MackCollier.com

by

7 Ways Tech Brands Can Build Customer Loyalty Through Digital Experiences

customer loyalty technology industry

Building customer loyalty in the technology industry can be quite the challenge. The industry marketplace is crowded and this creates a very competitive environment for customer attention, much less loyalty. Unfortunately, the days of simply building a better mousetrap and reaping the financial rewards are long gone. Over two decades ago, Apple carved a niche in the music industry for itself with the iPod. Despite being a technically inferior product to competitors, Apple better understood WHY customers would want its product, and that made all the difference.

The reality is that today, you need a superior product AND a focus on designing superior customer experiences. Couple a great product with a great customer experience, and you can create genuine brand loyalty and turn current customers into passionate fans that love your brand. Let’s look at 7 ways that your technology company can tap into digital experiences to increase customer retention, loyalty and advocacy:

Leverage Social Media to Its Fullest Potential

Social media optimization is an easy starting point for a better digital experience. Still, you don’t want to simply create a presence on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram and call it a day.  Remember that technology customers tend to be more analytical. They are more interested in diving deeper into topics and 101 level content that can be found on some social media sites may not be their cup of tea.  For instance, if you want to stay up to date on the latest technology news, you are more likely to hang out on Reddit and LinkedIn than you are on Facebook and Instagram. No matter what industry you are in, always keep in mind what type of content your customers are looking for, and where they would expect to find it. Ditch the boilerplate when it comes to planning your social media strategy!

Here’s some tips to optimizing your social media efforts:

  • Responding promptly to comments, queries, and feedback shows you are listening. Don’t let mentions go unanswered. Warning: Make SURE the information you give is correct, and if you make a mistake, own it and apologize. Technology customers will often know your product as well as you do. So if you give incorrect information, they will call you out on it. However, if you can quickly correct any misinformation and act on the customer’s feedback, you will often win their approval and advocacy as a result. I’ve worked with technology companies like Dell that realized the benefits in real-time of connecting with customers and utilizing instant feedback from customers and acting on it. It can create big loyalty and advocacy wins for your brand.
  • Proactively highlighting and thanking followers who post about your brand or share content. I have a saying I tell all my clients: Reward the behavior you want to encourage. There is no easier way to encourage customers to create MORE positive content about your company than thanking them. Whenever you see any customer on any social media channel saying ANYTHING positive about your company, thank them immediately. You would be amazed at how many companies ignore customers who positively promote them. It’s the lowest hanging fruit in social media. Learn to say ‘Thank you!’ early and often.
  • Featuring user-generated content like reviews, unboxings, or creations showcasing your products. User content builds authenticity, and it is viewed as being more credible than content that comes from the brand itself.
  • BONUS TIP: Don’t be afraid to promote content from your customers who are promoting your brand. If a customer has written a blog post that includes an endorsement for your company, then promote it on your social channels! Ford used one of my tweets waaaay back in 2010 as a Promoted Tweet! The automaker was using content from fans and enthusiasts, as a way to draw attention to others who were talking favorably about the brand. As I said, it’s all about rewarding the behavior you want to encourage.

The more you reward and spotlight social media advocacy, the more it will grow.

Optimize User Experiences Across the Entire Journey

Every touchpoint that customers have with your technology shapes their loyalty. Ensuring seamless, frictionless experiences is crucial.

This means obsessively optimizing key user interactions like:

  • Onboarding – Making the setup, installation, and initial usage intuitive and simple. Remember that the first experience that customers have with your technology product or service will greatly impact their perception of it.
  • Education – Providing easy to follow instructions, tips, and how-to’s guide users in becoming experts. Additionally, giving customers easy access to help can not only divert customer support inquiries, it can help boost customer loyalty and advocacy!
  • Support – Fast, effective technical troubleshooting and customer service keeps users happy when issues arise. Make sure your CS department has easy access to Subject Matter Experts who can provide more technical support if necessary.
  • Upgrades – Migrations, new releases, and added features should build on the familiar and avoid disruption.  As long as the upgrade feels like an improvement, it will be welcome and lead to higher levels of customer satisfaction. But if every upgrade feels like ‘starting over’, it will lead to a frustrating experience for the customer, and could even prompt them to explore competitor’s offerings.

Mastering end-to-end user experience removes adoption barriers and frustration while exceeding expectations. Delighted users then pay it forward with referrals.  Remember, your best salespeople are your current, happy customers!

 

Build an Engaged User Community

What’s the difference between an audience and a community?  With an audience, all the interaction is one way, from the stage toward the seats.  With a community the interaction is happening from person to person. Creating a community around your products and services is one of the best ways that a technology company can build loyalty and advocacy from customers.

Consider digital community building strategies like:

  • Hosting user forums and groups to share tips, product hacks, feedback, and more. Let users help each other. BONUS: Over time, elevate the most proficient contributors to your group to the role of Moderator. This encourages more engagement from the group, and it signals to your user group that its users will share ownership of the group along with your company.
  • Promote user-generated content and reviews. Even if it promotes the creator as much as it does your brand.  Also, don’t be afraid to highlight 4-star reviews. Most customers actually view 4-star reviews as being more credible than 5-star reviews. If a product or service has all 5-star reviews, it looks suspicious. But if the reviews are excellent overall, a few 4-star or even 3-star reviews sprinkled in can actually make all the reviews as a group seem more credible.
  • Holding live or virtual events and meetups to cultivate relationships between fellow users and the brand. These can be intimate gatherers with a few customers, or massive user conferences like Adobe Summit. Remember, any time you can get your passionate customers and users together in the same place and interacting with each other, it’s good for your brand loyalty.
  • Private community groups on Facebook or Slack for power users. VIP access builds exclusivity, and is viewed as a perk or reward for your most passionate users.

Bringing users/customers together is a wonderful way to build affinity and loyalty toward your brand. Look for ways to connect your most passionate customers to each other, it will pay for itself every time.

Develop a Customer-Focused Content Strategy

Can I let you in on a secret? (Leans in) Content that’s useful to your customers makes it easier for them to trust you.  If you constantly create content that’s relevant to your customers, then they will actively seek out your content and it will reflect positively on your brand. It will also make your customers more receptive to all your brand’s communications.

Valuable types of loyalty-focused content include:

  • “Insider tips” or “pro tips” articles with advice for power users. This is content that’s targeted at your current customers, who have a higher degree of awareness and knowledge of your products and services.
  • Step-by-step how-to tutorials for maximizing capabilities. Become users’ go-to resource. Let’s say you buy a graphic design program for your mac. After a few weeks of using it, you feel like you have the basic functions and usage down, but you want to learn more. So you will start to seek our deeper dives and more detailed how-tos. Why not give your customers and users the content they will be looking for?  If you don’t give them this content, they will find it from another source, or another customer. And that customer might suggest using a competitor’s design program instead. Something to think about.
  • Sharing inspiring user stories and creations featured in the community. Applaud their innovation. Remember earlier how I talked about rewarding the behavior you want to encourage?  This is a perfect example of doing so. When your users create amazing content or art or whatever by using your products or services, put the spotlight on them! Make them feel like rock stars, because they are. All this will do is encourage and inspire more users to create more content with your technology.
  • Insights from product designers, founders or engineers. Pull back the curtain, make your SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) accessible to your community of users.
  • Sneak peeks and early access to new features or product roadmaps. This will be viewed as a perk by your users and they will greatly appreciate your brand giving them access that the ‘general public’ doesn’t have.

Content acts as fuel for loyalty when it highlights common user pain points and fulfills unmet informational needs.

 

Launch a Formal Loyalty or Brand Ambassador Program

Once you have identified your most passionate users and customers, it may be time to create a formal program to manage your ongoing relationship. This can be a loyalty program, or something more in-depth such as a brand ambassador program. In either event, you want to create an ongoing relationship with these customers where you can more easily access feedback from them as well as stay connected. Being in closer contact allows your brand to leverage these special customers to more easily communication key messages to the larger marketplace, as well as collect valuable feedback from your customer and userbase.

Tactics such as:

  • A tiered-points system with points/credits earned for actions like reviews, referrals, UGC. More engagement means more perks.
  • Early access to new products and sales. This could also include special access to your brand’s SMEs, designers, engineers, etc.
  • Swag, discount and free services. Also, create free swag just for your members. It will make them feel special to get a piece of clothing or device that the ‘general public’ doesn’t have, but it also creates word of mouth. People will ask where they got that special item, which then gives the user a chance to brag on themselves for being a member of your program and having ‘special access’!
  • Free products to review or prime positioning in marketing content. One year I worked with a tech company to facilitate an on-site customer event at its world headquarters. As part of the event, a camera crew was on hand to record the sessions and discussions. The following year we had the group back again, and I was again on hand to moderate the event. Part of the event included a sneak peek at a new commercial that the brand would be releasing that included some of the video that had been shot at the previous year’s event. While showing the commercial, one of the attendees suddenly burst into tears, and exclaimed ‘I just saw myself in the video!’ The brand had included a short clip of her speaking at the previous year’s event. Needless to say, it made a VERY positive impression on her!

Creating a well-structured brand ambassador program can greatly amplify your ability to engage your most passionate customers and boost customer loyalty. BONUS: Here’s how a brand ambassador program can work for a technology company.

 

Get Creative with Contests, Games, and Activities

Gamification, when done right, can tap into users’ competitive spirits and drive more active engagement with the brand.

Some examples can include:

  • Photo contests for fan art, or video contests for best product demo. Let users showcase their skills, let the larger community vote on the winners. Promote winners on the brand’s main marketing and social media channels, and use entries as repurposed content throughout the year.
  • Leaderboards and badges for top forum contributors. This is a great way to encourage more community involvement, plus badges and ‘digital flair’ serve to drive online word of mouth. For instance, give top forum contributors a badge they can display on their blog.
  • Referral and feedback quests with prizes or charity contributions. Increase advocacy behaviors.
  • Easter eggs hidden in products, packaging or content. Add an element of surprise and delight.
  • AR experiences along with virtual quests. These help add entertainment and functionality to your technology, along with giving unique digital experiences.

With a little creativity and strategic planning, your technology brand can develop endless quests and challenges that not only entertain users but get them more invested in your brand.  And a deeper investment leads to higher levels of loyalty.

 

Pull Data Insights to Refine Your Loyalty Strategy

The beauty of digital channels is the ability to closely track activity and glean actionable data insights that fuel constant optimization.

Analyze key metrics like:

  • User retention rates (churn rate) over time and after milestone actions. Keeping a close eye on churn, and what is prompting it, let’s you identify bottlenecks in the brand loyalty journey.
  • Web traffic source patterns showing top referral channels. This data gives you insights into where your most loyal customers and users are spending their time. This also helps you refine where your brand spends ITS time, so you can better connect with your customers where they are.
  • Behaviors that correlate to the most loyal vocal advocates. By constantly tracking and engaging with your brand advocates, you can build a persona and understanding of who they are, and the behaviors they engage in.
  • Touchpoints users frequently interact with. By mapping all touchpoints along the customer journey, you can identity where conversions are happening, and where churn is as well.
  • How advocacy amplifies at different customer spend levels.

Crunching user data identifies what is moving the needle on loyalty so you can double down on what works and change course when needed.

 

The Never-Ending Quest to Earn Customers for Life

True brand loyalty and advocacy cannot be bought. Consistently exceeding expectations and nurturing community are the digital building blocks for creating passionate fans that love your technology brand. While challenging in competitive, noisy tech environments, putting the customer first both on and offline establishes genuine connections.

With people increasingly turning to peers for product recommendations, earning customers for life through loyalty and advocacy is the most powerful marketing strategy you can pursue. Once again, your best salespeople are your current, happy customers. The strategies and tips listed in this article will give you the framework to begin cultivating an army of customers who are also advocates for your brand.

by

The Promise (and Peril) of Artificial Intelligence for Content Creators

Artificial intelligence for content creators

Artificial intelligence is arguably the hottest growth area of business this year and could be for the rest of the decade. In early 2023, Microsoft announced a $10 Billion investment in ChatGPT creator OpenAI. Google followed a month later with a $300 Million investment in AI startup Anthropic, giving them a 10% stake in the company. So big tech’s big bucks are flowing to artificial intelligence right now, and that will sustain its growth path, at least for the foreseeable future. As you might guess, artificial intelligence for content creators will hold great promise as well.

If you haven’t already, you should familiarize yourself with these tools. ChatGPT is the most popular, and I’ve been using it since December of 2022. You can experiment with it yourself here.

At first blush, Artificial Intelligence seems like a godsend for content creators. It has the potential to address many of the most pressing problems that content creators have:

  • Ideation. This is big for me, I have always struggled with coming up with enough ideas for new content.
  • Editing. My process to editing goes like this: Publish the post, then immediately proofread it. With AI, you can have your post proofread for you quickly and easily, and have it edited in pretty much any style you choose.
  • SEO, AI can easily give you tips to improve the search engine performance and rankings for your content.
  • Visual enhancements.  AI can suggest appropriate visual components.
  • Headline writing tweaks.  AI can write your headlines for you! Many content creators and especially bloggers struggle with writing compelling headlines.

 

So as you can see, when used correctly, artificial intelligence can greatly aid content creators. But there are some potential drawbacks to consider as well.

AI Should Enhance Your Content Creation, it Shouldn’t Replace it

The best way to look at Artificial Intelligence is as a tool you can use to improve an existing output, not as a tool that creates the content for you.

Let’s look at two scenarios to illustrate the difference:

First, let’s say you have agreed to cook dinner for friends. Since you aren’t much of a cook, you decided to go with something quick and easy, spaghetti with marinara. For the marinara, you decided to choose Rao’s Homemade Marinara (which is actually quite good), but you want to pass it off as being your own homemade concoction.

So your friends arrive, but it seems Michael invited his friend Paolo to join the group, and of course Paolo would just so happen to be a world-class chef. So when your friends begin dinner, they compliment you on the spaghetti and sauce, which you claim you made yourself. Paolo compliments it as well, adds it tastes remarkably close to Rao’s that can be bought from the shelf, and asks for your recipe.  Oops.  This would be an example of having AI do the work for you, and how that can create problems.

Now let’s look at the second scenario. In this scenario, you are still making dinner for your friends, still making spaghetti, but in this example you can actually cook! And you have gotten quite good at making homemade marinara, as your friends will attest. So your friends arrive a bit early for dinner, and again, Michael invites Paolo along to dinner. When you learn that Paolo is a world-class chef, you invite him to sample your marinara as you are preparing it. He marvels at the taste, you thank him and add that you think it needs some more ‘heat’, but you don’t want to make it spicy. Paolo tastes it again and then suggests you add a pinch of black pepper. You do, and perfection! Your marinara has the exact taste of ‘heat’ you were looking for! In this example, AI, er….Paolo, took an already good homemade marinara sauce, and made it better.  The AI enhanced your work and improved the final product.

Additionally, the information given by AI isn’t always accurate. And that can quickly cause problems:

Also, the sources of information that AI tools pull from, especially visuals such as photos, may include copyrighted material, which can create additional issues:

Also, there’s the concern over spreading misinformation that’s been generated by AI:

 

So how should you use AI as a content creator?

Simply put, AI should be used to enhance content that YOU create. These tools can be quite valuable for content creators, if used correctly. What you don’t want to happen is let the AI create the content, then you tweak it. You should create the content, then use AI as a tool to help edit, enhance and improve YOUR work.

by

Monday’s Marketing Minute: Elon’s Twitter Takeover Back On, Twitter Re-Embracing Devs, What Makes B2B Content Memorable

Happy Monday, y’all! I hope everyone has a wonderful and productive week! Here’s some business and marketing stories that I’ve had my eye on over the last week:

 

So it seems the on-again, off-again bid by Elon to buy Twitter is back on. Multiple sources are saying that the Twitter board is reconsidering Elon’s latest offer to buy the company. I would caution that just because it’s being reported that Twitter is close to a deal with Elon, that doesn’t mean they are. Control of Twitter is a BIG BIG deal, as its become such a massive platform to create and shape public opinion. The company and its shareholders want to continue to control that.  So does Elon.  We will see how it plays out.

 

Years ago, in a time where Twitter let 3rd party developers access its API and build tools on top of it, one such tool called Monitter existed.  At the time, Monitter was one of the most useful social media tools out there. It gave you the ability to search Twitter VIA TARGETED LOCATION. You could see, in real-time what people were saying on Twitter, at a particular location.  It had amazing potential, say you were a restaurant that offered delivery, you could search Twitter for people tweeting ‘I am hungry’ within the last hour, in your neighborhood.  Or if there was a breaking news event at a particular location, you could search for tweets from people at that location, reporting live as the event was unfolding.  It was amazing.  But like many promising apps, Twitter cut off access to its API, and they went away.

Well now they may be coming back.  It seems Twitter is reaching back out to the same developers it once turned its back on.  This may end up being a case of too little too late, but hopefully Twitter will embrace developers building on the platform’s functionality as it once did.  If so, Twitter’s users will be the real winners, and Twitter can always just acquire any successful apps that emerge.

 

New research from Demand Gen gives insights into the types of content that B2B buyers prefer. Specifically, B2B buyers gravitate to content that relies on research and data in presentation. Research and data lends to credibility for the buyer. When it comes to shareability, buyers said that being able to quickly distill key insights derived from the data made the reader more likely to share the content. This is why it’s a good idea to summarize lengthy content with ‘Key Takeaways’ at the start of the post. Readers will often use these insights when sharing your content.

 

So that’s it for this week’s Monday’s Marketing Minute! At some point I want to do a deeper dive into Elon’s flirtations with buying Twitter, and what it really is all about. I might do that later this week, or I may wait until we see if his bid to buy the company actually works or not. I haven’t decided yet. Either way, I appreciate you taking the time to read, and I hope you have a wonderful and prosperous week ahead!

by

New Research Reveals How Content Creation is Changing For Bloggers

My pal Andy Crestodina conducts blogging research annually to give us insights into what’s working for bloggers when it comes to content creation. He just published the results of this year’s survey, and I wanted to do a deeper dive into some of his findings.

Successful bloggers spend 4-6 hours on each post

According to Andy’s research, the average blog posts takes 4 hours to write in 2021. This makes sense as more bloggers are moving toward creating long-form content, and we will see that reflected in the survey results.
Additionally, bloggers were asked if they felt their posts were delivering ‘strong results’. Bloggers who spent 6 hours or more on a post reported the highest levels of ‘strong results’ by far. So if you want to write successful blog posts, be prepared to invest at least 4 hours per post. If not more.

The average blog post in 2021 is 1,416 words

And according to Andy’s blogging research, that number has grown every year. I was just discussing this very topic with a colleague. A big reason why longer-form content is more appealing is because it’s harder to write long-form content unless you are an expert on that topic. Longer posts and articles are a key indicator of expertise.
Andy also broke down the length of blog posts, and asked bloggers to rank if their blog posts were giving ‘strong results‘. For instance, for bloggers who wrote posts that were less than 500 words, 16% of them said their blog was delivering ‘strong results’. For bloggers who wrote 500-1000 words per post, that percentage increased to 17%, and for bloggers who wrote 1000-1500 words a post, those bloggers felt their posts delivered ‘strong results’.
Here’s where it gets interesting; For bloggers that wrote 1500-2000 words per post, the percentage who felt their posts delivered ‘strong results’ shot up to 30%. Bloggers who wrote 3000+ words per post felt their blog delivered ‘strong results’ 36% of the time.
Longer content gets better results.

Blogging frequency is down slightly

Not surprisingly, bloggers who are writing longer posts, aren’t blogging quite as often. The average blogger tends to write 1-2 new posts a week. That’s pretty much in line with what I try to shoot for.
Think about the type of content you will be creating. If you are publishing more thought leadership pieces, then you want to go longer, and that means fewer posts. If you are publishing more news or industry-roundup posts, those can typically be shorter, and take less time.
In general, I think you should commit to at least 1 new blog post a week. In a perfect world, I think 2 a week, perhaps Tuesday and Thursday, would work best. But every situation is different. What’s most essential is that you pick a schedule, and stick to it. Consistency is the name of the game, and how you build an audience over time.
Remember, blogging is a marathon, not a sprint.
blogging research

How are bloggers promoting their content?

So I wanted to close with the survey results on content promotion. What’s interesting to me is that social media was listed as the most popular promotion channel, used by 90% of respondents.
But only 20% of respondents said social media was an effective promotional channel, in fact it was the least successful. Isn’t that interesting? Social media is by far the most popular promotional channel and also the least effective.
Why is this? I think a great part of the reason why bloggers aren’t seeing good results from social media is that most bloggers simply tweet or share a link to their new blog post, with zero explanation or context explaining why the post is worth our time. I am the worst about doing this, I need to get better about adding context to ALL links I share, my own, and the links of other creators.
So check out Andy’s blogging research, there’s a ton more of useful information.

by

The One Thing I Hate About Content Creation

Content CreationThe one thing I hate about content creation is writing about the same topic over and over again.

I hate doing this. When I do, it always feels like I am being lazy or repeating myself. I mean, I covered this same topic back in 2011, why revisit it?

As it turns out, there’s actually several good reasons to create content around the same topic, more than once. So if you are like me, and it gives you the willies to create content about the same topic over and over again, strap in and let’s talk about why this is actually a good idea.

Why you should be creating content about the same topics over and over again

1 – Your audience changes. I’ve been blogging since 2005, across three different sites. The audience I wrote for at each site was vastly different. I’ve now been blogging here for over 12 years.  The people I am writing for today are vastly different than the readers I wrote for back in 2009. It makes complete sense to cover the same topics repeatedly because there are constantly new eyeballs on your content.

2 – Your expertise changes. I look back at a lot of the content I created back in 2005-2007 and realize now that I had no earthly idea what I was talking about. I certainly thought I did, but over the years I got to work with many companies and clients and put what was theory, into practice. My skills improved and grew, and as such the point of view I had for the work changed as well. I could go from presenting other people’s case studies to illustrate a point, to referencing the work I had personally done with clients. My knowledge and understanding of the topics greatly improved, and as a result it makes sense to revisit those topics to add what I have learned.

3 – You have better examples. Tying in with the previous point, as your expertise grows, your ability to illustrate concepts and ideas does as well. You become aware of better examples either through your own growing experience, or simply by being exposed to new case studies.

For instance, when I first started blogging, I often wrote about the value of using influencers on-site to drive interest in a conference or event. After a few years of experience working with companies such as Adobe as an influencer to promote their events, I could then point readers toward the results from that work. This resulted in my being able to create better content, and back up the concepts with real-world results.

4 – It helps your SEO. Yes, writing for search engines still matters. Depending on your blog, anywhere from 30-80% of your traffic comes from search engines. Those are numbers that are simply too big to ignore. By consistently creating content around certain topics, you are telling those search engines what the focus of your blog is. That makes it more likely that the content you create for those topics will place higher in search results, leading to more traffic from search engines.

The plugin I use for my blog to help me rank higher in search results is Yoast SEO. I cannot recommend it enough.

5 – It helps readers understand what the focus of your content is. It’s important to write for search engines, but it’s even more important to write for your readers. Consistently writing about the same topics helps readers understand where your focus is. Once they know what topics you write about, they can help tell their friends and colleagues about you as well.

So it’s vital to think about, from a strategic standpoint, the key topics you want to focus on. This will be the 3-5 topics that you want to be known for. I call these Topic Buckets. I pick 3-5 Topic Buckets that will be the main focus of the content I create here. This helps me focus my content. Additionally, this makes it easier for others to understand what the main topics are that I cover here.

 

There’s five reasons why it pays to focus your content creation efforts on the same topics, over and over again. Pick 3-5 Topic Buckets, then consistently create content that fits into one of those Topic Buckets. This will not only help drive more search traffic to your blog, but it will drive more direct and referral traffic as your readers better understand the focus of your writing.

by

5 Common Mistakes Businesses Make on Instagram (And How to Fix Them!)

In the early days of social media (2006-2010), most businesses created content for three channels; Their blog, Facebook and Twitter.

All that changed in 2010 with the introduction of an app called Instagram. What made Instagram stand out from the social media crowd was its focus on visual content. Today, Instagram boasts over a billion users, and it has revolutionized social media, forcing all competing platforms and apps to adopt more visual content options in order to compete.

Yet as businesses are rushing to use Instagram, they are still making many mistakes.

5 Common Mistakes Businesses Make on Instagram (And How to Fix Them!)

 

1 – You business uses Instagram the same way it uses every other social media channel. Instagram is about visual content. The focus of your content should be images and videos, obviously. You can’t just post the same image that you did on Facebook and Twitter and expect the same results.

More than anything, Instagram is a wonderful platform for visual storytelling. If you are reading this post and want to know how to get better at using visual content, I would suggest reading The Power of Visual Storytelling, by my friends Ekaterina Walter and Jessica Gioglio.

Want to see an amazing example of using Instagram for visual storytelling? Check out what Whole Foods did to its Instagram feed.

2 – Your business focuses too much on itself, and not enough on your customers. Keep in mind that social media is best used as a way to build awareness. Who do you want to build awareness with? Your customers! So why not have your customers create your content for you?

For instance, the Alabama Mountain Lakes Tourist Association has partnered with ambassadors throughout North Alabama to photograph the sights of the area. This partnership gives AMLTA access to much more content, and the photographers have a vested interest in promoting that content to their friends and followers. (Disclaimer: I advised AMLTA on their ambassador program as it was being created and launched)

By focusing on your customers, either in creating content about them, or letting them create the content directly, you are giving other customers a reason to engage with your content.

Instagram AMLTA

3 – Your business isn’t using Instagram Stories. If no one sees your content, then they can’t engage with your content. One problem that businesses face when they first join Instagram is building a following. Building a following in necessary to get more visibility and engagement. But there’s another way you can improve both: By using Instagram Stories.

 

Look at the top of that picture.  The bubbles for Amber, NickMercs, Donna and Stephanie are Instagram Stories. The big benefit to using Instagram Stories is that the Stories are moved to the top of the IG feed of your followers. That means better exposure and visibility. If you are simply posting to Instagram, then your updates are going to the regular feeds of your followers. With Instagram Stories, your content stands out and is more likely to be seen.

4 – Your photos are poor quality. Instagram is a visual medium. Your content is competing against businesses that are investing in creating top-notch visual content, both photos and videos. If you want your images to stand out, they must be top quality. If you don’t have a photographer on staff, or access to high quality images, you should make an effort to acquire them.

instagram

5 – Your posting is erratic. Success in building awareness and engagement with social media content is rooted in consistency. You need to create a schedule for when you post content on Instagram, and stick to it! Keeping a consistent schedule ‘trains’ your followers to know when your new content will be posted, so they know when to look for it.

 

So there’s 5 common mistakes that businesses make on Instagram, and how to fix them. If you want to learn more about using Instagram for your business, check out all the posts I’ve written on how businesses are using Instagram.

by

10 Simple Ways to Boost Engagement on Your Business Blog (For Free!)

business blog engagementBlogging, especially for a business, can often feel like a very lonely endeavor.

Ten years ago, blogs were where conversations happened on social media. I could write this same post in 2010, and it would likely have 30 comments in a week. This one will be lucky to have a tenth of that in a week.

It’s just the nature of the beast. Blogging has changed, how people engage has changed. Those of us that blog for our business, need to adapt to meet those changes.

 

What does ‘engagement’ mean for a business blog?

There’s a big misconception about what engagement is in terms of business blogging. Many people view engagement for a blog, personal or business, as simply being about comments. Nothing could be further from the truth for a business blog.

For a business blog, engagement is defined as any action that a reader takes that creates value for your business. This could be leaving a comment, but it could also be sharing your post with a colleague or signing up for your newsletter.

So don’t limit your view of engagement on a business blog as simply being about getting more comments. In fact, before we talk about boosting engagement on your business blog, let’s list some of the types of engagement that we want to boost:

  • Comments
  • Shares of your post or article with colleagues
  • Signing up for a company newsletter
  • Leaving your business blog to visit the company website or a product specific area of the company website
  • Emailing or calling your company to ask a product-specific question
  • Downloading a white paper

Now we have an entire list of ways that visitors can engage with the content on our business blog. We can now structure our content to encourage one or more of these types of engagement.

10 Simple Ways to Boost Engagement on Your Business Blog (For Free!)

1 – Simplify your content. Content that’s easier to grasp and understand, is more likely to engage your audience and hold their attention.

The easiest way to do this is to is to focus on topics that are written at a more 101-level than advanced. That’s because its easier for people to form and share an opinion about 101-level content than it is say 401-level content.

Case in point, which question do you think would receive more comments?

  1. What’s your favorite movie night snack; burgers or pizza?
  2. Who was the better military strategist; Alexander The Great or General Robert E Lee?

Obviously, more people would feel confident engaging with content around the first question, than the second. Ultimately, you want your audience to feel comfortable engaging with your content. So creating content that’s easier to digest and understand, will lead to higher engagement rates.

2 – Focus on improving the readability of your content. Content that’s easier to read is easier to understand. Simply organizing your content so it is clear and easy to read will enhance understanding, and that improves engagement.

This is where I want to share one of my content creation secret weapons with you. It’s the Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress. Yoast SEO has a Readability checklist it creates for each post you create. That checklist gives you a list of items you need to do in order to make the post easier to read. It’s been a huge help to me and if you compare this post to ones I wrote even a year ago, you can see a stark difference in organization and readability.

3 – Make it clear how you want readers to engage with your content. Do you want more comments? Then ask for them. Do you want more newsletter signups? Then include a signup form in or around your content (There’s one at the end of this post). Do you want them to download your white paper? Then include a link where they can.

Think about how you want readers to engage with your content, then craft your Calls to Action so that you encourage those forms of engagement.

4 -Reply to comments. This one is so simple it hurts. If someone leaves a comment on your blog, answer them! It’s incredibly hard to get anyone to leave a first comment. If they do, and you respond and engage them, that increases the chance that they will comment again.

5 – End your post with these three words; “What do you think?” That encourages the reader to engage you in the comments. You can make it even easier by asking them to leave a comment OR email you any thoughts they have.

6 – Write about your audience, not your company. Remember that your business blog is a great tool for building brand awareness. Awareness is at the top of the sales funnel. To get customers into your sales funnel via content, you want to create content that focuses almost completely on the customer.

Write about what your customer goes through every day. Talk about the problems and issues they face in their lives, without talking about how your company solves those issues. At least not yet. You want to focus completely on the customer in order to get their attention and engage them. Then, once they are on your business blog and engaging with you, then you can create content that helps the customer understand how your company can solve the problems they are facing every day.

7 – Use social sharing buttons on every post. Not every reader wants to comment, but many will want to share your article with friends and colleagues. Giving them social sharing options is an easy way to encourage more visitors to your site. When deciding which buttons to add, always remember to add a button to share via email. Old school still works!

8 – Add Related Content to the end of every post. This is an easy way to help the reader find more content you have written on the same topic. It works perfectly, because if they read the entire article, it signals interest, then you include Related posts at the end for them to read next. I use the Jetpack plugin(Affiliate link) to add three Related posts at the end of each post.

9 – Write good headlines. Your post headline should be engaging, interesting and even a bit provocative all at the same time. But above all, your headline should make a specific promise to the reader, and that promise should compel them to read your post.

Too many bloggers use the post headline to simply summarize the topic of the post. Understand how your content will be spread: It will show up in search results, it will be shared on social media feeds. In most cases, your headline is all a person will read before deciding if they want to click your post and read it.

Spoiler alert: Boring headlines don’t get clicks. I’m using the Headline Optimizer Test from Thrive Themes to create the headline for this post. I entered multiple variations of the headline, the Headline Optimizer serves the headlines randomly, and the one with the best engagement ‘wins’ and is chosen as the headline for this post. So as I’m writing this post now, the most engaging headline hasn’t been chosen yet! You can get the Headline Optimizer Test for your blog as part of the Thrive Themes Suite(Affiliate link), which I also use on this blog.

10 – Publish new posts when your audience will read them. Think about who you are writing for, and when they will be reading blogs. For instance, if your business is a B2B, you likely want to reach customers who are at work, so publish new posts during the workday. Publish new posts when you think your audience might be free to read them, such as in the morning before lunch, or in the afternoon before they leave for the day.

 

So there’s 10 easy (and free!) ways to start getting more engagement on your business blog as early as today! Want more advice on how to grow your business blog? Check out all the posts under the Business Blogging category.

by

#ContentCircus 2-2-21 Recap: How to Create Buyer Personas For Your Content Marketing Strategy

Last night, we had another great conversation at #ContentCircus on Twitter, this time discussing How to Create Buyer Personas For Your Content Strategy. Let’s jump into some of the key takeaways:

When you start creating buyer personas, you want to define who the persona is. For that, you need customer data. If you work for a business, your sales, marketing and customer service teams should be able to help you define your ideal customer. If you have a retail business, you and your employees that are in regular contact with your customers can give this information. If you are still uncertain who your ideal customer is, you can create a persona for who you would want this customer to be.

 

After collecting demographic data about your persona (age, gender, occupation, income, education), you want to move on to addressing the personas pain points. What are the issues and problems they face every day, that you can address via the content you create? Giving customers the solutions to their problems is a wonderful way to create content that drives sales, and loyalty.

 

https://twitter.com/chippermuse/status/1356791739323940868

When creating content for your personas, you want to be aware of where the persona is currently getting information, and which sources it trusts. You also want to know what type of content they prefer. Do they want to read long blog posts on their desktop, or do they want to see short videos on their smartphone? By understanding what type of content they want and from what sources, it helps you tailor content to meet the expectations of your customers.

 

Finally, when you are creating your personas, you want to define where the persona is in the Buyer’s Journey. We discussed creating content for each stage of the Buyer’s Journey back in December at #ContentCircus, here’s the recap post for our conversation. Additionally, you want to define the persona’s role in making purchasing decisions within their organization or household. Can they authorize purchases independently, or will they need approval from their boss or spouse?

 

So that was our discussion last night at #ContentCircus of How to Create Buyer Personas For Your Content Strategy. If you want to join the next #ContentCircus, it happens every Tuesday night at 7pm Central. Just follow the #ContentCircus hashtag. Next week’s topic will be Winning Strategies For Content Creation on Twitter! See you then!

 

Bonus: I wrote about How to Create Buyer Personas For Your Content Marketing Strategy here yesterday. In that post I also added the persona for Sarah, to give you an idea of what a persona looks like so you can better understand how it can help your content creation efforts.  Here it is again:

 

by

How to Create a Buyer Persona For Your Content Marketing Strategy

If you want to take your content strategy to the next level, one of the smartest moves you can make is to create a buyer persona(s) for the content you create.

 

What is a buyer persona?

A buyer persona is an abstract representation of your ideal customer/client/donor/partner. Ideally, your sales and marketing department will already have existing buyer personas that you can work off of. If not, you’ll need to coordinate with these departments to create new personas.

What the big deal about a buyer persona? Think of personas as a ‘day in the life’ snapshot of your ideal customer. Personas help the content creator quickly and easily understand the person it is creating the content for, as well as the type of content that can best meet the needs of that person. Personas help give your content creators structure and direction on the type of content they should be creating. In fact, if your personas are developed correctly, you even set your content calendar with your personas instead of topics. For instance, on Monday you write a post for Sarah, on Wednesday you write one for Isaac, and Friday is for Jennifer.

 

Where do you get the information to create your buyer persona?

In other words, how do you determine who your ‘ideal’ customer is? A good starting point is to talk to your sales team. This group typically has the most hands-on experience working with and connecting directly with your customers. Also check with your marketing team, and see if they have done any customer surveys. Your ecommerce team can also help with information about who your customers are. Finally, talk to your customer service team, they can give you a different set of customer insights, which we will talk about in a minute.

These are all in-house sources of information. You can also look at market research, especially research done about customers in your industry and vertical. Also, study your competitors and try to get a sense for who they are targeting with their sales and marketing efforts, this will give you a sense of who their ideal customer is.

 

What does a buyer persona include?

There’s multiple areas of information that you want to focus on to help define each buyer persona that you create. For each of these areas, you want to be as specific as possible, while still being accurate. For instance, you don’t want to say your ideal customer is a male aged 18-34, because that’s a pretty big age range. You want to shorten that age range as a much as possible, while still being as accurate as possible.

Demographics

This is the first area of information you want to focus on. You want to include basic information such as gender, age, martial status, income level and educational history. If your company is a B2C, then you want to also make sure that your buyer persona clearly defines that person’s role within the family. You want to know how your persona relates to the other members of the family, and whether or not this person has direct control over purchases or not.

For a B2B, you want to clearly define the person’s role within their company. You want to clearly define their responsibilities within their company, as well as where their position fits within the company hierarchy. As with a B2C persona, you want to clearly define if this persona has direct control over purchases, or if they must work with someone else within the company to secure that purchases are made. In both scenarios, you basically want to know who has the ability to authorize a purchase; is it the persona, or someone else.

The persona’s pain points and worries

Here, you identify and detail what ‘keeps them up at night’. You detail what problems the persona faces in their home and/or business life. This is done to help the content creator understand the problems that your products and services help solve. You can also detail what worries them, and also what excites them about being in their position, whether it be in a personal or professional setting. For instance, if your persona works for Company ABC, detail what they like about their job, and dislike. Talk about the issues the persona faces on a daily basis that the persona feels is holding them back. These are problems that the persona faces, but they also can give you a sense of what type of content you should be creating to address those problems, or at least communicate how your products or services can address those problems.

What type of content does the persona prefer, and from what sources?

Here, you want to gain insights into the type of content your persona is looking for, and why. Do they want video content that can demonstrate how your products and services work? Do they prefer posts or articles that can explain how they work? Also, where do they get their content from? Do they consult blogs, or do they prefer to more ‘mainstream’ sites? You basically want to know what sources does the persona trust for information, and in what form does that information exist?

Where is the persona on the buyer’s journey?

At this point, let’s quickly review the buyer’s journey:

Buyer's Journey, Creating Better Content

You want to establish where your persona is on the above buyer’s journey. This will give you insights not only into the type of content the persona needs based on their location on the buyer’s journey, but it will also show you how to craft the content in order to move the buyer to the next stage. This is also a good place to review if the persona has direct control over purchasing decisions, or if they must convince some other person or party to approve purchases.

 

Meet Sarah, your new persona! 

This is a very basic persona I created in roughly a half hour using the format outlined in this post. You can go far more in depth than this, I’ve worked with clients that had about four times as much information in their personas. I just wanted to give you an idea of what this would look like.

Note that just from this simple persona, you can get a much better idea of who your ideal customer Sarah is, and how to create content that’s useful to her. You can see she needs content that helps her with her time management issues. So any products or services you sell that can help her save time as either a business owner OR a mom, will resonate with Sarah. You can also see where she is on the Buyer’s Journey, plus you get a sense of her income. Smaller purchases that can benefit her in either role as a mom or business owner, Sarah can likely make by herself. A major purchase would likely require she and her spouse to consult first. Additionally, her age tells you that she is likely more comfortable with emerging digital technologies and how she prefers to consume and interact with content.

 

So that shows you how personas can truly take the effectiveness of your content strategy to the next level. What I love about personas is they help bring clarity to your content creation efforts. Anything that helps clarify who you are creating content for, and what type of content you should be creating for them, helps you create better content, in less time. I’m all about doing more in less time, and personas can definitely boost your productivity when it comes to creating content.

Need help creating buyer personas for your content strategy? Email me and I’ll be happy to assist you!

by

How Do You Create Content When Your Business is Closed Due to Covid

Many retail businesses across the country and world have had to abruptly adjust its sales strategies over the last year due to concerns over covid. Local and state restrictions in most areas have impacted capacity and in many areas businesses aren’t allowed to have customers in store other than to pick up an order.

This has also impacted businesses’ content creation efforts. What happens when your content strategy was to highlight the in-store experience, and suddenly your store isn’t open to the public?

The answer is you adjust. In this post I’ll give you some ideas you can use to boost your content creation efforts even if your business isn’t open to customers. Additionally, this will be the topic of tonight’s #ContentCircus on Twitter, starting at 7pm Central. So this post will give you plenty of tactics to get you started, then you can join #ContentCircus tonight and get even more ideas.

Bring the Backstage to the Front of the Stage

Whenever I work with clients on developing advocacy programs, such as a Voice of the Customer, Loyalty or Brand Ambassador Program, one of the discussions we have is what type of content they should create to support these initiatives. I always explain to the client that your ‘fans’ want content that goes ‘behind the scenes’ or that gives them ‘special access’. This content is a great way for the brand to develop deeper ties to the customer, and customers who are your fans, want this type of connection and content.

For the purposes of this post, let’s assume our business is a bakery called Sally’s Sweet Tooth. Sally’s content has been mostly focused on pictures of her cakes, pies and pastries, maybe a mention of new creations or sales. She posts the pictures on Instagram and Facebook, and has some pictures up of all her offerings on her website, but she isn’t updating the content there as often as she should be. Sally likes to also highlight her store in her photos, as well as the happy customers. But she’s at a loss now as to how to keep creating content at the same pace since her bakery is closed to the public and can only accept pickup orders. Without customers in the store, Sally can’t figure out how to create content at the same clip as she has been and her engagement on social is starting to fall.

The key for Sally is to take her content backstage. Before, Sally’s content focused completely on the store itself and the products being sold in the store. But there’s so many more sources of content that Sally could showcase:

  • The history of Sally’s Sweet Tooth
  • The baking process
  • The bakers who work for Sally
  • Sally’s customers

 

The History of Sally’s Sweet Tooth. Sally can create content create content that shows how and why she got into baking, why she wanted to make a career out of it. If her bakery has been in business for a long time, she can show pictures of the bakery in current and previous locations, if applicable. This is very effective if the business has a long history, because it helps speak to the success of the business. Plus, we all love nostalgia, we all love ‘origin stories’. Any content Sally can create about herself and her business and its history simply helps to humanize the business and it makes it easier for customers to connect with her.

The Baking Process. Here, Sally can go inside her kitchen and show how she and her bakers make the delicious sweets and pastries that her customers love. This would also be a wonderful opportunity for Sally to create content that educates her customers on the precautions she and her bakers take to ensure a clean and safe environment. Sally can help put her customers’ worries over covid at ease by demonstrating the precautions Sally’s Sweet Tooth is taking to ensure that her customer’s health and well-being is protected. Plus, customers love this type of content, it helps establish the baker’s expertise and makes the customer more comfortable buying the product being created.

The Bakers Who Work For Sally. Sally should regularly create content that gives customers an idea of who her bakers are as people. Let the bakers talk about why they love baking, what makes them want to create food for other people. Have them talk about their favorite cake or pastry to make, and what it means to them. Also, don’t be afraid to let your employees talk about how they are dealing with covid and the change its made in their lives. For many employees, this can actually be helpful for them to share their stories, and for your customers, it gives them a better understanding of the people behind the name badge. When we better understand the people we do business with, it makes us more likely to want to continue to buy from them.

Sally’s Customers. Finally, Sally would be smart to create content that focuses on her customers. She can talk about long-time customers who have stuck by her for years.  She can talk about creating a special cake for Megan’s wedding and what it meant to create it. And don’t be afraid to create content that promotes your customers. We are all facing hardships right now, feel free to create content that champions your customers and promotes them as the rock stars that they are.  They will appreciate it, and you will feel good about putting the spotlight on the people that keep you in business.