MackCollier.com

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How to Expand Your Reach in Social Media When You Have No Budget

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Last night I was thrilled to join Full Sail University for a special Think Like a Rock Star webinar.  It was an amazing turnout, and I wanted to talk about one of the questions that an attendee asked.

Someone wanted to know how you can expand your reach in social media when you have no budget.  The answer is that you reward the behavior you want to encourage.

Years ago when I first started blogging, I had a nice little community reading my blog.  I would only get 50-100 visitors a day (This was 2006) but every post I wrote had comments, sometimes 15-20.  A blogger friend that was writing for a site that at the time got about 10,000 visitors a month (far more than my blog) left a comment saying ‘I just want to know why you get 10 or more comments on every post and I don’t get any’.  I told him ‘because I respond to my comments’.

I didn’t have many readers, but my level of engagement was much higher than blogs with huge readerships.  If you want to build your reach and engagement then start by rewarding the behavior you want to encourage.  If you want to get more comments on your blog, then start by responding to every comment.  Communicate to your readers that if they comment, that you will respond.  This seems like a no-brainer but you wouldn’t believe how many bloggers never respond to comments, then wonder why they get so few.

No matter how ‘small’ your blog or social media presence is, you’ll have some fans.  People that enjoy your content and that follow you because of it.  Cherish these people.  Even if there are only 2 of them, treat them like rock stars.  Because they are.  And these 2 fans will tell their friends to check you out and before you know it you have 5 fans.  Then 10, then 50, then 100.

The two most powerful words in social media are ‘Thank you’.  Whenever you see someone interacting with your content or sharing your content or recommending your content, then thank them, because they just did you a favor.  And since we all like to be appreciated, when you thank them that encourages them to keep sharing and interacting with your content.

Start small, grow big.

Pic via Flickr user aleske

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Stop Chasing Shiny Objects, Invest in the ‘Classics’

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A few years ago an agency approached me and said they had figured out a plan to get ahead.  They were seeing at the time that Twitter was growing like a weed in the South in August, so they were going to hire a ‘Twitter person’.  This person would be an expert at using Twitter, and she would train the entire agency on how to use Twitter, so that they would have an agency full of Twitter experts.

She concluded by asking ‘what do you think?’ with a confident tone that told me that she fully believed she had just cracked the code on successfully propelling her agency into the next decade.

I told her the same thing that day that I will tell you today: Stop trying to understand the tools, and instead invest in learning how your customers are using the tools.  Earlier this month it felt like every marketer in the world was jumping on Jelly.  Marketers were infatuated by a new social tool and more importantly, a new sales opportunity.  These marketers had no clue who was using Jelly or if it would ever be relevant to their customers.  They rushed in at the promise of finding a hot new social channel to sell their wares via.

The true sales opportunity lies in figuring out where the customer is headed and then clearing a path to help them reach their destination.  The customer will eventually reach her destination with or without us, but the value we bring to the equation is to help the customer reach her destination as effortlessly as possible.  Helping the customer do this IS the sales opportunity.

There are two areas you need to focus on in 2014:

1 – Understanding how your customers are using these tools

2 – Understanding how customer behavior is changing because of emerging tools and technology

Over a decade ago, The Cluetrain Manifesto was published, and the work is perhaps best known for presenting the idea of markets as conversations.  The idea that the markets that companies sell to are actually made up of human beings having conversations with each other, and if you wanted to connect with these markets, you needed to understand the conversations they were having, and even participate in those conversations.

Marketers heard the ‘participate’ part, but they missed the ‘understand’ portion.  No matter how many shiny tools you master, none of that will help you if you don’t understand your customers.

BTW anyone notice that all the talk about Jelly died down as soon as it started up?  That’s because marketers got there, spent a few days with it and didn’t see an immediate sales opportunity, and left.  Agency folks camped out there long enough to see if they could sell their clients on ‘Jelly Management’ projects, and left when they realized everyone else was.

Which leads to another classic: There are no silver bullets.  Roll your sleeves up, invest in understanding your customers.  Do the work.

Pic via Flickr user dylan garton

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The Death Knell for Social Networking Sites: Mainstream Usage

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The first online portal I joined was Prodigy in 1991.  It was actually a great experience, there was just no one there.  But the few people that did use the mostly text-based service were very friendly and it wasn’t unusual to interact with someone on one of the pseudo-message boards and share your home address with an invitation for others to write a letter.  Different times.

From there I went to CompuServe in the mid-1990s and AOL soon after that.  Both CS and AOL were also internet providers, and at the time it was some outrageous amount, like $25 for 10 hours online.  For a month!  I often spend more than 10 hours online in a day!

Then around 1997 or so, AOL announced that it was changing it’s price structure and removing the hourly cap on online access.  They rolled out the $25 for unlimited access and it was a total game-changer.  Unfortunately, it also totally changed the experience on AOL.  Suddenly, there were kids everywhere!  I feel like the old man shaking his cyber-fist but suddenly I had to learn what ‘LOL’ and ‘OMG!’ meant, along with ‘trolling’, ‘noobs’ and the endless string of 🙂 😛 XOXO.

AOL had gone mainstream, and in the process, the experience that it’s core users had become accustomed to had changed greatly.  Ironically, we are now seeing the same thing happen in reverse with Facebook.  Facebook started out as a site for only college students.  Then the restriction of having an edu address to access FB was lifted, which meant that recent college grads and soon-to-be college students (IOW the younger and older siblings of current FB users) started checking out the site.

The social media geeks found FB in 2007.  Over the next 2-3 years its userbase grew at an astronomical rate.  Suddenly it seemed like every kid from the age of 14-24 was on Facebook.

Then the parents found out that their kids were on Facebook.  Suddenly parents everywhere that had little to no idea what their kids were up to, only had to go on Facebook at it was all there!

As you might expect, Facebook is quickly becoming ‘uncool’ to these kids. In fact, Facebook recently verified that young teens are leaving the site.  Where are they going?  To sites that their parents haven’t discovered yet like SnapChat, Instagram and Path.  Which are now growing like crazy, that is until mom finds out about them…

It’s truly the paradox of growing an online site or portal: You need to reach a certain mass of users to attract more users.  And you need to monetize those users, which is another reason you want more users.  But the simple fact is that adding more users changes the overall experience.  It has for every social media site I’ve used for the last 20+ years.  And when the overall experience changes from what made the site appealing to begin with, people leave.

If you are trying to create an online community site, or even if you are trying to build a blog readership, always focus on delighting and retaining your first users.  These are the builders of your base, the people that love your experience and tell others about it.  When you get in a rush to bring in new users too quickly, you change the experience, which means you lose those first users that are really the foundation for you entire community.  It’s like building a pyramid, you have a strong foundation, then you start slowly building the pyramid.  Then suddenly you start to quickly add on and going skyward with the pyramid, while at the same time you start removing the foundation.  Obviously the pyramid will soon collapse under its own weight.

Never pursue growth at the expense of user experience.  Facebook’s growth was driven by kids.  Kids that are now deciding they don’t like being on the site anymore.  When the foundation is removed the collapse isn’t very far behind.

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Seven Business Books to Make You a Better and Smarter Marketer in 2014

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I’m often asked about what some of my favorite business/marketing/social media books are.  Here’s seven of my favorites that will make your job as a marketer much easier in 2014:

Content Rules – The ultimate guide to content creation.  Walks you through how to create compelling content and the different ways in which you can do so.  If any part of your job includes creating online content then this is the book you must own to show you how to do so correctly.

Who should buy it: Anyone that is tasked with any form of content creation, be it blog posts, podcasts, video, anything.

The Passion Conversation – I love marketing books that focus on science and research.  For example, early on in The Passion Conversation, the authors tackle the three forms of motivation that spark Word of Mouth: Functional, Social and Emotional.  I won’t give it away but I did do a Q&A with John Moore a few weeks ago here that has more information on the book.

Who should buy it:  Anyone that’s responsible for connecting either directly or indirectly with customers, and who wants to increase customer loyalty and improve brand perception.

YouTility – YouTility is one of the breakout hit in the business/marketing/social media space in 2013, and it’s a great read.  Jay walks you through how to change your marketing approach and to actually bake usefulness into your marketing messages.  Because if your marketing is useful to customers, they will spread it.  Jay said you should try to create marketing that’s so useful that people would pay for it.

Who should buy it:  Anyone that has ‘content marketing’ listed as part of their job description.

Resonate – Slide:ology is probably Nancy Duarte’s best-known work, but I’m actually a bigger fan of Resonate.  Resonate walks you through how to incorporate effective and compelling storytelling into your presentations.  She takes some of the most famous speeches in history by some of the world’s greatest orators (Ronald Reagan, Martin Luther King, Jr, Steve Jobs, etc) and dissects their presentations literally line by line and unravels why what they said was so compelling and why it held our attention.  I’ve incorporated so much of Nancy’s teachings into my own presentations, and it’s greatly improved them.

Who should buy it: Anyone that’s responsible for creating presentations and materials (both internally and externally for clients or the public) that wants to sell others on adopting a particular idea.

Think Like Zuck – I will be honest, I did not expect to like this book.  I’m not a huge fan of Mark Zuckerberg or Facebook, but I am a huge fan of Ekaterina Walter, so I decided to give it a shot.  I’m glad I did because Ekaterina created a wonderful book that helps you not only understand Mark Zuckerberg, but also a lot of the driving forces behind most successful entrepreneurs.  Packed with case studies and littered with scientific research and takeaways, it’s an interesting read, even if you’re not a huge fan of Facebook.

Who should buy it: Anyone with an entrepreneurial spirit or who loves reading ‘how they got there’ accounts.

The Invisible Sale – Again with the scientific foundation!  I love Tom’s focus on the science of Propinquity, which says that the more you come in contact with someone and have favorable interactions, the more likely you are to enjoy their company.  The same applies to online interactions, if you can frequently interact with potential customers/clients and give them valuable content, the more likely they are to buy from you, or at least the more likely you are to move them closer to a sale.  Tom teaches you how to help potential clients and customers self-educated themselves, so that they literally reach out to you and when they do, they are ready to buy.

Who should buy it: Anyone that’s responsible for driving sales online, especially creating online content that helps generate sales.

Think Like a Rock Star – Think only rock stars have raving fans that literally love them?  You’re wrong, many brands have extremely passionate fans, fans that love them and that are driving real business growth for their favorite brands.  TLARS shows you exactly how to find, understand, embrace and empower your biggest fans.  With dozens of case studies, it walks you through exactly what rock stars like Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, Katy Perry and even Johnny Cash do to create fans.  The book also shows you how brands of all sizes and industries have built loyal followings of passionate customers that literally consider it their job to promote their favorite brands.  If you want to stop ‘acquiring’ customers and become a fan-centric brand where passionate customers happily bring customers to you, then Think Like a Rock Star is the book for you.

Who should buy it: Anyone in a marketing role that’s tasked with increasing customer loyalty, improving marketing efforts or generating sales.

 

BTW for each book above if you click on the title it will take you to Amazon where you can read the reviews and order.  You can’t go wrong with any of them.  Also, if you live in the US and want to buy a signed copy of Think Like a Rock Star for $25 shipped, click here.

Which books were your favorites this year?  Any that need to go on this list?

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The Passion Conversation: A Q&A With Author John Moore

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It’s no secret that I’m big fans of the gang at Brains on Fire.  You probably know them for their work with client Fiskars in helping to create and develop The Fiskateeers movement, which is a staple case study at marketing and social media conferences, and for good reason.  I used it as a case study in Think Like a Rock Star and also interviewed BoF’s Greg Cordell and John Moore for the book.

And I wanted to interview John again because Brains on Fire has just released its second book, The Passion Conversation.  The Passion Conversation looks at the science and research behind what motivates us to have passion and excitement for a particular business or cause.  It’s a wonderful companion to their first book, Brains on Fire, and I’m very excited that John has agreed to tell you more about it:

Mack – Early on in the book you talked about how brands can create ‘meaningful’ engagement with their communities of customers and you cited a study that said that said that less than 0.5% of people that Like a brand on Facebook actually engage with that brand during any week!  How can brands create meaningful engagement with their customers, whether it’s online or off?  

John – In the book will recommend businesses follow this concept when trying to create meaningful engagement with customers: PROVIDE MORE. PROMOTE LESS. As in… provide more information, provide more customer service, and provide more interesting customer experiences while promoting in a much less obvious way.

Whole Foods Market “provides more information” by having a concierge in many of its stores. It’s staffed by very knowledgeable employees who provide shoppers with the information they need to make better decisions. Customers come away knowing more and will probably pass that knowledge on to their friends and friends of friends.

Lexus “provides more customer service” before, during, and after the sale. I’ve purchased two cars from two different Lexus dealerships and every time I am amazed at their proactive attention and fast follow-up. Is it any wonder a Lexus recommendation I once made to a friend resulted in a sale?

Cirque Du Soleil provides “more interesting customer experiences.” I was just in Vegas and saw the the Beatles LOVE show. Whoa! The show experience was multi-dimensional and multi-sensory. It was nearly customer experience overload. Since returning, I’ve shared how amazing the show was to many people in-person and online.

Ultimately, the passion conversation isn’t about getting people to talk about you, the brand. It’s about getting people to talk about themselves. If a brand can make a meaningful connection with its customers, then a customer-driven conversation will naturally include how the products/services a brand provides makes them feel better.

 

Mack – One of the things I loved about The Passion Conversation was the amount of scientific facts and research you cited that explored what Word of Mouth is and how it’s created.  In Chapter Two you mentioned that there were three motivations that spark conversations about brands: Functional, Social and Emotional.  Which of these three do you think is best for sparking WOM? 

John – Let’s backup and explain the three conversation motivations. A functional conversation is about sharing basic information — facts and figures type stuff — like the specs on a fancy Nikon camera. A social conversation happens when a person visually shares their affinity for a brand such as through wearing a pair of TOMS shoes or tweeting online about how much they got a steal of a deal on wine at Costco. An emotional conversation is sparked when someone has strong feelings about a brand or a cause like when someone openly talks about how funny the “Hump Day” Geico commercial is or when someone talks about why they support the Wounded Warrior Project.

Each conversation motivation can spark word of mouth equally. My advice for a brand is to pick one trigger and have it serve as the lead conversation starter but not to ignore the other two triggers because they can also spark a word of mouth conversation.

 

Mack – I loved that you touched on the fact that many companies focus on acquiring new customers, and almost seem to ignore their current ones.  Why do you think most companies are willing to go to such great lengths to chase the attention of new customers while ignoring the current customers that often want to connect with them?

John – My many years spent working deep inside the Starbucks marketing department gives me an interesting perspective on this. Our hope at Starbucks was that if we could drive in a totally new customer then they would be so enamored with their drink and the overall experience that they would come back again (and again) and become a customer for life.

This issue is similar to romantic relationships. During the courtship phase both people bend over backwards to be accommodating and to show appreciation. For some, once the couple has been dating for a period of time the bending over backwards to be accommodating and appreciative wanes. Each person takes for granted the relationship.

Brands also take for granted their relationships with current and long-time customers. Why is this? Perhaps it’s sexier to start a relationship than it is to continue a relationship.

 

Mack – Many of us are aware of wonderful examples of brands that have sparked a passion conversation with their customers, such as Fiskars with its The Fiskateers Movement or Maker’s Mark having a robust brand ambassador program that’s over half a million strong.  Why aren’t their more examples of brands that have created a Passion Conversation with their customers?  What’s holding them back? 

John – Showing love to customers in order to receive love from customers is messy work. It ain’t check the box and it’s done. It’s much more than that.

You have to treat brand ambassadors as individuals and not as customer segments. You have to be willing to let go of rigid brand guardrails and allow the ambassadors to speak in their voice and say the things they want to say in the ways they want to say them. You have to be ready to respond swiftly to the wants and needs of ambassadors. You also have to find ways to measure success because whatever results you deem as success takes time to happen.

Loving customers over the long haul ain’t easy. It’s messy work. Not enough brands are willing to get that messy for something that takes time and isn’t easy to measure financially.

 

Thanks so much to John for agreeing to share his thoughts on the book.  It’s a great read and as I said above, I think Chapter Two is worth the price of the book alone simply for the explanation and research behind what drives Word of Mouth in both an online and offline situation.  Plus the book has several interesting client case studies that you can learn from as well.  Hop on over to Amazon and get your copy today!

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Why Did Lady Gaga Spend One Million And Create a New Media Company Just to Launch a Fan Site?

Lady Gaga, little monsters, think like a rock starIn February of 2012, Lady Gaga launched LittleMonsters.com.  The community site was designed to be a place/hub for her most passionate fans to come together.  Gaga invested over one million of her own money into the site and even created a new company called Backplane to build out the exact site experience that she wanted for her fans.

While brands are spending millions on marketing to acquire new customers, and partnering with agencies or creating their own to help them better win new sales, Gaga is doing the same thing, in an effort to connect with the very people that are already giving her business.

Why would she go to all of this trouble to build something for the people that already love her?

Data.  Good old-fashioned customer data.

“Pretty much no artist up to this point has really known who their fan base is”, explains Gaga’s manager Troy Carter.  “Their fans specifically by name, age, where they live, what they do, what they like, who their friends are, which concerts they attended, which music they listen to, which songs they skip, where they skip them, just really understanding, having real data.

“And having that data helps you make better decisions as it relates to the music you release, where you tour, how big the venues are, who you invite, the price of the ticket, how much merch to carry with you. Everything. And these are all going to be data-driven decisions that we’re going to be making. It won’t be through Twitter. It won’t be through Facebook. It will be through your own sites that you build, your own communities that you build.

“This is going to be a very transparent thing that you have with your fans, and information that your fans are going to volunteer,” he said, “because they want a better experience.“

For how long have I been banging the drum of the importance of connecting directly with your most passionate customers?  Since at least 2007.  The reason why is simple:  Because the more connected you are to your fans, the better you understand them (and they you).  And the better you understand your most passionate customers, the more effectively you can market to them.

The best part?  Your fans want to share this information with you!  They want to connect directly with you and have a closer connection with you.  One of the things Lady Gaga has noticed on LittleMonsters.com is that fans have started sharing their artwork of the rock star.  Gaga then goes in and picks her favorite works, and then puts them on t-shirts and other merchandise and sells them back to her fans at concerts.

The result?  Merchandise sales at concerts are up 30%.  Hello!  I’m not harping on connecting with your fans and I didn’t write Think Like a Rock Star simply because I wanted you to embrace your fans (although you should, literally!).  I want you to connect directly with your fans because it will have a massive impact on the growth of your business if you do.    

Find your fans, connect with them and connect them to each other.  Watch your business grow.  This isn’t rocket science.  Don’t know how to get started?  I wrote the book that shows you exactly how to connect with your fans step-by-step.

But speaking of rocket scientists, next Monday I’ll be headed to the city that’s home to many rocket scientists.  I’ll be in Huntsville, Alabama presenting Think Like a Rock Star at the Alabama Governor’s Conference on Tourism.  You still have time to register and the event runs from Sunday, August 18th through Tuesday, August the 20th.  I’ll be on site signing copies of Think Like a Rock Star most of the day on the 19th.  Hope to see you there!

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Learn How Paper.li Created its Brand Ambassador Program Today at #Rockstarchat!

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UPDATE: Here’s the transcript from this chat!

I’m thrilled to announce that Paper.li’s Marketing Director Kelly Hungerford will be joining #Rockstarchat today at 1pm Central on Twitter to discuss how the brand created and launched its brand ambassador program!  This is a great opportunity to learn from Paper.li because I know so many of you work or brands that either have or are considering launching such a program.  Kelly will help you understand how the process has gone for Paper.li, and will be happy to answer any questions you might have.

Here’s the points we’ll cover:

1 – What prompted Paper.li to want to launch a brand ambassador program?

2 – What are Paper.li’s goals for the program?

3 – How are members selected?  Is there a cap or can anyone join?

4 – How does Paper.li measure if the program is working?  What metrics do you track?

5 – What have been some of your A-Ha! moments from launching this program?

 

And if you would like to get a bit more background on Paper.li’s brand ambassador program, check out this guest post that Kelly wrote here a few months ago.

So if you want to join in on the fun, check out the #Rockstarchat happening on Twitter today at 1pm Central!  You can follow the tweets here(Click the All tab at the top to see all the tweets), and here’s the transcript!

BTW, if you subscribe to my Think Like a Rock Star newsletter then you got a heads-up about this yesterday.  Click here if you want to subscribe!

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Give Up Control to Get Control

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“I just said we gotta do this, this is at the heart of the brand.  We’ve got a real problem in losing control of our ability to talk to friends.” – Former Maker’s Mark CEO Bill Samuels Jr. on how he pitched the idea of launching a brand ambassador program to his Board of Directors.

I am in love with this quote right now.

Often when a business considers launching a brand ambassador program or even a fan-engagement strategy on a smaller scale, one of the key worries is a loss of control.  Companies fear giving more control over to their customers and letting these customers have any significant amount of say and control over the path that the program takes.

These companies can only see that they will be losing control.  They can’t see what they will be gaining.

In my book Think Like a Rock Star, I’ve included several case studies from where rock stars gave their fans control of a message, idea, program.  What do rock stars like The Donnas, Katy Perry and Jewel understand about their customers that your company does not?  Why would they give away control so freely to their fans and actually look for the opportunity to do so?

Because rock stars understand that when you give control to your fans, you get back their trust.

When you give up control, you gain trust.  And people advocate for brands and people that they trust.

In the Maker’s Mark example, the brand had always prided itself on having a one-to-one relationship with its most passionate customers.  Maker’s Mark truly embodied the rock star mindset of embracing your fans.  But as the brand grew beyond just a small Kentucky brand into a national brand, it meant that its network of fans became national as well.  So the founders realized that the brand had lost control of its ability to connect directly with its biggest fans.

The solution?  A brand ambassador program.  With a brand ambassador program, Maker’s Mark had a vehicle that let the brand connect directly with its biggest fans (its brand advocates), and by extension, it could then connect with all the customers that the brand ambassadors came in contact with.  By creating this program and giving up some control to its members, Maker’s Mark regained control of its ability to connect direct with its fans.  It regained the ability to connect with its fans that it lost when the brand went national.

Maker’s Mark understands what most rock stars do: That if you embrace your biggest fans, you will gain their loyalty, and their trust.  And they will work for you to help build your brand.

Sometimes it’s worth it to give up something small, to get something bigger in return.

Pic via Flickr user LunchBoxStudios

PS: Every week we discuss how your brand can create more passionate fans in the Think Like a Rock Star newsletter.  Click here to signup for free.

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How Do You Decide Who You Should Be Writing For On Your Blog?

GirlNotesI’ve been blogging here for just over 4 years now.  I love blogging, but one of the things that has always frustrated me about blogging is that I have never been able to draw a direct line between my blog and a quantifiable business benefit.  IOW, I couldn’t give you an exact ROI on my blogging.  I know that blogging is indirectly leading me to business because it’s directly leading to a lot of the things that ultimately lead to business, but it’s muddy.  A couple of years ago I decided to get serious about creating that straight line from blogging to business benefit.

I started really obsessing over the stats here.  One of the things that I noticed was that search traffic was rising.  So I started changing the way I was blogging and writing, and I began to write more for search engines.  If I was getting more search traffic, in theory I would be getting more traffic from people looking for help with marketing and social media.  In other words, potential clients.  So in my mind, rising search traffic meant more potential clients visiting my blog.

So I really began to focus on improving the SEO of my posts.  Search traffic over the next couple of years went from 50 visitors a day, to 500.  Search as a percentage of overall traffic here went from 25% to as high as 66% on some days.

I mention this because last night I went through the archives of my posts here, and started examining them from the first post.  I was actually looking for something completely different, but I was immediately struck by something: Almost every post had about 20-30 comments.  I realized that the posts here over the past couple of years had gotten far fewer comments the posts did for the first couple of years.

And then it hit me: When I had started writing for search engines, I had (unwittingly) stopped writing for my readers.  The people that came here and commented on almost every post.  I was then writing for people that had never visited the blog before and who were about to find it for the first time thanks to a Google search.

And yet….one of the common discussions I’ve had with other consultants is exactly who we are writing for.  Along these lines, there seems to be two camps:  The people that believe you write for potential clients only.  This group could care less if they ever get a comment on their blog, as long as they get an email or phone call asking about their services from someone that read their blog, they are happy.

The other camp wants comments.  The other camp views comments and the discussions on their blogs as almost a form of networking, and feel they get business as a result of those discussions.

I think both camps make good points.  But I do think there is real business value in creating vibrant discussions and engaging with your readers, even if those readers aren’t potential clients.  Perhaps the real goal for those of us that are blogging for our business should be to write for search engines AND our readers at the same time?  Or is that even possible on a consistent basis?

Who are you writing for?

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You Can’t Screw Up Your Marketing If You Give it to Your Fans

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Over the past few months I’ve been sharing with you what I’ve been learning from the process of creating my book Think Like a Rock Star, and then marketing it, etc.  Today I wanted to give you an update on how the book’s doing and also talk about my marketing efforts to this point.

First, here’s the Amazon average sales rank for each month so far this year for TLARS:

January – 713,959

February – 524,232

March – 415,237

April – 68,196 (The book was released on Amazon in paperback on April 1st)

May – 88,169

This is what you expect from the typical business book launch.  Sales peak at launch, then start going down.

But guess what?  The current Amazon average sales rank for June is currently 34,339.  TLARS is currently experiencing its best sales ever, even better than it did at launch back in April.

That’s interesting, but even moreso when you factor in that I’ve done almost no marketing for the book.  I”m not a big-name author and simply couldn’t afford to hire a publicist and a marketing team to promote the book for me.  You won’t see any banner ads for the book, and other than writing a few posts here and tweeting about it and Facebooking about it, I’ve really done no marketing for the book.

So why is it selling?  And better yet, why is it selling more copies?

First, it’s a pretty damn good book.  I think everyone knows that I’m not exactly prone to bragging, but I am incredibly proud of Think Like a Rock Star.

Second, the book has some killer marketing.

Ok so the book is being marketed, but not by me.  Originally, I wanted to create this elaborate plan to market Think Like a Rock Star.  But due to several events/misshaps (the main one being Amazon releasing the book 3 weeks early), a lot of the big marketing push that I was envisioning for the book’s launch fell away.

Then I realized that this was actually a perfect opportunity to apply Think Like a Rock Star’s core message to its own marketing.  The core lesson I teach in Think Like a Rock Star is the value of embracing your fans.  So I decided in March that since I couldn’t do an elaborate marketing push myself for the book, that I was going to let the fans of the book market it, especially via reviews on Amazon.

So what I started doing was engaging with anyone that mentioned the book online, especially positively.  I thanked them profusely, and then started interacting with them.  And part of that interaction was to ask them to please review the book on Amazon.

My thinking was this:  I knew the book was good.  So if more of the book’s fans were talking about the book, that would drive sales.  So the more reviews up on Amazon, the better!

As of today, there are 40 reviews on Amazon for the book, and 35 of them are 5-star.  The remaining reviews are 4-stars.  I am convinced that those reviews are now driving sales of the book.  Sales are going up on Amazon, but the only thing that’s changed is the number of reviews on the site has gone up.

The fans are driving sales of the book.   Seriously, check out the reviews, they are glowingly positive.  In fact two of them are so complimentary of the book that they actually embarrassed me a lil bit.  See if you can figure out which ones they are.

And to clarify, only 14 of the 40 reviews came from people that I knew on January 1st.  18 of the 40 reviews came from people that I didn’t know when I asked them to please review the book.  These were people that I saw either mentioning that they had read the book, or they had reviewed it on another site like GoodReads, and I asked them to review it on Amazon.

Want to hear the amazing part?  When I asked these strangers to please review the book, several of them thanked me for asking them to review it!  Are you kidding?!?  But fans want you to connect with them!  And it’s a lot of fun to do so!

The point of all of this isn’t to brag on the success of my book.  It’s to show you how easy it is to generate new business by simply embracing your existing fans.  All I did was connect with people that were already talking about this book.  That’s it.  If I can do this, surely you can too.

And BTW, if you have read Think Like a Rock Star (thank you!) would you please consider reviewing it on Amazon for me? 😉