calendar showing you this month plus the previous two months.  Under Date Range, the previous 30 days will be highlighted.  You want to first click on TODAY’s date.  Next, click on the small box right under it that says ‘Compare to:’, and it will have a dropdown menu that you don’t want to touch for now.  Two new date range boxes will open up under the first two, but they won’t be highlighted.  You want to click on the first date box on the left, and then go back to the calendar and click the date for one week earlier.  For example, if you are doing this on a Monday, for this you would click on the previous Monday’s date.  Click on it again so that the date range you are comparing to is the previous Monday.  Then click Apply.

At first, it will be set to the default view, which is Day.  It will show you how the current day’s traffic is doing versus 7 days earlier.  If you click on Hourly, you will then see today’s traffic broken down by hours and compared to the previous Monday’s traffic on an hourly basis.  The blue dots will be for today, the orange dots will be for the previous Monday.  So you can quickly see how hourly traffic is doing today vs the same day last week.  Here’s what the settings look like for the report I created on Monday to compare traffic to the previous Monday:

WeeklyGA

It can be a bit complicated at first, but pretty easy once you get the hang of it.  As you can see, you can easily adjust the settings to compare this week to the previous week or this month to the previous month, or this year to 3 years ago.  Whatever you want.

2 – I closely examine Real Time traffic, especially right after I publish a new post.  The Real Time traffic feature in GA is a great way to get an instant snapshot of the traffic that’s currently on your blog.  For example, as soon as I publish this post, I will share it on Twitter and Facebook, probably LinkedIn as well.  I will then check with Real Time traffic, to see which, if any, of those links are immediately sending traffic to the site.  This is great way to see instantly if certain types of content resonate more or less on a particular site.  For example, if the link to this post I share on LinkedIn immediately sends traffic and the link I share on Facebook doesn’t, that could suggest that the topic of using Google Analytics is more relevant to the more business-oriented audience on LinkedIn.  Plus, examining Real Time traffic can be a great way to get early notification of a new backlink to your blog or maybe an influencer with a large network Twitter just RTed your post.  Here’s an example of what this looks like:

RealTimeGA

You can see which content is being viewed, from what sources, their location, etc.  Also, if you get in the habit of regularly checking this you will get a sense of what times of the day are better for your traffic, which also helps you decide when to publish new posts!

3 – I examine traffic by channel.  For this I go back to the week to week comparison.  Click on Acquisition, then All Traffic, then Channels.  This shows me a breakdown of my traffic by different channel types, such as Organic Search, Direct, Referral and Social.  This is very important because if you just look at your overall traffic numbers you won’t get a complete picture.  For example, let’s say this Monday’s traffic to your blog was 500 visitors, and last Monday’s traffic was 450.  So that’s a weekly gain of about 10%, which is really good.  But without looking at the traffic by channel, you may assume that each type of traffic rose by 10%, but it could be that your Organic Search traffic was up by 40% and your Direct traffic was down by 25%.  But overall traffic was up.  Still, those are big jumps in both directions for your Organic Search and Direct traffic, so it’s worth knowing that so you can keep an eye on both moving forward.

4 – I dive deeper into channel traffic and sort by Source/Medium.  This is very important because all sources of traffic are not created equally.  For example, I am writing this post at about 6PM on a Monday night.  In comparing today’s traffic vs the previous Monday’s traffic, here’s what I currently see in Channel view for Organic Search:

Organic Search

There’s about 6 hours in the day so Organic Search for today will end up being close to 1,100 visitors for the day, which will be about a 10% increase over the previous Monday, so I’m pleased with that.  But, it’s worth remembering that Organic Search isn’t just Google, it’s all Organic Search from ALL search engines.  To find out exactly how each search engine is doing vs the previous Monday, we need to click Source/Medium heading above these results.  So while overall Organic Search is currently down 14.66%, here’s how each search engine is actually doing:

Google – Down 11.9%

Yahoo – Down 5.56%

Bing – Down 58.56%

So you can see that Google and Yahoo are actually doing way better than Bing is.  Now about 90% of the Organic Search is coming from Google for me, but your numbers may vary.  If the majority of your blog’s Organic Search was coming from Bing, it would be worrisome to see your traffic from Bing down by 58%!

5 – I look at the most viewed pages week to week.  For this view I click on Behavior then Site Content then All Pages on the left side of the GA dashboard.  I do this because I want to see what content is driving visitors, but I also am looking for irregularities.  Did one page get a lot of views this week and none last week, or vice versa?  For example, when I click on All Pages it shows me the most viewed pages for today vs last Monday.  Notice something interesting I found:

MostViewedPosts

See that post on the bottom, Ford Launches the Fiesta Movement?  That’s an old post, but notice it had zero views last Monday, but has 18 this Monday!  I would like to know if GA can help me understand why this old post suddenly got a lot of views this Monday, when it usually gets none.  Does anyone know of a way to further way to drill down with Google Analytics and figure that out?

 

Those are the 5 main ways I use Google Analytics to get a better idea of the makeup of my blog traffic.  What’s your favorite way to use GA?

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How Keywords Fit Into Your Content Strategy

BrandAmbassadorSearchResultsOptimizing blog content for search engines has always been a moving target.  One constant in this evolution of how Google ranks content has been the keyword.  The rules governing how Google views keywords in posts has changed, but consistently the search giant has used keywords as one of its top signals for what a piece of content is about, and how it will rank against other forms of similar content.

Perhaps the best advice for how to stay ahead of the frequent changes Google makes to its algorithms is to write for humans, not search engines.  This means optimize your content first for humans, and if the content is useful for your readers, it will be shared and engaged with, which will signal to Google that it is useful content, and that will push it higher in the search results.

But having said that, keywords still matter.  They matter to Google, they matter to your readers, and perhaps most importantly, they matter to you.  I’ve written before about ‘owning’ or planting your flag on certain keywords.  So if you want to know what role keywords play in your optimizing your content for search, here’s the deal: It’s not about using the right keywords in your posts and content.  It’s about deciding what keywords you want to be known for and then creating useful content around those keywords.

The useful content helps establish your expertise around these topic for both your readers, and Google.  But perhaps more importantly, it gives your content strategy focus.  It also gives you direction and keeps you focused on serving YOUR audience.

Think of the 3-5 keywords that you want to be associated with your brand.  If someone were to ask you what your brand stands for or why it is unique, think about the keywords or keyword phrases you would use to describe your brand and why it matters to people.

Those are the 3-5 keywords that you want to own with your content.  This also helps bring clarity to your content strategy because now you have a better idea of the content you should be creating.  Your content flow should go through those 3-5 keywords that you are focusing on, and if you that, the search results will follow.

Here’s an example.  A few years ago while I was preparing to write my book Think Like a Rock Star, I realized that I needed to shift my content to focus more on topics like ‘brand ambassadors’ and ‘brand advocacy’.  Specifically, I wanted to work with companies that needed help in designing a brand ambassador program.  So I wanted to create content that would focus on those keywords, but that was also useful to readers, because I knew if it wasn’t useful to readers that it wouldn’t matter how many keywords were stuffed in it.

So instead of simply writing a short ‘here’s what a brand ambassador program is’ type post, I wrote a thorough post that was aimed at helping companies that were ready to commit to launching a brand ambassador program.  The result was a 1,200 word post ‘10 Things to Remember When Creating a Brand Ambassador Program‘.  Thanks to this one post, here’s how I currently rank in Google for the following search terms:

Brand ambassador program – 13

Brand ambassadors – 21

Brand ambassador – 28

That’s not bad for just one post.  A side benefit of this is that since that post was published I’ve gotten probably 100 email leads from companies that found the post by doing a search for brand ambassador programs or a similar keyword phrase. All because I focused on creating useful content that would help my audience.

So if you want to rev up your search rankings, focus on just a few keywords that are core to your business, say 3-5, and focus on relentlessly creating useful content around those keywords.  Not promotional content, that’s what most businesses do and that’s why they don’t tend to rank well for those keywords.  But instead you want to create content that helps your audience with its current business problems.  Do that, and the search rankings will follow.

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The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show Episode 37: Creating Content That Creates Cash

Welcome to the 37th episode of #FanDamnShow!  Today I talk about a topic that a lot of companies are struggling with:  How to sell products and services via social media, especially when no one knows who you are.  I delve into that in this episode as well as how to marry your sales pitch to content that’s relevant to your audience, so you gain their attention and as a result, increase the chance of actually selling to them!

Here’s the Show Notes:

1:50 – Creating content that sells if no one knows who you are

4:05 – How to create a more effective sales pitch if you are offering services

7:00 – How to create a more effective sales pitch if you are selling products

10:00 – Focus on creating content that covers the larger context that your product lives within in the customer’s mind

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!

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My Blog Traffic and Podcast Audience Results For August

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 August:

Blog – At least 80,000 visitors

Podcast – At least 4,000 downloads

Blog Traffic Results For August

My blog traffic in August was 36,154 visitors versus 38,125 visitors in July.  That’s a decrease of 5.17%.  I had 10 new posts in August, which is about where I wanted to be with 2-3 new posts each week.

Here’s how each source of traffic did in August vs July:

Search – Down 5.8%

Direct – Up 13.42%

Referral – Down 17.9%

Social – Down 32.83%

Other – Up 7.75%

Email – Down 72.87%

Before I got into the numbers any deeper, I was interested to see if some of the decline could simply be a matter of people spending more time on vacation in August vs July.  So I decided to run the same numbers for August of 2014 vs July of 2014.  I saw that overall traffic actually increased in August over July of 2014 by 8%.  So it appears the decline is more likely a nagging side affect of the issue I’ve been facing for most of this year with search traffic going down.

I dove deeper into the search traffic for the entire year, and while the decline is steady with search traffic from Google, it’s less pronounced with Yahoo, and search traffic from Bing has more or less gone sideways, with June being the best month so far this year for traffic from Bing.  So it appears this is more a Google search issue than a search issue as a whole.  Then again since Google accounts for well over 90% of my search traffic, it kinda IS a search issue!

Earlier this month I went into Google Webmaster Tools and made a couple of tweaks to see if those would have any impact on search traffic.  I have noticed that so far this week, search traffic seems to be up slightly, but it’s really too soon to tell if the bump is likely coming from the changes I made.  I’ll keep an eye on it and if search traffic continues to increase, it will be a good sign that my tweaking worked, and I’ll talk more about what I did next month.

Podcast Numbers and Overview for August

The goal for August was at least 4,000 downloads of the podcast, and The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show actually had 5,330 downloads in August. This was up sharply from July and is the best month ever for the podcast.  Here’s the number of daily downloads so far this year:

PodcastDLsJan-Aug

 

As you can see, for the year the average daily download is right at 100.  A far cry from this time last year when there were only 128 downloads in the entire MONTH of August 2014!  I’m thrilled with the growth of the podcast but at the same time know it will hard to hit the monthly download goals for the rest of the year.

Speaking of which, here’s the blog audience and podcast download goals for September:

Blog Traffic – At least 85,000 visitors

Podcast Downloads – At least 5,000

This are the goals I set at the start of the year.  The blog’s goal will need a miracle to hit, but the 5,000 download number was hit in August so I just need to do that again in September to hit my goal for downloads.  I’ll check back in next month and let you know how I did!

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SEC Social Media Fan Experience: The Alabama Crimson Tide and The Ole Miss Rebels

It’s GAME DAY, y’all!  College football begins in earnest tonight, and both the South Carolina Gamecocks and Vanderbilt Commodores will be in action from the SEC tonight.  This is my favorite time of the year, the weather is cooler and football is in the air, I love it!  Today we are going to wrap up this series with a look at how the final two SEC teams; The Alabama Crimson Tide and The Ole Miss Rebels are using social media to connect with their football fans, and maybe recruits as well.

How The Alabama Crimson Tide Uses Social Media to Connect With Its Football Fans and Recruits

As with most SEC schools, Alabama focuses most of it content delivery via the Big Three of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.  On Facebook and Twitter, there’s a good mix of content from Fall camp, as well as visuals designed to program the larger football program, etc.  One thing I noticed was that Alabama was using social media to promote a ‘flash sale’ of tickets to some of its game at a special low price for only 4 days.  Smart thinking, and Alabama also uses Facebook and Twitter to push its fans back to its main RollTide.com site for practice updates and information.

But its on Instagram where Alabama really shines.  The football program is an absolute beast on IG, they have the perfect mix of promotional content, but also giving you photos AND videos from backstage at the program and fall camp:

The Crimson Tide putting in some work today at the start of practice #RollTide

A photo posted by Alabama Football (@alabamafbl) on

In fact it was the fan reaction online to this short video posted on IG during the Summer that prompted me to do this series:

Commitment takes no days off. #HuntFor16 #BuiltByBama #RollTide A video posted by Crimson Tide Football (@crimsontide_fb) on


Fans LOVE this type of content that goes behind the scenes and gives them a Backstage Pass.  Alabama is the template for how every college football program should be using Instagram to connect with its fans.  They pump out an insane amount of content, both in visual and video form, and they cover all the bases.  Promotional, behind-the-scenes, spotlighting accomplishments of key players both past and present.  They do it all, the only quibble I have with Alabama’s IG usage is that they have two different accounts, this one that’s billed as the official account of Alabama football, and then this one that’s run by the Alabama football staff.  Not sure why they have two different accounts, and amazingly, they post different content to each.  Still, Alabama’s IG usage is amazing, in fact it’s so good it makes me wonder if in another year or two Instagram could become more important to teams like Alabama than even Facebook or Twitter, as the site becomes more mainstream.

But it turns out that Alabama has one more social media trick up its sleeve.  Remember that on Tuesday I mentioned that September 1st was the beginning of the period where schools could reach out directly to recruits in the 2017 class via email and DMs on Twitter?  Bama did exactly that on Tuesday, sending recruits they are targeting in the 2017 custom graphics like this one:

Remember when I mentioned that schools can leverage social media to connect with fans AND recruits? This is a perfect example of how Alabama is doing the latter.  Alabama DMed these ‘interest cards’ to 2017 recruits starting on Tuesday.  It’s a great tool to let recruits know you’re interested and to make them feel good about playing for your school.  Click the recruit’s tweets above and you’ll see he got similar DMs from other schools like Tennessee and Florida State.

Overall, I’m impressed with Alabama’s social media usage.  It’s solid on Facebook and Twitter, but they really shine on Instagram.  BTW no Periscope for the Crimson Tide, it seems.  If they had a killer Periscope and YouTube presence, they would clearly be the class of the SEC when it comes to social media.

How The Ole Miss Rebels Use Social Media to Connect With Their Football Fans And Recruits

The first thing I notice is that Ole Miss football has an account on Facebook and Twitter….but no dedicated Instagram account?  Wow that’s surprising, the athletics department as a whole has an IG account, but I couldn’t find one for just the football program.  As this series has developed, we’ve learned that most every SEC team is making great use of Instagram to create visual and video content that connects with fans.  I’ve come to expect it and Ole Miss not having an IG account for the football program really seems like a fumble.  They are making extensive use of Facebook and Twitter, but the sparse content on IG really puts their overall social media efforts in a weaker light.

The Rebels also have a main YouTube account for the athletics department.  One thing I did notice is apparently the Rebels last year and this year are producing a video series chronicling their football season.  I thought this was pretty interesting, here’s what appears to be the first episode, covering Fall Camp:

Best single piece of content that any SEC school has created for its fans.  I’m blown away by this video and if I were an Ole Miss fan I would so excited about this series!  The quality is on point, this looks like a series that would be produced by ESPN or The SEC Network.  As disappointed as I was with the Rebels lack of a solid IG presence, I’m far more impressed with this content, and am honestly surprised that more teams aren’t creating long-form video content like this.  Well done, Ole Miss, well done.

 

So that concludes my look at how each SEC program is using social media to connect with its football fans and recruits.  This series has been SO much fun that I’m not ready to end it.  I think I’ll give away some awards….

Best Overall Social Media Usage: The Texas A&M Aggies.  Solid from top to bottom, but the fact that the Aggies have been on Periscope since the Spring really puts them over the top, I give them major early-adopter points for that.  Honorable mentions go to Alabama and Miss State.

Best Single Piece of Content For Football Fans: The Season – Ole Miss Football Fall Camp 2015.  Mentioned it above, just blown away with the quality, it gives fans a recap of the 2014 season plus about 15 minutes of behind-the-scenes coverage of Fall camp, even lets you go inside a football staff meeting.  Excellence.

Best Single Piece of Content For Football Recruits: Dreams by the Georgia Bulldogs.  This video is spectacular, you will want to lace up your sneakers and play for the Georgia Bulldogs after watching this.

Best Facebook Usage: The Alabama Crimson Tide.  Several SEC teams do a pretty good job on Facebook, including Alabama.  But at the end of the day the Crimson Tide has something that no other SEC program comes close to matching: Over 1 Million fans on Facebook.

Best Instagram Usage: The Alabama Crimson Tide.  Not only does the Crimson Tide produce a ton of content on IG, they cover all the bases; a mix of video and visual content.  They focus on promoting ticket sales, on covering Fall Camp, and spotlighting current as well as former players in the NFL and even past legends.  This is the blueprint for how a college football program should use IG to connect with its fans.

Best Twitter Usage: The Arkansas Razorbacks.  The Hawgs not only tweet up a storm on Twitter, they’ve also been known to live-tweet football press conferences, which I think is a brilliant idea that I’m shocked other teams haven’t thought of doing this.

Best Periscope Usage: The Texas A&M Aggies.  The odds are your favorite program isn’t even on Periscope yet, as only a handful of the SEC teams are so far.  When you think about that, understand that the Aggies were Periscoping during their Spring Scrimmage back in April!  That’s being an early adopter!

 

I hope you had as much fun reading this series as I did writing it!  If you want to catch on the entire series, here’s each entry:

July 30th: The Florida Gators and The Vanderbilt Commodores

August 6th: The Tennessee Volunteers and The South Carolina Gamecocks

August 13th: The LSU Tigers and The Miss State Bulldogs

August 20th: The Texas A&M Aggies and The Kentucky Wildcats

August 27th: The Georgia Bulldogs and The Missouri Tigers

September 1st: The Auburn Tigers and The Arkansas Razorbacks

Today: The Alabama Crimson Tide and The Ole Miss Rebels

 

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SEC Social Media Fan Experience: The Auburn Tigers and Arkansas Razorbacks

It’s game week, y’all!  Welcome to the 6th installment in the SEC Social Media Fan Experience series!  This week we will be wrapping up the series with today’s look at how Auburn and Arkansas are using social media to connect with their football fans and recruits, and on Thursday we’ll do the same for The Alabama Crimson Tide and the Ole Miss Rebels.

This is actually a huge day for SEC programs and their social media efforts.  September 1st is the first day that the NCAA allows schools to contact recruits for the 2017 class directly via Direct Messages on Twitter.  It’s still too early to judge how teams will be using Twitter to reach out directly to recruits since the only way we’ll know is if recruits share that info as schools aren’t allowed by NCAA rules to discuss recruits by name.

How the Auburn Tigers Use Social Media to Connect With Their Football Fans and Recruits

Here’s the complete list of social media channels and accounts for Auburn.  I appreciate the fact that Auburn has a very clear-cut and organized listing of all their accounts in one place.  This is the easiest to navigate and cleanest list I’ve seen so far from any of the SEC teams in this series.  There is a Facebook, Twitter and Instagram account of the football program, and Auburn lists NINE different social media accounts for the athletic department as a whole.  I also noticed that when you click on the link for Auburn’s Periscope account, it takes you to this page that explains what Periscope is and how to use it.  Smart thinking, because most fans have never heard of Periscope so it’s a nice touch to educate them.

As with most SEC teams, Auburn’s football program is making use of the Big Three: Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to distribute content for fans.  As I mentioned above, Auburn also has a Periscope account, but they are making very sparse use of it, and apparently aren’t sharing any scopes from Fall camp, which is a bit disappointing.  I can understand not wanting to share video from actual practices, but other SEC programs like Miss State and Tennessee are regularly utilizing Periscope to share press conferences and interviews from coaches after practice.  This is something Auburn could be doing as well.

On Instagram, Auburn has been sharing some photos from Fall camp, about one a day, but no videos.  However, the one thing Auburn is doing very well is using its social media accounts to link to content on its main website, www.auburntigers.com.  Here’s a couple of examples from Facebook and Twitter:

AuburnFBNote that Auburn is using different content on both Facebook and Twitter to push fans back to the same link on their website.  Auburn is probably doing the best job of any of the SEC programs so far when it comes to linking back to the content on their website.  This might not seem like a big deal but it really is, Auburn is driving engaged traffic back to its website with each of these updates.  They are leveraging social media accounts to build up online properties they own, which is what you should be doing as well. How the Arkansas Razorbacks Are Using Social Media to Connect With Their Football Fans and Recruits Arkansas has a pretty sparse collection of social media accounts, typically sticking to the Big Three for each sport.  The football program has the familiar accounts on Facebook(If anyone from Arkansas’ SM team reads this, you have a bad URL linked for the FB account, need to edit that), Twitter and Instagram. While the content frequency to the Facebook and Instagram accounts are a bit light, Arkansas is tweeting up a storm on Twitter: 

One thing I noticed that Arkansas has been doing is live-tweeting press conferences from the football coaches! Of course, what a great idea!  The Hawgs are also sharing some backstage content about the weight program, etc, but the live-tweeting really caught my eye and it’s a great way to build a following on Twitter.  Also, for those SEC teams that aren’t interested in sharing content via Instagram or Periscope from practices, live-tweeting PCs is a great idea as it gives you complete control over what is and is not shared.

The rest of Arkansas’ social media usage is pretty straightforward.  But like Auburn, they are doing a nice job of leveraging social media to drive traffic back to their www.arkansasrazorbacks.com website.  Yet they still find time for some fine hawg-callin’…

ArkansasFB

So far in this series, I think top-to-bottom, Texas A&M is doing the best job of leveraging social media to connect with its fans, with Miss State and Tennessee close behind.  More specifically, I think Miss State is doing the best with video content, Arkansas is the best on Twitter, Georgia does the best job in using social media to connect directly with recruits, and Auburn is probably the best in using social media to drive traffic back to its main website.  But we still have two teams left to examine on Thursday, and I have a feeling my Crimson Tide may have something to say about which team uses social media the best.

Here’s the complete series so far if you want to catch up:

July 30th: The Florida Gators and The Vanderbilt Commodores

August 6th: The Tennessee Volunteers and The South Carolina Gamecocks

August 13th: The LSU Tigers and The Miss State Bulldogs

August 20th: The Texas A&M Aggies and The Kentucky Wildcats

August 27th: The Georgia Bulldogs and The Missouri Tigers

Today: The Auburn Tigers and The Arkansas Razorbacks

Thursday: The Alabama Crimson Tide and The Ole Miss Rebels

 

See y’all on Thursday for the end of this series and the kickoff to the college football season!

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SEC Social Media Fan Experience: The Georgia Bulldogs and Missouri Tigers

Welcome back to the 5th week of the SEC Social Media Fan Experience.  Each week leading up to the start of the college football season, I’ll be looking at how the SEC teams are leveraging social media to connect with their fans.  After today we’ll have 2 more installments coming next Tuesday and Thursday, as the season starts that night.  You can catch up on former entries in the SEC Social Media Fan Experience here.

Here’s the schedule for the series:

July 30th: The Florida Gators and The Vanderbilt Commodores

August 6th: The Tennessee Volunteers and The South Carolina Gamecocks

August 13th: The LSU Tigers and The Miss State Bulldogs

August 20th: The Texas A&M Aggies and The Kentucky Wildcats

Today: The Georgia Bulldogs and The Missouri Tigers

September 1st: The Auburn Tigers and The Arkansas Razorbacks

September 3rd: The Alabama Crimson Tide and The Ole Miss Rebels

How The Georgia Bulldogs Use Social Media to Connect With Their Football FansRecruits

As I’ve been going through the SEC Social Media Fan Experience series, I’ve spent a lot of time talking about how each team does with sharing behind the scenes content from its Fall camp.  Fans love these videos as it gives them a sense of how practices are run, which players are doing well in practice, etc.  So I was a bit surprised when I checked the Facebook, Twitter and Instagram channels for Georgia Football and found almost no content from Fall camp.  No videos, no recaps, nothing.

So is this an example of Georgia really dropping the ball when it comes to giving fans the content they want?  Maybe….or maybe not.  While Georgia isn’t sharing very much content from their Fall camp, they are also sharing a lot of content devoted to how former Georgia players are doing in the NFL.  Also, I kept seeing the phrase ‘Commit to the G’ sprinkled throughout the content Georgia was sharing.

Then I came across this awesome video on Georgia’s Vimeo channel:

Now Georgia’s content focus makes a lot more sense.  Georgia isn’t targeting fans with its content, the Bulldogs are trying to connect with recruits.  Remember when I started this series I said that social media was a great way for college football programs to connect with both fans AND recruits.  Georgia is the first SEC schools in this series that’s focused the majority of its social media content on connecting with recruits instead of fans. BTW note that one of the last shots in the above video is Todd Gurley posing with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell during this year’s NFL draft.  That’s no accident, the video is designed to show recruits how amazing it is to play in Athens, and that playing for Georgia will also help them go on to play in the NFL.

This goes to the heart of what all good social media strategies are about.  Last week we looked at how Texas A&M is doing an amazing job of leveraging social media to connect with its fans through Instagram, Periscoping practices, even a kickass smartphone app that pulls all their social media content together in one place.  It’s easy to look at what Texas A&M is doing with video, photos, livestreaming, and then look at what Georgia is doing and think the Bulldogs are behind the Aggies.

But you have to remember: Georgia is creating content that helps it reach its unique goals for social media.  Texas A&M is trying to connect directly with its fans, while Georgia is trying to connect directly with recruits.  Different goals which means a different approach to content creation and distribution.  Both programs are doing a great job of creating content that connects with their desired audience.

 

How The Missouri Tigers Use Social Media to Connect With Their Football Fans  

Missouri’s social media efforts seem to be a bit lax, to be honest.  And it’s also a bit difficult to find the football program’s social media accounts, when I clicked on the main site’s Social Media section, I was pointed to the Facebook page for the Tigers’ football program, and the athletic department’s Twitter account.  Some Googling led me to an Instagram account for the football program as well as a YouTube account(which hasn’t posted new content in 10 months) and one for Twitter.  If I had looked at Missouri’s football social media accounts at the start of this series I probably wouldn’t with such a critical eye, but after seeing how well some of the other SEC programs are leveraging social media to connect with football fans, what Missouri is and is not doing stands out.

Yet the Tigers do seem to hit most of the high points. There’s a good mix of fan-oriented content, especially content that highlights players and markers that let fans know how close the season is to starting.  Also, one thing Missouri is doing that I like is they are leveraging Twitter and Facebook to drive fans back to their website for in-depth practice reports, as you see here:


Maybe there’s a Periscope channel I just missed or something similar, but I’d like to see more content from Fall camp from Missouri’s channels.  Although, it may be a conscious choice by Coach Pinkel not to share content from Fall camp.  Many coaches are very protective of sharing what happens during fall practices (and rightly so).  In fact, I would wager that Georgia is also purposely not sharing content from Fall camp, as Coach Richt is notorious for limiting exposure to the facility and practices during the Fall.  In this case it can be a trade-off between giving your fans the content they want, and potentially giving opponents information about your team.  But with the level of control that each program has over the content it creates, I think they can edit it down so they share content from practice that doesn’t give away their secrets, but does excite their fans for the upcoming season.

So that’s it for this entry in the SEC Social Media Fan Experience.  We are down to our final week, next Tuesday we’ll cover how the Auburn Tigers and Arkansas Razorbacks are using social media to connect with their football fans (or maybe football recruits!).  See you then!

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Patagonia’s Marketing Plan to Keep You From Buying Their Products

For Black Friday in 2011, Patagonia ran an interesting ‘Don’t Buy This Jacket’ ad in the New York Times.  The ad kicked off a campaign by Patagonia to attack ‘consumerism’ head-on, and the brand asked its customers to strongly consider whether or not it was necessary to buy a new piece of clothing, or if an existing article they already owned was still useful enough.  Additionally, Patagonia wanted customers to think about the idea of owning things that have a purpose versus just owning something because you wanted it.

Surprisingly, the campaign actually sparked sales growth for the brand, to the tune of a whopping 33% increase in 2012.  The campaign is part of a consistent message that Patagonia has delivered to its customers:    Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.

Patagonia’s marketing works because it’s not focused on its products, but rather the ideals and beliefs that the company holds that its customers identify with.  I’ve written repeatedly about Patagonia’s marketing efforts and even included the brand as a prominent case study in Think Like a Rock Star.

And keep in mind when you read this that I don’t own a stitch of Patagonia clothing.  I just recognize amazing marketing when I see it, and want to celebrate it as such.

Another initiative Patagonia pushes is its Worn Wear program.  Patagonia will take your damaged clothing, and for a ‘reasonable’ fee, repair it for you.  The idea here is to extend the life of an existing garment versus buying a new one.

But this year, Patagonia is kicking it up another notch, and taking the Worn Wear program on the road, literally.  Throughout the year, a specially built Worn Wear wagon has been making its way across the country.  This vehicle is making stops and not only repairing Patagonia clothing for free, but other brands as well.  Additionally, Patagonia is teaching customers at every stop how to repair their own garments.

And if all this hasn’t thoroughly impressed the hell out of you, Patagonia has one more trick up its brand advocacy sleeve.  It has partnered with DIY repair site IFixIt to create a series of custom manuals and even a section for asking questions on how to repair and care for individual garments.

So this begs the question: If such customer-centric marketing and business processes work so well, why aren’t more companies copying what Patagonia is doing? There’s a couple of very important distinctions with Patagonia:

1 – Patagonia’s founder, Yvon Chouinard, is an avid outdoorsman and very concerned about the environment.  That means there is literally buy-in from the top down for Patagonia’s marketing approach to focus on the passions of the customers over the products.  Because Patagonia’s founder shares the same passions as his brand’s customers.

2 – Patagonia is a private company.  In this PBS Newshour feature on Patagonia, PBS played a snippet of a talk that Chouinard gave where he explained that “The problem with a lot of public companies is that they’re forced to grow 15 percent a year. They’re forced to show profits every quarter.”  Chouinard’s implication is that by being private, Patagonia can pursue a marketing strategy that perhaps would be far more difficult or even unattainable if the company was public.

Regardless, the idea of focusing your marketing communications on the larger context that your brand lives in, works.  Apple does it.  Red Bull does it.  Patagonia does it.  More companies should be doing it.

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SEC Social Media Fan Experience: The Texas A&M Aggies and The Kentucky Wildcats

Welcome back to the 4th week of the SEC Social Media Fan Experience.  Each week leading up to the start of the college football season, I’ll be looking at how the SEC teams are leveraging social media to connect with their fans.  After today we’ll be over halfway through the SEC, with 2 more installments coming next Thursday, and then we’ll wrap up the SEC on September 1st and 3rd, as the season starts that night.  You can catch up on former entries in the SEC Social Media Fan Experience here.

Here’s the schedule for the series:

July 30th: The Florida Gators and The Vanderbilt Commodores

August 6th: The Tennessee Volunteers and The South Carolina Gamecocks

August 13th: The LSU Tigers and The Miss State Bulldogs

Today: The Texas A&M Aggies and The Kentucky Wildcats

August 27th: The Georgia Bulldogs and The Missouri Tigers

September 1st: The Auburn Tigers and The Arkansas Razorbacks

September 3rd: The Alabama Crimson Tide and The Ole Miss Rebels

How The Texas A&M Aggies Use Social Media to Connect With Their Football Fans

The Aggies, like most other SEC teams, has dedicated football social media accounts on The Big Three; Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.  As we’ve been discussing, visual content: photos and videos, are a big hit with SEC fans, and most teams are smartly using Instagram to distribute visual content, then seeding that content through other main channels like Facebook and Twitter.  And the Aggies also have a YouTube account for the football program that’s giving a lot of video content around Fall camp, scrimmages, interviews with coaches, etc.  Fall camp is tailor made for diehard fans.  The average football fan may only follow his or her favorite team on Saturdays when they play, maybe they’ll read a few updates in the paper, but that’s about it.  But true Aggie fans want more access.  They want to delve into Fall camp, they want content that gives them daily updates on how each practice goes, which players are doing well, etc.  So the Aggies are doing a great job of giving their hardcore fans that Backstage Pass they want.

Now so far, there’s nothing earth-shattering about the social media mix that Texas A&M is utilizing.  It’s smart, but it’s also expected.  But the Aggies aren’t done.  Not only are they active on Periscope, it turns out the Aggies have been utilizing Periscope since at least March.  I would think that would have to make Texas A&M one of the first football programs in the country to utilize Periscope, and since they are in Texas I have to wonder if their social team found out about Periscope at SXSW.

Also, Texas A&M has a pretty cool smartphone app that does a nice job of being a sort of content dashboard for football fans:

AggiesApp

This is perfect for an Aggie fan as you have not only news but the latest social media content from Texas A&M right on your smartphone.  I do wish the app integrated Texas A&M’s Periscope feed, but that may not be possible with a smartphone app since Periscope is live-streamed content with a 24-hour lifespan.

But from a marketing/brand advocacy standpoint, consider this: What if your company had a smartphone app like this for your Brand Ambassador Program?  Perhaps the functionality could include options for you to create and share content directly with the brand, and also have options to contact the brand directly.  It would be possible to snap a photo of something happening in a retail location (good or bad) and share it directly with your brand contact.  Or your fans could even do an audio interview with a customer on the fly, then send you that video or audio content.  The possibilities are endless and a smartphone app for your brand ambassadors could be a wonderful idea.  Speaking of which, if you are involved in a brand ambassador program and the brand you work with utilizes a smartphone app for its ambassadors, please mention it in the comments!

Overall, I like what Texas A&M is doing with social media, they have a nice mix of content across several channels and I’m very impressed that they have been using Periscope for so long.  Plus the Aggie smartphone app is pretty cool, although to be fair I believe a few other SEC teams have similar apps.  Still, I think Texas A&M is probably making the best use of social media to give the fans the content they want than any of the SEC schools I’ve profiled so far, just ahead of Miss State and Tennessee.

How The Kentucky Wildcats Use Social Media to Connect With Their Football Fans

Once again, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube are the main social media workhorses for distributing content to fans.  One of the almost disadvantages that a team like UK has now that we’re halfway through examining how the SEC teams use social media, is that by now I’m not looking at how each team uses social media as much as I’m looking for how they are using social media better than the other schools.  I’m looking for something that stands out, like with A&M it was the long history of Periscope usage and the smartphone app.  Given that, I’m not seeing a lot of ‘wow’ in UK’s social media efforts for its football program.  Which isn’t a bad thing, the Wildcats seem to be utilizing all the main channels which is what you want to see.  I did think the Wildcats Instagram content was a bit weak, I would have liked to have seen a few more videos and photos that highlighted individual star players.  For reference, I thought Miss State has an amazing IG page.

One thing that I thought was interesting is that UK promotes Head Coach Mark Stoops as its Twitter account for the football program.  Interesting approach to have the head coach be the face of the football program on Twitter, but it does make some sense.  Also, I noticed on Facebook that UK was sharing content and pointing fans back to its main website for detailed practice updates.  I like this approach, South Carolina does the same thing.  It’s always a good idea to move fans off of social media channels you don’t own and point them back to site that your school DOES own.

Also, UK posts video updates to YouTube on a regular basis, I think this is smart as well.  While Periscope is the hot new tool and likely more popular with younger fans, it is live-streaming, which means it’s gone after 24 hours.  YouTube videos stay up, so it makes sense to utilize both as well as Instagram for video content.

So that’s it for this week’s look at how the Wildcats and the Aggies are leveraging social media to deliver content to their fans.  We’re getting closer to the end of this series, and closer to the start of the college football season!  Next Thursday we’ll wrap up the Eastern Division with a stop in Athens to see how the Georgia Bulldogs are using social media to connect with their fans, then swing west to Columbia, Missouri, for a closer look at the Missouri Tigers’ social media efforts.  See you then!