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SEC Social Media Fan Experience: The Tennessee Volunteers and South Carolina Gamecocks

Every week through the start of the college football season on September 5th, I will be profiling how SEC teams are leveraging social media channels to connect with its fans.  Last week I looked at how the Florida Gators and Vanderbilt Commodores are using social media, this week I’ll show you how the Tennessee Volunteers and South Carolina Gamecocks are leveraging social media to connect with its fans.

How The Tennessee Volunteers Use Social Media to Connect With Their Football Fans

When looking at each SEC team, I start by seeing how many social media accounts each team has that are dedicated to just the football program, versus ones that are for the athletic program as a whole.  Tennessee has dedicated football accounts on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. It looks like these three platforms are going to be very popular with SEC schools as all three are great channels to share visual and video content that will be popular with fans.  Plus, the content itself can remind SEC fans of the calendar:

As I’m going through this series, I’ve decided to not look ahead on what the other SEC schools are doing.  This is purposeful because as I’m doing the series I am going to comment on what I’d like to see the remaining schools do with their social media efforts.  For example, last week I mentioned that moving forward, I was going to be paying close attention to whether or not the remaining SEC programs gave fans a backstage pass via its social media channels.  One way to do this would be to give fans access to Fall camps, which are starting right about now.  I was delighted to see that Tennessee is doing exactly this, by leveraging Periscope to give fans special access to the Vols’ Fall camp. IMG_0572 LOVE this!  Looks like the Vols are going to use Periscope to give fans coverage of Fall camp as well as the head coach’s press conferences after each practice.  The bar has been raised, if the other SEC schools aren’t doing something very similar to this, they should be. Tennessee is doing a great job of creating photos from Fall camp, and then using those photos on multiple channels.  Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, even using the photos via Exposure, which is a service I hadn’t heard of before this.  So kudos to the Vols for understanding how important visual content is to its fans!

Not a lot of video content (where are the hype videos?), but there’s such a feast of photos being created by the Tennessee social media accounts that it’s hard to quibble.  The Vols are doing a great job of leveraging Fall camp as a content stream for its social media platforms.  As we continue through the series it will be interesting to see if the other SEC teams can match or exceed what Tennessee is doing.

How the South Carolina Gamecocks Use Social Media to Connect With Their Football Fans

Now let’s venture to the Palmetto state and look at how the SC Gamecocks are using social media.  South Carolina has a dedicated Twitter and Instagram account for the football program according to its main site here.

South Carolina is creating a lot of photos from Fall camp just like Tennessee did, but I noticed they are also creating video content from Fall camp such as this video posted on Instagram:

29 days til kickoff! Day 2 of practice in the books, full recap on GamecocksOnline.com. #SCCamp15 #HereSC #Gamecocks

A video posted by Gamecock Football (@gamecockfb) on

Also, I noticed something interesting with this tweet, see if you notice what I did:

They are using the same video that was posted on Instagram, so they are re-sharing content among multiple channels.  But what I love about this tweet is notice they add a call to action that asks fans to go back to GamecocksOnline.com for the full recap.  I *love* that because they are leveraging social media to move traffic off Twitter back to their website.  This doesn’t seem like a big deal, but it is.  Once SC moves fans back to its website, then they can sell them merchandise and tickets.  Anytime you move traffic from sites you don’t own to sites you do, that’s a win and you can’t do that without that simple call to action.

South Carolina also has uploaded a ton of videos devoted to coverage of Fall camp from its main YouTube channel for its athletics programs.  These are great and easily shared via other channels like Twitter and Facebook.  You can see all the social media accounts related to the South Carolina athletic programs here.  Also notice that 3 of the football coaches have their own Twitter accounts listed, but unfortunately that doesn’t include the Ol’ Ball Coach, Steve Spurrier.

Even though South Carolina only has a Twitter and Instagram account dedicated to its football program, they are creating both visual and video content from Fall camp at a pretty healthy clip.  Again, this is ‘behind the scenes’ or backstage content that fans love.  I also love that they are sprinkling in calls to action to move fans back to GamecockOnline.com.  Very smart.

So that’s this week’s look at how the Tennessee Volunteers and South Carolina are leveraging social media to connect with its fans.  Last week we looked at Florida and Vandy, so that means we’ve covered 4 teams from the SEC’s Eastern division so far.  Next week we’ll move out West, and look at how the LSU Bengal Tigers and the Mississippi State Bulldogs are using social media to connect with their fans.  See you next Thursday!

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How Much Money Should You Spend On Your Business Blog?

BlogMouse-300x225The topic of #Blogchat last Sunday was “If You Could Spend $500 on Making Your Blog Better, What Would You Buy?”  It brought about an interesting discussion and here’s the transcript.  I wanted to add my thoughts because anything related to money and social media is a topic that a lot of companies have questions about.

First, let’s tier purchases that your business could make on improving its blog:

The Essentials These are the items you should invest in from launch.

1 – Dedicated/Upgraded hosting.  If you are running on WordPress, go with the self-hosted version and pick dedicated hosting.  Your experience will be more seamless, your site should run faster, and updates will be done automagically.  Many companies are now offering dedicated WordPress hosting, and you can typically get it for anywhere from $15-$100 a month, with price being mostly a function of number of monthly visitors you will have.  For many blogs, $15-25 a month will get it done.  I use GoDaddy’s dedicated WordPress hosting and its $20 a month and this site gets around 40,000 visitors a month.

2 – Sucuri Security.  They are currently offering complete malware protection and removal, plus firewall for $199 a year.  I went with them in March of 2013 to deal with a malware issue that had all but crippled this blog.  It took a while to get cleaned out but once they did I haven’t had a single problem with security on the blog.  Trust me, the money is worth it just for the piece of mind.

3 – A Premium Blog Theme.  Premium themes give you more flexibility in the design and functionality of your blog.  A custom-built blog can easily cost $5,000-$10,000, so this can be a nice compromise.  This site runs on Thesis, which is great if you are comfortable with coding, CSS and love tinkering with code.  It can be a bear for the novice, though.  There are dozens of premium themes to consider, here’s a nice list.  Most range in price from $50-75 for a one time fee.

So the total price for the Essentials is going to be around $50-75 for the theme, and a monthly fee of $35 or so for the dedicated hosting and Sucuri.  That will give you a nice foundation for your blog and for most businesses, that will be all you’ll ever need on the design/backend.

Now let’s look at the second tier:

Upping Your Content Creation/Strategy Game  

1 – Audio/Video equipment.  As more businesses are moving blog management in-house, it pays to start investing in the equipment that will help you more easily create content.  Specifically, you’re talking a camera for shooting pictures and video, and a microphone for recording audio such as interviews and podcasts.  Now if you aren’t interested in recording video, and just want to shoot pictures, if your bloggers have newer smartphones, the cameras on those will probably be fine for snapping shots as they are out and about that can later be used with posts.  But if you’re wanting to shoot video, it makes sense to invest in a decent camera and then you can not only shoot video, but take better pictures as well.

Next, if you want to do a podcast or create audio (without video), then you need a decent microphone.  The microphone I use for The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show is the Rode Podcaster USB mic.  It’s an excellent mic and many of the top podcasters use it, such as Kerry O’Shea Gorgone on the Marketing Smarts Podcast.  Its a dynamic mic, which means it picks up the person talking directly into the mic and tends to not pick up as much background noise as a condenser mic.  A lot of the less expensive mics you’ll find are condenser mics, and these can work fine, if you are recording in a very controlled environment with little background noise.  But if you are going to be recording in an environment where other people will be, go with the dynamic.  Plus, I believe the sound quality is better.  The Rode I purchased came from Amazon as part of a podcasting kit for $350.  If you want to just get the mic, it is usually around $200, plus you’ll need at least a desk stand for it, which you can get for under $20. Plus it has a 10-year warranty!

2 – Attending Conferences/Webinars.  These are a great way to get tips and ideas for content creation and strategy.  Of course, prices vary widely, quality webinars you can view over the internet are typically anywhere from $50-$150, whereas total expenses for a conference trip could top $2,000.00.  The big advantage to attending a conference is that you get to talk to other attendees that are having the same issues you are, so it can really help you improve your own efforts by comparing notes with others.

3 – Blog/Content Marketing Strategy Audit.  A professional Blog/Content Marketing Strategy Audit is a great way to take your blogging and content marketing efforts to the next level.  It gives your blogging efforts clarity and it always helps to bring in an outside source to give a second opinion and to potentially catch opportunities that you may be missing.  It’s definitely an investment but the investment should also help you bring clarity to the effectiveness of your blog and how it benefits your business.

 

All of these options should be viewed as investments in your business blog.  As such, you should consider the expense, and then consider what benefits your business will gain from that expense to decide if the investment is worth the money.

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My Blog Traffic and Podcast Audience Results For July

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 July:

Blog – At least 75,000 visitors

Podcast – At least 3,000 downloads

Blog Traffic Results For July

My blog traffic in July was 38,125 visitors, averaging 1,229 visitors a day.  In June, the blog’s traffic was 40,721, averaging 1,357 a day.  So an overall decrease of 6%.  This is mostly due to the fact that I only posted 9 posts last month, and only 3 of those were new, original posts that weren’t associated with #Blogchat or #FanDamnShow or this update.  The goal is to have at least 2 such posts a week, so I missed that goal by 5 posts.  Writing those additional posts would have probably given me a slight traffic increase over the previous month.

Here’s how each category of traffic did in July vs June:

Search traffic – Down 1.05%

Direct traffic – Down 5.13%

Referral – Up 6.71%

Social – Down 37.08%

Other – Up 36.87%

Email – Down 87.59%

 

A mostly mixed bag but I am pleased that Search traffic was barely down, and Referral traffic was up for the 3rd month in a row.  Social being down was in large part due to my writing fewer posts last month.  Plus I think some of the overall decline in traffic could be due to blog readership falling a bit in the Summer.  It will be interesting to see how August does vs July.

One thing I haven’t really talked about so far with this series is the value of new content you create and the impact that new posts can have on your blog.  Here’s the Top 10 most viewed pages on this blog for July (according to Google Analytics):

BlogJuly

 

So only 1 post written in July ranked in the Top 10 for views in July, and that post was about my job search.   I want to see if I can change that for August, hopefully have 2-3 of the posts I write this month rank in the Top 10.

 

Podcast Numbers and Overview for July

The goal for July was at least 3,000 downloads of the podcast, and The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show actually had 3,662 downloads in July. That was actually down sharply from June, but I only recorded one new episode in July, aired on July 1st.  I got busy with a lot of side projects and the job search, so I plan on getting back on a weekly schedule starting with this week.  Here’s the number of daily downloads so far this year:

PodcastJanJulyThe Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show actually topped 20,000 lifetime downloads last month and has a chance to top 25,000 downloads this month.  For the last few months the podcast has been coasting comfortably and easily hitting monthly goals.  That’s about to change as the monthly goals are about to take big jumps each month as we’re now in August and the goal by the end of the year is to hit 10,000 downloads in December.  This month the goal jumps by 1,000, up to 4,000 downloads total.

 

So those are my blog and podcast results for July.  Here’s my goals for August:

Blog traffic – At least 80,000 visitors

Podcast – At least 4,000 downloads

These were the goals I set for both at the start of the year.  So it looks like the blog’s goal will be all but impossible to hit, and it looks like the podcast’s goal is very reachable.

I’ll be back in one month to share my results for August!

 

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SEC Social Media Fan Experience: The Florida Gators and The Vanderbilt Commodores

Over the next 6 weeks till the start of the college football season, I’ll be examining how the schools in the SEC are using social media to connect with their fans.  College football in the SEC is huge business, and the primary driver of revenue in the richest athletic conference in the nation.  Last year alone, the profit from Alabama’s athletic programs topped every NHL franchise and the majority of the NBA teams as well.

SEC football is huge business, and I wanted to take a closer look at how these programs are leveraging social media to better connect with their fans.  On the surface, this might not seem that important, because SEC football already has passionate fans in place, why is it so important to connect with them via social media?  There’s two big reasons why: Recruiting, and ratings.

Social media has become an incredibly valuable recruiting tool for college athletics.  And for the SEC, a dominance in recruiting has translated to on-field dominance over the last decade, so these programs have a vested interest in using every advantage they have when it comes to recruiting.  Social media is a powerful way to attract and keep the attention of potential recruits.  So while SEC programs are trying to connect with existing fans, they are also trying to appeal to potentially the next 5-star QB that could lead them to a National Championship in a few years.

Then there’s TV ratings.  Anyone that’s followed Twitter during a major TV finale knows that Twitter chatter drives ratings.  And ratings play a major role in where teams are slotted when it comes to television coverage.  It’s why the South Carolina – Vandy game will be on the SEC Network at 11 am, and the LSU – Alabama game will be on CBS primetime at 7 pm.  And having your program shown on a more high-profile network and timeslot means more exposure for your brand and a greater ability to connect with recruits.  It’s a very powerful recruiting tool, if a top high school running back is sitting at home and he sees that Texas A&M is being shown nationally as the Game of the Week on ESPN, it makes an impression on him, especially if he is considering other schools in Texas whose games aren’t getting national coverage.

So over the next 6 weeks I’ll cover the social media efforts of the football programs for each of the 14 teams of the Southeastern Conference.  Keep in mind as you read these posts that these programs are trying to connect with two main audiences: The fans that buy the tickets, and the recruits that help them win more games (which sell more tickets!).

Here’s the schedule for the series:

Today: 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

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

 

How The Florida Gators Use Social Media to Connect With Their Football Fans

One of the aspects of this series that will be interesting will be to see which teams have created social media channels that are dedicated to just the football program, and how many they use.  For example, Florida has accounts for the football program on Twitter, Instagram, and Vine.  The Vine account is a bit of a surprise, but it’s sparsely used, only one Vine so far this year.

I was also a bit surprised that there wasn’t a dedicated Facebook page for the football program, instead Florida has one for the athletics programs as a whole.  I will say, whoever mans the Florida Facebook page does a good job of engaging with fans and also has a pretty good sense of humor!

FloridaFB And custom graphical images featuring players like this from Florida’s Instagram account will be very popular with fans:

Gotta keep a lookout for these #Gators. All named to pre-season award watch lists this week.

A photo posted by Florida Gators Football (@gatorsfb) on

Also, remember that fans want a backstage pass.  They want to see content that goes behind scenes.  Show us how the facility upgrades are coming along.  Give us some videos of summer workouts.  This is the kind of content that the casual fan that doesn’t really follow football until the season starts might not care about, but the hardcore fans love to see what’s happening behind the scenes.   As I go through this series and look at the other 13 programs, I’ll be paying close attention to how well each school does at creating content that takes me backstage. Now to be fair, Florida’s Facebook page does a nice job of linking to media coverage that each sports program receives.  For example, SEC Media Days in Birmingham were earlier this month, and the Facebook page for the Florida athletics program has a nice stream of links to coverage from Media Days on Florida coach Jim McElwain and the attending players.  Given that Facebook is going to appeal to a more general audience, this type of content is a good idea. Also it’s worth noting that Florida has a very robust list of social media channels devoted to the athletics department as a whole, including the channels you would expect like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Google Plus, but also some surprises like SoundCloud and Storify.  Here’s a complete list of the social media channels Florida utilizes across all sports. How the Vanderbilt Commodores Use Social Media to Connect With Their Football Fans Vanderbilt, affectionately known as ‘The Harvard of the South’ is a University more known for its academic prowess than its athletic accomplishments.  Looking at how Vandy allocates social media usage, all major sports teams have a dedicated Twitter account, and a few, not including the football program, also have a Facebook page.  Vandy has a dedicated Twitter account for each sport, including the football team.  However, the athletic department as a whole has dedicated accounts on all the major platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and Pinterest. As with Florida, Vandy is currently putting a lot of promotion via social media for ticket sales for the upcoming football season.  I did see a few specially-designed images of football players to get fans excited for the upcoming season such as this one on Twitter:

Honestly, I’m surprised that I haven’t seen a lot more of these type of custom pictures/images from both Vandy and Florida.  Images such as these are very popular with fans, who often use them as wallpaper for their mobile devices or PCs. Without looking ahead, I am betting the remaining SEC schools will make good use of such images to hype fans for the upcoming season.

But remember that earlier I said it’s not just about the images for fans, it’s also about the video content.  Especially video content that gets fans excited for the upcoming season or ‘hype’ videos.  This one from Vandy’s YouTube channel is a great example of  the type of video content that fans will eat up as we’re just weeks from the start of the season:

Great video and note that the branding at the end reminds viewers of the value of the Vanderbilt degree. This is one area where Vandy has a real advantage vs most of the rest of the SEC schools, and it’s smart of VU to play off that.  What’s interesting to see from Vandy’s social media content is that they are really trying to appeal to prospective students as well as fans, again realizing the value of the Vandy degree.  Check out this blog post about a service trip to Cuba that some of the student-athletes took recently.

 

So that’s this week’s look at how the SEC is leveraging social media to connect with its football fans.  Next Thursday, we’ll do the same for the Tennessee Volunteers and the Kentucky Wildcats.  As we move into August, Fall camps will begin so it will be interesting to see if the profiled teams include any content from Fall practices as a way to give fans a backstage pass.

If any of you are Florida or Vandy fans, what do you like best about your team’s social media efforts?  Have you tried to engage with either Florida or Vandy via Twitter, Facebook or another channel?

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A Closer Look at HootSuite’s Brand Ambassador Program

HootAMB

Many companies that are interested in creating a brand ambassador program want to see actual examples of companies that are running such programs.  I’ve known about HootSuite’s brand ambassador program for a while, but on Sunday, one of its members Adel de Meyer joined #Blogchat and gave me a bit more information and then HootSuite chimed in so I wanted to share the background of the program with you.

One of the first things I do when working with a company that wants to launch a brand ambassador program is ask them to think about what’s in it for the company, and what’s in it for the brand ambassadors?  Because if there isn’t a clear set of benefits for both the company and the ambassadors, the brand ambassador program is in trouble before it ever launches.

In HootSuite’s case, they are using their brand ambassador program as a way to expose more people to HootSuite.  The idea is to take HootSuite’s existing passionate users and empower them to better promote the service to others and educate them on how to get started using HootSuite.

That’s what HootSuite gets.  But what about its ambassadors?  The ambassadors get perks that are only available to program members, such as swag, free access to HootSuite University, and a discount towards the Newhouse Advance Social Media Strategy Certificate.  What I love about these perks is that thought has been given to who HootSuite’s ambassadors are, and how HootSuite can help them become better at what they do.  HootSuite’s ambassadors not only love HootSuite, they are power social media users, or at least want to become better at using social media.  So HootSuite offers education and discounts that focus on improving their social media skills.  This goes above just helping them become better HootSuite users, it’s about helping them become better at using social media.  HootSuite understands that many of its ambassadors are using social media at their jobs either for the companies they work for, or their own businesses.  By giving these ambassadors a way to improve their social media skills, HootSuite is also giving them a way to become more productive and successful at work.  And that’s a pretty big benefit!

Another aspect of this program that I love is that it has a strong offline component.  HootSuite ambassadors are encouraged to host and participate in offline meetings with current and potential HootSuite brand ambassadors called HootUps!  According to Adele there were 199 of these HootUps around the world in 2014.  Offline meetings like this among current and potential ambassadors are so powerful, those of us that have met people online and then later met them offline at a conference or similar event know how powerful it is to take an online relationship offline.  It’s a great idea to take people that are passionate about HootSuite and put them in the same space so they can interact.  It’s also a great way for friendships to develop among those with similar interests; social media and HootSuite!

Finally, HootSuite encourages ambassadors to give them product feedback and then incorporates that feedback into new product features.  Giving ambassadors a feedback mechanism is a vital component of any successful brand ambassador program.  It’s so smart because HootSuite’s ambassadors are not only power users, but they are also regularly interacting with other power social media users that also have questions, ideas and even complaints about using HootSuite.  The ambassadors can then take all this information back to HootSuite, which can then analyze it and use it to improve the product and experience for all HootSuite users, not just its ambassadors.

Here’s what I love about the HootSuite Brand Ambassador Program, and these are key components you should consider implementing into your own Brand Ambassador Program:

1 – Brand Ambassadors get special perks and recognition for being a part of the program.  This is not only a way to reward involvement, it is a way for ambassadors to show how ‘cool’ they are.  It’s important to make potential ambassadors feel like the program is something they should want to be a part of and something it is cool to be a part of.  Now I will add that while the brand ambassadors should get special perks for being a member, at the same time there should be hurdles to involvement so that not just anyone can join.  HootSuite seems to be pretty lax about letting in anyone that loves HootSuite and wants to help others.  And to HootSuite’s credit the program has now grown to over 1,000 members.  But I would guess that moving forward, HootSuite might look for ways to make it more difficult to join the program, since it becomes more difficult to scale at such higher numbers.  Plus, if not everyone can get in, it makes it a bit more desirable to want to BE in the program!

2 – Strong offline component.  Ambassadors are actively encouraged to participate in and organize offline meetups with current and potential ambassadors, or HootUps.  This is a great way to not only expand the program’s membership, but it also builds tighter connections among existing members.  Which makes their involvement in the program more enjoyable!

3 – A feedback mechanism.  Always incorporate a way for ambassadors to give your brand feedback on the product or service as well as their interactions with other potential ambassadors and users.  Additionally, HootSuite ambassadors get advance access to new and potential product features, which is not only another perk for ambassadors, but it also gives HootSuite a valuable way to test potential product features before pushing them live.

 

So if you are considering launching a brand ambassador program, take a close look at what HootSuite is doing.  And for the record, they have given me zero compensation in any form for writing this post, I just love their program, the success it’s had, and wanted to share that with you.  Here’s a post from HootSuite with more information on the brand ambassador program, and here’s a great writeup from one of its ambassadors, Adel, on her blog.  If you want to apply to be a HootSuite Brand Ambassador, you can do that here.

Does your company have a brand ambassador program?  Feel free to share it in the comments below!

 

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Are You Making This Common Content Marketing Mistake?

contradictionOne of the great allures of using social media is the promise that it gives companies a cheap and easy way to raise awareness for the company, as well as its products and services.

But that phrase, ‘raise awareness’ is often assumed by companies to mean ‘free advertising’.  Too many companies believe that they should start using social media tools, especially blogs, as a way to raise awareness or advertise the company as well as its products and services.  So they turn their blogs and other social media channels into brochureware, creating digital advertisements that often miss the mark and leave the company shaking its fists at the thought leaders that convinced them that social media was the silver bullet that they needed.

Blogs and social media can very effectively raise awareness but you also have to consider if your audience is receptive to your message.  Sometimes it pays to raise awareness of an idea or theme that relates to your products and services, instead of focusing directly on the products and services.

Let me give you a hypothetical example.  Let’s say that tomorrow I decide to launch my first blog to raise awareness of my social media and digital marketing consulting services.  So I start writing blog posts that describe in great detail the consulting services that I offer.  Because this is why we blog, right?  To leverage our blog to raise awareness of our products and services.

Here’s the problem: If a CMO reads my blog, and he sees it is about my consulting services, he thinks “Well we are already working with an agency that performs these services for us.”  So my post on my services is immediately dismissed as being a waste of this CMO’s time.

But let’s say that instead of blogging about my services, I blog about the impact my services can have on clients.  I talk about how a content strategy could help this CMO see better results from its company’s digital marketing efforts.  I talk about ways to  leverage social media to better connect with customers, and how to create content that leads to sales.

The CMO is intrigued, and asks his agency why they aren’t using these same tactics.  Or better yet, he contacts me directly to learn more about my services and if I can help teach his company how to improve its own digital marketing efforts.  The point is that you shouldn’t directly promote your products and services unless your customers are ready to buy and need that information to make a final decision.  But if you are trying to leverage social media as a channel to raise awareness of your business, then your intended audience is very likely not ready to buy.  So if you create content that focuses on selling to them, they will tune that content out.

Instead, you want to focus on creating content that creates value for your intended customers.  You do this by focusing on how your product or services relate to your customer instead of focusing directly on the product or service.

Here’s a few examples from the product side:

If you are selling products to rid a lawn of pests, focus your content on creating a healthy lawn and landscaping

If you are selling cameras, focus your content on teaching customers how to take better pictures

If you are selling cooking utensils, create content that teaches your customers how to be better cooks

If you are selling luggage for business travelers, create content that focuses on business traveling

 

While your intended customers may not be aware of your products, they are aware of the topics that relate to your products.  A potential customer may have never heard of your pots and pans, but that potential customer is a novice cook.  So you should create content that helps her become a better cook.  If you can show her how to become a better cook, that makes her aware of your cooking utensils. At that point, she’s interested in buying, and she can get more information on your products and order them, either on the blog itself, or by visiting your website.

The point is that your content can’t covert into a sale if your audience isn’t ready to buy.

Create content that informs them or helps them become better at some skill or technique that relates to your product or service, then they will pay attention to your product or service.

Then you can generate sales.

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How Personality Differences Keep 60% of Your Readers From Taking the Action You Want, Sunday’s #Blogchat topic!

TeamRealWorldOn Sunday (July 19, 2015) we’ll be discussing the affect that your personality can have on your blog and writing.  Specifically, our topic will be How Personality Differences Keep 60% of Your Readers From Taking the Action You Want, starting at 8pm Central!

This #Blogchat will be sponsored by Team Real World, please follow them on Twitter.  Additionally, Team Real World has created a custom landing page just for #Blogchat that will have resources for this week’s chat as well as resources from past weeks!

Here’s our schedule:

Topic: How Personality Differences Keep 60% of Your Readers From Taking the Action You Want

Every 20 mins will answer a question related to this topic:

8:00 pm – 8:20 pm: How do personality differences get in the way of success?

8:20 pm – 8:40 pm: What in your personality helps or hinders readers?

8:40 pm – 9:00 pm: What key things to do and not do to connect with readers more?

 

This should be a great discussion and make sure you check out the #Blogchat landing page for resources and perhaps a couple of surprises just for #Blogchat!

See you Sunday night starting at 8:00 pm Central!

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My Blog Traffic and Podcast Audience Results for June

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 June:

Blog – At least 70,000 visitors

Podcast – At least 2,500 downloads

Blog Traffic Results For June

My blog traffic in June was 40,721 visitors, averaging 1,357 visitors a day.  In May, the blog’s traffic was 39,000, averaging 1,258 a day.  So a slight increase of 4%, which reverses the trend of the last few months.  I made some backend changes to the blog back in February, and since that time search traffic has decreased considerably, which was a big driver in the fall in overall traffic.  The hope has been that eventually search traffic would rise back to at least previous levels and bring overall traffic levels with it.

Here’s how each category of traffic did in June vs May:

Search traffic – Down 4.82%

Direct traffic – Up 19.85%

Email – Up 8,216%

Referral – Up 5.12%

Social – Up 86.61%

 

As you can see, search traffic was actually down again, but every other major source of traffic was up.  Email and Social had huge gains, and that was due primarily to the popularity of this post: Don’t Sweat the Technique: The Rock Star’s Guide to Content Creation, Content Marketing and Promotion.  This was by far the most popular post I wrote last month, and was a big driver in the jump in Social traffic.  An interesting byproduct of writing that post was that as it gained popularity on Twitter and Facebook, it caught the attention of Moz, who included it in their email roundup of interesting posts, and that generated about another 2,000 visitors via email.  So if I didn’t write that one post, the entire outlook for the month looks much different, traffic is probably down about 5% from May versus being up 4%.  It’s a testament to the potential power of every single post you write, and a good reminder to me as well.

Here’s how weekly search traffic has looked through June:

SearchThroughJune

You can see it was very high through mid-February, then the bottom fell out.  It continues to slightly decrease, I was hopeful that had ended earlier this month, last week was actually up about 10% and I thought the fever had finally broke.  But this week it’s back down slightly, so on we go.

I wrote 10 posts in June, which was about 2-3 lower than my monthly goals.

Podcast Numbers and Overview for June

While blog traffic was down again month, podcast downloads again did very well in June.

The goal for June was at least 2,500 downloads of the podcast, and The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show actually had 4,296 downloads in June. That was actually down slightly from May, but still far ahead of the goals for June.  Here’s the number of daily downloads so far this year:

PodcastDLsJan-June

 

The numbers were again strong in June.  One episode was unique, as I welcomed the first guest to The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show as Kerry Gorgone joined on the June 17th episode to discuss the legal concerns of social media.  This episode is already the most downloaded one, with well over 2,000 downloads, about 400 more than 2nd place.  Obviously Kerry was quite popular as was her topic, but I also think that having a guest helped make the episode more popular so I will look for ways to incorporate more guests into future episodes.

So those are my blog and podcast results for June.  Here’s my goals for July:

Blog traffic – At least 75,000 visitors

Podcast – At least 3,000 downloads

These were the goals I set for both at the start of the year.  So it looks like the blog’s goal will be all but impossible to hit, and it looks like the podcast’s goal will be all but impossible to miss.

I’ll be back in one month to share my results for July!

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10 Steps to Creating a Successful Twitter Chat

Creating a successful Twitter chat #Blogchat was first started in March of 2009 and since that time has been one of the most popular chats on Twitter.  It’s definitely been a labor of love for me, and I am a HUGE proponent of Twitter chats.  So I wanted to write down the ten steps I’ve taken to build #blogchat up into the success it has become.  I would hope you can use this advice to start your OWN successful Twitter chat.

The focus and structure of the chat

1 – Pick the theme of the chat.  This sounds like a no-brainer, but you need to be careful here.  I picked #blogchat on purpose because I wanted to be able to cover all forms of blogging.  These leads to a wider audience, and allows me to tweak the weekly topics to appeal to a wide or smaller group.  For example, if I had gone with #corporateblogchat, then the theme of the chat is much smaller.

I think a broader theme leads to a larger audience, while a more niche theme will lead to a smaller following.  Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it just depends on what you want to discuss.

2 – Pick the time.  Think about who you are trying to reach.  If the majority of the people you want to reach will be working a 9-5 job, then you probably need to pick lunchtime or the evening for your chat.  In general, I think lunchtime and early to mid-evenings are the best times for Twitter chats.

3 – Pick the schedule.  Most Twitter chats are weekly, but that doesn’t mean yours has to be.  If you are going with a niche focus, you might want to start out with a bi-weekly or monthly chat, then increase the frequency as demand warrants.  But make sure that you at least lock-down the day of the week that your chat will be, and stick to it.  Others can’t promote the chat to their contacts, until they know for sure when it is.  And no matter what day and time you pick, someone will say it isn’t the best for them.  I am constantly having people tell me they want to join #blogchat, but can’t because it’s on Sunday nites.  But sometimes when a holiday or special event falls on Sunday nite, I will move #blogchat to Monday for that week.  And as soon as I do, some people will tell me that they can’t join because Monday nites are no good for them.  So pick the day that works best for YOU, and stick with it.

4 – Decide on the flow.  Will you tightly moderate the chat, or will it be very loose in structure.  My thinking with how I moderate #blogchat has always been ‘get out of the way of the smart people’.  So I basically throw a topic idea out for each #blogchat, and let the smart #blogchat participants do their thing.

Now if that’s your cup of tea, fine.  But many chats go with a very structured format, with a chosen topic, then multiple questions asked around that topic.  A new question is asked every 15 or so minutes.  Some people really like this format.  In the end, it really comes down to which YOU like, but definitely pay attention to what the chat participants are telling you.

Building a following for your Twitter chat

5 – Ask your chat’s participants for their feedback, then act on it.  One of the things I often do is ask #blogchat participants to help me pick that week’s topic (seriously after a few weeks, you are probably going to be scrambling to find new topics to cover).  If I decide to go with a suggestion from one of the participants, I point out to everyone who suggested the topic, and thank them.

Another example is OPEN MIC.  Several months ago, I wasn’t able to join #blogchat one Sunday nite.  So instead of canceling it that week, I decided to make it OPEN MIC for that week, meaning everyone could talk about whatever blogging topic they wanted.  I was afraid the idea would be a disaster, but instead it was so popular with #blogchat participants that I decided to make it a monthly event.  So now, the last Sunday nite of every month is OPEN MIC.

6 – Bring in co-hosts.  As part of the listening to #blogchat participants, I could tell that many of them wanted to discuss how to improve the SEO of their blog.  I am NOT at all qualified to discuss this, so I asked Lee Odden if he would join us, and he graciously accepted.  Over the last 16 months, I’ve brought in several co-hosts to help me cover topics.  This makes the quality of #blogchat better PLUS, it provides additional exposure for #blogchat, since the co-hosts have a natural incentive to promote their involvement in #blogchat to their networks.  So it’s a win-win.  And the good news is, as your Twitter chat grows, it only becomes easier to attract co-hosts.

7 – Invite and welcome newbies.  As #blogchat has grown, it has attracted a lot of new people that want to see what the big deal is.  But the problem is, if you aren’t familiar with #blogchat, it can be completely overwhelming the first time you join.  So whenever I see someone tweet that they are joining #blogchat for the first time, I reply welcoming them, and invite them to join in, and also encourage them to let me know if they have any questions.  That’s a great way to ensure that they stick around and give #blogchat a chance, plus it lets them know that I really do appreciate them joining us.

8 – Shift ownership.  If you think you can build a successful Twitter chat by yourself, you are insane.  It’s going to take a lot of hard work and dedication, and it is going to take acknowledging and empowering the people that are helping to grow your chat.  If someone does a recap of one of your chats, RT that.  If others are helping promote when the chat is and what it’s about, send them a quick @ or DM thanking them.  Let your chat participants know that THEY are very much a part of the success that your chat is having.  That will simply give them the incentive to promote and grow the chat even more.

9 – ‘No experts allowed’.  I make sure everyone that joins #blogchat understands that NO ONE there is an expert, and that we are all there to learn from each other.  I think this puts participants at ease, and makes them more likely to participate.  I want this, because the more people that participate in #blogchat, the better the quality of the chat.

10 – Say ‘Thank You!’, and mean it.  If you’ve participated in just one #blogchat, you know that I appreciate the hell out of everyone that takes the time to join #blogchat.  I love the community we have at #blogchat, and am so grateful for their contributions that have made #blogchat the success it is.  And I think most of the people that join #blogchat realize that they are appreciated, which makes them that much more likely to help grow the chat, and promote it to others.

So these are the steps that I’ve used to grow #blogchat into the success it has become.  Hopefully, it can help you launch and build your own successful Twitter chat.  I really think Twitter chats hold a ton of potential for bringing together people and growing ideas.

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Selling Products On Your Blog, Tonight’s #Blogchat topic!

TeamRealWorld

UPDATE: Here’s the link to the transcript for tonight’s #Blogchat on Selling Products on Your Blog

Tonight (7-12-15) we’ll be discussing How Do you Decide What Products to Sell on Your Blog!  A lot of you are interested in monetizing your blog, and sponsor Team Real World will help us figure out how to do this.

Here’s the questions we’ll tackle tonight:

8:00 pm – 8:35 pm: How to do decide what type of products you want to sell? Digital? Physical? We’ll talk about the strategy behind deciding.

8:35 pm – 9:00 pm: What type of products sell better on a blog vs a website?

Every #Blogchat in July is sponsored by Team Real World.  Please follow them on Twitter.  Also, they have created this great landing page just for #Blogchat that has recaps of key points and concepts covered.

Selling products on your blog can be a very tricky proposition, but tonight’s #Blogchat will help you understand how to think through the process and create a strategy that helps you make money from your blogging!  Be sure to tune in tonight starting at 8:00 pm central!