MackCollier.com

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#Blogchat Topics For June Plus Two HUGE Co-Hosts!

JayBaerWe’ll have FIVE Sundays in June, as well as one rock star co-host!  Here’s the lineup:

June 2nd (Tonight!) – We’ll be discussing How to Use Topic Buckets For Your Business Blog.  This will be an expansion of last week’s post on the same topic.

June 9th – How to Think Like a Rock Star and Cultivate Fans On Your Blog!  This will be discussing how to create more engagement and fans on your blog, applying the principles from my book.

June 16th – Your favorite blog plugins.  We do this every few months, it’s your chance to share your favorite blog plugins and also pick up some new ones to improve the functionality of your blog!  Most of the discussion will be on WordPress by design, but we’ll be discussing which widgets etc are good for all blogs as well.

June 23rd – Jay Baer joins us to discuss how you can apply his concept of Youtility to your blogging efforts!  Jay will discuss his book Youtility with us as well as how shifting your content strategy to focus on teaching and helping versus selling can actually generate more sales!

June 30th – OPEN MIC! We do this the last Sunday of every month, no set blogging topic, we’ll chat up whatever blogging area you want to discuss!

(Cue cheezy late-night commercial television voice) But wait…that’s not all!

Mitch JoelIn July we will be joined by another awesome co-host as the one and only Mitch Joel will be joining us on July 7th to talk his new book Ctrl Alt Delete, as well as his approach to blogging.  I think it will be fascinating as Mitch does things a little bit differently than most of us when it comes to blogging, and I am anxious to learn from him!  Finally, another special surprise in July is that  Y’all Connect in Birmingham will host the first Live #Blogchat of 2013!  Y’all Connect will be on July 23rd and the first 100 attendees also receive a free copy of Think Like a Rock Star!

Additionally, I’m currently seeking a sponsor for #Blogchat in July.  Here’s more information on what you will get.  Obviously, the big advantage is to have your brand associated with #Blogchat and given prime exposure every Sunday night.  Each #Blogchat covers a different blogging topic and I will work with you to cover topics that are relevant to your business, or if you have certain questions about blogging and social media that you need help answering, we can focus our discussions on these areas as well.  A #Blogchat sponsorship is a great way to bring more exposure to your brand, but to also get answers to the blogging and social media questions you have.

Also, the sponsor will be given one ‘Sponsored’ post here.  Currently, the blog’s daily traffic and feed readership is right at 4,000, but that is rising, May was the blog’s best month ever for traffic.  Also, you’ll get a 200X200 pixel ad that will be placed at the top right of the blog for the month of July, as well.  This sponsorship is first-come, first-served and the Think Like A Rock Star newsletter subscribers got a heads-up on this opportunity on Friday, and I am already talking to a couple of interested companies.

So if you want to lock down the July sponsorship for #Blogchat, please email me ASAP for pricing.  With the lineup we’ll have this month with Jay co-hosting, then Mitch next month, the participation levels for #Blogchat this month and next should be at record levels.  Which is another reason why a #Blogchat sponsorship makes so much sense!

Here’s what Paper.li had to say about their #Blogchat sponsorship last December.

See y’all tonight at 8pm Central!

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4 Questions Every Blogger Should Ask About Their Social Strategy

J0309040Note: This is a guest post by Mairead Ridge, Marketing Manager at Offerpop.  This post is part of Offerpop’s sponsorship of #Blogchat in April.  Click here to learn more about Offerpop’s services, and also note they are offering a free 14-day trial of its social media marketing services with no credit card required!  You can read Offerpop’s Tumblr here.

Also, if you want to learn how you can sponsor #Blogchat in June, click here and email me for pricing.

 

You’re an avid blogger; a Twitter aficionado. But have you invested time into building an actual social strategy?

The most successful bloggers treat social as a key marketing channel, employing well-defined plans to drive blog traffic and repeat visitors. You don’t have to be a self-promotion machine. The goal is to get more out of the great content you’re already sharing.

Take a step back and ask yourself the following questions:

Am I on the right networks?

Some bloggers never stray far from Twitter. Others spread themselves too thin, making minimal impact across an array of networks.

When figuring out the right mix, consider the demographics of each network and the kind of content that resonates. If you blog about highly visual subjects like art, or fashion, Pinterest and Facebook could work for you. If you’re blogging about business, invest some time in LinkedIn groups.

Is it worth running a promotional campaign?

Plenty of merchants run sweepstakes and promotions on Facebook or Twitter, handing out discounts and prizes to earn more fans. But bloggers with small budgets and no “product” often think this tactic is not for them.

Big mistake. If you’re creating big pieces of content, like e-books or webinars, try “fan-gating” them, requiring people to become fans or followers of your feed or page before downloading. It’s a low-barrier way to build a relevant audience, and an approach we practice ourselves.

You can also use giveaways for prizes, like free passes to a conference where you’re speaking. Or partner with a brand that shares your core audience to reward fans with products they love.

Do I give my fans reasons to visit my blog?

If your blog is the main show, social is your carnival barker, intriguing people to come on in. Attract new readers by teasing morsels of content from your latest posts, like a funny quote or an unexpected tip. But if you only share these posts once, most of your audience will miss them. Schedule posts with links to “evergreen” content for weeks and months to come.

And don’t fall behind on sharing content from other bloggers and influencers. Curating content helps you build a reputation as an educator and get more clicks and shares for your own stuff.

Do I know what’s working?

Even if you’re a Google Analytics junkie, your metrics aren’t complete until you know how your content performs within a social channel. Keep track of what posts get the most likes, comments and shares, and continuously apply that knowledge to future content.

Social media is a barometer for what drives readers’ passions, providing insights that can benefit your blog. And, as you’re testing new networks and campaigns, keep an eye on those blog analytics. You’ll see what traffic sources grow (and don’t grow) over time. Use the knowledge to make decisions about which networks to focus on.

What other questions should truly social bloggers ask themselves? Tell us in the comments!

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A Few Simple Tips For Making Your Blog More Secure

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Go here to let Sucuri scan your blog for free to tell you if you’ve been hacked or have malware.

So over the last few months I had been chasing a nagging malware issue on this blog.  It looks like (knocking on keyboard) it’s finally cleaned out, so I wanted to share what I learned so hopefully you’ll be able to avoid some of the same problems.

First, here’s what I think happened:  It looks like somehow someone got access to the blog, either via stealing a password (doubtful) or exploiting a security hole in an outdated plugin (likely).  Then what they did was they added code to the template and plugins that let traffic be redirected from this blog, to their site.

Here’s what I did to clean it up:

First, I tried to download some security plugins to give me an idea of what had happened.  I added Wordfence, Better WP Security and Bulletproof Security.  What I liked about WordFence is that it scans your WordPress and plugin files and will tell you if any have been changed and will show you the exact changes that were made.  Better WP Security gives you a nice checklist of options you can take to make your blog more secure.  Plus, it gives you the ability to ban users that repeatedly try to login to your blog or access security holes in the setup.  Bulletproof Security has a few additional options and honestly I have it more as a ‘it can’t hurt’ option than anything else.

But the problem was, at best these plugins were alerting me to the fact that there were issues, but couldn’t fix them all.  So I ended up paying to get Sucuri’s service for my blog.  Sucuri costs $90 a year for one site/blog, but it was worth it.  They were able to go in and clean up my blog, and then give me tips and ideas on how to keep a re-infection from happening.  The problem was that the issue kept popping back up.  We’d clean the blog up, it would be fine for the next few days, then suddenly the following Friday or Sat, Google would blacklist the blog and we’d start the process all over again.

It turns out that what was happening was someone had access to the blog, and they were going in every Thursday and changing files to have traffic be re-directed to their sites.  This was somehow taking place the following day, and then triggering the Google blacklist.  After it happened about 3 weeks in a row, I finally figured out what was happening, and was able to alert Sucuri as soon as the files were changed on a Thursday, and they cleaned it up within a few hours and we never saw the blacklist from Google.

Also, I noticed that one of WordPress’ core files had been modified, Sucuri changed that back.  I went in and changed my WordPress password, and in two weekends since, there have been zero problems and no files have been changed.  So it seems that the problem, at least for now, is gone.

So if you want to avoid this headache, here’s some simple tips:

  • Create strong passwords for your blog, including numbers and letters.  It’s best to mix in upper and lower case letters, plus a few special characters as well.
  • Update WordPress and all your Plugins as SOON as the updates are available.  I learned this the hard way, but often plugins are updated simply to close an existing security hole.  Before I *hated* updating plugins and would often wait till I had several that needed updating before I would.  Never again.
  • If you have a user as ‘admin’ then delete it.  That’s the user account that hackers target the most.

BTW, if you install the above plugins you can see how often hackers try to access your blog and it happens CONSTANTLY.  One of the settings I have is I get an email if someone makes 10 bad attempts to sign into my blog.  They are banned and then I get an email saying they were banned.  I get 5-10 of these emails EVERY DAY.  Seriously, it’s scary stuff to see how often bad people will try to access your blog and look for any security hole they can find, so you have to be proactive about protecting yourself.

We’ll have more ideas for keeping your blog secure tonight at #Blogchat, so please check in and let’s learn from each other!  See you at 8pm Central!

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Carrie Wilkerson Co-Hosts #Blogchat Tonight Plus OfferPop is April’s Sponsor!

CarrieI’m excited to make TWO big #Blogchat annoucements: The first is that the one and only Carrie Wilkerson will be co-hosting #Blogchat tonight!  Carrie is an entreprenuerial force of nature, who has created a 7-figure income for herself and her family and she mentors over 100,000 people to do the same via social media, email and live teaching.  Social media smarties like Chris Brogan and DJ Waldow trust her to help them take their businesses to the next level.  She’s also been a tremendous help to me and that’s why I wanted to bring her to #Blogchat so that she can help YOU as well!

We’ll be discussing how small businesses, solopreneurs and startups can use blogging to grow their businesses!  Or if you are working a job now and you’ve been considering starting a side-business from home, you will definitely want to attend tonight so you can learn from Carrie, she’s a genius as an idea-generator when it comes to helping people figure out what new products they can launch!

#Blogchat starts tonight at 8pm Central.  Here’s what we’ll be discussing:
8:00-8:30 – How Can a Small Biz get started blogging and what should their goals be?

8:30-9:00 – What should a small biz blog about and how does it lead to sales?

Also, as a special bonus I will be giving away TWO copies of Carrie’s book The Barefoot Executive on CD, read by Carrie.  The winners will be chosen based on participation and engagement, mostly, so feel free to get chatty 😉

OfferpopAnd the second big #Blogchat announcement is that OfferPop is the sponsor for April!  OfferPop helps you engage with your fans, and launch contests and promotions via social media channels, especially Facebook and Twitter.  The service can also help you identity your ‘super fans’, and connect them to one another!  You can also check out client case studies to learn more about the success brands have seen from utilizing OfferPop’s services.  The company itself is growing by leaps and bounds, and just closed 2012 by securing $5.7M in funding.

Additionally, you can sign up for a free 14-day trial of OfferPop without a credit card!  And the pricing is extremely affordable, even for a small business or solopreneur.  Absolutely perfect if you’ve been thinking about experimenting with an online campaign via social media to boost sales!  You can learn more about some of the services and apps that OfferPop provides here.

Finally, our #Blogchat topics for the rest of the month will be chatting about using Twitter and Facebook along with your blog (April 14th), and focusing on the Mobile experience for your content on April 21st, which is a topic we’ve never covered at #Blogchat, so it should be a great discussion.

So please follow Carrie on Twitter, as well as our April sponsor, OfferPop.  See y’all tonight at 8pm Central!

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What Amanda Palmer Teaches Us About Asking For and Receiving Help

I was delighted to see that TED posted Amanda Palmer’s talk from last month on its site.  Amanda is one of the main music case studies in Think Like a Rock Star, and it’s because she does an amazing job of not only connecting with her fans, but asking her fans for help and support.  She is constantly giving her fans free and secret shows, then again she is constantly asking her fans to help her, either by providing her with an item she needs, or by supporting efforts like her record-setting Kickstarter project.

But the core lesson of her talk was about the power of asking for help.  This is a topic that resonated with me because it’s one I struggle with.  As Amanda said in her talk, asking for help makes us vulnerable.  A lot of people don’t like being vulnerable or being put in a vulnerable position.  But the upside of this is that it also makes it easier for others to connect with us when we are vulnerable.

Every week during #Blogchat I will have people tell me that they get so much value from the chat.  That’s honestly a big reason why I continue doing it, because I know it is helping so many people become better bloggers.  I love that I have created a way for hundreds of people to come together every Sunday night and help each other.  But I absolutely hate the idea of bringing on sponsors for #Blogchat, because I hate asking for help.  Honestly, I rarely push for sponsors unless there is a perfect fit, or if I really need some extra money.  Otherwise, I simply hate doing it because it feels like I am trying to monetize something that we all create together.

But with my book, it’s a completely different story.  I love promoting the book, because I don’t see it as asking people to help me, I see it as asking people to support an idea.  People have asked me over the last year ‘How can I help support YOU and your book?’  I clam up when I hear that, because I don’t want these people to support me, I want them to be excited about the idea behind the book.

So in light of Amanda’s talk, I found that dichotomy interesting between my reluctance to ask for help personally, versus my wanting help spreading an idea I am passionate about.  I’m interested to hear what you think about it.

Here’s her TED talk:

[ted id=1682]

And in light of her talk, I wanted to make it the focus of our first #RockstarChat on Wednesday at 1pm Central on Twitter.  We’ll chat about how brands can do a better job of asking their fans to help and support them.  Hope to see you then!

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Ignore the Haters

It’s such a privilege to be a part of #Blogchat every Sunday night.  The community there is incredibly supportive and helpful.  People go out of their way to greet you when you arrive, and to help you in any way they can.  Especially newbies and people that are joining for the first time.

However, and I believe partly because of the supportive community #Blogchat has, it does attract a few ‘haters’.  People that try to tell bloggers that they need to stop blogging.  That there are too many blogs, that people don’t need to blog about every little thing that comes into their minds.  Basically, they spend the majority of their time telling other bloggers how they are doing it wrong.

These bloggers are the ones doing it wrong.  They are the haters.  The people that can’t understand why their blog isn’t more active, why their traffic isn’t going up.  So instead of trying to contribute to a helpful community, they bash.  It’s as if they seem to believe that telling someone else what’s wrong with their blog, will make them feel better about their own blogging efforts.

Ignore the haters.  When is the last time you saw a truly successful blogger waste her time going around telling other bloggers how they are doing it wrong?  Exactly, the most successful bloggers are usually the ones that go out of their way to help other bloggers, not hinder them.

The people that care will tell you what you are doing wrong, and then show you how to fix it.  The assholes will just tell you you are wrong then leave.

Ignore the assholes.  You are the only person that decides whether or not you can succeed at blogging or anything else in life.

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Creating Advanced Content and the Role of Deeper Discussions on Blogs

If you think about it, one of the fastest ways to truly establish thought leadership with a blog is to continuously create high-level content around a subject.  Yet very few blogs do that, and the ones that offer high level content on a frequent basis typically have a very infrequent posting schedule.

Does that mean that most people are simply incapable of creating more advanced content?  I say no, and offer two reasons why most bloggers aren’t creating more advanced content:

1 – Saying ‘Here’s What I Think’ can be scary.  When you write more advanced content, you are often ceding the role of expert and acknowledging to your readers that you don’t have all the answers.  That can be very scary for some people.

2 – More advanced content typically gets less engagement.  THIS is the biggest reason I believe why most of the content we see in this space is 101-level, and not 301 or 401 level.  In general, basic content gets shared, more advanced content gets mulled over.  And just like the blogger can get skittish about admitting that they don’t have all the answers, so can the reader when they go to leave a comment.

 

So at the end of the day, how do we as bloggers create more advanced content on our blogs?  That’s the topic I want to discuss tonight at #Blogchat (8pm Central time, Sunday night).  But before we chat about it tonight, I want to offer one example of how we can do that on our blogs, and it ties back to a method I actually use during #Blogchat:

Create more advanced content by first creating deeper discussions. 

First, if you’ll notice the majority of the topics we cover at #Blogchat are more 101-level.  There’s a reason for this, as stated above, 101-level content lowers the participation barrier.  When the topic level is 101-level, it’s easy for more people to feel like they are an expert, and thus they feel more comfortable joining the discussion.

The simple fact is that most people, especially regular participants of #Blogchat, are completely capable of engaging in and contributing to more advanced conversations.  But many people don’t believe they are, and I think it’s the job of the host (whether on Twitter or a blog) to bring out deeper thoughts from participants.  This is something I don’t do very well.

So I will save the rest for tonight at #Blogchat, but if you will be joining us (thank you!), please be thinking about ways that we all can create more advanced content.  And at the same time, how can we create more advanced discussions around our content?

See y’all at 8pm Central!

Pic via Flickr user Appalachian Encounters

PS:  If you want to leave comments here now, please do and we can carry the conversation over to #blogchat when it starts tonight!

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Should You Remove the Dates From Your Blog Posts?

There are many common topics discussed during #blogchat, and one of the most popular is whether or not bloggers should include dates in their posts.

Now as you can see, I do not include dates on my posts(although the date does show up in search results).  I honestly cannot remember WHY I removed them, but I do know that I wouldn’t have done so unless there was some logic behind the move that made sense to me.  My hunch is that a certain SEO-savvy friend explained that it would help my search results, but I really don’t remember.

The topic came up again last night, and again there wasn’t a consensus answer.  Some people again said they hate when bloggers don’t include dates because they want to know how ‘old’ the content is.  A few were like me that they believed there was an SEO benefit, but no one could explain what that benefit was.

So I decided enough was enough, and took to Google to see if I could find a definitive answer on whether or not bloggers should include dates on their posts.

Sadly, I could not.  But I did find some interesting fodder both for and against having dates on posts.

The case for having dates on posts

First, I found several bloggers that lamented that they felt removing posts was akin to hiding something.  Commenters routinely agreed, and ironically, I found a post from Shel Holtz that lamented the fact that he shared a link on Twitter only to later discover that the post he shared was actually 5 years old.  I thought this was ironic because….

The case for removing dates from posts

…Shel’s post linked to a post that Jim Connolly did (which I found before reading Shel’s post) where Jim actually experimented with removing dates from his posts to see what, if anything, would happen.

Jim found that his comments and number of shares via social media sites significantly increased when he removed the dates from his posts.  Further, Jim added what I think is a very salient thought concerning dates on posts:

It appears that the date then acts as a filter, with each person having a different threshold.  So, some people may not bother reading a post that’s more than a week old, others may have a 6 month threshold, whilst others will be fine with posts that are years old.  If the date is not there, it seems more people start reading the posts and then make their mind up, based on the value of the content rather than the date it was published.

This is what has always worried me because to many people reading and sharing blog posts, newer is better.

Here’s an example, which blog post would you rather read:

1 – Ten Steps to Launching a Social Media Strategy For a Global Brand, dated March 27th, 2010

2 – Ten Steps to Launching a Social Media Strategy For a Global Brand, dated January 14th, 2013

Easy choice, right?  Newer is the clear winner.

Unless…what if that post from 2010 was written by Scott Monty, head of Social Media at Ford, and the post from today was written by an anonymous marketing intern at an anonymous marketing agency, that simply googled ‘launching a social media strategy for global brand’ and mish-mashed several older posts together (including Scott’s).

Two sides to the date/no date coin 

On the one hand, many people want to know how old a post is when they read it, to find out if the information is dated.  On the other hand, and this goes back to Jim’s findings, many people that see an older date on a post will automatically assume the information is dated, even if it isn’t.

At the end of the day, you as a blogger should ultimately do what you feel is best for your blog, and its readers, when it comes to adding or deleting the date from your blog post.  What works for me may not work for you, and vice-versa.

But I will offer this piece of advice:  If you are on the fence about either adding or deleting dates from your posts, then you should do exactly what Jim did, you should TEST to see what changes.  If you are using dates, remove them for the next 2 weeks and see what, if anything, changes.  If you aren’t using them, put them back and see what changes.

The problem that many bloggers have is that we don’t test things enough on our own.  We want someone else to always tell us what does and does not work.  Sometimes, we need to move the puzzle pieces for ourselves and see what happens.

What do you think?  Do you prefer to read blog posts with dates, or without?  Which would make you less likely to share a post, a post with no date, or a post with a date from 2009?

 

UPDATE: Based on the excellent comments from y’all as well as the desire to practice what I preach, I’ve decided to add dates back to the posts here for the rest of the month.  At that point I will report any perceived changes up or down in both search traffic and referral traffic from social sites.

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The Case For Adding ‘Easter Eggs’ to Your Blog Posts

Yesterday C.C. Chapman wrote a fabulous post on why we need ‘next level’ conferences.  Please check it out, and there are a TON of amazing comments, I am still going through them all.  I did want to take a slightly different take on this issue because as I’ve seen in the past, when someone raises a ‘someone needs to do this’ post like this, typically most people read that as ‘someone else‘.  Not knocking C.C.’s post at all, it’s a great discussion starter, but human nature being what it is, most people will wait for someone else to make that move.

So instead of making it about ‘someone else’, I started thinking about how individuals as content creators and speakers can take our content to the ‘next level’.  I think the best speakers and content creators like C.C. are already doing this.  Most of the audiences we write and speak for are interested in more 101-level content.  But not everyone, some people are wanting more, and some of those people started out at the 101-level, but thanks to our content, they are now at a more advanced stage.

Which brings me to the topic of adding ‘easter eggs’ to our blog posts.  If you are a gamer, you are familiar with the concept of an easter egg.  It’s a small addition to a game that really isn’t required to complete the game, and will typically go un-noticed by the ‘casual’ gamer.  It’s typically hidden, so it’s a type of reward for the gamers that are willing to do more exploring and to look everywhere.

Here’s an example.  In the game Batman: Arkham City, if you go to a certain place in the game at a certain time and do a certain thing, you are rewarded with a cameo appearance from Killer Croc:

Now I am going to corrupt the gamer’s definition of an ‘easter egg’ here a bit when I talk about adding them to your blog posts.  To a gamer, an easter egg is a reward in the sense that it’s cool and fun, but it doesn’t typically make them a better gamer or better at the game they are playing.  What I’m suggesting is what if you add ‘easter eggs’ to your blog posts that did make your more advanced readers better?

For example, my audience here is like most social media blogs, typically made up of people looking for 101-level social media help.  So while I want to cater to that audience, an example of adding an easter egg might be to add a tip to the post that the 101-level reader isn’t ready for, but that the 201-level reader is looking for.  How many times have you read a blog post and seen the author add a ‘Pro Tip’?  This is the same basic idea, add more advanced content or tips to ‘reward’ the more advanced readers.

To be honest, this is something I probably don’t do a very good job with.  I tend to forget about what happens to the readers that are ready for more advanced content because of my posts.  Recently on #Blogchat we talked about the idea of creating Topic Buckets to help blog more often and to give structure to the content you create.

Maybe to add another layer to that, we should consider adding 201 level content as well?

For example, the idea with Topic Buckets was that if you could come up with say 4 main subjects you wanted to cover on your blog, then if you could write one post a week for each bucket, then you’ve written 4 posts a week!  But what if you also added a learning context to those buckets, and said that 3 of your weekly posts would be 101-level, and one would be 201 level?

I will have to noodle on this for a while, in the meanwhile, what do you think about this idea of adding ‘easter eggs’ to blog posts, or even writing more advanced posts on occasion?

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Why Brands Should Sponsor TweetChats or Engage, and Be Prepared to Wow Yourself

Note from Mack: This is a Guest Post from Paper.li’s Community Manager, Kelly Hungerford.  This post is technically part of Paper.li’s sponsorship of #Blogchat last month, and I told Kelly to treat it as an opportunity to talk about why Paper.Li is awesome and to showcase the service.  So what does Kelly do?  She uses it as a chance to showcase #Blogchat instead 😉  But more importantly, Kelly used this post to try to help other brands that are considering sponsoring a Twitter chat or participating in them.  And I think that speaks to the heart of the Paper.li brand, it’s all about creating content that has value for others.  

Have you ever planned a marketing campaign expecting one outcome, and then been completely blown away by the unexpected? That’s what happened to us when we sponsored #Blogchat last month.

One of my goals moving into 2013 was to create more participative marketing experiences with our community. I thought Tweet Chats would be a great place to start. I wanted to participate with our publishers as well as the community “around” Paper.li in order to better understand the wants and needs of everyone involved in the Paper.li experience; readers of papers, site owners, content creators, the people sharing the content and, of course, our publishers.

So mid 2012 I begin researching the possibility of Tweet Chats to include in our marketing strategy. These are notes I took down as to how I thought a chat could help us:

  • Budget: affordable way to attend a (virtual) events, keeping connected to the US when you live overseas
  • Community: build awareness, trust and long lasting relationships
  • Variety: provide an diversified group of users (great way to validate user personas!)
  • Research: data collection: about the service, users, features

So why #Blogchat? 

1. Because it was the right fit for Paper.li. The Paper.li community is comprised of all types or bloggers; experienced bloggers, beginning bloggers and “would like to be” bloggers. Blogging is one of our most popular topics when it comes to sharing content via Paper.li and papers on the newsstand are made from shared blog content.

2. I had done my homework and knew that #Blogchat community was home to people who loved Paper.li, hated Paper.li and have never tried Paper.li. That’s a great place to start if you want to build relationships.

3. I’ve been a fan of Mack and enjoy learning from him and respect him as an marketing and community building authority. I knew that this sponsorship would be a win-win-win for everyone involved.

 

What was our goal? 
1. Awareness: To be present, not push product but be present

2. Build trust: Let community know were there to help and we’re there for the long-term relationship

So did it work? Yes. 

Our #Blogchat experience exceed our expectations and here were two examples that took me by surprise:

Participation: because our largest user base is located in the US, I *assumed* that this sponsorship would really only interest our US community. I couldn’t have been more wrong. We had Paper.li community members from Sweden, Germany Switzerland, and Italy waking up at 3:00am to join our chats. What does this say about your most loyal customers? They will defy all logic and rational thinking to participate in something amazing if you give them the chance. (Mack covers this in his book Think Like a Rock Star and I was ecstatic to experience it myself.)

Community engagement: within the month of December, I received more than 200 emails and tweets requesting help and offering feedback. Out of the 200, I personally helped over 50 people revive old papers, create new ones and fine tune via skype, twitter, email and hangouts.

 

If I think of that in terms of investment, in a matter of 5 hours a month, I received the same amount of qualified leads as I would attending a conference.  This was also information I could share with our product marketing and development teams and well as customer support. I attribute these numbers to the fact that selling was not one of our goals!

 

How else did Paper.li benefit?

  • as a Brand it was the opportunity to learn first hand what the community thought about our service
  • as a Marketer it was a new way to generate interest and leads
  • as a Product Manager, it was opportunity to understand what is needed to evolve the product
  • as a Social Media Manager, it was the opportunity to refine skills and better understand which channels and tools the community is using
  • as a Customer Care representative it was the opportunity to meet the community and interact without a ticket, issue, or bug between us and provide a service on demand
  • as a member of PR, it was the opportunity to be involved in the conversation where it was happening
  • as a Community Manager it was the opportunity to interact with awesome people, strengthen relationships community and build new bridges

Would I recommend sponsoring #Blogchat to another brand? Absolutely. And if #Blogchat isn’t the right fit for your community, find a Chat that is. Even if that means getting up at 3am in the morning to attend!

 

PS from Mack:  And if you want more information on sponsoring #Blogchat, click here.  And if you are a Twitter chat host or a blogger and you have the chance to work with Paper.li please JUMP at the chance!  They are amazing people, and Kelly is the best of the best 😉  And yes, she got up every Monday morning at 3am Switzerland time to attend and participate #Blogchat each Sunday in December!