MackCollier.com

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The Backstage Pass is Moving to Substack

A bit of housekeeping: I am moving The Backstage Pass newsletter from Mailchimp to Substack.  Effective next week. If you haven’t yet subbed to The Backstage Pass, please do so over on Substack.

Why the change?  Substack has two key advantages over Mailchimp for me:

1 – I can add more social elements. I’ve growth and nurtured The Backstage Pass for over 10 years now. One of the nagging problems I’ve had with the newsletter is the lack of interaction I can have with subscribers. Unless a subscriber reaches out to me directly or vice versa, I have no clue if the content I am creating is resonating with them. Other than looking at Clicks or Open Rates and guessing.

But with Substack, I can add social elements. We can have chats for each newsletter issue, discussions about each topic. It’s so much easier to connect directly with subscribers. Now, they do need to be on Substack in order to connect with me on Substack, but the signup process is as pain-free as it is on any other social channel. Please follow me here if you join Substack.

2 – Substack has monetization options built right in. As a result, I will soon be offering a premium version of The Backstage Pass, which will have more ‘premium’ content. This will also allow me to devote even more time to the newsletter, which is something that I’ve always wanted to do. But prior, it was hard to justify spending more time on a stream that isn’t producing revenue. Substack will help me solve that problem.

 

So if you haven’t already subbed, please do so.  As for Substack itself, I have to say, I am really enjoying the experience there. There’s a strong community vibe, it feels like early days excitement there before all the ‘influencers’, marketers and gurus find it.  I’m sure that’s coming, but for now it feels super cozy. In fact, it really feels like what I think a lot of us wanted to see blogging become: A way for us to connect and support our favorite writers and content creators.

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Biz Accounts Are Coming to Twitter, US Retail Sales Grow, Google’s Easter Scavenger Hunt

Happy Monday, y’all! Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend! We are now dealing with Daylight Savings Time, which I hate.  We will have darkness at 9pm soon, then go back to darkness at 5pm in the Fall.  Ugh. Let’s get back to something more interesting, marketing and business news:

 

Twitter is working to finalize roll out of new profiles for businesses. Some of the features that these business profiles will have are still up in the air, and Twitter is working with users on feedback. We know that the new business profiles will be verified by default, will include a designation of the type of business it represents, and additional information on the business such as hours of operation, etc. Twitter hasn’t said when these new business profiles will start becoming available, but I would guess it would be sometime within then next 2-3 months.  This article from Social Media 2Day has a good rundown of what’s coming, and some of the possible features which are being discussed.

 

US retail sales are set to make a solid recovery in 2021 as we continue to work past covid. According to the National Retail Federation’s forecast, retail sales as a whole should be up around 7%. And online sales are set to surge around 20%. As I’ve been talking about for the last year, customer purchase patterns have been disrupted as a result of the lockdown, and most of us are looking for more online purchasing options. Take this into account when you are building your sales and product strategy for this year and beyond.

 

I am SUCH a sucker for scavenger hunts by companies. I think they can be SO much fun for customers if executed properly. Love this example of Cadbury letting people ‘hide’ virtual Easter eggs in Google Maps, then sending clues to others on where to locate the eggs. A great way for friends and families to continue the tradition of having an Easter egg hunt, even if its a virtual edition this year.

 

So that’s it for this week’s edition of Monday’s Marketing Minute. Now if you want more news, Friday’s edition of the Backstage Pass will have a special rundown of all the news happening in the growing creator economy. All the moves that Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other platforms are making to pay content creators, and why your business needs to be paying attention.

If you aren’t already subscribed to my Backstage Pass newsletter, click the image below and get in! Backstage Pass comes out every Friday, and each issue gives a massive, deep-dive into a different topic to help your business create amazing content, marketing and digital strategies. Last week’s issue on training your customers to be better salespeople was the biggest yet, topping 2,200 words.

Would love to see you join our community! Click this image to get started:

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An Open Letter to Anyone Who Hates Self Promotion

To many of us, the idea of self-promotion makes us nervous. The reason is simply because we don’t like talking about ourselves.

So don’t.

In 2008 I made my professional ‘speaking’ debut. At South By Southwest. On the main stage. In the same room where 24 hours earlier a certain Mark Zuckerberg made his SXSW debut during the infamous ‘why is everyone coughing?’ interview by Sarah Lacy.

Did I mention I am introvert? That I was terrified? That this was the first time since college that I had spoken in public?

Did I mention that I absolutely love public speaking?

What changed? I mean, you don’t find many introverts who are into public speaking, and even fewer that love it.

What changed for me is I learned to stop putting myself in the spotlight. This is why so many people hate public speaking, because they feel like everyone is looking at them. And of course they are! I got past the nervousness of public speaking by putting the spotlight not on myself, but instead on my IDEAS. There’s nothing more satisfying than having an amazing idea to share, and then seeing the lightbulb go off over someone’s head. They GET why your idea is so valuable! For me as a speaker, there’s no better feeling!

So if you are uncomfortable promoting yourself or the platforms that you own like your blog or newsletter or podcast; there’s a few things to think about.

1 – If you are worried about being ‘that guy’ when it comes to self-promotion, there’s roughly a 99.9% chance that you are NOT ‘that guy’. The reality is that the shameless self-promoters don’t see themselves as such, and don’t CARE if you do. So if you are asking if you might be ‘that guy’, it pretty much guarantees that you are NOT.

2 – If self-promotion makes you nervous, keep in mind that growing your platform means you will have a bigger platform to promote the IDEAS that you are passionate about. Remember, don’t focus on yourself, focus on the ideas.

3 – If self-promotion makes you nervous, keep in mind that growing your platform means you will have a bigger platform to promote the PEOPLE you are passionate about. I love leveraging this blog and my newsletter Backstage Pass to put the spotlight on smart friends and peers who I think deserve your attention. Or put another way, the brilliant Carrie Wilkerson once told me you make more money so you will have more money to support the people and ideas you believe in.

 

If it makes you nervous to self-promote, don’t think of it as self-promotion, think of it as promoting the ideas that you are passionate about. And as your platforms grow, you can use them to promote the people that you are passionate about.

In 2006, on my first blog, The Viral Garden, I started a weekly ranking of the ‘top’ marketing blogs. I called it ‘The Viral Garden’s Top 25 Marketing Blogs’, and updated the list weekly. I ranked the Top 25 marketing blogs each week according to some criteria, at first it was number of Technorati ranks, later it was Alexa score. As you might guess, the list became very popular, as the blogs on the list were quite happy to promote their inclusion, which brought more attention to the list.

But over time, something irritated me a bit. I loved that the Top 25 list gave more exposure to the blogs on it, but I felt there were a lot of blogs that were left off the list that deserved our attention.  So I started something called ‘The Z-List’. I started with a list of a few blogs that I thought were awesome, that I wanted to draw attention to. I invited others to take the Z-List that I started with, and add a couple of their favorite blogs, and link to all. This would be a way for the list to grow, and for all these deserving blogs to get some additional links and attention. The Z-List became very popular, very quickly. So much so that a certain international thought leader approached me about moving The Z-List to his own platform.

The point in all this is, don’t fret over putting the spotlight on yourself. Put the spotlight on the ideas and the people that you want to lift up.

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Twitter Making Moves, Clubhouse’s Privacy Concerns, CEOs Bullish on CX, Not on CMOs

Happy Monday, y’all! I hope you had a wonderful weekend and are ready to have a spectacular week. Here’s some news items I spotted to quickly get you up to date on what you need to know in the world of digital and marketing!

 

So Twitter has announced that it is making several moves in an effort to boost revenue. These include letting users monetize their content via newsletters or ‘super follows’ (I saw someone tweet “I don’t know what a ‘Super Follow’ is, but I know I don’t like it’). Now, is this a glass half-empty or glass half-full scenario for Twitter? On the one hand, critics of Twitter have noted that the company has been slow to roll out new revenue streams, so these moves will meet those complaints head-on. On the other hand, Twitter’s recent moves to moderate and even censor content on the platform has led to users leaving the site, either by their own choice or by Twitter’s. Additionally, emerging sites like Clubhouse, Gab and Parler are pulling users away from Twitter. Twitter will likely feel a pinch from users spending less time on the site, and will need to make up for that in some form. These monetization moves can been seen as being proactive moves to increase growth, or as hedges against coming losses. I suspect we will have a much better idea of which it is when Twitter reports revenue for Q2 and Q3.

 

Clubhouse continues to be white-hot among digital early-adopters and would-be influencers. But we are starting to see some cracks in the armor. I’ve seen some complaints about room moderation and letting hateful speech be shared (I honestly haven’t experienced any issues in any rooms I have been in), and now there are complaint arising over privacy concerns. One of the disappointing aspects of Clubhouse rooms is that the conversations happening in the room aren’t recorded or available to the users. Or so we thought. It turns out that the conversations in every Clubhouse room ARE being recorded. They are recorded in real-time as they happen. If a complaint is made about the content of the room while the room is still open, then the audio will be saved and can be used in any later investigations. If no complaints are made while the room is open, then the recorded audio is deleted when the room is closed. This is why I always advise clients to take a wait and see approach with any new ‘hot’ social media platform. Clubhouse could easily be 10X bigger by the end of the year, and it could just as easily have folded by then. As I said in my Backtage Pass newsletter earlier this month, I think you should be aware of Clubhouse, play around with it and become familiar with it, but for most businesses it doesn’t make sense to jump on the platform with both feet. If your customers are already there, and you can use the tool to connect with them in a way that creates value for you both, fine. That’s standard for any emerging social media platform. Always be wary of the hype from early-adopters. And when it comes to privacy concerns over social sites and apps, just remember that if you aren’t paying for the product then YOU are the product.

 

Finally, I thought these findings from IBM were interesting. They found that for CEOs feel that improving CX (customer experience) and building better relationships with customers to be the top priorities over the next 2-3 years. What’s interesting is these same CEOs said that they didn’t feel that CMOs would play a vital role in reaching their goals for improving CX and customer relationships. Instead, they felt that CFOs and COOs would be the main positions driving these efforts. What I suspect this suggests, at least in part, is that many CEOs don’t feel that their CMOs have a solid grasp of the digital marketing tactics and strategies that will be necessary to deliver better digital experiences to customers in the coming years. Let’s remember that even most corporate early-adopters to using digital marketing to reach customers barely have 10 years of experience creating and implementing digital marketing strategies. Many have far less than that, and even in 2021, there are many top companies that are still hesitant to make digital marketing the priority in connecting with customers. This will continue to change, and obviously the shift to digital will be accelerated by moving both employees and customers to home due to covid restrictions.

 

 

So that’s it for this Monday’s Marketing Minute. If you haven’t already, please do click the image below and signup for my Backstage Pass Newsletter. It’s delivered every Friday morning, so it’s perfect to read and digest over the weekend, then begin to implement what you learn on the following Monday. I’m super pumped about this Friday’s issue, as I’m going to do a deep dive into how your company can develop a training system for your digital marketing team. I think it’s vital that all employers have a plan in place to constantly work with all employees to upgrade their skills. It leads to higher productivity, and less churn among workers. Plus, it makes for a happier workforce! So on Friday I’ll talk about how you can create a system to improve the skills of your employees AND I’ll include a special offer on how I can work with your team to create a skills improvement program for your company. But you have to be subscribed to the Backstage Pass Newsletter to get the information, and the offer.

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Twitter Needs Revenue, Top Social Apps Surprising, Staying On-Brand Means $$$

Happy Monday! Hope everyone is safe, warm and happy as we start the week. The warm part is gonna be tougher as a good portion of the southwest and southeast woke up to ice and snow this morning. It feels like I’ve been cold for weeks, let’s hope winter breaks way to Spring soon!

BTW, thanks to everyone for the great response to the first issue of the newly launched Backstage Pass newsletter! If you missed the first issue, you can view it here, and subscribe here. Next issue hits inboxes this Friday at 8am!

 

If Twitter’s recent moves are any indication, the social media site is anticipating a decline in revenue. Twitter is making moves to unlock additional revenue streams, such as recently buying newsletter service Revue, and now exploring adding charges to some features, as well as maybe adding subscription options for users. This could be setting up a very interesting Q1 earnings report for Twitter. I’m almost wondering if Twitter could be setting up such moves as a hedge against disappointing revenue performance or forecasts for later in the year.

 

For the first time in maybe a decade, there seems to be a real sense of competition developing among social media platforms. Just look at the top social media app downloads and note how Facebook and Instagram were shut out of the Top 3 on all lists, and Twitter didn’t crack the Top 10 on any of them. And breaking just as I’m writing this, it seems Twitter-competitor Parler is coming back online (still not loading for me, although I am seeing many people on Twitter saying it’s back up). And I would suspect Clubhouse will rank pretty highly in the next App Store downloads update.

 

And finally, I love this example of the power of branding that resonates with customers, and that’s on point.

 

Hope y’all have an amazing week! See you back here tomorrow with a new post on the social audio phenomenon, Tuesday night at 7pm on Twitter discussing overcoming our content creation obstacles on #ContentCircus. and Friday morning at 8am the next issue of Backstage Pass drops, helping CEOs and Managers deal with a workforce that’s suddenly remote.

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Pinterest on Fire, Employees Love Remote Work, Hubspot Acquires The Hustle

Happy Monday, y’all! Ok guys I have an announcement to make, and I could NOT be more excited! This Friday, I am relaunching the Think Like a Rock Star newsletter as the Backstage Pass newsletter. If you are already subbed to TLAR, you’re in!

So why the relaunch?

For years, since at least 2015, I have had peers who are smarter than I, all industry names that you know, telling me the same thing. “Mack, you gotta get on email. Newsletters are where it’s at!’

So I launched the Think Like a Rock Star newsletter. But I couldn’t figure out the format, the audience I wanted to appeal to, or the content that should be included. And the schedule was non-existent. I honestly did everything wrong with the newsletter, and yet it still had over 3,000 subscribers. That told me that the subscribers enjoyed the content I was creating, I just needed to get the strategy dialed in.

At the same time, I am watching how my dear friend Ann Handley is killing it with her newsletter Total Annarchy. The branding is on-point, the schedule is consistent, and the content is spectacular. And recently, I’ve discovered The Hustle (more on them later) and Morning Brew newsletters. Both are insanely popular right now, and I love the format.  Then last week I was in a Clubhouse room where I heard Ann say that in 3 years of writing her newsletter, she had grown it to 45,000 subscribers.

That was the final push I needed to go all-in on newsletters. And that’s what I am doing with Backstage Pass.

What will it feature? Click here to get more information, and to subscribe. In short, I want every issue to replicate the content and material I would cover if I could spend a full day with your company, training and working with your marketing, digital and content teams. Each issue will be massive, it will require hours to consume, which is why I am delivering it on Friday so you have all weekend to enjoy it and can implement the ideas it contains starting on the following Monday. I spend approximately 20 hours on every issue, and it will hit inboxes every Friday at around 8am Central.

Please do subscribe to Backstage Pass. My best content will be here, and in Backstage Pass. Thank you!

 

Now…on to today’s Marketing Minute:

 

Not surprisingly, workers are loving the freedom of working remotely from home, as we see from this eMarketer chart. However, remote work is creating a lot of problems for companies that were forced into the move due to covid. Such companies are struggling to effectively manage suddenly remote workers, and the workers themselves are being affected by a loss of office life and in-person interactions with their teams and co-workers. Managing remote workers is actually one of the biggest concerns CEOs have right now, and I’ll be doing a deep dive into this topic and how to manage remote work in next week’s issue of Backstage Pass.

 

Pinterest is closing in on half a billion active users. What’s interesting is that Pinterest’s growth is mostly fueled by international users, growth in the US has pretty much stalled. Pinterest’s monthly usage grew 11% in the US, and a whopping 46% internationally. Additionally, most of Pinterest’s revenue comes from US users. So if the platform can figure out how to more effectively monetize it’s non-US users, it could be see massive growth in overall revenue in the coming years.

 

Finally, Hubspot acquired The Hustle last week. I’ll have more on this in Friday’s issue of Backstage Pass, but I did have to chuckle at how another popular newsletter Morning Brew, reported this news. The majority of their blurb on the news focused on how this signals that there is an acquisition market for select newsletters that have built a massive following. In sum: Morning Brew is thinking this news means they could be acquired as well, and they are probably right.

 

That’s all for now, please do subscribe to Backstage Pass, as the first issue will go out this Friday morning. And tomorrow night at #ContentCircus on Twitter, we will be discussing Winning Strategies For Creating Content on Twitter. And we’ll be discussing it on Twitter! How amazing is that???

And see you here in 24 hours for a case study on customer acquisition that I think you’ll find fascinating. See you then!