MackCollier.com

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#Blogchat 4-3 Schedule, co-hosted by Liz Strauss!

I’m excited to announce that tonite’s (4-3) #Blogchat will be co-hosted by Liz Strauss!  Liz will be joining us to discuss How to Write for Multiple Blogs!  I know this is a topic that a lot of you are interested in if you are writing for multiple blogs currently, or if you are thinking about starting a new blog in addition to your existing one.

Here’s how the discussion will be organized:
1 – At 8:00 we will discuss Liz’s best tips for writing for multiple blogs.  Including how to come up with enough post ideas, etc.

2 – At 8:30 we can discuss How to Decide If You Should Have More Than One Blog.  I know a lot of #Blogchat participants have blogs where they write about their life, but that they also want to talk professional topics, and want to know if they should split it into two blogs.  If this is your situation, we’ll be happy to talk about it here!

To prepare for #Blogchat, first make SURE you are following Liz on Twitter.  And please subscribe to Liz’s blog, as it WILL make you a better blogger!

If you’ve never joined #Blogchat, here’s what it’s all about!  #Blogchat is tonite and every Sunday nite starting at 8pm Central.

And if you have some questions or topics that you want to discuss with Liz tonite, go ahead and leave a comment and we’ll make sure to talk with you about it during #Blogchat!

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The fallacy of trying to be ‘awesome’

First, I’d like to point you to this video:

Thanks to Robbin for the heads up on this.

Next, I’d like to share a quote from Kathy Sierra:

“Let other companies, brands, apps battle with one another over who has the most awesome product, while the REAL battle is over who has the most awesome users.”

This video and this quote go to the heart of what I think is wrong with 99% of the talk about being ‘awesome’ these days.  All this talk about how you need to be awesome, how you need to create amazing content and how ‘awesome wins’.

Because most of that talk is focused on how YOU can be awesome.  What YOU need to do to be awesome, and how if YOU create awesome content, then YOU are awesome.

Everyone that attended the World Science Festival with Bobby McFerrin no doubt left thinking HE was awesome.  Why?  Because he made THEM feel awesome.  Note with Kathy’s quote, the focus is on who has the most awesome USERS (and it could just as easily be the most awesome customers, or blog readers).

The point is, don’t focus on how YOU can be awesome, focus on how you can make OTHER PEOPLE awesome.  If you are blogger, how can you create content that’s going to help your readers do something they couldn’t do before?  How are you going to help them solve a problem, or be more productive?  What ability are you going to give them that they didn’t have before?

It’s not about putting a spotlight on yourself.  It’s not about beating your chest and bragging about your accomplishments.

But empowering others…now THAT is awesome.

What super power will you give your readers?

 

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10 Proven Tips for Getting More Engagement on Your Business Blog RIGHT NOW!

Reader engagement, more comments, interactionNext week I am speaking at the PRCA State Conference in Birmingham, on how to create engaging content.  I’m currently putting the finishing touches on my presentation for this event, and wanted to share some of the tips with you here on how to increase engagement on your blog.

1 – Decide WHO you are trying to engage.  It all starts here.  Are you trying to reach customers?  Potential partners?  Potential donors?  You have to decide who you want to reach before you can reach them.  You should already have your blogging strategy in place that will tell you what group you should be targeting, and why.

2 – Decide WHAT type of activity you want your target audience to engage in.  This is also critical.  You need to first decide who you want to be reading your blog.  Then once they are on your blog, you need to decide what action (or type of engagement) you want them to take.  Do you want them to comment?  Sign up for your email newsletter?  Visit your website?  Email you?  If you don’t know what action you want visitors to take on your blog, you can bet that they don’t either.

3 – Give readers multiple ways to connect with you.  Don’t just hope for more comments, give visitors an option to sign up for your blog’s feed (via both Email and RSS), and give them a way to contact you directly via email.  And if you have a retail location especially, add your phone number.  Believe it or not, not everyone is comfortable commenting on blogs, they may want to contact you privately, especially if they are interested in hiring you or buying from you.

4 – Reward readers that engage in the type of behavior that you want to encourage.  Remember when I mentioned that Comment Redirect is a great plugin?  It does exactly this, when you leave your 1st comment here, you are redirected to a page that thanks you for your comment.  Why?  Because I want readers to leave more comments.  So when they do, they are thanked via that special page.

5 – Ask for the type of engagement that you want.  If you want more comments, then ask for them.  If you want more subscription signups, then add a footer to your posts asking readers to subscribe to your blog.

6 – Don’t moderate comments. Or if you must moderate comments, approve them ASAP.  But let’s be honest, if most people spend even 30 seconds writing a comment and are greeted with ‘Your comment is awaiting moderation‘ then the odds are they won’t be back.  For most new business blogs, comment moderation really isn’t necessary.  As long as your blog has a way to block spam (such as the Akismet plugin), then the only moderation that will be necessary is for the content itself.  For most business blogs it will take a while for your blog’s readership to grow to the point where you are getting frequent comments.  So as long as you are proactive about checking new comments, you shouldn’t need to moderate.

7 – Respond to existing comments.  This is very obvious, but a lot of business bloggers miss this.  Last week’s post on Why Introverts Love Social Media currently has 89 comments, but 34 of them are from me.  You have to write em to get em.

8 – Tailor your content so that it encourages the type of engagement you want.  This goes beyond simply asking for comments or emails in a post.  Think about what type of content would prompt the type of engagement you want.  For getting comments, this is fairly easy.  But what if you want more subscribers or even buyers, you need to create content that will move visitors toward that level of engagement.

9 – Interact with readers on other sites to drive interest back to your blog.  Figure out which sites/blogs current and potential readers spend time on other than yours, and interact with them there.  For example, find sites/blogs that cover your specific industry.  The odds are that some of the people you want to reach via your blog, are already actively engaged on those sites.  If you can go interact with them there, that can lead them back to your blog.  Or maybe if you are a marketing and branding firm, a LinkedIn group on branding might be a good place to connect with people and drive interest back to your blog.  And since you have already connected with these people OFF your blog, they will be more likely to interact with you when they come back to your blog.

10 – Publish new posts based on when people visit your blog.  Check your blog’s stats, and note which days and times have the msot visitors.  If you discover that peak traffic occurs every Monday-Friday from 10am-2pm each day, then there’s your likely window for when you should be publishing new posts.  If you can give your visitors new content when they are on your blog and looking for it, that increases the odds of getting their attention, and getting them to interact with your content.

 

BONUS: Experiment.  Use these proven tips as your starting point, but don’t assume that each of these are the only ways that YOU can increase engagement on YOUR blog.  Good business bloggers are the ones that can take what has worked for others, and apply it to their own efforts.  But the great business bloggers are the ones that can also create successful efforts based on their unique situations.  Every blog’s readership and goals are different, and need a unique strategy and execution.  Use the above list as your starting point for increasing engagement on your blog, not as the beginning and end.

Pic via Flickr user ausnahmezustand

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Why do we apologize for wanting to make money?

There seems to be an unwritten rule in social media: “You don’t attempt to make money off the content you create via social media.”

I’m not sure who created this rule, but every time a content creator attempts to monetize their efforts, there is almost always a level of backlash.  Chris Brogan is probably the poster-boy for attempting to monetize his content, and today he announced that he was accepting ads on his blog.  That’s not what got my attention, what struck me was the almost apologetic tone of his post.  A few of Chris’ readers picked up on this tone as well, and commented on it.

I’ve never completely understood why this is an issue for some people.  To me, this is a win-win.  If the content creator can earn some money from the content they create, then they can afford to spend more time creating that content.  If I enjoy the content that the person is creating, then obviously, that’s a big WIN for me.

Still, some people are going to be upset by this.  When I announced back in October that I was going to start taking sponsorships for up to 1 #Blogchat a month, I had a few regular participants say they were leaving and never coming back.  I assured them that the #Blogchat experience would be almost exactly the same, that I would only accept sponsors that would make #Blogchat better, and that I was taking the sponsors so that I could afford to spend more time on expanding the offerings of #Blogchat so everyone benefited.  Still, people left, and that’s their choice.

Let’s clear the air right now: No one is going to get rich monetizing their social media content.

Seriously, every time Blogger X attempts to monetize their efforts, there are wild rumors about how this blogger is suddenly making ‘big money’.  Yes, everyone hears the same rumors, and they are so detached from reality in most cases that it’s laughable.  In fact, that’s one of the only things I dislike about this space, the wild rumors, and most of them are associated with what people make.

But the unfortunate side affect of all this backlash and rumor-mongering is that we are sending the message to ‘new’ bloggers that attempting to monetize their content is a distasteful act.  It isn’t.  In fact, that’s how we all learn to improve our own efforts, by studying what is working for others.  Have you noticed what Jason Falls is doing with Exploring Social Media?  I love that, and it’s giving me a ton of ideas for expanding the educational element of #Blogchat, and possibly extending the live experience into a classroom setting.

What do you think about bloggers monetizing their content?

Does this bother you?  If one of your favorite bloggers announced that they were taking ads or sponsors on their blog, would that be enough to make you stop reading that blog?  If you monetize your blog content, what have been your results?  Have your readers voiced their displeasure over this?

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How I increased traffic to my blog by 145% in three months

Over the past 3 months, I’ve made a concerted effort to post more often here.  During #Blogchat on Sunday night, a few people were asking me about my experiences, and I promised to do a recap post here, detailing what I have learned. First, as you might expect, traffic is up sharply.  Here’s how traffic here has done over the past 6 months. As you can see, a huge spike in traffic starting in January when I started posting more.  In fact, I found that the percentage increase in traffic almost exactly mirrored the percentage increase in number of posts.

From October through December, I averaged 8 posts a month.

From January through this month, I have averaged 21 posts a month.  That’s a 163% increase.

From October through December, my average traffic was 6,363 visitors a month.

From January through this month, I have averaged 15,570 visitors a month.  That’s a 145% increase.

Feed subscribers increased as well, here’s how my number of subscribers tracked over the past 6 months:

October 1st – 1,970

November 1st – 2,074

December 7th – 2,218

January 1st – 2,242

February 1st – 2,577

March 1st – 2,768

Today – 2,991

There you see the same thing, feed subscribers were growing at about 100 a month before I started posting more, since then, it’s up to 200-300 a month. So obviously, posting more often here has greatly increased my traffic, feed subscribers, and visibility.  I really noticed this a couple of weeks ago when I was in Austin for SXSW.  In my prior two visits to SXSW, a few people were kind enough to stop me and tell me they enjoyed my writings.  What I noticed this time was that far more people were mentioning they enjoyed my writing, but they were also referencing individual posts I had written. Additionally, over the past three months I’ve seen an increase in work and speaking requests as well, so it’s obvious that by simply creating more content (that hopefully hasn’t fallen in quality), that I am getting on more people’s radars.

Now, the big question for you is, should you try to post more often?  The big problem that many of you have (as referenced again by feedback from the last #Blogchat), is that most of you don’t have time to post more.  Personally, my biggest problem was finding ideas to post about. What I did up till January was shoot for 1-2 posts a week here.  So basically, my method for finding ideas was to basically wait for inspiration to strike, and hope that it hit at least once over the course of a week.

But when I made the commitment to post 4-5 times a week, it meant I had to start looking for new post ideas EVERY day.  That changed how I looked at my interactions and the other blogs I was reading, and I realized I was leaving a LOT of post ideas on the table.  In fact, at least one post I write here a week now comes directly from a conversation I have either participated in or observed on Twitter.

So what about the time issue?  The other big surprise to me has been that my time spent writing each post has been slashed.  Before, I would spend a couple of hours writing each post.  Now, I spend 30-45 mins.  The end result is that my output of posts has increased by 163%, but my overall writing time is the same as before, or slightly lower!

So if you want to try this experiment, here’s what I would suggest. Take the number of posts you are writing now every week.  If it’s 1 a week, triple that to 3.  If it’s 2 posts a week, double that to 4.  If you are writing 3 posts a week, increase that to 5. Then whatever your new number is, commit to writing that number of posts next week on your blog.

This will FORCE you to do two very important things:

1 – Come up with more ideas for posts

2 – Write faster

Try that experiment for one week, and see what your results are.  Then at the end of the week, you can decide if you want to commit to doing it for another week.  And you really won’t begin to see big changes in your traffic, subscribers, etc, until you’ve stuck with it for at least a couple of weeks.  So the longer you can stick with this method, the better results you’ll see. And also, pay close attention to the quality of your posts.  You don’t want to increase your posting output if it means that your overall quality of posts falls.  As I’ve already said, I found that ideas for posts were easier for me to come by, so I don’t think my post quality has fallen too much, in fact I’ve had many people tell me it’s higher now than it was last year.

So give this a spin, and see what you think!  If you have any questions about what has worked for me, or how it do this yourself, please leave a comment or email me.

UPDATE: The key takeaway for me from this experiment hasn’t been the increase in traffic and other metrics, I expected that.  What’s surprised me is that the content creation process has become much easier.  This totally blindsided me, and this is why I think you should consider trying this as well, to see if you have similar results.

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Two WordPress plugins to help convert new visitors into readers

According to Google Analytics, at least 25% of the traffic here is coming from Twitter and Facebook.  Which is great, but the problem is that a lot of these visitors are here for the 1st time, and often they will only be here long enough to read the latest post, maybe leave a comment, and then they are gone.  And they likely won’t be back unless someone in their network links to another of my posts.  We are beginning to use our networks as our newstand, we quickly check out shared links, but bounce to the next one just as quickly.

So I started thinking, if there was a way to convert just 10% of those new visitors that were coming from Twitter and Facebook every day, that could make a HUGE impact on this blog’s readership!  To help me do this, I’ve added two plugins that I wanted to share with you, to see if you can benefit from them as well.

1 – Comment Redirect.  I can tell that this plugin has been a BIG hit with yall, as I get a few emails every week on how much readers love this.  What comment redirect does is redirect FIRST time commenters to a page of your choice, after they leave their comment.  On that page you can put whatever information you want.  Since I am hoping to get first time commenters to become regular readers, my page thanks them for commenting, and then gives them a way to subscribe to this blog’s feed, and follow me on Twitter.  Also, I have an area where they can learn about my services.  Here’s where you can learn more about this plugin, or from your WordPress dashboard, go to plugins, and then search for it.  Thanks to Amy for introducing this one to me.  If you’ve never commented here before, you can leave one to see what my page looks like 😉

2 – WP Greet Box – I discovered this one on C.C.’s blog.  What WP Greet Box does is target new visitors based on where they came from, and offers you the ability to give them a custom welcome message!  For example, if you come here for the 1st time from Twitter, the plugin should notice that and offer a small message box above the post and welcome you.  For Twitter, you are giving a window box that gives you the options to tweet the post to Twitter, and follow me on Twitter.  You can learn more about the plugin here.  Below is a snapshot of what the box would look like for a new visitor from Twitter to my last post on introverts and social media.

To be honest, I’ve just started using this plugin and I’m not 100% sold on it.  It’s a good idea, but it’s also slightly intrusive at the top of the post.  I think a similar message at the end of the post might be a better idea.  I will track my number of readers/followers for a couple of weeks and see if there are noticeable changes.

But notice that for both these plugins, the idea is to focus on the type of behavior that I want to encourage.  I want more comments, so the Comment Redirect plugin is there to make sure that first time commenters know that I appreciate them and how they are helping to make the content here more interesting.  With the WP Greet Box, I want first time visitors to stay in touch with me, so I give them custom ways to do this, based on the site they came from.

What about you?  What plugins are you using to help convert first time visitors into readers?  What other options are there, or do you know of something similar to WP Greet Box?  I would like to see what else is available.  But I think the point is that it just makes sense to make it as easy as possible for new visitors to subscribe to your content, and to keep up with the new content you are creating.

 

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Why introverts love Social Media

“Hello, my name is Mack, and I am an introvert.”

If you are an introvert that’s active in social media, do people that you meet find it difficult to believe that you are introverted?  I get this often, so much so that I have on my Facebook page that I am “Online extrovert, offline introvert.  It’s complicated.”

But for me, it’s much easier to be outgoing online, than it is offline.  I think that’s why I love social media so much.

For example, one of the things that I hate is being in a room full of people where I don’t know anyone.  I find it extremely difficult to introduce myself to anyone and talk to them, because I assume they don’t know me and don’t want to know me.  It’s a terribly awkward situation for me, and if you’re an introvert you can probably relate.

But if I am in a group of people I don’t know on Twitter, I have little problem striking up a conversation with them.  The anxiety over having to in-person introduce myself is all but removed, and as a result, it’s much easier for me to engage with people.

Here’s another example of an awkward offline situation.  What if you have just met someone and are talking to them.  What do you do when you reach that point where the conversation has died, and you need to politely break it off?  I hate that!  But again, if I’m online, then I can leave and no one really knows.  So again, that awkward feeling is removed.

This is why I think it’s so easy for introverts to be extroverted online.  I was talking to Liz Strauss and Kellye Crane about this at SXSW, and we all felt the same way.  But the problem this creates for me is that since I *am* extroverted online, people that I meet offline expect me to be extroverted.  And I’m almost always more reserved (even at SXSW), so I can give some people the wrong impression that I am ‘stuck up’, or not interested in talking to them.  I’ve really tried to work on that, but it’s an issue.

What do the rest of you introverts say?  Do you find it easier to communicate with people online versus offline?  And if so, how do you handle meeting people offline?  Do you think there’s a noticeable disconnect between how you act online, vs offline?

BONUS: My friend Lisa has a series of posts on introverts and leadership and business.  Great reading!

 

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New research proves that RESPONDING to negative feedback online benefits companies

One of the biggest misconceptions companies have about online and social media is that any and all negative reviews and comments should be completely ignored.  The idea seems to be that if companies ignore the negative response from customers, that it ‘goes away’.

A new Harris survey concludes that the opposite is true, if companies address negative reviews and feedback head-on, the customer often deletes the negative review AND sometimes even posts a positive one!

The Harris survey tracked customers that posted negative feedback or reviews during the Holiday shopping season on either sites that support adding customer reviews, or on social networking sites.  The survey found that 68% of customers that left these negative reviews got a response, and 18% of these people became loyal customers as a result, and made additional purchases from the company.

Now for the biggie:  Of the customers that received a response from a company after posting negative feedback about their shopping experience, 33% turned around and posted a positive review, and 34% deleted the original negative review.

These findings also support the notion that negative comments and reviews about your company can be a good thing, and something that can help your business.

The key point that companies need to understand is that the negative comment/review isn’t the most important thing, how your company responds to that negative review/comment is far more important.  And the above survey results supports this notion.

If you want to know how to handle criticism of your company online, here’s what you should do:

1 – Respond as quickly as possible.  Often, one negative comment that doesn’t get a response will lead to additional negative comments.  And 3 negative comments with no response from the company can quickly balloon into 10.  But if the company jumps in and responds quickly, that greatly reduces the chance of additional negative comments.

2 – Be thankful, polite, and respectful of your customers EVEN IF you think they are DEAD WRONG.  Common courtesy goes a LONG way here.  You have to understand that the customer believes they are RIGHT and YOU are wrong.  So if you get defensive in your response and start lashing back, you are going to make the situation quickly turn ugly.  Be polite, respectful and LISTEN to what your customers are saying.  It might help you actually….gasp…..understand why they are upset.

3 – If your customers have inaccurate information, feel free to correct them.  This often happens, and again, another way to minimize this happening is to respond quickly, before assumptions based on inaccurate information can spread.

4 – Tell the customers how you are going to address their complaints, and what the next steps are.  Let them understand that you take their complaints seriously, and that there is a plan in place to handle their complaints.

5 – Give customers a way to stay in touch with you, and invite further feedback.

One thing you have to remember is that many customers are WATCHING the interactions that you and other customers are having.  If they see that you are coming off like a pompous jackass, then that increases the chance that they will post negative criticism about your company.  And the flipside is true, if your company handles negative criticism in stride, and works to offer the customer a positive solution, that reflects well on the company, and improves the chances that customers watching these interactions will have a positive reaction.

So the bottom line is that companies that respond to negative feedback online, and do so quickly and appropriately, see huge benefits.  If you think your company needs help or training in handling negative comments or reviews online, please email me.  Or if you have a particular instance that you’d like to discuss, please leave a comment so we can help you, or feel free to email me if you want to discuss it in private.

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The one blog post that got me over $22,000 in consulting business

I wanted to tell you about two blog posts I have written that both got very different results for me.  The first was a rant, and it was an engagement bonanza.  It currently has over 70 comments, got around 600 ReTweets, and on the day it was published, traffic to the blog was over 900% above normal.

The second post had far less fanfare.  It only had a handful of retweets, and even fewer comments.  Traffic barely moved on the blog the day it was published.

And yet that second post was the one that has so far led to over $22,000 in consulting projects for me.  The 1st post was ranty, and it was designed to get a discussion started.  And boy did it ever!  But it wasn’t written for potential clients.  It was great for engagement, but not for creating new business.  At the time I didn’t realize it, but when I was writing it I wanted engagement, but I didn’t think about whether or not that engagement would be with potential clients.

The second post came about far more innocently.  I was tinkering with Feedburner one night, and I discovered a feature that helped me better understand my blog’s traffic.  I decided to write up a post that contained this and a few other tips for helping bloggers better understand their traffic and subscribers, by using Feedburner.

The post was later found by an agency owner that was using Google to do research for a project, and she contacted me about joining them on a project, which I did.  I later worked with them on a second project, and I was also referred by that client to another client, and continue to work with both of them.  So that one post that was aimed at helping potential clients, got me real business, while the 1st ‘ranty’ post got a lot of people excited and a great discussion on my blog, it wasn’t aimed at potential clients, and so far hasn’t gotten me a penny in business.

I point these two examples out to encourage you to think carefully about who you are writing for.  It’s wonderful to get engagement and I always love and appreciate comments and RTs from readers.  But at the end of the day, you have to understand who it is you need to connect with.  I could write a ‘ranty’ post here every day, and possibly get more comments and traffic than I do now.

But would it get me any more business?  Probably not, because the clients that I want to connect with want to read posts that will help them better use social media and grow their businesses, not rants.

And to be fair, there’s nothing wrong with writing a ranty post every once in a while.  I’ve done it here before, and no doubt will again in the future.  But what I’ve learned is that engagement is great, as long as you are engaging with and writing for the ‘right’ people.

Who are you writing for?

 

UPDATE: Here’s a link to the ‘ranty’ post I wrote, and here’s a link to the Feedburner post.  Thanks to Kami for suggesting I add these.

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Fans aren’t just for Rockstars: A Framework for helping companies connect with their advocates and vice-versa

Warning: This is an uncharacteristically long post for this blog, but it’s a topic that I am pretty passionate about: Helping companies better connect with their brand advocates and customers, and vice versa.  If you’ve read this blog for any amount of time, you know how I often use the Rockstar analogy to explain how Rockstars have fans, while companies have customers.  This post attempts to address this point, and provide a framework for how companies can better connect to their customers and advocates.  And vice-versa, with the end goal being that both the customer and the company better understand each other, and the financial benefits that the business will enjoy as a result.

The best post on social media that you have likely never read is this one from Hugh in 2005.  In it, Hugh makes the case for corporate blogging (remember this was a year before Twitter was launched and the Goliath of the social media arena at the time was MySpace), and talks about the conversations that companies have internally, versus the one their customers are having externally.  The idea being that a corporate blog makes it easier for the customer to bring their external conversation to the company, and the company can more easily bring their internal conversation to the customer.

Ideally, both groups would become more closely aligned, as a result of better understanding each other.  As the customer’s external conversation begins to be heard and understood by the company, then the company’s internal conversation changes a bit.  And that change likely moves it closer to the external one, and in theory, as each group better understands the other, the two separate conversations will gravitate toward each other.  This is what I was talking about in my post on the promise of social media for businesses lies in FEWER conversations.

I was recently talking to Liz Strauss about this concept, about how businesses need to better understand the external conversation their customer are having, and how it will change the internal conversation. The idea is that businesses should be connected to their customers, especially their advocates, and bring that external conversation to the company, so they can better understand and connect with their customers.  And at the same time, find a way to connect with the customer so they can better understand the internal conversation the company is having, and the company itself.  Liz asked a very good question: “What’s the process for that?”

Uhhhhh…..

So I decided to come up with a process to do just that.  This is rough and I’ll no doubt be editing it constantly as time goes by.

To better understand what I’m suggesting, let’s look at a fictional B2C company, Carl’s Soda.  CS is middle of the pack in a crowded industry, and like most companies, can tell you their customer demographics, but doesn’t have a lot of direct interaction with their customers.  They have average customer satisfaction (avg to the beverage industry) scores, yet like most companies, do have their customer advocates.  Though the company does little to engage this group.  The majority of its marketing and advertising is done via traditional channels, with the pre-requisite experimenting being done online, especially with social media.

In short, they are pretty much lost in the shuffle in a crowded industry.  We want to see if we can change that by better connecting the company to its customers, and its customers to the company.

What we need to do is find a way to help CS get a better understanding of their customers via the external conversation that its customers are having about the brand.  At the same time, we need to take the internal conversation that the company is having about itself and its customers, and take that to its customers, in an effort to not only build brand awareness, but to also help its customers better understand the brand.  Because once both groups better understand each other, that’s going to facilitate more communication between both groups, which will increase understanding, which will lead to trust.  Which will move CS from middle of the pack, to the front of the pack.  As Steve Knox said:

As you’ll see as this process is fleshed out, it’s going to not only embrace and empower CS’s existing brand advocates, but cultivate new ones as well.

Step One: Creation of a Customer Insights Team

Responsibilites:

  • This group will be responsible for not only monitoring online and offline product and company mentions, but for preparing findings and providing them to relevant departments within the company, such as marketing, PR, customer services, product development/design, etc.
  • Additionally, this team will closely track changes in the volume of online mentions, as well as the sentiment.
  • Responsible for internal education of customers and interacting with them online.

Step Two: Creation of a Brand Ambassador Program for Carl’s Soda

As stated above, Carl’s Soda has its share of brand advocates, but really hasn’t done anything to engage them.  That starts with this program, which will be invitation-only and cap membership at 100.  This will give Carl’s Soda the ability to not only connect directly with its most passionate customers, but a mechanism to give them the tools to spread their love of Carl’s Soda to other customers.  If you’re looking at an existing model to compare this to, look at what Fiskars has done in creating The Fiskateers movement.

Step Three: Creation of an Internal Social Networking Site for Carl’s Soda’s employees

This would be a way for employees to learn more about each other, and share ideas and feedback.  This would also give employees a way to give feedback on the working environment, and suggestions for improvement.  Unlike the brand ambassador program, this should be open to any employees that want to participate.  Similar corporate models could be Best Buy’s Blue Shirt Nation, or Dell’s internal IdeaStorm for employees.

Now we need a mechanism in place to facilitate the flow of the external the customers are having to the internal walls of the company, and a separate mechanism in place that will facilitate the flow of the internal conversation that the company is having about itself and its customers, to the customers.  This leads to Steps Four and Five:

Step Four: Creation of a Brand Advisory Council

This will be a 6-person council comprised of 4 brand advocates for the company, and 2 customer advocates (who are company employees).  The 4 brand advocates will be chosen from the membership of the brand ambassador program.

Responsibilities:

  • The Brand Advisory Council will be over the Brand Ambassador Program.
  • The Brand Advisory Council will work with the Customer Insights Team to ensure that Carl’s Soda has the most accurate information about its customers
  • Will meet quarterly with key executives at Carl’s Soda to give them greater insights into the company’s customers and advocates.

Step Five: Creation of a Customer Advisory Council

This will be a 6-person council comprised of 4 customer advocates (who are company employees), and 2 brand advocates, who are also members of the Brand Advisory Council.

Responsibilities:

  • Will be over the internal social networking site for employees as detailed in Step Three.
  • The Customer Advisory Council will be responsible for bringing the internal conversation that the company is having about itself and its customers, to its customers.  This could be done via meetups, or even social media by highlighting employees and their thoughts via posts, video, etc.
  • Will meet quarterly with key executives at Carl’s Soda to give them greater insights into the company’s employees and the internal conversation they are having about the company, and its customers.

Now as I stated above, this is a rough draft and I will no doubt be altering this several times in the future.  But the entire reason for this process is based on this truth: Participating in a conversation changes that conversation.  This process is about finding a way to better align the external conversation that customers are having about the company, with the internal conversation that the company is having about its customers.

The benefits of this process include:

  • A better understanding of its customers, which leads the company to more effectively and efficiently market to its customers.  Which lowers marketing costs.
  • As the company better understands its customers, and vice versa, customer satisfaction improves.
  • As the company’s employees have a mechanism in place (internal socnet) to connect with each other and provide feedback on the company itself, employee satisfaction improves.


Why I think this is so important

Several times I’ve written here and elsewhere about how rockstars connect with their fans, and more or less have the same conversation.  Some companies, such as Harley-Davidson, have many brand advocates, and as a result, the internal and external conversations aren’t that far apart.  Harley-Davidson loves its products and brand for many of the same reasons its customers do.

But many companies have difficulty with this because the conversation the company is having and the one the customers are having about the company, are usually quite disjointed.  This process attempts to address that, and bring the two conversations more closely together.

At the end of the day, companies cannot afford to ignore their customers any longer.  Customers now have the tools available to them to mobilize and communicate with themselves far faster than the company can communicate on its own behalf.  Recent PR trainwrecks like Motrin Moms and Kenneth Cole’s #Egypt tweets on Twitter attest to this.  Companies have to not only be aware of what their customers are saying, but find a way to bring that conversation into their walls, and vice versa.  This process helps them get started along that path.

What have I missed? And there is a TON I have missed, trust me.  Does this make sense?  Again, it’s the starting point, the execution side hasn’t really been addressed yet.  What would that look like?