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How to Create More Social Media Content For Your Business

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For years, the big focus in social media marketing was finding ROI.  It still is, to a great degree.  But as more companies bought into using social media, a new problem developed: How do we create more social media content for our business?  Scratch that, how do we create more social media content that is USEFUL to our customers, that also helps our business reach its goals.

It’s tough, it’s damn tough.  I was talking recently with a fellow consultant about balancing doing client work and creating a steady stream of content that helps us get more client work.  It’s a struggle for us, so I know it’s probably a struggle for your company as well.

The good news about content creation is that the more you do it, the easier it becomes.  So the first step, is to address content creation from a time standpoint.  We want to make the process easier and more efficient so that you can create more content in less time.

One of the main reasons that businesses explore using social media is because they want to build awareness for who they are and what they do.  Social media doesn’t excel at driving sales directly, but it can be a great channel for driving awareness.  It can also be a great channel for positioning and branding.  So if we attack our content strategy from the awareness/positioning/branding angle, we can accomplish multiple goals at once.

Remember the plant your flag approach to content strategy?  It means you ask ‘what do we want to be known for?’  If you were to explain your business and why its relevant in 30 seconds at a cocktail party, what would you tell someone?  What terms and ideas do you want to own?

Once you know who you are and why your business is relevant, you want to create and share content around those ideas.  Red Bull creates and shares content focused on extreme sports and extreme sports athletes.  Pedigree shares content focused on happy and healthy dogs.

So as you are keeping up to date on your industry and market, look for ways to share some of that content with your network.  At first this can seem counter intuitive; Why would you promote content that’s not about your business?  Because if it’s content that’s related to your business, it helps identify your business as being associated with those ideas or that industry, or that concept.

Plus there’s this: If someone isn’t aware of your business, they also aren’t aware of why they should pay attention to your business.  One way to increase the chances that they will pay attention is to associate your business with content that they DO find interesting.  For example, if your business is a hotel chain, sharing content that helps customers plan a road trip can increase the chances that they will pay attention to you.  The content on planning a road trip is interesting and relevant to them, so if you share this content, they will pay attention to it, and by extension they will be more likely to pay attention to you.

So start by identifying sources of relevant content for your intended audience.  If you want to reach single moms that need help cooking quick and healthy meals for their children, think about where they would get this information.  Then you want to find these sites, and share their content.  You are providing a service for them, and in the process you are giving these single moms an incentive to pay more attention to you.

So if you want to create more useful social media content, start by staying up to date on your industry and market.  When you can, share relevant content from sources that your audience trusts.  Just doing this can easily double the content you distribute via your social media channels.  As an added bonus, it also makes those sources more likely to want to promote your content.  I’ll talk about this more in Thursday’s post.

Pic via Robert-Couse Baker

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Leveraging Social Media to Drive Greater Customer Insights

For the last 10 years, marketers have been trying to leverage social media as a sales channel.  It’s been a messy proposition at best, due to how people use these social tools.  Social media tools are used by people to create and share content about themselves.

But for smart companies, this creates an enormous sales opportunity.  The key isn’t to leverage social media as a sales channel, but to instead leverage social media as a listening channel that can better inform brands about who their customers are and what they want.  This has always been the case.  Granted, I’m no fan of how we are getting away from having truly social interactions with these tools and instead are becoming an army of social narcissists, but even that does create an opportunity for smart brands to learn more about their customers.  As customers are creating content about who they are and what they want, that content can be analyzed, and insights can be gained into those same customers and how to better market to them.

The great promise that social media offers for brands has never been about leveraging the tools as a way to sell directly to customers.  It’s always been about better understanding those customers so you can create more effective and efficient marketing…that increases sales.

Some companies have been proactively analyzing the content their customers create online and are adjusting their marketing to make it more inline with who their customers are and what they want.  The result are broadcast commercials like this from The North Face:

And this from Red Bull:

Notice in both commercials (both of which currently have over 7 Million views on YouTube), the product itself takes a secondary role to the customers themselves.  The North Face isn’t selling its clothing, it is selling the activities you engage in after you put on its clothing.  Red Bull isn’t selling an energy drink, it’s selling what you do after you drink it.  In both cases, the marketing isn’t about the product, it’s about the customers and the activities that they love engaging in.  This makes the marketing message more interesting and relevant to those customers.  And by extension, the brand bringing you that marketing becomes more interesting and relevant as a result.

This is the great promise of social media for brands: Gaining a better understanding of your customers.  By first investing the time to learn who your customers are and why they use these tools, you can then have an intelligent conversation with them that comes from a place of understanding, not ignorance.  Listen first, learn, adjust, and move forward with better marketing.  This is why I’ve always been so excited about social media from a business standpoint, the potential for better understanding customers and creating more interesting and relevant marketing communications as a result.  For decades, most marketing has devolved into nothing more than a nuisance and irritant.  This is to a great extent simply because the brands creating that marketing don’t understand their customers well enough to create an interesting marketing message for them.

Now, thanks to social media, companies finally have a way to get a better understanding of what their customers want and who they are on a grand scale.  Commercials like those above only begin to scratch the surface of what marketing could look like when it’s created from a customers’ point-of-view.

Listen. Engage. Improve.  Do those things in that order, and your marketing communications will become more effective, and the sales will come.  There’s never been a time to be more excited about the future of marketing than right now.

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5 Ways I Use Google Analytics to Improve My Blog’s Content

First, if you haven’t added Google Analytics to your blog, do so now.  It doesn’t matter if your blog is your business or nothing more than your online diary, you need to know more about the people that visit your blog.  GA is a great way to give you those insights, and it’s free.  Here’s 5 ways I use Google Analytics every day to better understand the traffic that visits my blog and to make my content strategy more effective:

1 – I compare today’s hourly traffic vs last week’s hourly traffic for the same day.  For example, on Sunday, I will bring up the traffic for the current day, set it to hourly, and compare it to the previous Sunday’s hourly traffic.  This lets me know as the day progresses how the hourly traffic levels are comparing to the previous Sunday.  Here’s what it looked like for this Sunday (blue) vs the previous Sunday (orange):

Week2WeekTrafficGA This gives me a quick and easy snapshot of how traffic did on this Sunday vs the previous Sunday.  As you can see, a very good day, hourly traffic was up almost every hour versus the previous Sunday and traffic for the day was up almost 15% and Avg Session Duration was up over 40%, another huge number.

Here’s how you can get this same view for your blog:  Click on Audience, then Overview, both on the left side of the screen.  The default view is to just show you the previous 30 days before this one.  You want to change that view so click on the Down button next to the date range on the top right of the screen.  This will open up a calendar showing you this month plus the previous two months.  Under Date Range, the previous 30 days will be highlighted.  You want to first click on TODAY’s date.  Next, click on the small box right under it that says ‘Compare to:’, and it will have a dropdown menu that you don’t want to touch for now.  Two new date range boxes will open up under the first two, but they won’t be highlighted.  You want to click on the first date box on the left, and then go back to the calendar and click the date for one week earlier.  For example, if you are doing this on a Monday, for this you would click on the previous Monday’s date.  Click on it again so that the date range you are comparing to is the previous Monday.  Then click Apply.

At first, it will be set to the default view, which is Day.  It will show you how the current day’s traffic is doing versus 7 days earlier.  If you click on Hourly, you will then see today’s traffic broken down by hours and compared to the previous Monday’s traffic on an hourly basis.  The blue dots will be for today, the orange dots will be for the previous Monday.  So you can quickly see how hourly traffic is doing today vs the same day last week.  Here’s what the settings look like for the report I created on Monday to compare traffic to the previous Monday:

WeeklyGA

It can be a bit complicated at first, but pretty easy once you get the hang of it.  As you can see, you can easily adjust the settings to compare this week to the previous week or this month to the previous month, or this year to 3 years ago.  Whatever you want.

2 – I closely examine Real Time traffic, especially right after I publish a new post.  The Real Time traffic feature in GA is a great way to get an instant snapshot of the traffic that’s currently on your blog.  For example, as soon as I publish this post, I will share it on Twitter and Facebook, probably LinkedIn as well.  I will then check with Real Time traffic, to see which, if any, of those links are immediately sending traffic to the site.  This is great way to see instantly if certain types of content resonate more or less on a particular site.  For example, if the link to this post I share on LinkedIn immediately sends traffic and the link I share on Facebook doesn’t, that could suggest that the topic of using Google Analytics is more relevant to the more business-oriented audience on LinkedIn.  Plus, examining Real Time traffic can be a great way to get early notification of a new backlink to your blog or maybe an influencer with a large network Twitter just RTed your post.  Here’s an example of what this looks like:

RealTimeGA

You can see which content is being viewed, from what sources, their location, etc.  Also, if you get in the habit of regularly checking this you will get a sense of what times of the day are better for your traffic, which also helps you decide when to publish new posts!

3 – I examine traffic by channel.  For this I go back to the week to week comparison.  Click on Acquisition, then All Traffic, then Channels.  This shows me a breakdown of my traffic by different channel types, such as Organic Search, Direct, Referral and Social.  This is very important because if you just look at your overall traffic numbers you won’t get a complete picture.  For example, let’s say this Monday’s traffic to your blog was 500 visitors, and last Monday’s traffic was 450.  So that’s a weekly gain of about 10%, which is really good.  But without looking at the traffic by channel, you may assume that each type of traffic rose by 10%, but it could be that your Organic Search traffic was up by 40% and your Direct traffic was down by 25%.  But overall traffic was up.  Still, those are big jumps in both directions for your Organic Search and Direct traffic, so it’s worth knowing that so you can keep an eye on both moving forward.

4 – I dive deeper into channel traffic and sort by Source/Medium.  This is very important because all sources of traffic are not created equally.  For example, I am writing this post at about 6PM on a Monday night.  In comparing today’s traffic vs the previous Monday’s traffic, here’s what I currently see in Channel view for Organic Search:

Organic Search

There’s about 6 hours in the day so Organic Search for today will end up being close to 1,100 visitors for the day, which will be about a 10% increase over the previous Monday, so I’m pleased with that.  But, it’s worth remembering that Organic Search isn’t just Google, it’s all Organic Search from ALL search engines.  To find out exactly how each search engine is doing vs the previous Monday, we need to click Source/Medium heading above these results.  So while overall Organic Search is currently down 14.66%, here’s how each search engine is actually doing:

Google – Down 11.9%

Yahoo – Down 5.56%

Bing – Down 58.56%

So you can see that Google and Yahoo are actually doing way better than Bing is.  Now about 90% of the Organic Search is coming from Google for me, but your numbers may vary.  If the majority of your blog’s Organic Search was coming from Bing, it would be worrisome to see your traffic from Bing down by 58%!

5 – I look at the most viewed pages week to week.  For this view I click on Behavior then Site Content then All Pages on the left side of the GA dashboard.  I do this because I want to see what content is driving visitors, but I also am looking for irregularities.  Did one page get a lot of views this week and none last week, or vice versa?  For example, when I click on All Pages it shows me the most viewed pages for today vs last Monday.  Notice something interesting I found:

MostViewedPosts

See that post on the bottom, Ford Launches the Fiesta Movement?  That’s an old post, but notice it had zero views last Monday, but has 18 this Monday!  I would like to know if GA can help me understand why this old post suddenly got a lot of views this Monday, when it usually gets none.  Does anyone know of a way to further way to drill down with Google Analytics and figure that out?

 

Those are the 5 main ways I use Google Analytics to get a better idea of the makeup of my blog traffic.  What’s your favorite way to use GA?

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How Keywords Fit Into Your Content Strategy

BrandAmbassadorSearchResultsOptimizing blog content for search engines has always been a moving target.  One constant in this evolution of how Google ranks content has been the keyword.  The rules governing how Google views keywords in posts has changed, but consistently the search giant has used keywords as one of its top signals for what a piece of content is about, and how it will rank against other forms of similar content.

Perhaps the best advice for how to stay ahead of the frequent changes Google makes to its algorithms is to write for humans, not search engines.  This means optimize your content first for humans, and if the content is useful for your readers, it will be shared and engaged with, which will signal to Google that it is useful content, and that will push it higher in the search results.

But having said that, keywords still matter.  They matter to Google, they matter to your readers, and perhaps most importantly, they matter to you.  I’ve written before about ‘owning’ or planting your flag on certain keywords.  So if you want to know what role keywords play in your optimizing your content for search, here’s the deal: It’s not about using the right keywords in your posts and content.  It’s about deciding what keywords you want to be known for and then creating useful content around those keywords.

The useful content helps establish your expertise around these topic for both your readers, and Google.  But perhaps more importantly, it gives your content strategy focus.  It also gives you direction and keeps you focused on serving YOUR audience.

Think of the 3-5 keywords that you want to be associated with your brand.  If someone were to ask you what your brand stands for or why it is unique, think about the keywords or keyword phrases you would use to describe your brand and why it matters to people.

Those are the 3-5 keywords that you want to own with your content.  This also helps bring clarity to your content strategy because now you have a better idea of the content you should be creating.  Your content flow should go through those 3-5 keywords that you are focusing on, and if you that, the search results will follow.

Here’s an example.  A few years ago while I was preparing to write my book Think Like a Rock Star, I realized that I needed to shift my content to focus more on topics like ‘brand ambassadors’ and ‘brand advocacy’.  Specifically, I wanted to work with companies that needed help in designing a brand ambassador program.  So I wanted to create content that would focus on those keywords, but that was also useful to readers, because I knew if it wasn’t useful to readers that it wouldn’t matter how many keywords were stuffed in it.

So instead of simply writing a short ‘here’s what a brand ambassador program is’ type post, I wrote a thorough post that was aimed at helping companies that were ready to commit to launching a brand ambassador program.  The result was a 1,200 word post ‘10 Things to Remember When Creating a Brand Ambassador Program‘.  Thanks to this one post, here’s how I currently rank in Google for the following search terms:

Brand ambassador program – 13

Brand ambassadors – 21

Brand ambassador – 28

That’s not bad for just one post.  A side benefit of this is that since that post was published I’ve gotten probably 100 email leads from companies that found the post by doing a search for brand ambassador programs or a similar keyword phrase. All because I focused on creating useful content that would help my audience.

So if you want to rev up your search rankings, focus on just a few keywords that are core to your business, say 3-5, and focus on relentlessly creating useful content around those keywords.  Not promotional content, that’s what most businesses do and that’s why they don’t tend to rank well for those keywords.  But instead you want to create content that helps your audience with its current business problems.  Do that, and the search rankings will follow.

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SEC Social Media Fan Experience: The Texas A&M Aggies and The Kentucky Wildcats

Welcome back to the 4th week of the SEC Social Media Fan Experience.  Each week leading up to the start of the college football season, I’ll be looking at how the SEC teams are leveraging social media to connect with their fans.  After today we’ll be over halfway through the SEC, with 2 more installments coming next Thursday, and then we’ll wrap up the SEC on September 1st and 3rd, as the season starts that night.  You can catch up on former entries in the SEC Social Media Fan Experience here.

Here’s the schedule for the series:

July 30th: The Florida Gators and The Vanderbilt Commodores

August 6th: The Tennessee Volunteers and The South Carolina Gamecocks

August 13th: The LSU Tigers and The Miss State Bulldogs

Today: The Texas A&M Aggies and The Kentucky Wildcats

August 27th: The Georgia Bulldogs and The Missouri Tigers

September 1st: The Auburn Tigers and The Arkansas Razorbacks

September 3rd: The Alabama Crimson Tide and The Ole Miss Rebels

How The Texas A&M Aggies Use Social Media to Connect With Their Football Fans

The Aggies, like most other SEC teams, has dedicated football social media accounts on The Big Three; Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.  As we’ve been discussing, visual content: photos and videos, are a big hit with SEC fans, and most teams are smartly using Instagram to distribute visual content, then seeding that content through other main channels like Facebook and Twitter.  And the Aggies also have a YouTube account for the football program that’s giving a lot of video content around Fall camp, scrimmages, interviews with coaches, etc.  Fall camp is tailor made for diehard fans.  The average football fan may only follow his or her favorite team on Saturdays when they play, maybe they’ll read a few updates in the paper, but that’s about it.  But true Aggie fans want more access.  They want to delve into Fall camp, they want content that gives them daily updates on how each practice goes, which players are doing well, etc.  So the Aggies are doing a great job of giving their hardcore fans that Backstage Pass they want.

Now so far, there’s nothing earth-shattering about the social media mix that Texas A&M is utilizing.  It’s smart, but it’s also expected.  But the Aggies aren’t done.  Not only are they active on Periscope, it turns out the Aggies have been utilizing Periscope since at least March.  I would think that would have to make Texas A&M one of the first football programs in the country to utilize Periscope, and since they are in Texas I have to wonder if their social team found out about Periscope at SXSW.

Also, Texas A&M has a pretty cool smartphone app that does a nice job of being a sort of content dashboard for football fans:

AggiesApp

This is perfect for an Aggie fan as you have not only news but the latest social media content from Texas A&M right on your smartphone.  I do wish the app integrated Texas A&M’s Periscope feed, but that may not be possible with a smartphone app since Periscope is live-streamed content with a 24-hour lifespan.

But from a marketing/brand advocacy standpoint, consider this: What if your company had a smartphone app like this for your Brand Ambassador Program?  Perhaps the functionality could include options for you to create and share content directly with the brand, and also have options to contact the brand directly.  It would be possible to snap a photo of something happening in a retail location (good or bad) and share it directly with your brand contact.  Or your fans could even do an audio interview with a customer on the fly, then send you that video or audio content.  The possibilities are endless and a smartphone app for your brand ambassadors could be a wonderful idea.  Speaking of which, if you are involved in a brand ambassador program and the brand you work with utilizes a smartphone app for its ambassadors, please mention it in the comments!

Overall, I like what Texas A&M is doing with social media, they have a nice mix of content across several channels and I’m very impressed that they have been using Periscope for so long.  Plus the Aggie smartphone app is pretty cool, although to be fair I believe a few other SEC teams have similar apps.  Still, I think Texas A&M is probably making the best use of social media to give the fans the content they want than any of the SEC schools I’ve profiled so far, just ahead of Miss State and Tennessee.

How The Kentucky Wildcats Use Social Media to Connect With Their Football Fans

Once again, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube are the main social media workhorses for distributing content to fans.  One of the almost disadvantages that a team like UK has now that we’re halfway through examining how the SEC teams use social media, is that by now I’m not looking at how each team uses social media as much as I’m looking for how they are using social media better than the other schools.  I’m looking for something that stands out, like with A&M it was the long history of Periscope usage and the smartphone app.  Given that, I’m not seeing a lot of ‘wow’ in UK’s social media efforts for its football program.  Which isn’t a bad thing, the Wildcats seem to be utilizing all the main channels which is what you want to see.  I did think the Wildcats Instagram content was a bit weak, I would have liked to have seen a few more videos and photos that highlighted individual star players.  For reference, I thought Miss State has an amazing IG page.

One thing that I thought was interesting is that UK promotes Head Coach Mark Stoops as its Twitter account for the football program.  Interesting approach to have the head coach be the face of the football program on Twitter, but it does make some sense.  Also, I noticed on Facebook that UK was sharing content and pointing fans back to its main website for detailed practice updates.  I like this approach, South Carolina does the same thing.  It’s always a good idea to move fans off of social media channels you don’t own and point them back to site that your school DOES own.

Also, UK posts video updates to YouTube on a regular basis, I think this is smart as well.  While Periscope is the hot new tool and likely more popular with younger fans, it is live-streaming, which means it’s gone after 24 hours.  YouTube videos stay up, so it makes sense to utilize both as well as Instagram for video content.

So that’s it for this week’s look at how the Wildcats and the Aggies are leveraging social media to deliver content to their fans.  We’re getting closer to the end of this series, and closer to the start of the college football season!  Next Thursday we’ll wrap up the Eastern Division with a stop in Athens to see how the Georgia Bulldogs are using social media to connect with their fans, then swing west to Columbia, Missouri, for a closer look at the Missouri Tigers’ social media efforts.  See you then!

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The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show Episode 36: Creating a Fan-Worthy Content Strategy

Welcome to the 36th episode of The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show! This week I talk about the five considerations in creating a Fan-Damn-Tastic Content Strategy!

Before I get into the Show Notes, I wanted to say thank y’all for the continued support, last week’s episode on Creating Loyalty to Your Brand vs Your Offer had over 900 downloads in its first week!  I appreciate the support and it looks like August will set the monthly record for the most downloads of #FanDamnShow.  If your company would like to sponsor #FanDamnShow, here’s details including rates.

Show Notes:

1:15 – The difference between a content marketing strategy and a content strategy.

2:10 – Five considerations for creating a content strategy

2:30 – How much bandwidth do you have for content creation?

3:38 – What are your goals for the content you create?

4:59 – Plant your flag when it comes to the content you create, what do you want to be known for?

7:25 – What tools will you use to execute your content strategy?

9:40 – Create your content calendar

 

Here’s where you can download and listen to the episode directly.  And if you can, please subscribe to The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show on iTunes, and I would *love* it if you could review the podcast on iTunes as well.  Also, #FanDamnShow is now available on Stitcher as well!

Also, don’t forget that sponsorships are now available for The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show. This page that has all the information on how your brand can sponsor #FanDamnShow and the rates. Please note that all available sponsor slots will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis, so please email me if you are interested in sponsoring #FanDamnShow.

We’ll talk again on Wednesday!

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SEC Social Media Fan Experience: The Tennessee Volunteers and South Carolina Gamecocks

Every week through the start of the college football season on September 5th, I will be profiling how SEC teams are leveraging social media channels to connect with its fans.  Last week I looked at how the Florida Gators and Vanderbilt Commodores are using social media, this week I’ll show you how the Tennessee Volunteers and South Carolina Gamecocks are leveraging social media to connect with its fans.

How The Tennessee Volunteers Use Social Media to Connect With Their Football Fans

When looking at each SEC team, I start by seeing how many social media accounts each team has that are dedicated to just the football program, versus ones that are for the athletic program as a whole.  Tennessee has dedicated football accounts on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. It looks like these three platforms are going to be very popular with SEC schools as all three are great channels to share visual and video content that will be popular with fans.  Plus, the content itself can remind SEC fans of the calendar:

As I’m going through this series, I’ve decided to not look ahead on what the other SEC schools are doing.  This is purposeful because as I’m doing the series I am going to comment on what I’d like to see the remaining schools do with their social media efforts.  For example, last week I mentioned that moving forward, I was going to be paying close attention to whether or not the remaining SEC programs gave fans a backstage pass via its social media channels.  One way to do this would be to give fans access to Fall camps, which are starting right about now.  I was delighted to see that Tennessee is doing exactly this, by leveraging Periscope to give fans special access to the Vols’ Fall camp. IMG_0572 LOVE this!  Looks like the Vols are going to use Periscope to give fans coverage of Fall camp as well as the head coach’s press conferences after each practice.  The bar has been raised, if the other SEC schools aren’t doing something very similar to this, they should be. Tennessee is doing a great job of creating photos from Fall camp, and then using those photos on multiple channels.  Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, even using the photos via Exposure, which is a service I hadn’t heard of before this.  So kudos to the Vols for understanding how important visual content is to its fans!

Not a lot of video content (where are the hype videos?), but there’s such a feast of photos being created by the Tennessee social media accounts that it’s hard to quibble.  The Vols are doing a great job of leveraging Fall camp as a content stream for its social media platforms.  As we continue through the series it will be interesting to see if the other SEC teams can match or exceed what Tennessee is doing.

How the South Carolina Gamecocks Use Social Media to Connect With Their Football Fans

Now let’s venture to the Palmetto state and look at how the SC Gamecocks are using social media.  South Carolina has a dedicated Twitter and Instagram account for the football program according to its main site here.

South Carolina is creating a lot of photos from Fall camp just like Tennessee did, but I noticed they are also creating video content from Fall camp such as this video posted on Instagram:

29 days til kickoff! Day 2 of practice in the books, full recap on GamecocksOnline.com. #SCCamp15 #HereSC #Gamecocks

A video posted by Gamecock Football (@gamecockfb) on

Also, I noticed something interesting with this tweet, see if you notice what I did:

They are using the same video that was posted on Instagram, so they are re-sharing content among multiple channels.  But what I love about this tweet is notice they add a call to action that asks fans to go back to GamecocksOnline.com for the full recap.  I *love* that because they are leveraging social media to move traffic off Twitter back to their website.  This doesn’t seem like a big deal, but it is.  Once SC moves fans back to its website, then they can sell them merchandise and tickets.  Anytime you move traffic from sites you don’t own to sites you do, that’s a win and you can’t do that without that simple call to action.

South Carolina also has uploaded a ton of videos devoted to coverage of Fall camp from its main YouTube channel for its athletics programs.  These are great and easily shared via other channels like Twitter and Facebook.  You can see all the social media accounts related to the South Carolina athletic programs here.  Also notice that 3 of the football coaches have their own Twitter accounts listed, but unfortunately that doesn’t include the Ol’ Ball Coach, Steve Spurrier.

Even though South Carolina only has a Twitter and Instagram account dedicated to its football program, they are creating both visual and video content from Fall camp at a pretty healthy clip.  Again, this is ‘behind the scenes’ or backstage content that fans love.  I also love that they are sprinkling in calls to action to move fans back to GamecockOnline.com.  Very smart.

So that’s this week’s look at how the Tennessee Volunteers and South Carolina are leveraging social media to connect with its fans.  Last week we looked at Florida and Vandy, so that means we’ve covered 4 teams from the SEC’s Eastern division so far.  Next week we’ll move out West, and look at how the LSU Bengal Tigers and the Mississippi State Bulldogs are using social media to connect with their fans.  See you next Thursday!

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SEC Social Media Fan Experience: The Florida Gators and The Vanderbilt Commodores

Over the next 6 weeks till the start of the college football season, I’ll be examining how the schools in the SEC are using social media to connect with their fans.  College football in the SEC is huge business, and the primary driver of revenue in the richest athletic conference in the nation.  Last year alone, the profit from Alabama’s athletic programs topped every NHL franchise and the majority of the NBA teams as well.

SEC football is huge business, and I wanted to take a closer look at how these programs are leveraging social media to better connect with their fans.  On the surface, this might not seem that important, because SEC football already has passionate fans in place, why is it so important to connect with them via social media?  There’s two big reasons why: Recruiting, and ratings.

Social media has become an incredibly valuable recruiting tool for college athletics.  And for the SEC, a dominance in recruiting has translated to on-field dominance over the last decade, so these programs have a vested interest in using every advantage they have when it comes to recruiting.  Social media is a powerful way to attract and keep the attention of potential recruits.  So while SEC programs are trying to connect with existing fans, they are also trying to appeal to potentially the next 5-star QB that could lead them to a National Championship in a few years.

Then there’s TV ratings.  Anyone that’s followed Twitter during a major TV finale knows that Twitter chatter drives ratings.  And ratings play a major role in where teams are slotted when it comes to television coverage.  It’s why the South Carolina – Vandy game will be on the SEC Network at 11 am, and the LSU – Alabama game will be on CBS primetime at 7 pm.  And having your program shown on a more high-profile network and timeslot means more exposure for your brand and a greater ability to connect with recruits.  It’s a very powerful recruiting tool, if a top high school running back is sitting at home and he sees that Texas A&M is being shown nationally as the Game of the Week on ESPN, it makes an impression on him, especially if he is considering other schools in Texas whose games aren’t getting national coverage.

So over the next 6 weeks I’ll cover the social media efforts of the football programs for each of the 14 teams of the Southeastern Conference.  Keep in mind as you read these posts that these programs are trying to connect with two main audiences: The fans that buy the tickets, and the recruits that help them win more games (which sell more tickets!).

Here’s the schedule for the series:

Today: The Florida Gators and The Vanderbilt Commodores

August 6th: The Tennessee Volunteers and The South Carolina Gamecocks

August 13th: The LSU Tigers and The Miss State Bulldogs

August 20th: The Texas A&M Aggies and The Kentucky Wildcats

August 27th: The Georgia Bulldogs and The Missouri Tigers

September 1st: The Auburn Tigers and The Arkansas Razorbacks

September 3rd: The Alabama Crimson Tide and The Ole Miss Rebels

 

How The Florida Gators Use Social Media to Connect With Their Football Fans

One of the aspects of this series that will be interesting will be to see which teams have created social media channels that are dedicated to just the football program, and how many they use.  For example, Florida has accounts for the football program on Twitter, Instagram, and Vine.  The Vine account is a bit of a surprise, but it’s sparsely used, only one Vine so far this year.

I was also a bit surprised that there wasn’t a dedicated Facebook page for the football program, instead Florida has one for the athletics programs as a whole.  I will say, whoever mans the Florida Facebook page does a good job of engaging with fans and also has a pretty good sense of humor!

FloridaFB And custom graphical images featuring players like this from Florida’s Instagram account will be very popular with fans:

Gotta keep a lookout for these #Gators. All named to pre-season award watch lists this week.

A photo posted by Florida Gators Football (@gatorsfb) on

Also, remember that fans want a backstage pass.  They want to see content that goes behind scenes.  Show us how the facility upgrades are coming along.  Give us some videos of summer workouts.  This is the kind of content that the casual fan that doesn’t really follow football until the season starts might not care about, but the hardcore fans love to see what’s happening behind the scenes.   As I go through this series and look at the other 13 programs, I’ll be paying close attention to how well each school does at creating content that takes me backstage. Now to be fair, Florida’s Facebook page does a nice job of linking to media coverage that each sports program receives.  For example, SEC Media Days in Birmingham were earlier this month, and the Facebook page for the Florida athletics program has a nice stream of links to coverage from Media Days on Florida coach Jim McElwain and the attending players.  Given that Facebook is going to appeal to a more general audience, this type of content is a good idea. Also it’s worth noting that Florida has a very robust list of social media channels devoted to the athletics department as a whole, including the channels you would expect like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Google Plus, but also some surprises like SoundCloud and Storify.  Here’s a complete list of the social media channels Florida utilizes across all sports. How the Vanderbilt Commodores Use Social Media to Connect With Their Football Fans Vanderbilt, affectionately known as ‘The Harvard of the South’ is a University more known for its academic prowess than its athletic accomplishments.  Looking at how Vandy allocates social media usage, all major sports teams have a dedicated Twitter account, and a few, not including the football program, also have a Facebook page.  Vandy has a dedicated Twitter account for each sport, including the football team.  However, the athletic department as a whole has dedicated accounts on all the major platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and Pinterest. As with Florida, Vandy is currently putting a lot of promotion via social media for ticket sales for the upcoming football season.  I did see a few specially-designed images of football players to get fans excited for the upcoming season such as this one on Twitter:

Honestly, I’m surprised that I haven’t seen a lot more of these type of custom pictures/images from both Vandy and Florida.  Images such as these are very popular with fans, who often use them as wallpaper for their mobile devices or PCs. Without looking ahead, I am betting the remaining SEC schools will make good use of such images to hype fans for the upcoming season.

But remember that earlier I said it’s not just about the images for fans, it’s also about the video content.  Especially video content that gets fans excited for the upcoming season or ‘hype’ videos.  This one from Vandy’s YouTube channel is a great example of  the type of video content that fans will eat up as we’re just weeks from the start of the season:

Great video and note that the branding at the end reminds viewers of the value of the Vanderbilt degree. This is one area where Vandy has a real advantage vs most of the rest of the SEC schools, and it’s smart of VU to play off that.  What’s interesting to see from Vandy’s social media content is that they are really trying to appeal to prospective students as well as fans, again realizing the value of the Vandy degree.  Check out this blog post about a service trip to Cuba that some of the student-athletes took recently.

 

So that’s this week’s look at how the SEC is leveraging social media to connect with its football fans.  Next Thursday, we’ll do the same for the Tennessee Volunteers and the Kentucky Wildcats.  As we move into August, Fall camps will begin so it will be interesting to see if the profiled teams include any content from Fall practices as a way to give fans a backstage pass.

If any of you are Florida or Vandy fans, what do you like best about your team’s social media efforts?  Have you tried to engage with either Florida or Vandy via Twitter, Facebook or another channel?

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Are You Making This Common Content Marketing Mistake?

contradictionOne of the great allures of using social media is the promise that it gives companies a cheap and easy way to raise awareness for the company, as well as its products and services.

But that phrase, ‘raise awareness’ is often assumed by companies to mean ‘free advertising’.  Too many companies believe that they should start using social media tools, especially blogs, as a way to raise awareness or advertise the company as well as its products and services.  So they turn their blogs and other social media channels into brochureware, creating digital advertisements that often miss the mark and leave the company shaking its fists at the thought leaders that convinced them that social media was the silver bullet that they needed.

Blogs and social media can very effectively raise awareness but you also have to consider if your audience is receptive to your message.  Sometimes it pays to raise awareness of an idea or theme that relates to your products and services, instead of focusing directly on the products and services.

Let me give you a hypothetical example.  Let’s say that tomorrow I decide to launch my first blog to raise awareness of my social media and digital marketing consulting services.  So I start writing blog posts that describe in great detail the consulting services that I offer.  Because this is why we blog, right?  To leverage our blog to raise awareness of our products and services.

Here’s the problem: If a CMO reads my blog, and he sees it is about my consulting services, he thinks “Well we are already working with an agency that performs these services for us.”  So my post on my services is immediately dismissed as being a waste of this CMO’s time.

But let’s say that instead of blogging about my services, I blog about the impact my services can have on clients.  I talk about how a content strategy could help this CMO see better results from its company’s digital marketing efforts.  I talk about ways to  leverage social media to better connect with customers, and how to create content that leads to sales.

The CMO is intrigued, and asks his agency why they aren’t using these same tactics.  Or better yet, he contacts me directly to learn more about my services and if I can help teach his company how to improve its own digital marketing efforts.  The point is that you shouldn’t directly promote your products and services unless your customers are ready to buy and need that information to make a final decision.  But if you are trying to leverage social media as a channel to raise awareness of your business, then your intended audience is very likely not ready to buy.  So if you create content that focuses on selling to them, they will tune that content out.

Instead, you want to focus on creating content that creates value for your intended customers.  You do this by focusing on how your product or services relate to your customer instead of focusing directly on the product or service.

Here’s a few examples from the product side:

If you are selling products to rid a lawn of pests, focus your content on creating a healthy lawn and landscaping

If you are selling cameras, focus your content on teaching customers how to take better pictures

If you are selling cooking utensils, create content that teaches your customers how to be better cooks

If you are selling luggage for business travelers, create content that focuses on business traveling

 

While your intended customers may not be aware of your products, they are aware of the topics that relate to your products.  A potential customer may have never heard of your pots and pans, but that potential customer is a novice cook.  So you should create content that helps her become a better cook.  If you can show her how to become a better cook, that makes her aware of your cooking utensils. At that point, she’s interested in buying, and she can get more information on your products and order them, either on the blog itself, or by visiting your website.

The point is that your content can’t covert into a sale if your audience isn’t ready to buy.

Create content that informs them or helps them become better at some skill or technique that relates to your product or service, then they will pay attention to your product or service.

Then you can generate sales.

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Fans Have Gravity: Why Customer Acquisition Isn’t Your Best Marketing Bet

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Marketers are obsessed with size.  Especially size of market, and they often spend billions of dollars chasing the biggest market of all:  New Customers.

And yet, rock stars follow a completely different marketing path.  Instead of marketing to New Customers, they go out of their way to create experiences and engagement with their biggest fans.  Lady Gaga created LittleMonsters.com to cater specifically to her most hardcore fans.  Taylor Swift has T-Parties just for a handful of her biggest fans at each concert.  Amanda Palmer does secret shows where she usually gives away tickets to her biggest fans, even to the point of excluding ‘New Customers’ from the selection process.

Notice the complete difference between how most brands and most rock stars market.  Most brands market completely to New Customers, even to the point of all but ignoring their Brand Advocates or Fans.  While on the flipside, rock stars go out of their way to connect with their biggest fans, even to the point of ignoring New Customers.

What do rock stars know that most brands do not?  Rock stars understand that Fans Have Gravity.

Think about your favorite restaurant.  The one you always take out-of-town guests to when you want them to experience the ‘best’ your city has to offer.

How many people have you encouraged to visit that restaurant in the last year?  Your loyalty and excitement for that restaurant is attractive to other people.  Your friends and the people you talk to about the restaurant are more likely to visit it because of interacting with you.

Why does this happen?  Because…

1 – Fans are more trustworthy than brands.  When a brand runs a commercial saying they are awesome, we don’t believe it, but when a fan says the same thing, we do.

2 – Fans have passion, and passion is sexy.  Fans are genuinely excited about the brands they love, and their passion is infectious.

3 – Fans want others customers to be fans as well.  Fans love their favorite brand for whatever reason and want to share that love with others.

 

So if fans have gravity and pull other customers to them, what happens when multiple fans are in the same place?  Their ability to attract others becomes stronger.  This is why rock stars focus on connecting their biggest fans to each other.  Simply being in the same space with other people that love the same rock star helps validate that love for each fan.  It makes their ability to attract other people to them and the rock star that much stronger.

Rock stars relentlessly focus on connecting with their most rabid fans ONLY, even at the expense of connecting with new customers.  Look at concerts:  Concerts are the lifeblood of every successful musician’s career.  They are cash cows for the music industry, and always have been. Why?  Because they are events designed to appeal to the rock star’s hardcore fans only.  The person that has never heard a U2 song would think you were a fool to pay $100 for a U2 concert ticket, but the U2 fan would not only do so, he’d happily stand in line for 3 days just for the privilege.  For the fans, concerts are a way to get special access to their favorite rock star.  They can be a few feet away from them while they perform.  They can get an autograph after the show.  ‘New Customers’ of the rock star have no interest in any of this, and that’s why the rock star doesn’t market to them.  They connect with their biggest fans and create magical experiences for them.

How much money is your company leaving on the table by not connecting with your biggest fans and creating amazing experiences for them?