MackCollier.com

by

The Three Pillars of Modern Customer Communication

My first recollections of getting ‘online’ are in the late 1980s, and local electronic BBSes (Bulletin Board Systems).  These were basically where someone would turn their computer into a network where others could call into it with a modem, and we could chat with each other, post messages, etc.  Extremely basic functionality, ‘graphics’, etc, and again, reserved to a very small local packet of people.  The great thing about BBSes was you got to meet local people, and we’d occasionally have ‘meetups’ which of course was the forerunner to the Tweetups we have today.

As the late 80s turned into the early 90s, those BBSes started linking to one another.  I could get on one BBS, and go to a special forum and see messages from another BBS in Denver.  Then the messages we were leaving there, would be sent to the BBS in Denver.  So a very crude form of online communication and network beyond just the one BBS was developing.  Of course, CompuServe had been around since the early 80s, and then Prodigy in the early 90s, and of course AOL in the mid 90s.  These ‘online services’ marked a way for people around the country, and even around the globe, to more easily connect with each other.  The internet itself was becoming more widely used, and websites started popping up like Kudzu in the South.

Which began to mark a change in how people got their information.  No longer did you have to watch CNN to get the latest news, now you could go directly to CNN’s website and get the latest news at a time that was convenient to you.  So as such, we began to talk about news, events, and companies online.  We still didn’t have the best tools to organize and connect with each other, but still, word of mouth was no longer reserved for the offline world only.

Then around a decade or so ago, blogs started popping up among the early adopters.  By 2004 and 2005, blogs were becoming more well-known, and growing in popularity by leaps and bounds.  By 2007, Technorati was tracking over 70 million blogs.  In 2006 we got YouTube and Twitter, and a year later the ‘social media kids’ discovered a social networking site that had already been popular on college campuses for a few years called ‘Facebook’.

As social media tools gave us the ability to quickly and easily create and distribute online content, we began to hear a debate about which was more important: online ‘word of mouse’, or offline word of mouth?  The ‘social media’ camp often argues that social media is the ‘wave of the future’, and that every is headed online.  The people that favor offline word of mouth will point to studies that suggest that 90% of word of mouth still happens offline, and that it trumps social media.

To me, this debate over which is ‘better’, ‘word of mouse’ or ‘word of mouth’ misses two key points:

1 – Both online and offline conversations and experiences feed INTO each other.  Look at your own experiences: How often have you been with friends and discussed something you read online?  Or how often have you gone on a trip, and taken a ton of pictures that you shared with your friends on Facebook as soon as you got home?  The line between our offline and online experiences is blurring.  We can no longer separate the content and conversations we have online with those we have offline.  For most of us, they are feeding into each other, and as a result, both our online and offline activities are richer.

2 – Mobile is greatly accelerating the blurring between online and offline.  Remember the title of this post is the THREE pillars of modern customer communication?  Mobile is the third pillar.  Think about what’s on your smartphone, on mine right now I have an app that lets me access Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, even my WordPress blog if I want.  Add in a camera, a video player, and I have all the tools necessary to link the online content that I and others create, to the offline world that I am in right now.  Note above how I mentioned you could take pictures from a trip then upload them to Flickr when you get back home?  With the proper mobile device, you can cut out the middle man, and take pictures right there, and immediately upload them straight to Twitter or Facebook, all from your smartphone.

The line between what is our offline and our online experiences is blurring and will soon disappear.  It’s pointless to think about which one of these three is the most important, as each is feeding into the other.

Look at this picture.  In terms of this post, Online or Social Media would be the locomotive.  It pulls the load behind it, which is Offline Word of Mouth.  Sometimes the load gets enough momentum that it can even push the locomotive.  They both work together.  But the tracks are mobile.  Mobile makes it much easier for the locomotive to pull the load, and for the load to move because it has the nice smooth tracks under it, instead of a rocky and uneven terrain.

All three work together to create something bigger than the individual parts.  Your company has to understand that your customers are likely going to use all three channels to get, share, create, and distribute content.  There’s no ‘winner’ among these three, they are all on the same team.

by

Disney Cautious in Marketing The Chronicles of Narnia

This post originally appeared on BMA on October 30, 2005.  As a sidenote, this is probably my favorite blog post I’ve ever written.  If you would like to read all the posts in the BMA series, click here.

Paul Lauer has been down this road before.

His company, Motive Marketing, has been tabbed to organize and execute a faith-based marketing intiative for The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. He performed a similar role for Mel Gibson’s The Passion of The Christ, orchestrating a church-based marketing campaign that helped make The Passion one of the highest grossing movies of all time.

For Narnia, he will perform a similar role, again reaching out to churches and designing ways for pastors to incorporate the Christian themes of Narnia into their teachings. Embracing churches was so successful for The Passion that many pastors actively encouraged their churches to see the movie as soon as it came out, creating enormous pre-release hype for the film. Disney hopes for a similar buzz leading up to the release of Narnia.

Lauer’s job should be even easier for Narnia, since the story behind C.S. Lewis’ classic is geared more toward children, meaning it will appeal to the entire family. But while Lauer’s task should be easier, the line between too much and not enough emphasis on Narnia’s Christian themes will be harder to navigate for Disney when marketing the film to the public.

With The Passion, the religious meanings were obvious. However, Narnia can either be presented as a straightforward fairy tale, or as a story inspired by the teachings of the Bible. “Many people put churchgoers and Hollywood on the opposite sides of the equation,” said Lauer. “But churchgoers are hungry for movies reflecting strong values — like ‘Narnia.”

Churchgoers, however, won’t be the only people seeing Narnia. And the question for Disney is will they risk alienating churchgoers by not emphasizing the Christian themes of Narnia, or would they offend the public by embracing the Christian symbolism of the story?

And it’s a huge gamble for Disney, as they have so much riding on the success of Narnia. With the studio in desperate need of a hit release, a solid showing for Narnia would also open the doors for a movie franchise that could rival that of the Lord of the Rings, or Harry Potter. It’s an opportunity that Disney is fully aware of.

“Everyone has his own take on the book, to which the movie is faithful,” said Disney’s VP of Publicity, Dennis Rice. “Rather than embracing any interpretation, we’re remaining neutral, adopting the Switzerland approach.”

Disney has also enlisted the aid of Lewis’ stepson Douglas Gresham, to make sure the film is faithful to his stepfather’s vision of Narnia.

“We never set out to make a ‘Christian’ movie,” said Gresham. “The book taps different veins in different people. If we overstressed what little symbolism there is, we would have thrown away the project.”

Which seems to be the correct path for Disney to take in promoting The Chronicles of Narnia. In writing The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Lewis’(a devout Christian) was wise enough to put the spiritual undertones of the story in plain sight, yet never forced them on the reader. Wisely, Disney seems to be taking the same approach in bringing Aslan and the White Witch to the big screen.

“This is a huge roll of the dice … ,” said “Narnia” producer Mark Johnson. “But the payoff could be enormous.”

by

Want me to speak at your event plus hold a LIVE #Blogchat?

Almost ready to start the LIVE #Blogchat at the Marketing Profs B2B Forum

In the past few months (really ever since SXSW) I’ve heard from many event organizers that they were interested in having  a LIVE #Blogchat added to their agenda.  And as you can see here, there’s currently four LIVE #Blogchats scheduled for the remainder of 2011.

Now as I am working with event organizers to bring a LIVE #Blogchat there, I am facing two issues:

1 – A lot of event organizers know of #Blogchat on Twitter, but aren’t sure what a LIVE version of the chat would look like.  They aren’t sure exactly what they are getting.

2 – Both at SXSW, and at the B2B Forum last month, when the LIVE #Blogchat was done, I really wish I had spoken at the event as well.

So in order to potentially address both these issues, I wanted to offer a ‘package’ deal to event organizers.  For the fee of $7,500.00 (not including travel), I will not only speak at your event (a 1-hour session), but I will also participate on a 1-hour panel, and we’ll do a LIVE #Blogchat as well.  That’s roughly a 25% discount over what I would charge to do each individually.  Now I can only offer three packages at this rate, one for August, one for October, and one for November.  So if you have an event scheduled for those months, please let me know and we’ll see if we can get something scheduled.

Now this doesn’t have to be a conference, it could also be a company event, in a couple of weeks I will be in Austin at Dell’s #DellCAP event, and we’ll be doing a LIVE #Blogchat as part of it.  Maybe you have a company or private industry event that you think this package would be a good fit for.

So I wanted to throw this out there and see what happens.  And as of right now, I’m not planning on doing any LIVE #Blogchats in December or January.  I do want to do one next year at SXSW in March, and possibly one in February, but I’ll just have too much going on at the end of the year to plan many speaking trips.

Again, the offer is I’ll speak at your event (up to 1-hour session), I will also be a panelist in another 1-hour session, plus we’ll hold a LIVE #Blogchat at your event, all for $7,500.00 plus travel (flight, hotel, cabs, food).  I can only offer three slots at this price, one for August, one for October, and one for November.  When these slots are reserved via a deposit, they come off the board.  And I’ll update this post to reflect that.  Please email me to secure one of these spots.

Also, if are only interested in having me speak at your event, or only interested in having a LIVE #Blogchat, of course we can talk about that, please email me and I’ll see what we can work out!

by

How to Add Google +1 Button to Your WordPress Blog and Track Social Media Engagement With Google Analytics

Now that everyone is rushing to get into Google Plus, you are going to see a lot more sites and blogs adding the +1 button.  I added it here last week, and the process is easy as pie.  It’s done via a plugin, here is the page for the one I used.  You can either go to that page and download the plugin then upload it manually, or go to the Plugins area of your WordPress dashboard, and search for it Google +1 Button and that should bring it up.  Pretty sure this is for WordPress.org only.

Something else that got kinda lost in the shuffle with everyone rushing to get onto Plus was that Google Analytics is now tracking social media engagement levels!  If you are already set up with a Google Analytics account, you’ll need to make sure you are using the New version, look at the top of your screen and there should be a link to Switch to the New Version.  You want to click that, because the new version of GA has some extra functionality, including measuring social media engagement.

When you get in, then click Visitors, and you’ll see a few new options, including Social.  When you click it, then you’ll see options to track Engagement, Action and Pages.  Now if you have installed the Google +1 plugin above, then GA will automagically start showing you how many clicks your Google +1 buttons are getting, how many page views, time spent on site, etc.  When you click on Engagement, it will show you your traffic for the last month, then the amount of traffic that was Not Socially Engaged, and Socially Engaged.  Here’s a screenshot of what mine looks like now:

Yeah I know, nothing to write home about yet 😉  But as I get a lot more data in, I can see how the usage of people that click the Google +1 button compares to other site users.  And the great thing about this report is that it can also track engagement levels with Tweets, Facebook Likes, Facebook Shares, and I believe even when posts are Stumbled!  The bad news is, that can’t be done via a plugin (yet), those can only be added via coding that I do NOT want to touch yet.  If you are adventureous, here’s some tutorials on how you can add this functionality.  I did note that Google is asking plugin developers to start updating their plugins so that it will add tracking functionality automagically, similar to how the Google +1 Button works.  So my guess is that these plugins that we are now using to add ReTweet and Facebook Like buttons to our blogs will soon offer this, so I’m going to wait a bit before I try to add it myself and break my blog 😉

So there you go!  If you were wanting to add Google +1 buttons to your blog, the above plugin will do it for you, then once you have it installed, you can start tracking how many clicks you’re getting and other forms of engagement with the new version of Google Analytics.  Let me know what you think!

by

#Blogchat this Sunday will be co-hosted by Dell’s Chief Blogger Lionel Menchaca!

Lionel being interviewed at #Blogchat LIVE at SXSW as Chris Heuer and Susan Beebe look on

I’m not sure how long the list is of people that have been blogging for the same company for FIVE years, but I’m guessing it’s pretty damn short.  But Lionel Menchaca is on it, and for the last five years, he has served as Dell’s Chief Blogger.  And this Sunday, he’ll also be returning to co-host #Blogchat for the second time!

Dell’s social media transformation has been nothing short of remarkable, from Dell Hell and exploding laptops in 2005 and 2006, to today being lauded for its progressive approach to using social media to connect with its customers.

And for the last 5 years, Dell’s blogging efforts have been at the forefront of its social media success, and I’m tickled pink that Lionel has agreed to join us at #Blogchat this Sunday!

Sunday’s #Blogchat topic will be How to Create and Maintain a Successful Corporate Blogging Strategy.  As we normally do with co-hosts, the flow of the conversation will be segmented into different sub-topics:

1 – At 8pm Central, we will begin #Blogchat by discussing this point – How do you sustain a blogging strategy for years, and how do you keep the blog relevant with your readers and customers?

2 – At 8:20pm, we’ll begin discussing this point – How do you find writers for your blog, and how do you keep them motivated to keep blogging for you?

3 – At 8:40pm, we’ll close by discussing this point – How do you create relevant content for your blog and how do you decide what content your readers are interested in?

So if you have any questions for Lionel, think about which of the above areas would be most appropriate, and please ask it then.  This #Blogchat will be sponsored by Dell, and that leads me to another surprise for y’all:

In a couple of weeks I will be in Austin working with Dell on a #DellCAP project (disc – Dell is a client).  But while I’m in town, we decided to do a LIVE #Blogchat! The Live #Blogchat will be Monday, July the 18th at the Westin Domain, with the meetup starting at 6pm, the actual #Blogchat will start at 7pm.  I will set up a signup page soon, and when I have that I’ll add a link here.  The event will be open to #DellCAP attendees plus about 30 people from the Austin area.  So I can’t wait to see all my Austin friends again!

So if you’ll be joining #Blogchat on Sunday, make SURE you are following Lionel on Twitter, and you can also check out Dell’s main blog, Direct2Dell.

by

I am officially a social media packrat

And two events clearly illustrated this for me yesterday:

1 – I went to ManageFlitter.com to see how many people I am following that aren’t following me.  I was following almost 3,000 people that were NOT following me.  This really worried me because the main reason I use Twitter is as a way to connect with others and have conversations with them.  By following those 3,000 people that have no interest in seeing my tweets, it’s making it far more difficult for me to connect with the people that DO want to chat with me.  I don’t like that.

2 – I have about 600 people in my Circles in Google Plus.  I started looking at the people I have in my circles and realized that half of them I didn’t have the faintest idea who they were.  I’ve already lost control of my network on Plus after less than a week!

One of the things I have constantly wrestled with was how to scale as the size of my networks grow on these social media sites.  I have always been really strict about who I follow on Facebook, and even now I only have about 600 friends and have been there about 3 years.  But on Twitter I follow over 16K people.  I’ve always wondered in a rush to expand our networks, if we aren’t really stifling our ability to actually connect with people.

So I’ve decided to do a bit of an experiment.  On Plus I am going to be super-picky who I follow, and only follow people that are close friends and/or people I know and have met in real life.  Complete contrast to how I manage followers on Twitter.

The idea is to test two different approaches: Is it better to try to have mostly platonic connections with thousands of people like I do on Twitter (with the hope that some might develop into deeper connections), or have deeper connections with only a few people, and let your network grow only by bringing in closer connections, like I have on Plus.

Man this social media stuff can get complicated!  How do y’all manage your online networks?  Do you have different approaches for different sites?  Am really fascinated in how we scale (or attempt to scale!) our ability to communicate online.

by

Should Your Business Be On Google Plus? Here’s the Quick and Easy Way to Decide

If you actively use social media, then you’ve probably seen a lot of people chattering about Google Plus over the last week or so.  A ton of invites went out, and a lot of people got their first look at Google’s newest social networking site.  After playing around with it for a few days, I can definitely see why a lot of Facebook users may want to migrate over.

However, does this mean that YOUR BUSINESS should be on Google Plus?  As always, there are two basic questions you need to ask yourself in order to decide:

1 – Will being on Google Plus help me better connect with my customers?

2 – Will being on Google Plus help my employees better connect with each other?

Those are the two main questions you need to ask.  If you can’t answer a ‘yes’ to either of those questions, then your business probably shouldn’t make the jump to Google Plus.  At least not yet.

You should also remember that the current buzz around Google Plus is being driven almost entirely by social media early adopters.  We are the geeky types that always want to try out the newest and the shiniest.  Remember a few months ago when you were suddenly hearing all this buzz about Quora and Empire Avenue?  Yep, that was us as well.

Now this is NOT to say that you should dismiss Google Plus.  I think you should absolutely familiarize yourself with the site and the available functionality.  For one, the ability to do Hangouts would be a great way for employees to connect, especially if they are working virtually.  And you need to understand that this product is NOT available to everyone.  Because it still has a lot of bugs that are being worked out, and new functionality will be implemented.  And we still aren’t sure exactly what impact content created there will have on search results.  There’s still a lot that’s up in the air at this point on many fronts.

So don’t think you need to do a cannonball into Google Plus just yet.  My advice would be to read up on the site and what it offers users, then when you get an invite, play with it a bit and see what you think.  I will be doing a more in-depth review of Plus once I’ve spent enough time with it to better understand what it offers.

If you are using Google Plus now, what potential impact do you see for businesses there?

by

#Blogchat topic for 7-3: How to create useful content for your biz blog without ‘giving it all away’

Hey y’all!  Hope everyone is getting ready for a festive Fourth of July!  Since tomorrow is the holiday, and not tonight, we’ll go ahead and have #Blogchat tonight (Sunday) at its regularly scheduled time of 8pm Central.

And our topic will focus on creating content for business blogs, and how ‘helpful’ our content should be.  Someone asked a question during last week’s #Blogchat about how you promote yourself via your blog, especially if you are a consultant or working for yourself.  My quick answer was ‘Give away the WHY, sell the HOW’, but I thought that would be a good topic to expand upon tonight.  I think there are two schools of thought here:

1 – Create content that establishes the need for hiring me (Why), and then use the content to get business (Where you teach the how).

2 – Create content that gives away the How, and hope that the content is so amazingly useful that it leads to positive word of mouth, and that leads to referrals.

I think you also need to consider what type of customer/client you want, when you position your content.  For example, if I wanted someone to hire me to setup their business blog, I would probably create more content devoted to WHY they need a blog to build their business.  On the other hand, if I wanted to connect with clients that are already blogging that need help building engagement, I would probably create more content around the HOW, because I want to establish my expertise in building engagement and community.

I think this will be a very interesting discussion as those of us that use our blogs to drive business often struggle with the proper balance in our content.  How much do we promote, versus teach?

So please do join us tonight for #Blogchat at 8pm Central!

Oh! And I promised a very small surprise, didn’t I?  As many of you remember, we were using WTHashtag to create transcripts after each #Blogchat up till a few months ago, when WTHasthag had to stop offering that functionality due to a change in Twitter’s TOS.  But, before it shut down, I was able to convert over a year’s worth of #Blogchats into PDF transcripts!  I’ll be sharing a few of these every week for the next several weeks, so you can use these as additional study materials.  Here’s this week’s transcripts:

7-26-09 – Topic: How to Get Sales and Business Leads From Your Blog (Co-Hosted by Amy Africa) – #Blogchat07-26-09TranscriptWAmyAfrica

7-12-09 – Topic: Finding the ROI of your Blogging and Social Media Efforts (Co-Hosted by KD Paine) – #Blogchat07-12-09TranscriptWKDPaine

7-19-09 – Topic: How Non-Profits Can Use Social Media (Co-Hosted by the Red Cross’ Wendy Harman) – #Blogchat07-19-09TranscriptWWendyHarman

Just click on the link for each, and then you can view them, and download if you like.  Enjoy!

by

My Very First Blog Post

From 2005-2007, I wrote for an advertising group blog called Beyond Madison Avenue.  The blog is still around, but over the years it has been redesigned several times and somehow in all the shuffling, it seems that all the posts written from those early years were lost.  I did some digging and found a few of  them, so what I wanted to do is share a new one of them with you each Saturday here over the next few weeks.  I honestly (sadly?) think these posts are better than most of the ones I write now, and on top of that, I think they are an interesting commentary on a space that’s gone through a ton of change in just a few short years.  I hope you enjoy these, and we’ll start with the very first blog post I ever wrote, from September 20th, 2005.

What a Hurricane Can Teach Us About Marketing

1 billion and counting.

That’s the current amount of donations received for victims of Hurricane Katrina, according to an article in yesterday’s Washington Post. That total doesn’t include donations from last night’s episode of Monday Night Football, during which current and former NFL players took donations for the relief effort. Some estimates have the final total approaching 2 billion. Granted, roughly half of the donations thus far are from corporations.

Still, that means over 500 million has been donated from everyday Americans in the three weeks since Katrina made landfall in Gulfport, Mississippi. When’s the last time a company released a new product to the market that had similar sales, with NO advertising?

Then again, this is a rare case where little advertising is necessary. The appeal is easy to understand: Compassion for our fellow man. The benefit of the donations is obvious: Helping fellow Americans rebuild their communities, homes, and lives.  Marketing professionals everywhere can learn much from the massive giving that’s coming in response to Katrina. If you have a product that people want, that they can clearly see the benefits of, and that fulfills a basic human need, it will sell itself.

What ‘product’ is being sold here? Hope. We all need some of that.


by

#Blogchat LIVE is coming to Content Marketing World!

UPDATE: Thanks to ON24 for being the official sponsor of the Live #Blogchat at Content Marketing World!

That’s right! I have been waiting TWO FREAKING MONTHS to share this news, but in September #Blogchat LIVE will be part of this year’s Content Marketing World!  You read that right, #Blogchat LIVE is coming to THE Content Marketing event of the year and will be kicking off the event on September the 6th!  And have you SEEN the speaker lineup for CMW?!?

David Meerman Scott, Jay Baer, Ann Handley, C.C. Chapman, Brian Clark (CopyBlogger), Jason Falls, Jim Kukral, Lee Odden and Shelley Ryan PLUS Joe Pulizzi, Mike Stelzner, the New York Times’ David Pogue, and Kevin Smith.  Yes, THAT Kevin Smith.  Over 50 of the smartest minds in content marketing.

Now THAT is some heady company! One of the biggest marketing events of the year, an all-star speaker lineup, and guys it’s #Blogchat LIVE during Content Marketing World!  Is there ANY way this could be more amazing?!?

Guys it’s not just #Blogchat LIVE….

It’s not just #Blogchat LIVE during Content Marketing World…..

It’s #Blogchat LIVE during Content Marketing World AT THE FREAKING ROCK N ROLL HALL OF FAME!!!!!

Yes you read that right.  We are actually going to have a LIVE #Blogchat at the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame.  Yes, I am literally giddy to be telling you this 😉

So the BIG question is how can YOU join us?  First, only attendees of Content Marketing World will be allowed to attend the LIVE #Blogchat at the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame (yes I love saying that!).  And space will be limited (literally), so the total attendance of the LIVE #Blogchat will be capped, but you MUST register for Content Marketing World to be eligible to attend the Live #Blogchat.  And if you haven’t already checked the agenda, it’s absolutely killer.  And I’ve been told Content Marketing World likely WILL sellout, so please get in as soon as you can in order to be eligible to attend the LIVE #Blogchat! Seriously if you can only attend one event for the rest of the year that focuses on content marketing and social media, this is exactly where you want to be.

To make it easy on you, here’s the complete conference agenda in PDF form.

And guys when you register make sure you use code BLOGCHAT to get an extra $100 off the price!

Now, if you are interested in being a SPONSOR of this LIVE #Blogchat during Content Marketing World at the freaking Rock N Roll Hall of Fame (have I mentioned that part?), then please contact Pam on Twitter, or email Pam or email me.  She’ll be happy to work with you to design a sponsorship package that works for you.  And as you can tell, I am far too excited about LIVE #Blogchat and will have zero problem promoting it and your sponsorship of it 😉

The format of this LIVE #Blogchat will be similar to our past events, in that we’ll have an hour of meetup/tweetup (probably 7pm), then start the actual LIVE #Blogchat at around 8pm.  If you’ve never attended a LIVE #Blogchat, here’s the recap of the one we did at South By Southwest, and here’s the recap of the one held at the Marketing Profs B2B Forum.  Attendees at both LIVE #Blogchat afterward told me it was one of if not THE highlight of their trip.  In Boston at the B2B Forum, attendees were asking me beforehand ‘So what is a LIVE #Blogchat like?’, and I told them ‘Just like the #Blogchats on Twitter!’  Afterward they each told me ‘You were right, it was just like it is on Twitter!’

So now do y’all see why I have been gushing endlessly about this on Twitter? 😉

PS: I can never thank #Blogchat enough for being the amazing community that has grown to the point where we can have a LIVE #Blogchat at the freaking Rock N Roll Hall of Fame. I love y’all and hope to see as many of you as possible there.

Pic via Flickr user jcburns