MackCollier.com

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How Your Business Can Tell Its Story With Blogging, Tonight’s #Blogchat Topic!

UPDATE: Here’s the Hashtracking transcript from this #Blogchat.

Tonight (5-24-2015) on #Blogchat we’ll be discussing How Your Business Can Tell Its Story With Blogging!  We’ll talk about what businesses should be sharing on their blogs, and what customers want to read.  And if you have some examples of company blogs that you love, please feel free to share those in the comments and during #Blogchat as well!

And don’t forget that this month’s #Blogchat sponsor is the Marketing Writing Bootcamp from MarketingProfs!  The Marketing Writing Bootcamp is a 13-class online course that begins on June 11th.  And if you register via this link and use promo code BLOGCHAT you will receive an additional $200 discount!

Our topic tonight is How Your Business Can Tell Its Story With Blogging.  We’ll cover three main areas:

1 – What information should companies share on its blog.  History?  Background?  What makes for an interesting story to customers?

2 – Should companies focus on their employees on their blog?  Does it make a company more interesting and trustworthy to you if you know more about its employees?

3 – Should companies incorporate their customers into their stories?  Should they focus on individual customers that are their ‘rock stars’?  

#Blogchat will begin at 8pm Central on Sunday, 5-24-2015.

And because the Marketing Writing Bootcamp is sponsoring #Blogchat in May, they will have a very special giveaway just for #Blogchat!  The Marketing Writing Bootcamp is focused on helping you solve your writing problems and becoming a better writer.  To that end, MarketingProfs will be giving away one free pass to the online Marketing Writing Bootcamp.  In order to be eligible to win the pass, all you have to do is write and publish a blog post by 5-31, discussing your biggest writing challenge.  When it comes to writing, what holds you back?  Share what your biggest writing challenge and MarketingProfs will select one post from one blogger at the end of the 5-31 #Blogchat to win a free pass to its online Marketing Writing Bootcamp!

To be eligible to win the free pass to the online Marketing Writing Bootcamp, do these two things:

1 – Make sure in your post that you note that the post is written as your chance to win a pass to the Marketing Writing Bootcamp and please link to the Marketing Writing Bootcamp at URL http://mprofs.com/blogchatmwb

2 – Leave a comment here with a link to the blog post that you write as your entry in this giveaway.  Just leave a comment and share your post.  Something like ‘Hey Mack, here’s my entry, my post on my biggest writing challenge is here – http://www.myawesomeblog.com’  You must leave a comment here to be eligible to win the pass.  This helps Marketing Profs keep up with everyone that’s written a post.

And if you want to save $200 on the Marketing Writing Bootcamp, remember to use promo code BLOGCHAT to register for the Marketing Writing Bootcamp and you will receive a $200 discount off the $595 price!

See y’all Tonight at 8pm Central on Twitter!

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The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show Episode 25: Four Secrets to Creating a Business Blog Readers Will Love

Hey y’all! Welcome to the 25th episode of #FanDamnShow! In today’s episode I talk about the four things your company should do to create a blog that readers love!

PPC_200x200 Standard no codeBut before I get into the Show Notes, a special thank you to MarketingProfs for becoming The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show’s first sponsor!  This episode is brought to you by the Marketing Writing Bootcamp, from Marketing Profs.  The Marketing Writing Bootcamp begins on June 11th and features 13 classes with almost 8 hours of instruction!  You can learn more here about the Marketing Writing Bootcamp and if you enroll with promo code FANDAMN you’ll save $200 on Marketing writing bootcamp. Plus, you’ll get over $1,000 worth of Marketing Profs seminars, classes, and video tutorials, free – just for registering!

The Marketing Writing Bootcamp will be the sponsor of The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show for the next 2 months.  If your company is interested in sponsoring #FanDamnShow, slots are available starting in July.  You can learn more about sponsoring The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show and get rates by clicking here.

And a special congratulations to Kerry Gorgone (who does an amazing job on the opener/closer for #FanDamnShow), who appeared last night as a legal expert for a segment on NBC Nightly News! You can view Kerry’s segment here, and visit her website too!  I’m so happy for Kerry!

Show Notes:

2:42 – The importance of creating reader-centric content, and how it can actually be a better way to promote your business than ‘brochure-ware’.

10:15 – All engagement is not created equally.  How to decide what type of engagement ties to your goals for your blog and what actions you want readers to take on your blog.

12:30 – Reward your readers for engaging in the behavior that you are trying to encourage

15:53 – The power of saying ‘Thank You’ to your readers and creating a culture of appreciation

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 (starting with July) 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 next week!

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How Visit Philly Leverages Analytics to Improve its Content Marketing

VisitPhillyPost

In one week I will be in Gulf Shores presenting Think Like a Rock Star to a group of smart tourism professionals from the Gulf Coast.  Whenever I present to an industry-specific group, I tailor my case studies to include examples from their space.  A couple weeks ago I pinged Sheila Scarborough to ask her about any great social media case studies from the tourism industry that I might have missed.  One of the examples Sheila shared with me was a deck from Visit Philly’s Caroline Bean on how that DMO is leveraging social analytics to improve its content marketing.

I’ve included the deck below, and I love how Visit Philly is closely examining its analytics as it relates to the content they create.  They focus on three key areas:

  • Type of content.  Visit Philly examines and tracks how people react to content with certain elements, such as photos, or videos.  It knows which elements create more interest and engagement.
  • Content topics.  Which topics are more popular with readers?  Visit Philly knows because it segments its content by topic and tracks engagement levels for each.
  • User behavior.  Visit Philly knows which days are better to post content based on engagement levels.  They even take it to the next level and know what type of content will appeal to local visitors, and what appeals to ‘out of towners’.

Combine these three areas together and Visit Philly has a good idea if a piece of content will be a success before it is ever published.  Visit Philly aggressively tracks data from Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, and Twitter Analytics.

The best part about this is that all of this is something that every company that uses social media marketing can and SHOULD be doing.  This is completely doable by your company, all it requires is putting in the work to analyze the data and improve your efforts moving forward.  As I was reading the deck below I was nodding along because so much of what Visit Philly looks at associated with the data around its content is the same things I look at for every piece of content I create as well.

Here’s one example of how this works: I checked out Visit Philly’s ‘sister site’, UWishUNu.com, and saw this post published 7 days ago.  Notice that it has 14 thousand Likes on Facebook!  In one week!

That happens because Visit Philly has put in the time and work to analyze the data around its content and knows exactly what type of content its readers want.  In fact, in the deck below they go into the strategy behind publishing that exact type of content on Facebook, and why it worked so well.  If this deck doesn’t give you the kick in the pants to get serious about letting analytics guide your content marketing, nothing will.

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The Art of Finding Your Voice With Your Social Media Content

Last night at #Blogchat we had an interesting discussion about finding your blogging voice and the importance of tone with the content you create.  Maybe it’s not completely accurate to talk about ‘finding’ your voice.  Perhaps it’s more about being willing to give yourself permission to share your voice.

But it is my contention that many bloggers, whether they are personal or blogging for someone else, lose interest in blogging because they either aren’t allowed or don’t allow themselves to share their unique writing voice.  I saw multiple people in #Blogchat last night referencing ‘write as you talk’, and I think that’s correct.  If you don’t feel comfortable expressing yourself naturally, then the very act of writing and blogging can feel forced.  As a result, it becomes less like an enjoyable activity and more like a job.

If this contention is correct, then the opposite must be true.  Bloggers that embrace their unique voice (or point of view) are more passionate about blogging.  And that passion carries through into their writing, making it more interesting to the reader.

Look at the tweet above from Southwest.  It was created in a humorous and light-hearted voice.  If you’ve ever flown with Southwest, you know that the flight attendants have this same voice.  They are light-hearted, fun and energetic.  The voice of Southwest’s content on social media is consistent with the brand’s voice across all communication channels.  That’s important.

So how do you find or share your unique blogging voice?  While I do think it’s more about giving yourself permission to share your voice versus finding it, I do think that writing consistently helps you to refine your voice.  For example, over time I’ve learned to share and develop my unique voice here.  My readers are primarily interested in information about how to more successfully create social content, and manage their efforts.  In other words, it’s a space where a lot of people have questions with few straight answers.  So over time, I decided to start sharing everything I knew about creating and managing social content.  Even my own content.  I share how I create content here, and how effective that content is in helping me reach my goals.

And I purposely share when something goes wrong.  This not only helps me communicate to my readers that no one is perfect when it comes to creating social media content, but it also helps me build trust with my readers.  This is also why I openly share all the prices I charge for my speaking/training/consulting services.  Remember at the first of the post when I talked about how not giving yourself permission to share your voice can contribute to you losing interest in blogging?  I hate being vague, especially when it comes to pricing services.  I hate talking to a company that needs help from someone like me with building out their social media strategy, and not addressing the pricing for my services up front.  If they are wanting more information on a $5,000 service and only have $500, then everyone’s time is wasted if we spend 2 weeks of discussing how we can work together if we are that far apart on money.  So I prefer to save everyone’s time and manage expectations by being upfront.

With brands, there are some unique challenges: Finding writers that can write in that brand’s unique voice, disconnects when the brand’s social voice doesn’t match the voice of customer service delivered via other channels, etc.

Whether you write for yourself or an employer, what has been your biggest challenge in finding and sharing your blogging voice?

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Has Content Glut Killed Content Engagement?

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Or do we simply need to change our expectations for engagement around the content we create?

Last year when I decided to launch The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show, I tried to focus on how I could make my podcast different to help it stand out from everyone else that was jumping into podcasting.  I came up with three ideas:

1 – I didn’t want to have a co-host, and I didn’t want to make the podcast an interview podcast.  So many podcasts interview guests, and IMO few do it well.  And the few that do, like Kerry Gorgone’s Marketing Smarts do it so well that you’re probably not going to come close to what Kerry does, so it’s better to fight the battles you have a chance of winning.

2 – I didn’t want to have every episode be 45 minutes to an hour.  I just don’t have time for it, and now that more and more people are listening to podcasts during travels back and forth from work (which is typically a trip that takes less than 30 mins), a longer episode doesn’t work as well.  Plus, what I’ve noticed from a lot of podcasts, whether they have a co-host or not, is that many podcasters seem to approach their podcast as a pseudo radio show.  The opening 5-10 mins of the podcast is off-topic banter and small talk that has zero to do with that show’s topic.  Some listeners love it, I hate it.  Don’t waste my time, get into the show and cut out the fluff.  So I wanted to shoot for 20 mins or less per episode for my podcast.

3 – I wanted to create a way for listeners and fans of the show to have a real stake in the direction that the podcast took.  My idea was, since #fandamnshow is focused on how companies can create and cultivate fans, I wanted to let the fans and loyal listeners of the podcast have ownership of the show’s direction.  I didn’t really see any other podcasts really making an effort to empower their listeners and give them a way to make the show feel like their own.  The way I wanted to do this was to encourage listeners to engage with me and fellow listeners via the #fandamnshow tweets.  My thinking was that this would be a way for listeners to share their thoughts on the show and also suggest future topics, etc.  And I could pick topics that listeners suggested, give them shoutouts during the podcasts, and they could see that their voice was being incorporated into the flow of #fandamnshow so in many ways it would become their podcast, as much as it was mine.

 

Fast-forward almost a year, and #3 hasn’t happened at all.  I’ve been lucky enough to have some listeners (thank y’all!) use the #fandamnshow hashtag to promote the podcast, but there’s been almost none of the discussion around the podcast itself via the hashtag that I was hoping for.

And yet, the audience for #fandamnshow is growing at a rate that I never would have dreamed was possible when I launched the show.  Last month the show had over 1,500 downloads, which was a 170% increase over the previous month.  April looks like it could double the number of downloads from March.  So the show’s audience is rapidly expanding, but the engagement via discussions I am getting around the show via comments here, emails and tweets with #fandamnshow continue to be very low.

Now granted, a lot of that is simply a byproduct of podcasts not being the best channels for creating engagement via discussions.  As I said, a lot of people listen to podcasts while they are on the go, and mobile commenting isn’t a very convenient way to engage.  At the same time, I see discussions here have fallen for the last couple of years as well, and I’ve already talked about how no one is talking on Twitter anymore (Although I do like the recent ability Twitter added that lets you add a comment to a RT.  That’s a nice touch).

The reality is that most of us have decided that we would rather spend our time consuming content, than engaging in discussions about and around that content.  The time I spend crafting a comment about a post/podcast/video is time I could take to read another post or watch another cat video on Facebook.

From a business context, this change in how we define engagement could be a good thing.  For too long, businesses have relied on ‘soft’ metrics to try to measure social media success.  Comments, Likes, RTs and Favorites were tracked, metrics that have little correlation to real business growth.  Since these forms of engagement are harder to find, businesses will have to adapt and measure/track more relevant forms of engagement, like leads generated, white papers downloaded and click throughs.

But for all of us, I think we need to realize that the heady days of 2006-2008, when you could create almost any piece of social content and a discussion would spring up around it, are gone.

Pic via Flickr user Udo Springfield

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BMW Pulls ‘Reverse April Fool’s Prank’, Teaches You About Digital Marketing

On April 1st, a BMW dealership in New Zealand ran a newspaper ad.  At the bottom, it added an ‘April Fool’s Day Special’ coupon.  The coupon said that the first person to bring the coupon in and ask for ‘Tom’, would be able to trade their old car in for a new BMW.

Here’s what happened:

Now, let’s look at this giveaway as being a marketing campaign.  First, let’s consider the costs.  There’s the cost of the BMW itself.  Then add on the cost to create the video you just watched.  Let’s assume there were also some costs associated with PR efforts around the giveaway.  Add in any miscellaneous costs and let’s assume a total cost of say….$60,000.00.

Now, what did this BMW dealership gain from the giveaway?  Let’s look at earned media generated:

First, there’s currently over 1.3 million views of the above video on YouTube.  The odds are it will eventually approach 2 million views, if not pass that.

Next, we have earned media in the form of articles written about the giveaway.  I googled “BMW new zealand april fools” and found 143,000 results:

BMWThen you have to consider the coverage that this giveaway got on television and radio shows.  This is just the type of giveaway that morning radio and television shows love to cover.  “Hey did you hear about the woman that answered the April Fool’s ad and won a free BMW?”

Additionally, it’s going to drive an increase in foot traffic to the BMW dealership, and will likely result in increased sales from this giveaway.  Many people will appreciate the fact that this dealership did the giveaway, and it will make them at least consider doing business there.  Also, if the dealership wants to do something similar in the future, it can expect a much higher response rate for its newspaper ad call-to-action!

So for $60,000, here’s what this business got:

  • A video on YouTube with over 1.3 million views
  • Over 140,000 positive articles about the dealership and its giveaway
  • Any negative articles or posts about the dealership will be completely buried by the avalanche of articles about this giveaway
  • A ton of free coverage on television and radio shows, and likely some newspaper column mentions as well
  • Increased customer satisfaction, loyalty, and sales

I think most businesses that could afford to spend $60,000 on its marketing would consider this to be a good investment.

The key to the success of this campaign has been spreading the story via online channels.  And the story spread online because it focused on the customer.  If this dealership had created a video promoting the same BMW it gave away, that video would have generated a small fraction of the exposure that this giveaway created.  Instead, this BMW dealership found a way to put the focus on the customer, and in doing so. made the video far more interesting.  Putting the customer at the center of the giveaway and video makes the video more relevant to other customers.

Customer-centric content spreads further and faster than company-centric content.

 

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A Very Simple Template to Decide What Content to Create For Your Business Blog

The other night during #Blogchat, Josh left these tweets about his business:

JoshTweets3So Josh is in a situation where he is shifting from providing dog training services, to focusing on manufacturing products for dog owners and likely dog trainers.  He wants to know how to create content that promotes the products he’s manufacturing, but one that isn’t too ‘salesy’ and that still covers topics related to dog training.

This is a problem that a lot of companies face:  How do we create content that does two very crucial things simultaneously:

1 – Promotes our products

2 – Engages readers

Too many companies make sure they nail the promotion aspect of their content, and effectively create a blog that houses an endless stream of commercials disguised as blog posts.  The irony of this approach is that by nailing the first point, the company ensures that its content will NOT engage readers.  Any content that comes across to the reader as being promotion, is immediately tuned out.

So then how do we walk the tightrope of creating content that has value for the company (promotes your products) while at the same time having value for the reader?

It’s actually very easy to do this.  Let’s go back to Josh’s example.  What most companies would want to do is talk directly about the products that Josh is manufacturing for dog owners and trainers.

The secret, is to instead create content about how (and why) your customers will use the product.  Think about your ideal customer.  Who are they, and what problems are they trying to solve by buying this product?  Think about how your product fits into their lives, and blog about that.  This is what the customer wants to know, she wants to know how your product is going help them solve a particular problem, or help them with a particular task, or help them accomplish something.

You don’t want to blog about your product directly, instead, you want to blog about how your product fits into your customer’s life.  That’s how you create content that engages your customer.

If you’re still skeptical, consider that Facebook did a study in 2012 where it analyzed the content created on the site’s most popular brand pages.  The goal was to discover what type of content created by these brands drove the highest levels of engagement.  Facebook found that the type of content that drove the highest engagement levels was content related to but not ABOUT the brand.  Content that directly promoted the brand underperformed, but content related to the brand was more customer-centric, and as a result it resonated more with customers.  Same thing here: Content related to your brand and how your brand/product relates to your customer is customer-centric, which means it is content that customers will find more engaging.

And here’s the secret: Creating engaging content about how your product relates to your customer is the best promotion for your product! 

A great way to get an idea of how to create content that appeals to your customers (but that also relates to your products) is to answer the questions that your customers are asking.  What questions do they have about your product?  About the proper way to use your product?  These questions give you key insights into who your customers are, and how your product could improve their lives.

So here’s the template:

1 – Take your product

2 – Don’t blog directly about the product. Instead, blog about the ways that your customer would use your product, and the reasons why they would use your product.  The idea is, you want to blog about how the product fits into your customer’s life, versus just the product itself.

Because if you blog directly about the product, your potential customers will view it as a commercial, and tune it out.  But if you blog about your customers instead, and how your product could fit into their lives, then the content becomes far more interesting and relevant to those customers!

And here’s the real secret.  I’ve followed this same template in this blog post.  This post was written to create value for companies that need help crafting a content strategy for their blog and online marketing efforts.  These companies are the type of companies I want to work with and help advise on creating a content strategy.  So in essence, this post becomes a promotion for my content consulting, but it doesn’t come across as a commercial, because the post creates value (hopefully) for companies that need clarity around their content strategies. If your company needs advice on how to craft a content strategy for your blog, please email me and let’s discuss your needs!

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Review: Paper.li’s iPhone Content Sharing App, Juice

(Disclosure: Over the last year I worked with Paper.li on its marketing and user-engagement strategies, but not on the development of its Juice app. I agreed to review the app here in exchange for letting me have a sneak-peek at it before it went public.)

Earlier this week, Paper.li launched its first iPhone app, Juice.  The idea behind Juice is simple:  Every day it analyzes your Twitter followers, and finds the 10 most popular links they are sharing, and gives them to you so you can share them as well.  Now at first this seems counter-intuitive, why would you want to share back the same content that’s already been shared?  But believe me, most of your Twitter followers have not seen the stories, and for most of them it’s great content that they enjoy seeing.

So when you download the app (You can get it here from the site and here from the iTunes app store), you sign in and it starts analyzing your Twitter followers to see what they are sharing.  Then, it gives you the 10 recommended stories for that day.

Here’s a couple of screenshots of what the suggested stories look like:

JuiceScreenshotsThen you can read the source, and/or share it. One thing I love is notice underneath the story it gives you some data either on the story, or the source.  Like for the Moz article on the left, underneath it adds that the story is ‘Shared 104.0x above average rate’.  This can help you decide which stories to share.

Then when you select to share a story, you get this view:

IMG_0461Guys look closely, when you share a story from Juice, the app automatically pulls a picture from the story and includes it in the tweet.  Adding a picture to your tweet is HUGE for bumping engagement.  I am constantly looking for stories to share from my feed reader or on other social sites, and when I click the RT button on a site, 99% of the time it does not add the post’s picture to the tweet.  Just the title of the story, and the link.  Which is crazy (click the blue Twitter button at the top of this post and you’ll see that the picture is automatically added to the tweet you’ll send out).  Adding the photo means a higher engagement rate.

Now there is one thing I don’t like about Juice, it currently doesn’t have an option for scheduling when the tweets can go out.  For example, let’s say Juice gives me 10 suggested stories to share today, and I decide that I want to share 7 of them.  The tweets will go out as soon as I send them.  I would like a way to schedule the tweets so that they go out say one every hour.  That way I can share the 7 stories over the span of the next 7 hours, instead of blasting out 7 links in 7 minutes.  By doing that, it limits the visibility that these tweets will get.

Other than that, I think Juice is a pretty lightweight and easy way to find and share content that your followers will enjoy.  It’s currently only available for iPhone users, but I believe they will be rolling out a version for Android users soon.  You can download the Juice app here from the site and here from the iTunes app store.  If you do use Juice, let me what you think!

 

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The Best Marketing Isn’t Focused on Your Product, its Focused on My Passions

Did you notice something about the commercials for this year’s Super Bowl?  Besides the fact that this was a pretty weak crop of ads, the few that did stand out had something in common.  These spots weren’t really about a product as much as they were about passions and beliefs.

Self-image, especially among young girls.

Online bullying.

Caring and loving others.

Think about your passions.  The things, ideas, people and beliefs that you care about. These are the things that move you, that don’t just hold, but arrest your attention.

The vast majority of the marketing in this country is aimed at promoting products.  But the small percentage of marketing that breaks through the clutter and grabs your attention typically has one common trait:  The best marketing isn’t focused on a product, it’s focused on the passions of its customers.

Watch this Red Bull commercial and ask yourself “What product is Red Bull selling here?”

I would argue that this spot isn’t designed to sell Red Bull’s energy drink.  It’s designed to sell what happens after you drink it.  Freedom.  Individual accomplishment.  Pushing your personal boundaries and reaching goals that you thought were out of reach.

These are themes that many of us are passionate about.  Very few of us are passionate about an energy drink, and Red Bull knows that.  So instead, the company focuses its marketing on the ideas, themes and beliefs that its customers are passionate about.

And in turn, that helps Red Bull’s customers become more passionate about Red Bull.  The key to successful marketing isn’t to promote your product, the key to successful marketing is to promote the passions and beliefs of your customers that your product fits into.

Patagonia is another company that markets its passions moreso than its products.  In 2011, Patagonia launched a ‘Don’t Buy This’ campaign encouraging customers to think twice about whether or not they really needed a new coat or jacket.  Or if they decided to buy one, buy used versus new.  The campaign from Patagonia was at attempt to combat materialism and consumerism.

And it didn’t work.  Patagonia’s sales spiked 30% as a result.  Why did this happen?  Because customers felt that Patagonia’s beliefs and passions were in line with their own, and as a result they felt that Patagonia was trustworthy, so they bought from the brand.  Patagonia’s marketing resonates with customers because it’s clearly focused on the company’s beliefs, not the company’s products.  Customers that share those beliefs, are drawn to the company’s marketing as a result.

If you want to grab my attention, stop focusing on marketing your products and instead focus on my beliefs.  More specifically, craft your marketing messages so that you explain to me how your products relates to the ideas, beliefs and themes that I am already passionate about.

Do that, and you’ll win my business.

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Giving Fans Backstage Access: How Paper.li Is Embracing Its Users

All InAlmost a year ago, my friend Kelly Hungerford contacted me about working with Paper.li to help the company build structures to help it more efficiently connect with its users and create value for them.  Paper.li has a pretty devoted userbase, and a big reason why is because of the personalized customer service (or ‘customer care’ that Kelly calls it) that Paper.li has given its users.

But Paper.li’s team is like many growing companies in that team members are often required to wear many hats.  Which presented a challenge for Paper.li: How do you scale having individual relationships with users when the userbase expands from a few thousand to a few hundred thousand users?

So we started out by asking and answering those two questions that I mentioned in the last episode of #FanDamnShow:

1 – What does Paper.li get from this?

2 – What will Paper.li’s users get from this?

 

We came up with some very specific goals that we were shooting for on each end that I don’t want to get into here.  The bottom line is that Paper.li wanted to create programs and structures that help it better connect with its users, and give those users more value and more input into its marketing, product design, and feedback, moving forward.

Many of Paper.li’s planned projects are still in development, but you’ve already seen one, the #Bizheroes chat on Twitter.  This chat is run primarily by Kelly and Magda.  The topics are chosen based on a simple question: “What business and life skills would be beneficial to Paper.li’s users?”  Paper.li brings in experts each week to discuss and teach about a particular skill.  Kelly, who transitioned from Paper.li to start her own consulting business late last year, is working with Paper.li in an advisory role now with the chat.  It’s a wonderful chat that happens each Tuesday at 1pm Central, in fact the participation numbers are often at or better than #Blogchat’s levels!

Another initiative that Paper.li has just rolled out is called Backstage at Paper.li.  Paper.li believes as I do that your passionate customers hold incredible value for your company as a feedback channel.  From our first discussions, we explored the idea of creating a way to let Paper.li users not only give us feedback on existing features, but also input and opinions on possible future features, products and marketing.

To that end, Belinda Sadouk, Paper.li’s new Marketing and Communications Manager, is spearheading the launch of Backstage at Paper.li.  This is a new place that will not only give those who signup an advance ‘sneak peek’ at new features and products from Paper.li, it will also be a feedback channel to better incorporate the ideas, opinions and expertise of Paper.li’s users into future offerings.  The idea is to create a place where Paper.li can connect with its users in a deeper way, allowing them to be able to get early access to new products, features and initiatives, so that their feedback can be applied throughout the development process.  This will not only improve the quality of the ideas and products that go through Backstage, but the users will become more invested in helping those ideas be successful, since they had more input in their direction.

Paper.li CEO Edouard Lambelet talks about this on Paper.li’s blog this week, but the Paper.li platform has allowed the company to collect massive amount of data, especially around content.  What type of content resonates with users, for example, and this is user-generated data.  So part of the goal of Backstage is to take this data and give it back to the users so it can benefit them as well.  By combining the intelligence created by Paper.li’s data along with input and feedback from users, Paper.li hopes to create products that make a more positive difference in the lives of its users.

If you are a Paper.li user (or just curious!) please signup here to join Backstage at Paper.li.  I will say this: Within the next few weeks members will be given an advance look at a new app that Paper.li will be rolling out that many of you reading this blog will want.  You can find out more information on Paper.li’s blog.

One Final Takeaway

Your most passionate customers, call them fans, advocates or ambassadors, are more than simply ‘volunteer salespeople’.  Yes, fans create cash, but your fans are also a treasure trove of valuable feedback and insights into how to improve your business processes.  It pays to reach out to your most passionate customers and invest in creating stronger connections with them that drive real business growth.  I’m looking forward to seeing what Paper.li has in store for creating deeper connections with its users.