MackCollier.com

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The Magic of Being Second and the Spontaneous Hillside Dance

Years ago I saw a video from an outdoor music festival. The video showed a crowd of fans sitting on a hillside enjoying the concert. After a few seconds, one guy stood up and started dancing. By himself. He continued dancing, awkwardly, by himself for a minute or so. A few people nearby watched him but for the most part he was ignored.

Then after about a minute, a nearby person stood up and ran over to him and started dancing, awkwardly, next to him. When this happened, everyone around them started looking around at each other like “what is happening?” After a few seconds, a third person jumped up to join them, then a fourth, then a fifth. Within a minute or so, the entire hillside was dancing, awkwardly, together and enjoying themselves.

This spontaneous hillside dance wasn’t triggered by the first guy that got up. It was triggered by the SECOND person. When there was just one guy dancing, it was easy to dismiss them as simply being that weird awkward-dancing guy. But when the second person joined, then they were a group. Suddenly it became much easier to join them if you wanted to. Then when a few people started joining, the dynamic flipped from being weird to being cool.

I was remembering this spontaneous hillside dance yesterday when I re-watched Simon Sinek’s brilliant TED talk on the power of why. You have likely seen this talk, but even if you have, it’s worth another view:

If you think about how most companies can tell you what they do but struggle to talk about why they do it, it seems to be rooted in this desire we all have to promote ourselves or talk about ourselves. This is what’s important to me.

But the ‘why’ gets to the heart of why your idea can hold importance for OTHER PEOPLE. That’s where the magic happens. When other people see the value in your idea, they become invested shareholders of that idea. They help nuture it, they help grow it. They share it with likeminded people and invite them to nuture and care for it as well.

When you think about companies, who they are and what they do and WHY they do it, can you more easily describe the WHY or the WHAT?

I can describe the WHY for Red Bull, but only the WHAT for Monster Energy Drinks.

I can describe the WHY for Patagonia, but only the WHAT for Columbia Sportswear.

I can describe the WHY for Pedigree, but only the WHAT for Alpo.

 

But at the heart of all this, we are talking about what’s important to the customer, and putting that first, and putting ourselves second. As Sinek has said “People don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it.”

Which goes against human nature. We want to tell others how they can help US first, and after they do, we then ask “Ok how can we help you?” But the magic lies in putting yourself in second place and putting the person whose money or attention or time you want, putting them first.

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Want to Create a Brand Ambassador Program? Here’s 10 Things to Remember When You Do

Brand Ambassador Programs, Social Media

Your family owns 5 bakeries across the northern part of your state. The bakeries have developed a reputation for creating delicious cakes and pastries, speedy deliveries, and exceptional customer service. Which has resulted in a lot of happy customers!

You manage the social media presences for the five bakeries. You are monitoring the Facebook page for your bakeries today, and as usual you have several new comments from customers. These comments are almost always positive, and today’s mentions are consistent with a typical day:

Sarah: “The birthday cake we bought for my son’s 10th birthday party was delicious! It made the party, I had three moms come up later and ask for the recipe, and I was tempted to claim I made it, but gave them your address in the end (ha!). So expect Tina, Jess and Kym to show up soon!”

Tom: “You guys saved our Thanksgiving! As always, we were too ambitious in our dinner-planning and just didn’t have time in the end to bake the pumpkin and pecan pies we needed to finish off desert. You guys came through at the last-minute for us, even delivering on the day before Thanksgiving! As an added bonus, our out-of-town relatives loved both pies and said they would be stopping by as they leave town in a few days to take another home with them!”

Amber: “Have been a happy customer for the last 5 years, your double chocolate cakes and blueberry streusel muffins are my favorites, they always make our meals special. Are you planning on opening a location in Lancaster? All my friends have heard about how delicious your cakes and muffins are, so you have a ready customer base if you do!”

 

In reading these comments, a light bulb goes off: These customers have taken ownership of the sales, customer service, marketing and promotion processes for your bakeries. Without guidance, these customers have taken it upon themselves to help grow your business.

But what if you could give these customers guidance in how to better promote your business and grow your customer base? What if you had a way to work directly with these customers to give them the tools they need and WANT to help share why they love your business with their friends, family, and other customers?

That’s where a Brand Ambassador Program comes in. Over the last few years, companies have begun to realize the benefits of having a way to connect directly with their most passionate customers to drive business growth.  While customers as a whole don’t trust brands, they do trust other customers.  Especially passionate customers that love their favorite brands.  While a marketing message from a brand will likely be ignored, a passionate recommendation from a fellow customer will be taken far more seriously.

This has a lot of companies researching how to create a successful brand ambassador program, and how to work with brand ambassadors. Let’s start with some definitions:

What is a Brand Ambassador? A brand ambassador is a person who works to promote and represent a brand in its marketplace. Brand ambassadors are often current customers who were already advocating for brands before they started working with them, but some brand ambassadors are chosen because they have a large following or are viewed as influencers. Brand ambassadors have a working relationship with the brands they represent, and are given instruction on how to interact with customers in the marketplace, based on the business goals for that brand.

What is a Brand Ambassador Program? A brand ambassador program is a business program that organizes brand ambassadors and creates an ongoing, working relationship between the brand and its ambassadors. A brand ambassador program is used to manage the ongoing, working relationship between the brand and its ambassadors, and provide ongoing training and instruction for its ambassadors, as well as support. Most brand ambassador programs work closely with other areas of the business, such as marketing, sales, customer service, and product design.

So if your company is considering launching a brand ambassador program to connect with your brand advocates and ambassadors, here’s 10 things to remember:

1 – Spread the word internally as well as externally.  Getting internal buy-in is just as important, if not moreso, than getting customers excited about your efforts.  If your brand advocacy program doesn’t have INTERNAL advocates pushing it along, its chances of success are going to be greatly reduced.  Launching a brand ambassador program takes time and energy.  Immediate ROI will be very hard to prove, it’s a long-term process.  Which is why it pays to have a team of people that are pushing for patience.

2 – Research, research, research.  You’ll have to invest a lot of time in discovering WHO your brand advocates are.  You might think you know who they are, but there’s rarely a ‘one-size-fits-all’ view.  You’ll also have to monitor ALL conversations with your customers.  Not just online conversations, not just offline ones either.  Look at both.  Also, make special note of the customers that go the extra mile to connect with you, the ones that write you letters, even if they sound negative.  Companies often confuse passion for the brand with negativity aimed at the brand.

Whenever I talk to companies who are curious about launching a brand ambassador program, one of the first questions is “How do we find our brand ambassadors?” The good news is, potential brand ambassadors will often find you! Customers who are good candidates to be ambassadors for your brand will often proactively reach out to your company. They will email you with feedback on your brand, they will respond to you on social media, they will call your customer service department with feedback.  Ideally, you can select enough qualified ambassadors for your brand by simply cataloging the customers who are already connecting with your brand proactively.

3 – Start small, grow big.  You don’t have to have a million members in your brand ambassador program.  In fact, I’d rather have 10 truly passionate brand advocates than 10,000 members that are merely ‘meh’ toward the brand.  If you start small and select those that are truly passionate about your brand and its vision, the growth will come organically as these passionate people will help you identify others just like them.

Additionally, it simply makes good business sense to start small with your brand ambassador program, especially if this is your company’s first attempt at such a program. Whenever you take on any new initiative like this, especially when working directly with your customers, there will be mistakes made. This is why I advise my clients that if possible, start with a small group, nail down the process, then you can expand the scope of the program after you’ve worked the kinks out. In other words, start small, nail the process, then grow.

Here’s an example of how this could work. Let’s say your company has fitness centers across the United States, your company has 425 centers and operates in 23 states, but you have the most locations in the Chicago, Los Angeles and Atlanta markets. Instead of rolling out a comprehensive, nationwide brand ambassador program with 500 members, it might make more business and logistical sense to launch a 10-person brand ambassador program for just the Chicago market. After spending the first year perfecting the program and process for the Chicago market, in the second year you could launch brand ambassador programs for the Los Angeles and Atlanta markets. After nailing down the processes for these markets, your company can then roll out a comprehensive, and nationwide, brand ambassador program.

4 – Make membership exclusive.  This ties into the previous point, but you don’t want ALL your customers to be members of your brand ambassador program.  You want to give them hurdles to jump, obstacles to overcome.  In other words, you want to weed out the customers that aren’t committed to the brand, or the program.  The true advocates for your brand will already be doing much if not all of what you would require of them as members of the program.  It also pays to cap membership, and to give the existing members a huge say in who the future members are.

5 – Connect with your advocates and create ways for them to connect with each other.  Your advocates are special people, you don’t want them on an island, you want them connected.  Create a central ‘homebase’ for the current members of your program, but also stay connected to other advocates that aren’t yet members.  And make your existing ambassadors aware of these advocates, and have them ‘vet’ them for possible membership in your formal ambassador program.

6 – Pay your ambassadors.  This is one of the biggest misconceptions about brand ambassadors.  They DO want to be compensated but most do NOT want to be given money.  Sure, we all love money, but for a true brand advocate they usually want other things.  Like access, empowerment, and acknowledgement.  A few years ago when I worked with Dell on its #DellCAP events, the customers weren’t paid to come (travel was covered), but they were given access.  For example, they got to tour Dell’s Social Media Listening Center, then they got to spend 30 minutes talking to CEO Michael Dell.  That’s pretty heady stuff for a Dell advocate.  When they go back home, their friend might brag about having the latest and greatest Dell laptop, while they can respond with ‘Oh yeah, well Dell invited me to their world headquarters and I got to chat with Michael Dell himself!’  That’s a great example of rewarding your advocates.

Here’s another example: I once worked with a software company to design a brand ambassador program for its users. The majority of the users of this software were small business owners. After surveying its users, the software company discovered that these small business owners were desperate for social media and content marketing advice. So we created a series of webinars just for members of the brand ambassador program that would have a different expert deliver a webinar on a different marketing topic to brand ambassadors. This benefit had nothing to do with the software company, it was completely focused on what would be valuable to brand ambassadors. If you’re brainstorming ideas for possible benefits you could give your brand ambassadors, check out this exhaustive list of benefits that Harley-Davidson offers members of its HOG group.

7 – Give your advocates direct access to the brand.  The members of your brand ambassador program should be given direct contact with multiple key executives within the brand.  In fact, I would suggest making 1 or more of the ‘top’ members of your brand ambassador program part of the team that’s responsible for reporting on the progress of the program to the C-Suite.  The idea here is to make sure that the voice of your brand’s biggest defenders and advocates is always heard at the company, from the top down.

8 – Create a feedback loop between the brand ambassadors, and the brand.  I outlined the process for this loop in this post.  You need to have a way to let your ambassadors have direct access to the brand, as mentioned above.  But at the same time, the brand needs to respond to the brand ambassadors and give them feedback on their feedback.  Additionally, the brand needs to take the feedback from its ambassadors and distribute that feedback internally and not just silo it among the employees that are working directly on the brand ambassador program.

9 – Give your ambassadors the tools to create something amazing.  Again, you want to start small and grow organically.  And you want that growth to be fueled by your existing advocates.  You want to embrace and empower your existing advocates, thus the creation of the brand ambassador program.  But you also want your existing ambassadors to have the tools to embrace and empower other advocates that aren’t yet members.  And tying back to the earlier points about giving ambassadors direct access to the brand, when your existing ambassadors find other advocates, they can immediately bring them to the brand’s attention.

10 – Transfer ownership of the program from the brand, to its ambassadors.  When you create a brand ambassador program, you need to realize that long-term, this will belong to your advocates.  You’ll always be there, and you’ll always have a voice, but the idea is that you want your most passionate customers to eventually take over this program.  Maybe you’ll start out with a ‘board’ over the program made up of 5 key brand executives, and 5 brand ambassadors.  But over time, as your ambassadors become familiar with the program and its function and goals, you need to let them have control.  Again, you don’t want the voice of your company to dominate this effort, you want the voice of your most passionate customers to have control, because those customers are going to be connecting with other customers.

 

 

But perhaps the most important thing to remember when creating a brand ambassador program is who you will be working with:

Every single day you’ll be working with customers that love you. Customers that love your brand as if it were their own, and who will work with you every day to see it grow and prosper. Let’s be honest, it’s pretty awesome to work every day with people that love you and believe in you. That’s exactly what happens when you create and launch a brand ambassador program.

 

BONUS: When you are ready to pitch your idea for a brand ambassador program to the C-Suite, make a plan that details exactly how the program will benefit the brand, and exactly how it will benefit the ambassadors who participate. Carefully and clearly spell out all the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) that will be measured and tracked, as well as an explanation of why it is important to do so. Also, give a thorough timeline of the roll-out of the brand ambassador program, for at least the first 6 months of the program, 12 months is better. Assume that there will be a healthy amount of skepticism from upper management about the success of a brand ambassador program (since your brand has likely never launched one), so the eventual signoff by the CEO or CMO will greatly depend on how well you address these concerns head on.

So there’s some ideas to consider when you get ready to create and launch an official brand ambassador program.  This won’t be easy, and it will take a lot of time, but if you are committed to connecting with your most passionate customers and willing to empower them, the results will make program a huge success.  If you need help getting started, let’s explore how we can work together to create an ambassador program for your brand.

 

DOUBLE BONUS: Want to see a great example of an employee brand ambassador program?

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Over the Hills and Far Away: The Rock Star’s Guide to Building an Online Community

Jessica Northey-Shaw is kind of a big deal in the country music scene. She’s worked with many of the industry’s top artists, and her #CMChat is probably the largest chat on Twitter, she’s had artists such as The Oak Ridge Boys, Charlie Daniels, Clint Black and Alabama as guests. She told me once that one of the first pieces of advice that Taylor Swift got when she started her career was “Shake half a million hands to get a Gold record”.  The message was that Taylor was going to have to connect individually with her fans if she wanted to be successful.

Taylor took that advice to heart and has always embraced her fans. In 2010 Taylor Swift agreed to have a free autograph signing for her fans as part of a CMA event in Nashville. Taylor was scheduled to start signing at 8am, and she agreed to sign for a staggering 13 hours.

Instead, she signed for 15 hours. The only breaks she took during the marathon signing session was to stop signing long enough to perform music for the over 2,000 fans who stood in line for her autograph.

Content creators of all stripes, whether it be a blogger, a Twitch streamer, a YouTuber or a budding Instagram star, want to grow their followings. Most of them are in a race to grow as quickly as possible. Growth is equal to success in their minds, and fast growth equals fast success.

Yet when you look at how most rock stars become successful, the ‘growth’ process typically takes years. There are rarely overnight success stories.

A big part of the reason why is rooted in how rock stars create and cultivate fans versus how the rest of us do.

Growing Slow Trumps Growing Fast

Consider how the average rock star gets their start. Maybe they perform for a local coffeeshop every Thursday, or maybe a local bar every Saturday night. In either case, the rock star performs for a very small crowd. The crowds are typically small enough that afterward, the singers have a chance to talk individually to the people that took the time to listen to their music. They can connect with these people individually. They can get their feedback, and apply it to the next performance.

Connecting individually with these people greatly increases the chance that they will become fans. Which means they will come back next week and when they do, they will likely bring some friends. Those friends will connect with the band after their performance and they will likely become fans as well. As a result, the crowds that the artist performs for each week become a bit larger. Soon, they are too large for the small bar or coffeehouse, and they have to move to a larger club, maybe a local arena.

Eventually, as the singers become more popular, they can tour the state, then the region.  Then the nation. But the growth, the growth started small by connecting with each of those few fans that showed up the first time to hear them sing.  From that point, the growth of the rock stars was fueled by their fans.

Which person are you more likely to listen to:

A – Me when I tell you that my blog is awesome and you should read it every day

B – Your best friend when she tells you that my blog is awesome and you should read it every day

 

Of course, you’re going to listen to your best friend. When I say it, it’s advertising, when your best friend says it, it’s a recommendation from a source you trust.

Rock stars have always understood this.

This is the Loyalty Graph, and it’s one of the most popular features of my book, Think Like a Rock Star: How to Create Social Media and Marketing Strategies That Turn Customers Into Fans. The Loyalty Graph is designed to give you a visual representation of the difference between how most rock stars market themselves, and how most companies do. For the purposes of our discussion, you could consider most companies to be most content creators, and most customers to be readers or followers or viewers.

Most rock stars spend almost all of their time interacting and marketing directly with their CURRENT customers, or fans. They do this because they know that their fans will grow their base for them. On the other hand, most companies try to acquire new customers, and all but ignore their current ones. Many bloggers or streamers do the same thing, they create content in a way that will grow their following, but they don’t focus on developing deeper connections with the people that are already consuming their content.

“But Mack, if my following grows, what difference does it make how it happens?”

Here’s the difference: Go to Twitter right now and tweet a link to your latest blog post and ask your followers to RT it for you.

Now email your 5 closest friends and ask them to do the same thing.

I suspect you will get more RTs from your 5 closest friends than you ever would from ALL of your followers on Twitter. Why?  Because the people following you on Twitter aren’t your friends. They aren’t connected to you and don’t have a relationship with you. Sure, some of your friends are also following you on Twitter, but if you’re like most people, you follow an awful lot of people on Twitter that you NEVER interact with.

Case in point: I have about 43,000 followers currently on Twitter. I could grow my Twitter following to 75,000 by the end of the month.  How? By simply following 2,000 people every day.  About half the people I follow would follow me back, and by the end of the month I’d have 75,000 followers. But how many of those additional 30,000 or so followers would answer my call for a RT?  Few, if any. So if I just gained 30,000 followers who I will never interact with and who will never interact with me, what is the point?

If you want to grow your online community, do it slow. Connect deeply with every individual person. Let them drive growth for you. The more you do to drive your growth directly, the less influence you will ultimately have over the people that follow you.

If you are a blogger and you have 5 readers, you have an incredible power. You have the ability to connect directly with EVERY reader of your blog. That’s going to convert them into fans who will grow your readership FOR you.

That’s precisely how rock stars grow their fanbases. One fan at a time.

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Selling Your Passion vs Selling Your Product

The vast majority of companies I work with are using social and digital media to build awareness for their brands. Typically, they contact me because their efforts aren’t getting the results they need. One of the first mistakes I often find is that these companies are selling before the buyer is ready to make a purchase. You can’t sell to someone that isn’t ready to buy, and if you are trying to build awareness with customers, obviously these customers are unaware of who you are and why they should buy from you.

So instead of selling your product or service directly to these customers, you talk about the customers. Think about it, if you see or hear a marketing message, but it’s about something that you can relate to, that interests you, then you pay attention! If you want to grab the attention of unaware customers, then you talk about the customers.

In this post, Tom Martin talks about how he networks at events. He makes a point to talk to the person he’s just met and hone in on any common interests. Why does Tom do this? Because by talking about something that BOTH Tom and the person are passionate about, it helps the person more easily connect with Tom. The other person will let their guard down and be more willing to listen to Tom. On the flipside, if Tom had introduced himself and immediately started talking about him, about his business, the person would have likely lost interest very quickly. So Tom smartly puts the focus on the other person, let’s talk about you, let’s find a common ground, and let’s talk about that something that we are both passionate about. Also note that Tom adds that one of the people at the event later remarked that someone had told her that they appreciated that Tom didn’t sell them immediately, but now that they’ve talked to him for a bit, they want to hear ‘the pitch’.

Your marketing should follow the same path that Tom does when trying to connect with new customers. First, focus completely on the customer. Then, once you have their attention, focus on that common passion point that relates to both the customer, as well as your brand. After doing this, the customer will be more open to ‘the sell’, so then you start to promote and market your products and services directly.

A key element, perhaps the most important element, of connecting with a customer is establishing trust. Once the customer trusts you, they will lower their guard and give you their full attention. Think about how you interact with your friends. How much of your conversations revolve around common interests? We can relate to our friends, and we trust our friends.

So shouldn’t you talk to your customers as if they were your friends? Remember in the previous post we talked about how Bill Samuels Jr at Maker’s Mark said the brand strove to view his customers as friends, and he called this ‘marketing without fingerprints’.

What’s the common interest or passion point that runs through your brand and your customer? If you’re looking to build awareness with your customers, start there.

 

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Instagram’s Threads Messaging App Attempts to Take Social Media ‘Back to the Future’

The rumor is that Instagram plans on launching a new standalone messaging app called Threads. This app would be geared toward letting Instagram users connect with their closest contacts only. The idea of a social media app that focuses on only your closest friends isn’t new (remember Path?), but what’s interesting here is how the app’s functionality is arrived at. Instagram looked at its users and found that they connected differently with their closest contacts. Most Instagram users preferred to communicate with close connections via instant messaging rather than public interactions.  In other words, Instagram found that most users communicate publicly with everyone, and privately with just their close friends.

I’ve written about this before, but I think we will see social media sites and apps begin to move toward helping us foster closer connections with fewer people versus platonic connections with everyone. Social media was originally focused on growing your network organically via simple interactions with friends and family. Everyone had smaller networks, and a much closer connection to the members of their network.

This all began to change when social media sites like Facebook and Twitter began adding ‘vanity metrics’ to a user’s account and activity. Suddenly, everyone could see how many people followed you, or how much engagement every bit of content you created had earned. It also changed how we created and shared content. If a particular piece of content had many Likes or Retweets, it was a sort of ‘social proof’ that other people enjoyed this content, so it must be worth our attention. Or at least worth sharing with others.

I’ve wondered how our behavior on social media today would change if no one knew how many followers someone had, or how much (or little) engagement their content had earned. Would we go back to communicating instead of broadcasting? Would we judge content on its own merits, rather than the number of Likes or Retweets it had gotten?

At the end of the day, I think most of us would like to return to a time when it was more about the ‘social’ and less about the ‘media’.

If you’d like to learn more about the potential of the Threads app and why Instagram could go in this direction, check out this episode of eMarketer’s Behind the Numbers podcast.

 

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The Secret Language of Happy Customers

Let’s say you are a die hard fan of the movie Memento, like I am. Think about the conversation you would have with someone who just saw the movie for the first time last night. Most of their input would likely be along the lines of “WTF did I just watch???”

Now how would that conversation change if you met another fellow die hard fan of Memento?  You would have a COMPLETELY different conversation. You would get into dissecting individual scenes, the plot as a whole, you would question if it was really Teddy who slipped the note under Leonard’s door at the hotel, or was it someone else?

In her wonderful book Badass: Making Users Awesome, Kathy Sierra talks about how your most passionate users/customers have a different conversation than your regular customers. They are the ‘experts’ who hear music differently, the photographers who notice details in a landscape and how to frame a picture perfectly that the rest of us completely miss. They have a more advanced understanding of the things they are passionate about, and as a result, their conversations are more advanced as well.

I was remembering Kathy’s teachings when I recently heard the wonderful episode of the Punch Out podcast with David Meerman Scott as guest. First, David is absolutely brilliant and has some incredibly fascinating hobbies, so the episode is a must-listen purely for the entertainment value.

But David said something fascinating that ties into Kathy’s point about passionate users/customers having a different conversation around the things they love.  David said “It’s a way to form really strong bonds with people, around a shared fandom, a shared emotional connection. At one time I was like ‘this is a frivolous hobby’, but it’s not. It’s something that’s really important for us humans, to be around like minded people.”

Whenever I talk to companies about building a brand ambassador program, one of the key elements I always address is the need to have a way for the members of the program to connect with each other. It’s incredibly important to have people that share a passion around an idea, a belief, or even a brand, connect directly with each other.  I’ve often said that a rock concert is one of the greatest marketing inventions created. Think about what a rock concert is; you take hundreds if not thousands of fans of a rock artist or band, and stick them in the same arena and let them interact with each other. Being that close to so many people that share a similar passion or interest as you makes the entire experience that much better and more rewarding. It also increases your attachment and passion for the rock star.

So it makes sense to find a way to connect these customers to each other. Such customers are often great candidates for Customer Advisory Panels, or any group you create where you regularly solicit and act on feedback from customers. If you have a formal brand ambassador program, one of the important aspects is creating channels or tools that allow ambassadors to connect with each and become more comfortable together. This can easily be done with something as simple as a Facebook group or Slack channel.

Now, how could these special customers fit into your current marketing efforts?

Let’s remember we are talking about customers who are highly knowledgeable about your products and services. So much so that they likely will know more about your products and services than some of your newer employees. In other words, these special customers have the ability to be some of your best salespeople, if you tap into their abilities.

At this point, let’s revisit the buyer’s journey:

Buyer's Journey, Creating Better Content

The best place to utilize these customers would be in helping move potential customers from the Interested to Ready to Buy stage. Potential customers who are already interested are likely doing research on your products and services as the final step before committing to a purchase. Think of these customers as your ‘closers’, the customers that come in and seal the deal/sale for the person who is almost ready to make a purchase.

Let’s remember that customers who are in the Interested stage of the buyer’s journey are doing independent research. They are perusing your company website for specific product information and details. They are also searching for feedback from other customers. Customer reviews on websites such as Amazon are a common choice as its important to hear what people thought about your product or service AFTER buying it. Savvy customers will also search for complaints about your products and services, looking for common issues or problems that customers encountered.

Which is why it pays to engage with your more advanced customers and give them the incentive and structure to engage with customers who are in the ‘Interested’ stage of the buyer’s journey.  Encourage these customers to write reviews, publish blog posts, interact on message boards and forums.

The reality is that your most passionate customers are also your best salespeople.  Research has shown time and time again that we don’t trust brands, but we do trust other customers.

 

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Tiny Love Spaces – Why Smaller is Often Better in Social Media

I wanted to talk about three distinct groups of friends I’ve followed over the last year or so. The first is a group of friends who are frequent business travelers, and we share stories and purchase suggestions in a group on Facebook.  The second is a group of friends who are fellow members of Adobe’s Insider Group, and we stay in touch via a Twitter group DM and Slack channel.  The third group of friends are people I have met on, of all things a phone game, and we have a group on messaging app Line.

These three groups are almost completely distinct (a few of my friends in the Facebook group are also in the Adobe Insiders group DM), and have formed around three very different social apps/platforms.

In fact, someone recently asked me what my favorite current social media site or app was and I immediately said ‘Line’. But I quickly realized that there’s nothing really spectacular about Line, I just thought of it first because that’s where my newest group of friends are.

These examples cover two trends that will be relevant to social and digital media over the coming years that I wanted to discuss.

1 – We are long past the saturation point in social media content. Notice I said social media CONTENT. Originally, social media sites and tools were used for communication. Over the last few years, social media sites have morphed into content distribution platforms first, with communication happening a distant second. As a result, user behavior has changed. Some people have adapted their social media usage, and have started sharing more content on social media sites. I certainly have. Others have changed their behavior by spending less time on these sites as the experience has shifted.

Yet another way that users have adapted to the content sharing saturation on social media sites is by creating small groups or clusters of people who can more organically interact with each other. The three examples I mentioned above; Facebook groups, Twitter group DMs and Line groups, represent this idea of going back to when we could connect and interact with our friends and peers on these sites. I also wonder if we might see this happening more on blogs, as bloggers try to re-cultivate reading communities on their sites. It’s about self-creating a way to cut through the clutter and get back to having a small group of friends or people that share a common connection or interest.

2 – People use social sites and apps based on whether or not their friends are using them. A few months ago I started playing a phone game and as soon as I did, everyone in the game told me “You have to get on Line!”  So after weeks of needling about not being on Line, I finally joined.  And the app itself is nothing that spectacular, but I enjoy using it because it gives me a way to stay in touch with the friends I’ve made while playing the game.

I think this is something we all do, we don’t pick a social app or site based on form and functionality as much as we do because we want to stay in touch with the people we know. Ten years ago there were far more social media sites and apps vying for eyeballs, and as a result many of those sites offered their own quirky user interface or functionality elements to try to attract attention.  Today, there are far fewer successful social media sites, and most of the mainstream ones share many of the core functionality elements. So functionality isn’t really a deciding factor in social media usage as it might have been a few years ago.

 

I’ve written about this before, but I think we are seeing a move away from a decentralized social web back to centralized, smaller groups or clusters of people organized around a common theme, belief or idea. I also think marketers need to understand this shift, and prepare for it.  This is why you are seeing companies move from working with influencers with huge followers, to working with T-Shaped or micro-influencers that have smaller followings, but a much deeper connection to those people.

What made social media so amazing in its earliest days was that it gave us an easy way to build deep connections with small clusters of people.  Over time, that’s morphed into having very shallow connections with as many people as possible.

I don’t think that’s ideal, or sustainable. Smaller and deeper groups of friends are preferable than having everyone on a site, and not really knowing anyone.

 

PS: I wanted to say thanks to BuzzSumo for including me in its list of the Top 100 Digital Marketing Influencers for 2019, at #20. A wonderful honor, check the list as there are a ton of smart people to follow.

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Case Study: National Geographic’s “Your Shot” Photography Community

One of the smart tactics many brands are leveraging is incorporating user-generated content into its social content streams. The idea is that you take content that your customers or fans are creating, and highlight it alongside your own. It gives the content creators a platform to get more exposure for their work, plus it helps the brand in getting more content. For example, Visit North Alabama is one of my favorite accounts to follow on Instagram. They often use pictures submitted by followers in their Instagram feed, such as this beauty:

National Geographic has taken this idea a step further with its Your Shot community. Your Shot invites photographers to submit their photos to ‘assignments’ that are posted on the site.  The assignments revolve around a particular theme, such as ‘Close Encounters’ or ‘Adventures in the City’. The submissions are reviewed by editors at National Geographic as well as the larger community on the site, and the best ones are selected to appear on the site.

When asking for customers/users/community members to submit content that you will use, there must be a clear benefit to the content creator in doing so. In this case, the benefit to National Geographic is obvious; They get a ton of gorgeous pictures submitted from talented photographers.

But what is the benefit to the photographers? Besides additional exposure for their work, these photographers also have a chance to have their work critiqued by National Geographic’s editors, as well as by the community at large:

This is invaluable advice from both the editors and the community at large. The community can comment on the work as well as select the elements of each shot that they appreciated. It can give the photographer detailed guidance on where his or her work is excelling as well as what they can improve on.

If you are going to test the user-generated content waters, make sure that the users you are appealing to have a clear incentive to share their content with you, and that there is a clear benefit to them from doing so. By agreeing to share their photos with National Geographic, the benefit these photographers get is clear, and who knows, a few spectacular shots might even land an aspiring photographer on National Geographic’s short list the next time they are hiring.

Remember, if you give your customers/users a clear benefit to share their content with you, they will be more likely to share content with you, and the content they do share will be of higher quality. The goal is to have a clear win-win for both you and your customers/users.

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Reward the Behavior You Want to Encourage

Every interaction you have with a customer creates another interaction. And in this case, not engaging with the customer also counts as an interaction.

For instance, let’s say you eat at a particular restaurant and have a wonderful meal. You’re so happy with the experience that you decide to hop on Twitter and tell the restaurant directly.

If the restaurant never responds, how does that make you feel?  Unappreciated? Invisible? It probably leaves a bit of a bad taste in your mouth, right?

On the other hand, if they respond, it feels like they value you as a customer enough to take the time to thank you, right?

I am always talking about the idea of Rewarding the Beahavior You Want to Encourage. The idea is simple; when someone does something that you want them to do, you find a way to ‘reward’ them and encourage them to do it again. If someone compliments you, you thank them. If they buy your product, you go out of your way to communicate to them that they made a smart purchase decision.  If someone comments on your blog, you respond so they will do so again.

The idea is to validate the behavior that they just engaged in.

Every Sunday night I run #Blogchat, we’ve been having #Blogchat for almost 10 years now on Twitter. Every week, someone will mention that this is their first time attending #Blogchat.

I always always ALWAYS respond to this person directly and THANK them for coming to #Blogchat. This is because I appreciate them taking the time to come to #Blogchat, but also because I want them to RETURN! If you come to a Twitter chat and no one talks to you, you’re probably not coming back, right? I go out of my way to communicate to first-timers that I appreciate them showing up, and want them to return.

Julia tweeted it was her first time joining #Blogchat, I thanked her and let her know how much I appreciated her taking the time to join us.

When you respond to others, it also sends a message to everyone else. Notice that after I reply to Julia, Zarina does as well:

I made a point to welcome Zarina when she first joined #Blogchat as well, and now she’s helping me and welcoming new members as well! This sends a message to both Julia and Zarina that they made a smart decision in joining #Blogchat, that we are going to look out for them, and help them solve their blogging problems.

 

Think about what behaviors you want your readers, clients or customers to engage in. Maybe it’s commenting on a blog post, or subscribing to your newsletter, or buying a product. In fact, let’s just run through each right now and how you can ‘reward’ that behavior.

Commenting on a blog post – This the behavior you want your readers to engage in. So how do you ‘reward’ that behavior? The most obvious way, is by RESPONDING to their comment. People leave a comment because they want other people to REACT to it. By responding, you validate to that person why they left the comment to begin with.  You ‘reward’ them with a respond and that makes them feel good about leaving the comment to begin with. It also increases the chance that they will comment AGAIN, and it communicates to everyone else that if they leave a comment, they will probably get a reply as well.

Subscribing to your newsletter –  Often when you subscribe to a newsletter, you soon find out that it’s not as valuable as you hoped it would be. So there’s a sense of ‘buyer’s remorse’. What I’ve done with my Think Like a Rock Star newsletter is I help subscribers immediately see value from the newsletter. I’ve created an email trigger funnel for new subscribers, so as soon as they subscribe, over the following 5 days, they get a total of 4, daily emails that are packed with in-depth advice on how to create and cultivate fans of their brand. This is the ‘reward’ for these subscribers engaging in the behavior that I wanted to encourage. It communicates to them that they made a smart decision in subscribing to my newsletter.

Buying a product – ‘Buyer’s remorse’ can be literal here, especially as the cost of the purchase increases. You can offset these feelings and make the buyer feel smarter about the purchase by making customer support available to them post-purchase and by staying in contact with them to make sure they know precisely how to use their new products and that they fully understand how to use all its features. Often, customers simply aren’t aware how to use a new product correctly, and if they figure out how to use the product correctly, it can greatly increase their satisfaction with the product.

 

Remember, a big part of rewarding the behavior you want to encourage comes from making the person feel SMART about engaging in the behavior that you ultimately want to encourage. If they feel smart, then they will probably have positive thoughts about interacting with you and/or your company.

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Creating Fans Through Storytelling

One of the best ways that brands can create fans is through storytelling. Specifically, through telling stories that relate to the brand, but that also tie into themes that are important to the customer. When done effectively, storytelling also helps the customer get a better understanding of what the brand is about. Think of it as pulling back the curtain and giving us a ‘backstage pass’ to see what goes on within the brand.

Last night I talked to the Advanced Social Media class at the University of Wisconsin – River Falls, and one of the examples of creating fans through storytelling was what Robert Scoble did years ago with Channel 9 videos while he was still at Microsoft. He would take a small camcorder and just go up to the cubicles of his co-workers and ask them to explain who they are and what they do. This was wonderful storytelling because it helped us understand more about the people who worked at Microsoft, and the culture at the brand. It made it a bit easier for us to relate to the brand once we could see the faces of the people that work there, and understand more about WHY they loved working there.

More recently, look at what Whole Foods did with wiping out its Instagram feed to raise awareness of declining bee populations around the world. This was powerful storytelling that tied into themes that relate to the brand (protecting the bees that help create the foods we love), while also giving us greater insights into what the brand is passionate about. Anything that a brand can do to help its customers better understand what it stands for, will always aid in creating fans.

Another instance of storytelling is what Maersk did with its archival photos. Kerry did a wonderful podcast with Maersk’s former head of social media, Jonathan Wichmann. Wichmann explained that when he took the job, he discovered that Maersk had an archivist who had thousands upon thousands of photos associated with Maersk and its shipping containers over the last century. He asked why no one ever used the photos and the brand’s response was ‘who would care?’  So Wichmann started posting the photos on Instagram and other social media sites and they were an immediate hit. These photos helped tell the story of the brand, and also helped us understand what they do, and for how long the brand has been doing it.  All of this also made it wasier to trust the brand, especially when you consider how long they have been providing the same services.

If your brand wants to experiment in creating content that helps tell the story of your brand, think about what stories you can talk about that tell what’s important to your brand, but that aren’t entirely focused on your brand.  Whole Foods talked about why we need to pay attention to declining bee populations.  Maersk by sharing its photos was also telling the story of why the work it does is so important. Yes, the pictures were mostly about the brand, but those pictures are also the history of shipping on the sea. It helps us understand what Maersk does, and what role in plays in global commerce.

And also, think about how you can lower your guard a bit and help us understand a bit more about what your brand does and who it is. Show us the people behind your brand, like Scoble did at Microsoft. GE does this with its employees, encouraging them to go on social media and talk about the work they do, as a way to increase the quality of job applicants. People better understand the culture at GE and why people love working there, and they are more likely to apply for open positions.

Above all, this is a potential competitive advantage for your brand. By engaging in storytelling with your customers, by opening your brand to them, you make it easier for your customers to better understand your brand, and relate to it.  Which makes it easier for your customers to TRUST your brand.

And when your customers trust your brand, then they can advocate for it. Interactions lead to Understanding which leads to Trust, which leads to Advocacy.