MackCollier.com

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How Do We Create a Fan-Centric Company?

Brand advocates, fans, brand advocacy

Last year, my friend Liz Strauss challenged me to think about how companies could better connect with their fans, and vice-versa.  I wanted to think about how this process would actually take place inside a company.  How would a company identify and connect with its brand advocates?  How would it create and continue a connection with that group?  How would it facilitate a flow of communication from the company to its advocates, and vice-versa?  How would it act on that information internally, and who would handle it?

Some of these same questions have been rolled up into the thought-process of what a ‘Social Business’ could be and we talked about it yesterday, although not in the detail I was hoping for.  But last year when I started trying to wrap my head around what this framework could look like, I realized with the events I would be speaking at and attending in 2011, I would have plenty of opportunities to talk to some pretty big brands and companies about how they are connecting with their fans.

So that’s what I did.  At almost every stop in 2011, I made it a point to set up meetings to talk with companies about how they were connecting with their brand advocates.  We’re talking VERY large companies, and usually the people I talked to were CEOs or CMOs.  After probably a dozens or so interviews in 2011 with big companies about how they were systematically connecting with their brand advocates, I came up with this answer:

They weren’t.  The closest would probably be Dell’s DellCAP program (Disclosure – I had a very limited role in helping Dell flesh out some of the initial ideas behind it and executing them), which I obviously think is a fabulous program, but I don’t think it’s accurate to say it’s solely based on connecting with Dell’s brand advocates.  All the companies I talked to saw the importance of its brand advocates, and several were doing things like monitoring for positive brand mentions and responding, or maybe highlighting fans on a Facebook page, but for the most part there wasn’t a formal process in place where the company regularly connected with its advocates.  Several expressed to me an interest in taking that next step, but they wanted to know what that process would look like.  This is why I kept harping on the need for more detail around ‘Social Business’ for the same reason in yesterday’s post.

But perhaps the biggest roadblock to companies adopting a formal process for connecting with their fans is they don’t understand who they are.  My friends at Brains on Fire call this figuring out the identity of your advocates, but I think of it as asking ‘What’s the heartbeat of your fans?’  Whats the one thing that binds them together in a love of your brand?  Even at the DellCAP reunion last year, at one point I was talking to a Dell exec and we were looking at the attendees and going around the room and we realized that they all loved Dell, but for very different reasons.  Some loved the product, some loved the people, some loved the service.  But they were different people.  You had the hard-core gamer that professionally competes in contests over here with his Alienware laptop, and the mom who writes a blog on tech for other moms over here.

Yet understanding who your fans are and why they love you is a step that cannot be overlooked and skipped.  I honestly think this is why Brains on Fire is so successful because they invest the time and energy for their clients in helping them understand who their fans are and what their identity/heartbeat is.  We all love the Fiskars/Fiskateers case study, but remember that it was made possible by Brains on Fire doing a LOT of research and figuring out how Fiskars’ customers were using its product, and realizing that a passionate scrapbooking community existed that loved the brand.  Without investing that time and energy in research, the resulting movement wouldn’t have happened.

I’ll wrap this post up now cause I see it’s starting to resemble a thesis, and we haven’t even gotten into what the formal process would/could look like.  I’ll dig into that in the next post on this topic.

But for now, if your company wants to really connect with its fans, make the starting point understanding who they are.  What’s their heartbeat?  What’s the ONE thing that unites them in a love of your brand?  To put this in music terms to help you understand, Lady Gaga doesn’t have fans, she has Little Monsters.  The Grateful Dead has Dead Heads.  You need to find that one thing, because that’s their passion point.  And in doing your research to better understand your fans, don’t rely solely on online research.  Look for ways to get feedback from your fans in an offline setting.  If you only hear from your fans that are online, you are getting an incomplete view of who they are and why they love you.

What are some examples of brands that you think do a great job of connecting with their fans?  Which ones do you think have found the heartbeat of their advocates?

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Subscribe to My Social Media Marketing Newsletter!

Social Media Marketing Newsletter

Starting next Wednesday, I’ll be running a weekly newsletter in addition to (almost) daily posts here.  The content focus will be slightly different, however.

Here, I cover Social Media primarily, but a blend of content that can benefit the individual, as well as those that are using Social Media for their company.  But this newsletter will be aimed solely at marketers and anyone using Social Media within their company or organization.  Each week the newsletter will feature original content that’s designed to do 3 things:

1 – Help you solve an existing Social Media Marketing issue you are having.  One week we might talk about building a better blogger outreach program, the next look at getting a better handle on our blog’s analytics to increase leads.  A case study here and there will be examined.

2 – Give you tips and advice for improving your day-to-day tasks and routines as well as managing your workflow.

3 – Keep you up-to-date on where I will be speaking/appearing, and giving you information on how we can work together.

I cannot stress this enough, the content in this newsletter will be original content.  Some of it may eventually make its way here to the blog, but it won’t be that often.

So if you’re working for a company or organization that wants to learn more about how to better use Social Media to connect with your customers and/or activate your brand advocates, please do subscribe to my newletter by filling out the quick form below.  You’ll input your email address then be sent an email to confirm your subscription.

Thank you so much, see you next Wednesday!


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It’s 2012 and the Idea that ‘Content is King’ is Still Total Bull****

Content marketing, blogging strategy

Yesterday’s post on how Seth approaches blogging drew a big response from y’all.  I got comments, emails, even phone calls about the post.  Some people agreed with me, others disagreed, but a nice and robust conversation resulted, which is all I could hope for.

Part of the reason why I wanted to write that post was to address a long-held belief in the blogging community that ‘Content is King’, and that if you create good content, blogging fame, numbers and riches will eventually come your way.  Just write good stuff, put it out there, and the blogging world is yours.

In my experience, this thinking is total bullshit.

Granted, creating valuable content is critical to your blogging strategy’s success.  But creating great content alone is NOT enough.  We have too many sources vying for our attention.  If you want to get your blog noticed, you have to first create content that I find value in, but second you have to make sure I notice it.

This is the main reason why I say that community is more important than content when it comes to being a successful blogger.  Simply writing amazing content isn’t enough for 99% of us.  We still need to engage with others in order to not only help that content get noticed, but engaging with others also improves that quality of the content we DO create.

When I first started blogging in 2005, I literally had no idea what I was doing.  So I started blogging, just writing posts every day.  And honestly, I think some of those posts were my best work.

But the problem was, no one was noticing them.  For weeks I wrote every day, and no one visited the blog.  No traffic, no comments, nothing.  I was beginning to think I wasn’t cut out for blogging.

At this same time, I was reading all the ‘top’ blogs.  I wanted to see what the ‘best’ bloggers were doing, in the hope that I could learn from their success, and apply it to my own efforts.  I didn’t really crack the blogging code, but along the way, I found a lot of interesting blogs, and began to comment on them every day.

So I kept blogging along, every day, creating (what I thought were) great blog posts, that got zero response.  Then suddenly after a few weeks, I started getting comments.  First a couple, then after a few days, every new post I would write would get comments!  At the same time, traffic went up, and incoming links started pouring in!  I loved the fact that I was suddenly getting comments and traffic, but had no idea where they were coming from.

Then one day a reader left a comment on a post and mentioned that they were commenting on my blog because they found my comment on their blog.  I went back and checked, and almost all of the comments I was getting, as well as the links, were coming from bloggers and blogs that I had visited first, and commented on.

I learned a very valuable blogging lesson that day: All the great content in the world is meaningless if no one sees it.

By reading and participating on other blogs, I was giving those bloggers and their readers an incentive to come check out my content on my blog.  And in doing so, I was getting comments on my content, as well as links.

And if you still want to say that you believe that Content IS King, that’s fine.  Because while Content may be King, Community is the Queen and SHE runs the castle 😉

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IKEA Fans Ask For a Sleepover So the Company Gives Them One

IKEA, community-building, brand advocates, fans, think like a rockstar

Over 100,000 IKEA fans took to Facebook to create a page called “I Wanna Have a Sleepover in IKEA“, and the brand granted that wish to 100 lucky members, sending them to their signature warehouse in Essex in the UK.  The fans were given the royal treatment, including snacks, massages, sleep advice from an expert, and goodie bags.  A strict Pajamas-Only dress code was enforced, but unfortunately it seems that few pillow fights broke out.

This goes to the heart of something I talk about in Think Like a Rockstar: Create Something Amazing For the People That Love You.  IKEA was smart enough to see that their fans had self-organized into this group, so all they had to do was find 100 lucky fans, and make the group’s dream come true.

Now to be sure, this was a BIG expense for IKEA.  Even if all 100 selected fans were local, they had to outfit the store, bring in experts, plus all the goodies, manhours, etc.  But when you Google ‘IKEA Facebook Sleepover 100 Essex’ you find almost 90,000 entries covering this event.  That is a LOT of free publicity for IKEA, and almost all of it is positive.  I’m not sure what IKEA would say the PR value of 90,000 positive articles and posts is, but I’d guess it’s probably more than what they spent on this event.

And yes, you may argue that ‘Well IKEA can do this because their customers are the Cult of IKEA!‘  Maybe one reason why IKEA has such devoted fans is BECAUSE of events like this?

Feed subscribers please click here to watch the video in the post.

HT – PSFK.

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Are Brands Finally Waking Up to the Potential of Sponsored Content?

Dell, Sponsored Content, SXSW, #blogchat, social media, blogging

Around this time last year, and mostly on a lark, I left a post here asking for sponsors for a Live #Blogchat at SXSW.  Honestly, I didn’t expect to get any responses, but within 15 minutes of publishing my post I started receiving offers, and within an hour, my friends at 1680PR were on as the Main Sponsor of the first-ever Live #Blogchat.  That would be the first of 7 Live #Blogchats held in 2011, and I’m planning on announcing the first Live #Blogchat for 2012 in just a few days.

What was really interesting was what happened next.  As soon as I arrived in Austin for SXSW, everyone had 2 questions for me.  The first was ‘So how does a Live #Blogchat work?’, and the second was ‘So who is 1680PR?’  Answering the first question paved the way for my getting more Live #Blogchats throughout the year.  In fact, I met Joe Pulizzi at the Houston airport flying INTO Austin for SXSW, told him about the Live #Blogchat, and that began the conversation that would eventually lead to me doing a Live #Blogchat at the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame to kick off Content Marketing World.

But what was really cool was to see how everyone was interested in learning more about 1680PR.  To me, this is how sponsored content should work.  By joining my friends at Dell in sponsoring the first ever Live #Blogchat, Ken and the team at 1680PR were doing two things:

1 – They were helping to facilitate an event that had value to the #Blogchat community

2 – They were becoming RELEVANT to that same community in the process

I got to spend a lot of time with Ken during SXSW, and he got to meet a lot of the people I know in this space, and they got to know him.  To this day, during #Blogchat on Twitter I will see Ken jump in and immediately some of the people he met during SXSW will chime in and say hi!  I had so many of my friends pull me aside during SXSW and tell me how much they liked Ken, and was glad 1680PR had helped sponsor the Live #Blogchat.

Also during SXSW, I got to talk to my friend Tom Martin about how he was providing sponsored content at TalkingWithTom.com.  What Tom did was go around the country interviewing some of the top thought leaders in the social media marketing space, and once a week he would post a new video interview he had done with them.  And Emma sponsored the site.  It was a smart move by Emma, because they got to have their brand associated with all these smart people, but they also made possible the creation of this site, which created value for others.

Tom and I have spent the last year discussing the idea of sponsored content.  But not just that, but the idea of how companies could benefit more from partnering with content creators that have an established community versus simply connecting with influencers.

For example, if a brand contacts an influencer about promoting their product, the influencer may be willing to promote the product if they are properly compensated, maybe with money, or maybe with a free product.

But if a brand contacts me about sponsoring #Blogchat, my first question is ‘Will this sponsorship create value for the #Blogchat community?’  This is an important distinction, because whereas the influencer’s motivation might be in receiving the free product, my motivation is in getting money from the #Blogchat sponsorship, but also in seeing how that sponsorship can be leveraged to create more value for the #Blogchat community.

For example, I’ve begun talking to a select few brands about having them be the long-term sponsor for #Blogchat.  I’m doing this for two reasons:

1 – It will give me a new source of income

2 – The income generated from the sponsorship will allow me to devote more time to building the #Blogchat brand and providing more value to its community.  Which will grow the #Blogchat community, ultimately providing even more value to the sponsor.

I really think you will begin to see more brands moving toward working with content creators to sponsor their content.  In fact, I’ve been talking to several other Twitter Chat hosts over the last several weeks, and many of them had either recently brought on sponsors to their Twitter chats, or were being approached by major brands about sponsorship opportunities.

I also think it makes more sense for the audience, because the content creator has a more vested interest in vetting the sponsors and making sure that bringing them on will provide more value to their readership/audience.  Tom also shared with me a Business Week article on how Expedia is teaming up with bloggers to promote their site.  I thought this ending passage was interesting:

Both company and bloggers say they aren’t concerned that readers may be turned off by commercial relationships between the travel agent and writers. Kim Mance, a Brooklyn, N.Y., video blogger and co-founder of Galavanting, a site aimed at female adventure travelers, says disclosure is important for readers but bloggers need to retain the mission and voice that garnered an audience in the first place. “Bloggers will miserably fail and lose their audience if they piss them off,” Mance says.

Bloggers say they’re ready to deliver travel tales and potential new Expedia customers—so long as they are compensated with exposure and cash. “I’ve spent five years traveling and building up an expertise and a following,” says Sherry Ott, a blogger from South Dakota who was among the Expedia visitors in Seattle. “I want to be able to be paid for my knowledge and for access into my audience.”

This speaks to why I think sponsored content makes so much sense.  Bloggers, for example, that have built up a following, are smart enough to know that if they bring on a sponsor, and their content suffers as a result, that they will lose that following.  So naturally, they only want to bring on sponsors that will bring VALUE to their following, because they want to GROW that following.  Which means they can get MORE sponsors.

It really does seem like a win-win when properly executed.  BTW if your company would like to talk to me about sponsoring #Blogchat on Twitter for either 3 or 6 months, please email me.  Since it is a 3-6 month sponsorship, it will be a bit more, but the benefits will be greater as well versus simply sponsoring one week.

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10 of My Favorite Reader Comments From 2011

It seems that every blogger is doing a ‘Best of 2011′ list on their blogs, and almost all of these posts are a list of their 5 or 10 most popular posts for the year.  For me, that seems like too much horn-tootin’, and if I’m gonna do that, y’all are coming along for the ride 😉

So instead of posting the 10 Most Popular Posts of 2011, I wanted to share what I think are 10 of The Best Comments Y’all Left Here.  These posts were so good cause of the comments y’all left, so you deserve the spotlight as much as I do.  Here’s 10 of the Best Comments Left Here in 2011 (Ranked by most recent first):

10 – Tom Martin – One Way You Can Be a Better Blogger Than Seth Godin:

“Mack,

Great helpful post here. Something I’ve been thinking about lately is how you can use the post headline to help you in Google and then use your Tweets, FB posts, G+ posts to test and push click-worthy headlines. Meaning, the headline you tweet doesn’t have to be the headline of the post.. it could be something more titillating to garner a click and then when a person comes to the post they are rewarded with good content.

Thoughts?”

 

9 – Jeff Hurt – Planning for 2012: Which Social Media Conferences Should Your Company Attend?:

“As a conference organizer, I’m not sure that Regional is better than National. I often find more innovation and cutting edge ideas from a national/international audience than I do from the regional folks. As for networking, I don’t see that a regional or national/international provides more or less. To me, location is not a boundary to networking today.

i want to go to conferences where I can be challenged and stretched by ideas. I often find that regional conferences are echo chambers of ideas because everyone is sharing, borrowing and adapting, especially those in close proximity. I find totally new ideas from people across the states or from around the globe.

here’s another tidbit I like to suggest to people. When we go to conferences with coworkers, we often take the “Divide and conquer” route to get as much info as possible. I like to shift that thinking. Become peas in a pod…go to a couple sessions together. Then discuss each other’s point of view and how to implement back in the office. Their is more likely a benefit for the organization when there is two or more of you tacking an issue together than just one of you. That’s the best organizational learning around…IMO.”

 

8 – Bobby Rettew – What Rockstars Can Teach You About Creating Kick-Ass Online Content:

“Mack…you know i love it when people use stories in their blogs. Whether it is a business blog or a personal blog…stories create such palatable context for the audience. The second point of this post is a great reminder to us all…we have to hear, see, and feel as our audience. We have to pear at life through their (the audiences) eyes and ears…then write with them, telling stories that connect us together. Blogging is one of the most wonderful opportunities for our very own personal editorial…connecting with our audience in complete symphony. I am a fan of point number 2.

This point makes think of a story the other day. I am working on a series of stories and I was doing a pre-interview with the main focus of the story. He was explaining his point of view, sharing that his experience was like a symphony. He was saved by numerous healthcare providers and first responders, flown to a hospital, and received a life saving procedure. He described this event as a moment where everyone worked as a symphony. The instruments were the technical tools and the healthcare providers were the musicians…and they created beautiful music. Imagine if we could do the same with words…telling stories that bring life to our blog where the audience and the writer work together as a symphony.

Thanks for your great writing!
BR”

 

7 – Sean McGinnis – Planning for 2012: Which Social Media Conferences Should Your Company Attend?:

“I can see your concerns and they make a lot of sense.

My experience was in a slightly different industry. I sent about 10 SEO consultants to various conferences across the country between 2006 and 2009. During that time I attended only one conference. I felt sending my top employees was more important because they were doing the front line work and also because they really valued the experience of attending these industry events. These were the senior people on my large team (we were about 40 people by 2009) and the feedback I got when sending them was they really appreciated the opportunity.

In fact, as I recruited new employees, i used conference attendance as a job perk, which I know had an effect. I know my replacement has taken the opposite view and only attends conferences himself, and team morale has suffered as a result.

During the report out, I was far less interested in hard core specifics and more interested in their analysis of the event. What were the trends? What should we be aware of as a business? Did they uncover any product opportunities we should consider? What should we be doing that we were not, and what should we possibly not doing any longer that we had been doing. It was a real opportunity to influence policy and change the behavior of my team as well as the business (because SEO was such a big part of our business at that time).”

 

6 – John Moore – The Promise of Social Media Isn’t in Leveraging Your Customers, it’s in Better Understanding Them:

“What gets measured, gets manufactured.” That’s a line I’ve used many times to describe how companies are making a game out of social media. If Facebook “likes” are being viewed as a measurement of successful customer engagement then, by golly, companies can find ways to make that happen.

I believe social media is making companies lazy as it relates to meaningfully connecting with customers. It’s easy to quickly respond to a customer in “real-time” on Twitter or Facebook or whatever. However that response pales in comparison to a business connecting meaningfully to customers in the “real world.”

At the FIRE Sessions #Blogchat a question came up about how to take customer engagement to the next level using social media. It was then I jumped in the fray to say my HMO (hot marketing opinion) that picking up the phone and calling a loyal customer to thank them was the true school way to take customer engagement to the next level. That’s not the easy way to engage, but it’s a meaningful way that I hope more companies find ways to make happen.

Mack, thanks for the post and for sharing my FIRE Sessions #Blogchat HMO.”

 

5 – Lisa Petrilli – The Promise of Social Media Isn’t in Leveraging Your Customers, it’s in Better Understanding Them:

“Mack,

I can understand where Jim Farley was coming from having sat in a room full of CEOs listening to them discuss social media. The overwhelming sentiment was fear – which thoroughly surprised me.

I had expected them to be open to the power of social media to connect them more closely with their customers, to deepen loyalty, and to help them understand customer needs – all of which would lead to significant ROI. Instead, what I observed was fear due to a lack of control.

This lack of control over the message (what will our employees say about us? what will our customers say about us?) is not something that they learned to deal with early in their careers, and so they’re well outside the boundaries of the comfort zones. Even the quote from Toby’s Facebook page reflects this. The Big PR Firm VP says their job is no longer control, but that’s exactly what they’re trying to do by arming their fans with talking points.

When a CMO like Jim or the Big PR Firm VP steps in the CEO’s office and presents a message that implies a bit of control…”we’ll do social media this way and then our customers will spread OUR message” that’s something that feels better – less risky.

So, I can see how this perspective would become common in the corporate environment – it’s the one that gets buy-in.

On another note, I don’t know if you saw the link I shared on Twitter earlier today via eMarketer, but it showed that the majority of companies either don’t know if their customers are commenting about them online or are convinced they’re not, and a high percentage don’t respond consistently when they do: http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?id=1008686&ecid=a6506033675d47f881651943c21c5ed4&R=1008686

I think this further shows that the mindset of companies is still, “What’s in it for me?” instead of, “What’s in it for you, the customer, and how can I help you with that?”

Excellent, thought-provoking post, Mack!”

 

4 – Mike Ashworth – The Key Feature That Neither Google Plus or Facebook Really Addresses:

“hi mack, you raise a valid point though i’ll answer by way of coming at this from a few angles.

1. i dont think its about “content”. when I follow people rather than say an rss feed of a website, its something else that’s on offer. for want of a better word lets call it your essence, your mojo, the things you post say a lot about the person. recently i’ve been taking a look at behaviours we exhibit in the real world with regard to our interaction rituals and making sense of how this translates to the online world (which in many ways is trying to do just the same except the tools often get in the way). so its more than about content, its about the person. my take on this is that if you want just the “content” subscribe to their blog / rss feed or similar, if you want the “essence” of the person you follow them on twitter (or elsewhere)

2. its all about balance. if i’m connected to someone on twitter then i generally expect to get more than “content”, as explained above. however, and this is an example, if i was following a “thought leader” and pretty much all their tweets seemed to be lame jokes, or updates about reality tv, or all about something other than the passion for which i followed them, then yes, their is a problem. the dilemma for the person hitting enter and tweeting is that the balance between “content” and “other stuff” will always be determined by the person on the other end, always. some ppl will accept / tolerate more non “content” others wont.

3. filters. now this is very interesting and i’ve been reading some research material recently about this, prepare yourself. we don’t need better filters! the reason is simple we only have so many hours in the day to process information. bizarrely as the filters improve, the more “good stuff” is received and then we have to devote more time to processing it, which becomes less efficient. what i’ve discovered is that missing a few things here and there doesn’t actually stop the world revolving, and if it really is something earth shattering, i will definitely hear it from someone, somewhere.”

 

3 – CK – The Importance of Creating Your Own Blogging Path:

“The beauty of blogging is that it gives us all a way to share our voice.”

YUP! And to share it in different ways: video, slideshows, audio, infodoodles!

I had to make a choice: I could either write a lot more short posts–or be able to create infrequent posts with new tools. For instance, I’m including a ton more video which is great… but it takes time to videotape, then edit, then post them. And I really like creating much larger ‘special’ pieces (like the http://b2bmobilerevolution.com paper = 15 pages!) and that takes time to make a quality piece. Same thing with creating slideshows… they take more time to concept and create–but I sure love doing them.

And after years of doing more posts that were smaller (still a great strategy), I decided to try some different formats that may take more time–and lead to less posts–but I’m enjoying it and learning soooo much. I am so happy to now have a full archive of videos (and that was a BIG step for me to do a full video channel — scary!). But video works for my mobile site as well as my blog–as mobile users need video over longer posts. And it’s fulfilling to look back at a suite of slideshows (love both slideshare and audio-enabled brainshark which lets the slideshow be more ‘personal’). And more, bigger papers and the like are planned… but again, these things easily take a month of planning so the tradeoff is not as much blogging.

But it’s not a sacrifice, it’s just a different choice… and a different way to share my voice, as you so adeptly hit on.

So I learned a lot by trying a different formats/tools and a different frequency. In this ‘era of choice’ with so many tools, it’s good to experiment (as our friend Ann Handley underscored at B2B Forum!). As for the future? We’ll see if it’s still the same strategy but I do know this: the future holds more experimentation, more new lessons and many more valued colleagues to meet, learn from, and cherish.

Sending you a virtual hug and thank goodness I got to see you this month–a year without seeing you IRL is far too infrequent! I want a strategy of seeing MORE Mack :-)

P.S.: Gini, it’s great to meet you :-)”

 

2 – Michiel Gaasterland –Wait, My Blog’s Search Traffic is Down, What happened?:

“Hi Mack,

Thanks for all your posts. I am one of your 3324 RSS subscribers and read most of your posts.

I blog 3x a week myself. Fixed schedule Monday, Wednesday, Friday. My content strategy is simple: I write about the tactical questions my clients have about ‘business’ & ‘social web’ (we help our clients become publishers of great content).

Blogging more would definitely help increase my search traffic for the sheer reasons of having more content out there. But I do think that the keyword aspect is really important.

I always try to visualise my target audience, figure out how they will search and translate that to full keyword phrases (incl verbs, etc). Example: I recently wrote a post about converting your Facebook profile to a page. I knew my keywords, but found out through research in forums, comments, etc that all these people used different words. I translated these words to my post. Ended up getting loads of traffic from people who where searching for solutions to this specific problem.

I can’t comment much on the ‘dip’ in your traffic, because I don’t have enough data to compare.

But as for ‘general advice’ (if there even is such a thing ;-) here’s a thought:

You are writing really conversational. You also have a pretty large following. A lot of people on your blog are people you have met in real life and online. (so keep writing conversational!)

But search engine traffic is mostly from people who don’t know you. They might be more solution oriented. They are looking for specific things. You are offering LOADS of great and specific advice in your posts. I think you also optimise and write well. But the one thing you don’t do (at least from what I see) is pay special attention to your Title Tag. If you use the keyphrase you want to be found on in there, you have a much better chace of getting in that search engine traffic.

Tip: use the ‘Custom title tag’ option in wordpress. You can then keep on using your nice conversational headers (they become h1).

Hope this helps. And thanks for all your great blog posts.

(“Sorry for writing you a long letter: I didn’t have time to write you a short one” – Mark Twain)

All the best from Amsterdam,

Michiel”

 

1 – Margie Clayman – What’s the Real Business Value of Comments?:

“Here’s where I come down on the plumber issue. It’s a radical, potentially sacrilegious point of view for which I could be very easily burned or thrown into the river.

Ehem.

Not everyone needs to blog. You might be in an industry where a blog, as in, something that invites back and forth communication, is not really needed. Talk to your customers. See how THEY want to learn from you, and then deliver it that way.

We work with a company whose industry still prefers print publications for the most part. In fact, the publication’s readers threw a fit when the newsprint was abandoned for glossier paper. If you try to blog for folks who are on the road getting their hands dirty all day, you need to ask yourself not just about comments, but you need to ask yourself when your customers are going to wipe off their hands, take time out of their busy schedule, and read for 20 minutes.

If you’re worried that your audience won’t take the time to comment, you need to ask if they’ll take the time to read. If that’s a concern, maybe a better channel would make more sense. That’s why research on the front end of a Social Media campaign is so darned important.

Just my $1.50 :)”

 

So there’s 10 of my favorite blog comments from y’all this year!  To clarify, I decided to limit it to 1 comment per, or a few of y’all would have had multiple entries on this list 😉

In reviewing these comments it really made me appreciate the value that y’all create here every day by sharing your smart thoughts and opinions.  I appreciate every one of you, and look forward to hearing more of your #smartitude in 2012!

Happy New Year everyone!

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How to Increase Participation in Your Twitter Chat or Any Online Community

Interaction and participation.  It’s something many community sites and managers struggle with and focus on increasing.  Engagement is the lifeblood of many online communities, and yet, so many struggle to reach that ‘critical mass’ of participants.

When #Blogchat started in early 2009, participation wasn’t an issue.  Even in those 1st few weeks where we’d only have a few hundred tweets, there was plenty of engagement.  But even then, I noticed some problems.  It seemed that there were a core group of really smart bloggers that were, for the most part, answering the questions of everyone else.  So the core group of smart bloggers were mainly talking to each other, and fielding questions from everyone else.

If you think about it, you see this in a lot of online communities, especially knowledge-based ones.  You have the ‘newbies’ and the ‘experts’.  And early on, that’s what we saw with #Blogchat, the ‘newbies’ were asking questions of the ‘experts’.  And there’s nothing wrong with that, but the problem is this: If you’re not a ‘newbie’ or an ‘expert’, how do you participate?

What started happening is that I would talk to people that follow #Blogchat, and when they told me they lurked, I would invite them to participate.  “#Blogchat is so much better when more people participate so we can all learn from each other!” I would tell them.  Almost every time, they would reply by saying “Oh no! I don’t have anything to add, I’m not an expert!”

I hated hearing that.  So I added a new rule for everyone in #Blogchat: No experts allowed.

That’s not to say that smart people can’t and shouldn’t participate, but I wanted to communicate to everyone that they should feel comfortable participating.  #Blogchat works best when everyone is comfortable sharing what they know.  Does that mean that some people make some points that are completely off the wall?  Yep, but that also leads to new discussions, because others feel comfortable questioning and debating those claims.

But if your community only has interaction from the experts and newbies, you’re going to be ignoring everyone else.  Kathy had a great point about this several years ago, and her point is the same as mine, that you need to communicate to your community that everyone should participate, and help them feel comfortable doing so.  For #Blogchat, when they hear ‘No experts allowed, we are all here to learn from each other’, it puts everyone at ease.  Most people are smarter than they give themselves credit for, they might not believe they are ‘qualified’ to join a discussion, but they almost always have something they can share that can benefit the group.

One of your key roles as a community manager is to get everyone to a place where they are comfortable contributing as they can.  And remember that when people start participating in a community, they begin to take a sense of ownership in that community.  That greatly increases the motivation they have to help you grow that community, and make it more valuable for everyone.

This starts by finding ways to get everyone more interactive.  Not just newbies asking experts questions, but everyone asking and answering questions.  This will generate more discussions and more value for everyone.

If you want to get more discussions and participation among your community, consider these steps:

1 – Encourage involvement from lurkers.  As I am watching #Blogchat’s stream, it’s obviously moving way too fast for me to catch even a fraction of the tweets.  But if I see anyone tweet that they are joining #Blogchat for the 1st time, I *always* go back and thank them for joining.  Nothing makes a lurker feel more welcome than announcing to the group that they are joining for the 1st time, and immediately getting a thank you tweet from the moderator.  Additionally, other #Blogchat members have started doing the same thing, which only increases the chance that this lurker will move to being a participant.

2 – Understand that statements are NOT discussions.  Often, I will notice that a member of #Blogchat isn’t directly engaging with anyone, but rather they are tweeting out general statements like ‘Blog from the heart!’ or ‘Make your post as long or as short as it needs to be!’  These tweets will probably get a lot of RTs, but by themselves, they don’t often generate a lot of discussion.  If I see someone that’s constantly leaving tweets like this, I try to engage them.  I’ll ask them questions about their statements, and hopefully get a discussion started with them.  Then, others have an opportunity to join in.

3 – Encourage all members to be helpful.  When I first started #Blogchat, I asked regular contributors to please help me by welcoming new participants, and to help them with any questions they have.  The #Blogchat regulars do a wonderful job of being helpful to everyone.  Now I tell everyone that if they are new to #Blogchat, to feel free to ask any of us any questions, that we will be happy to help.  And I am constantly seeing others tweet about how helpful and friendly the #Blogchat community is, so I think the #Blogchat regulars view it as a badge of honor.  At least I hope they do, because I do 😉

4 – Clearly spell out for all members how they can participate and what is expected of them.  All it takes is a simple post listing out the purpose of your community and any guidelines.  This is important, because if someone stumbles upon an established community, it can be a very daunting thing, and a ‘road map’ can definitely help put them at ease.

5 – If you are active in your community (as you should be), then make sure you are following your own rules.  For example, when I participate in #Blogchat, I am usually asking questions of other participants.  I try to avoid always making statements, and I use the words ‘I think….’ a lot.  If I am asking questions as the ‘moderator’ of #Blogchat then it sets the tone of everyone else to the same.

 

Remember at the end of the day if you can reach a point where community members are creating value for themselves, then everyone wins.  A great way to do this is to increase the level of participation within that community.

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What Rockstars Can Teach You About Creating Kick-Ass Online Content

Think about it, Rockstars are amazingly effective content creators.  They create content (music) that we are not only willing to pay to get, but we also pay to view and hear them creating that content (concerts)!  And then there’s all the merchandise we purchase as well that celebrates them as content creators.

So as you are looking to rev up your content creation efforts, take a closer look at how Rockstars create amazingly compelling content that not only resonates with their fans, but delights them.

1 – Rockstars always play their Greatest Hits.  If you go to an Eagles concert, it wouldn’t be complete without hearing them play Hotel California.  Likewise, if you load up the Little Monsters and go to see Lady Gaga perform, you can’t wait to hear the ‘Ra ra ah ah ah…’ that tells you Bad Romance is the next.  Likewise, if you are a content creator, there are going to be certain types of content, certain topics you cover, that simply resonate more with your audience.  These are your Greatest Hits.  These are the topics you love to talk/blog/tweet about, and this passion you have for these topics means you create better content, that your audience wants more of.  So know what your Greatest Hits are, and feel free to cover these topics regularly, because this is what your fans want.

Now there is a slight caveat to this:  Often with Rockstars, their DIE HARD fans don’t want to hear their ‘mainstream’ hits as much as they do their more obscure songs.  For example, up until about 10 years ago (or around the time she lost her mind and started playing country music) I was a HUGE Jewel fan.  But I wasn’t really a fan of her mainstream hits, I was a fan of her more obscure songs.  Mainly, because I had already heard all of her hits before.  So when I heard her perform in Birmingham in 1999, I didn’t care if she played You Were Meant For Me, I wanted to hear I’m Fading (The K-Mart Song, not the popified Wal-Mart version she’s done since).  So if you are a content creator, what this could mean for you is that if you have die-hard fans, they might be willing/wanting to pay you for more exclusive/unique content.  If it’s content that only THEY have access to, even better!

Tip: Check your blog’s analytics and see what your Top 10 posts are all-time ranked by views, and comments.  Also, check your keywords and see what terms people are searching for that are leading them to your blog.  This will give you a great idea of what your most popular content is.  If you see that every time you write about X topic, that your audience responds, then that’s a BIG hint that you’ve found one of your Greatest Hits!  Don’t be afraid to blog about the same topic more than once!  The next time writer’s block has set in, dig into your analytics and archives and see if you can resurrect a past hit and post about it again!

2 – Tell a story with your content that connects with your audience.  Rockstars are great storytellers.  They find a way to write songs that touch listeners.  That stir emotions within us and make us believe that this song was written JUST for us.

For example, the next time you hear a Taylor Swift song playing on the radio, actually stop and listen to the lyrics.  There’s a reason why millions of teenage girls absolutely love Taylor: It’s because she is singing about THEIR lives!  She’s talking about their hopes, their fears, their failures, and their dreams.  They connect with her because she’s singing about everything they are experiencing right now.

You want to do the same thing with the content you create.  You want to tell stories that help you illustrate your points and make them more relevant with the audience you are trying to connect with.  If you’ve ever seen me speak, you know I do this in all of my presentations.  I make a point, then I use an example/case study of a business that has executed that point that I’m trying to illustrate.  I do this because I want to make the content relatable to the audience.  It’s one thing to talk to non-profit marketers about how they can use social media as a crisis communication tool, it’s quite another to tell them the story of how the Red Cross is doing just that.

Tip: Use case studies or even personal examples and stories to illustrate the points you are trying to make.  Any advice you are attempting to share with your content is always easier to understand if you can share a story of how someone else has already done what you suggest.

3 – Be memorable.  There’s so many songs I remember for just one or two lines:

“Many is the word, that only leaves you guessin’.  You guess about a thing, you really oughta know…’ Led Zeppelin, Over the Hills and Far Away

“I’d like to fly, but my wings have been so denied…” Alice in Chains, Down in a Hole

“Where did the Angels go? Cigarette smoke is all that’s left. I traded my wings in for a string of pearls, and the string’s all I’ve left…” Jewel, I’m Fading

“All and all, you’re just another brick in The Wall” – Pink Floyd, Another Brick in The Wall

Rockstars do a great job of giving us that ‘hook’ in their songs that make them memorable.  You can do the same thing with your content and blog posts.  It could be the headline of your post.  It could be the infographic or picture that grabs attention.  It could be the key stat that drives home the point you’re trying to make.

Tip: When creating content, whether a blog post, a video, even a tweet, think about what the ONE key takeaway you want people to have.  Look at what would make the most impact, is it a picture, a stat, what?

4 – Be real.  Rockstars do an amazing job of creating songs that are raw, emotional, and strip all the bullshit away to get to what’s real.  Look at this amazing music video for the song Hurt by Johnny Cash.  Look at how Johnny sings about living a life of regret, then it shows an old home video of Johnny standing in his yard with a contemplative look on his face.  Or notice how as Johnny sings, June looks on with a worried look.  All of this does a fabulous job of relating to us that Johnny is singing from his soul.

Tip: Don’t be afraid to speak with your own voice when you create content.  How often have you seen someone write a short blog post that says something like, “I think Chris Brogan and Shannon Paul are onto something, check out their posts here and here.”  We’ve probably already read what Chris and Shannon think, I want to hear what YOU think!  Don’t just parrot what another blogger says, share your own opinion, especially if you have a DIFFERENT take on the issue!  Sharing your own voice is a great way to build your following and audience because your voice is unique and distinctive!

5 – Turn a negative into a positive.  Up until 1993, Sarah McLachlan was very well-known in her home country of Canada, but not internationally.  All that changed with the release of the LP Fumbling Toward Ecstasy, and her first breakthrough mainstream hit, Possession.  The lyrics to Possession were very stark and even haunting, a definite break from what we’d heard of Sarah’s catalog up until this point.  “Into this night I wander, it’s morning that I dread.  Another day unknowing of the path I fear to thread.  Into the sea of waking dreams I follow without pride. Because nothing stands between us here, and I won’t be denied!”  

After the song’s release and international popularity, it was revealed that Sarah had endured multiple stalkings just prior to writing this song, including letters being sent to her regularly.  One of her stalkers even sued Sarah, claiming that the lyrics to Possession were taken from his letters to her.  This person later committed suicide.  But Sarah found the strength to take these traumatic events and focus her energy into her music, and the result was a hit that took her from being a celebrity in Canada, to an international superstar.

Tip: Incorporate setbacks into the content you create.  Obviously, your examples don’t have to be (and hopefully won’t be) as severe as what Sarah endured, but maybe you could offer a Lessons Learned post from what went wrong with a Social Media campaign, or how you handled what could have been a potential negative for your brand, and turned it into a positive.  Case in point, check out this wonderful video by Gary Vee on how he turned a potential PR disaster, into a positive experience:

Remember, don’t just focus on creating useful content, create remarkable content!  Content that others want to share and talk about, and build upon.  Your goal should be to create content that inspires others to build content as a result.

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Review: LIVE #Blogchat at Blog World Expo in Los Angeles

You know how a parent isn’t supposed to show favoritism toward one child?  I almost feel that way about the seven Live #Blogchats that have been so far this year.  Every one had amazing discussions and was special in its own way.

But Live #Blogchat at Blog World Expo was my favorite one so far.  By far.

This was the 1st Live #Blogchat where there were several regular and active #Blogchat participants in attendance.  At all the other Live #Blogchats, at best there were a handful that had joined a few times, maybe a couple of regular participants.  But for many, they had little to no idea what a ‘#blogchat’ was.  This group not only knew what it was, but they knew the people that were going to be there.  Many of them showed up 30 minutes early to the session just to meet each other and I lost track of how many times I heard someone scream OMG! and then immediately tacklehug someone!  This was the first Live #Blogchat where I really felt like the community was present.  When the first wave showed up, we all were so excited to see each other that we spent about 5 minutes posing for pictures 😉

This is what I really wanted to see happy at the Live events because #Blogchat belongs to its community.  Yes, I started #Blogchat almost 3 years ago, but there are hundreds of people that have taken an active role in building #blogchat into what it is today.  I cannot wait to see what the Live #Blogchats look like a year from now when everyone is familiar with the format, and the audience is mostly made up of regulars, like it was at Blog World.

We didn't have no stinkin' speakers in Live #blogchat, so the Live-Bloggers got to be on the stage 😉

Thanks to Judy for the above pic!  Now I wanted to explain how this room was structured.  When I got to the room about an hour before Live #Blogchat started, you had a room with 90ish chairs, all facing forward.  The 1st two rows were at tables, facing the stage along with the rest of the chairs.  I wanted the chairs all facing toward the middle, so we switched the 1st two rows of chairs at the tables that you see in this pic, so they were facing the back of the room.  Then as a few people started arriving, James asked ‘So who’s going to be on stage?’  Without thinking, I said ‘You are!’   And all the live-bloggers for the session got to be up on stage.  I *really* thought it was important to have active #blogchat members up on the stage because if the ‘spotlight’ was going to be on anyone in this session, it should be on them.

The discussion, as always, was excellent.  We started off talking about creating a blogging strategy, but as always happens in #blogchat on Twitter, we soon started veering off into other areas like finding a focus for your blog, your content, injecting personal tones and personality to your blog to give it a unique voice; your own.  James did a great job of collecting many of the key tweeted takeaways from the Live #Blogchat via Storify.  I did want to send out a special thank you to Tamsen McMahon, Jason Falls, Marcy Massura and Mark Horvath for making a special effort to answer questions from fellow #blogchat participants.  I honestly think I talked way too much during #blogchat, and I had several participants afterward mention how much they appreciated their help.

And thanks to James for this picture, I don’t like most of my pictures, but this was a good one.  Clearly, being around #Blogchat peeps brings out the best in me 😉

I would hope that most of you had as much fun at the Live #Blogchat at Blog World as I did, but I know you didn’t 😉  Many of you have been asking about the next Live #Blogchat, it is tentatively scheduled for South By Southwest in March.  Right now I am trying to get sponsors and the venue locked down, so if you know a company that might be a good fit for a Live #Blogchat sponsorship, please email me and I’ll be happy to give them a rundown on what’s included, prices, etc.

When #Blogchat started, I told everyone that I appreciated them for coming, and loved them for it.  I meant every single word of that.  As we were getting set up, I went to check my phone to see how much time I had left before we got started, and I realized I was smiling from ear to ear.  I was so damn happy to see everyone and so glad they could share in this experience!  As soon as I thanked everyone for coming at the end of our hour, everyone got up and instead of leaving, all stayed and chatted and I realized how incredible LOUD it suddenly got in the room because everyone was either talking really loud because they were excited to be meeting someone, or because they were laughing at something someone had just said.

I loved it.  And I love all of you that came and made it possible!

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Getting more blog comments vs cultivating more blog conversations

One of the big concerns for so many bloggers is getting more comments on their blog.  There have been a gazillion posts written on how to get more comments, I have written a few myself.  But I think an important distinction we need to make is that getting more comments does not necessarily equal getting more CONVERSATIONS on your blog. And at the end of the day, I think when most bloggers say ‘I want more comments on my blog!’ what they REALLY mean is ‘I want more conversations on my blog!’

So if we really want more conversations, then that requires a slightly different approach than simply trying to get more comments.  And it was this distinction that we discussed last night during #Blogchat.  You can view the transcript here.

In chatting with all the other smarties during #Blogchat last night, I think we agreed upon a few key ways to cultivate more conversations (not just comments) on your blog:

1 – Ask your readers what they think.  I remember @JudyMartin8 specifically made this point.  It’s a great way to encourage your readers to get their point of view out in the open, and that increases the chance that others can agree or disagree with their points.

2 – Push commenters to go beyond just saying ‘Great post!’.  We all get these comments, and I definitely appreciate them.  But as far as cultivating conversations, these really don’t help us much.  When you get these type of comments, ask the commenter to share WHAT they liked about the post.  This way you get an interaction started with them, that could lead to a conversation.  Both @profkrg and @kamkansas made this point.

3 – Help connect commenters that make complimentary or opposing points.  This is a great way to cultivate conversations that I don’t think enough bloggers focus on.  If one blogger makes a point, then another follows up with a comment that either builds on their point or offers a differing point of view, try to connect the two.  Leave a comment like ‘Hey Sarah, I think Pete was making a similar point in his comment’, or ‘Jim I like where you are going with this, but what would you say to someone like Kathy, that thinks the opposite?’

 

At the end of the day, I think we as bloggers need to take ownership and proactively cultivate the conversations that we want to see happen.  I think we need to go beyond simply trying to get more comments, because as I said last night, if you get 10 comments that all say ‘Great post!’, that is NOT a conversation, that’s 10 comments.

What else could we be doing to cultivate conversations in the comments section of our posts?  What works for you on your blog?