For the last half decade, we’ve had it beaten over our heads that ‘it’s all about the conversation’. That all a company has to do is ‘be social’, to throw up a Twitter and Facebook account, and they have passed the marketing test. Add in a company blog for extra credit.

Of course, this is utter crap. If your product sucks today, it will still suck tomorrow if you start using social media. The only difference is that more people will know about it.

Now please understand that listening to your customers and monitoring what they are saying via social media is hugely important. But the quickest way to honk off your customers is to tell them ‘we’re listening’, and then prove to them that you are not.  You can’t simply monitor what your customers are saying, you need to apply their feedback and act on it.  You need to start a discussion with them.  You need to create a continuous feedback loop, so what your customers are saying about your product is understood internally at your company, and your company’s response is sent back to your customers.

The goal isn’t just to ‘be social’, it should be to establish connections with your customers that help you improve your existing products and business processes. For example, last year Dell had its first #DellCAP event in Austin.  This was where Dell brought in 30 customers that were actively using social media tools to discuss Dell and its products and services. Dell talked to these customers about several core areas of its business, as well as its products. Dell then took that feedback, and acted on it. A perfect example is its Facebook Tag Team app. One of the main feedback points that Dell customers gave during #DellCAP was that they would like a way to see how other customers are using Dell products. For example, if a Dell customer views himself as a hardcore gamer, he understands that fellow gamers will want Dell products that perform differently than a Dell customer that wants a PC to turn her home business.  So the Tag Team app was created with this feedback in mind. Here’s what Lionel Menchaca said when it was introduced:

Back when we invited customers to Dell for CAP Days, one of the clear requests we heard from customers regarding Dell.com is that we need to make it easier for them to find the system or accessories that will meet a specific set of needs.

Besides the request from CAP Days attendees, there’s  any number of studies that show most customers trust the opinions of their friends and family a heck of a lot more than what a company tells them. Here’s one of my favorite Hugh McLeod cartoons which illustrates that point beautifully.

How do we make it easier for customer to find the system they need based on how they plan to use it and augment that with content that’s written by our customers instead of us? The Tag Team app is our first attempt to bring those things together. We know a lot of our customers use Dell.com to research what kind of machine is right for them. That usually means starting with a product, browsing the product page, then digging into ratings and reviews from other customers.  With Tag Team, you can start by thinking about how you will use the machine and find the reviews from customers who are using reviews for that same thing.

 

Dell went beyond simply listening to the feedback its customers were giving, and actually used that feedback to improve its offerings based on its customers recommendations.  This is the difference between taking a crappy product and making it social, versus leveraging social media to improve your product.

Extra credit: Listening to your customers and then ACTING on their recommendations increases brand advocacy. Nothing impresses a customer more to tell them that you are listening, and to then prove that you are.

If you want to start using social media to actually improve your products and services, here’s some tips to get you started:

1 – Start monitoring what your customers are saying online. You should already be doing this, but if not, make sure you start ASAP.

2 – Make sure that information and feedback from Step 1 is collected and distributed internally within your company.  Marketing, PR, Product Design/Development, Customer Service, etc.

3 – Incorporate customer feedback as applicable. Just because one customer in Idaho says you should change a product feature does NOT mean you should spend millions of dollars to change your existing manufacturing process to accommodate one customers’s wish. But if thousands of customers are saying the same thing and many are saying they won’t buy your product as a result of this feature, then maybe its in your best interest to make the change.

4 – When changes are made based on customer feedback communicate that back to your customers. This will not only increase customer satisfaction once they see you are actually acting on their feedback, it will greatly increase the volume of feedback you get. And getting more feedback means the quality of that feedback improves. It becomes easier to distinguish between issues that are marginally important to your customers, versus ones that are affecting the majority, as illustrated in Step 3.

 

But make sure you push for Step 2, getting the feedback you collect via social media monitoring, distributed to relevant departments in your company or organization. That should get the ball rolling and help your customer move from being one that simply listens to social media conversations, to one that acts on them.

As part of a project I am working on, lately I have been reading (and reading up) on a lot of the books that many ‘social media experts’ have written.  And I honestly find myself cringing at a lot of the advice that they are giving companies.  Basically, they are explaining how they got X0,000 followers on Twitter or X0,000 blog readers, then telling a company how they can do the same thing.

Which is the big elephant in the room: Just because you have 50,000 followers on Twitter does NOT mean you are qualified to advise a company on how it should properly implement social media strategies to connect with customers.  And to be fair, there are successful social media consultants that have more than 50,000 Twitter followers or 100,000 blog readers.  But getting to such benchmarks is not a ‘proof of concept’ that you know how to successful implement social media programs for companies.  Still, many people are trying to leverage the volume of usage on social media sites as a validation for their career choice as a social media consultant.

When I started blogging in 2005, it was a bit different.  Bloggers that were making a name for themselves by creating valuable content and creating a community on their blog, were being hired by companies and promoted at existing ones.  They were often hired to fill ‘Community Evangelist’ or similar roles, or if they already worked at a company or agency, they were promoted to handle some or all of that company’s social media and ‘community outreach’ efforts.  Neither of these solutions were perfect either, but at least then, these people were part of a TEAM and working within organizations where they were getting real-world business experience every day.  And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that many of the people that went that route in 2005-2007 are now some of the biggest names in the social media space.

But at this point we need to return to the issue at hand and make a clarification: If you can build a community of 50,000 people following you on Twitter or 50,000 people reading your blog that IS significant.  No, it doesn’t mean you are automagically qualified to sell social media consulting services to companies, but it DOES mean that you have an ability to create content that connects with people.  That is a SKILL, and one that you SHOULD be able to monetize.

I think the problem is (and I’ve been blogging this for 5 years now) that there aren’t a lot of viable options for how content creators can monetize their content-creation skills unless they have massive reach, and even then, it’s usually via ads on their blog.  If you think about it, it’s pretty ironic: Many of us in the social media bubble complained for years that bloggers shouldn’t be trying to make money off their blogs.  So a lot of people didn’t try (to avoid the potential backlash from readers and critics), and decided to become ‘social media experts’ instead and sell their services to companies.  Which meant an influx of unqualified people working with companies, and then many of the same people that complained about bloggers attempting to monetize their content, were then complaining about all the hacks calling themselves ‘social media experts’.

If you are ready to ‘cash in’ on your content-creation and community-building talents, here are some other options besides simply marketing yourself as a ‘social media expert’.

1 – Write an ebook.  Already rolling your eyes?  Stop it.  @SarahMaeWrites wrote an ebook based on a popular blog post series she wrote, and sold it for $4.99.  Big deal, you say?  She launched the ebook on April 11th and as of May the 9th, she had sold over 5,600 copies, meaning she made over $20,000 in her first month.  Can we get a show of hands of all the A-List Social Media Consultants that made even half that last month?  Sarah was smart because she leveraged her community-building skills to keep her readers involved and updated throughout the creation process (leveraging multiple social media channels) so that when the ebook launched, demand for it was at a fever-pitch.

Oh and ironically, which do you think would impress a company more if you were a social media consultant: Saying you had 50,000 Twitter followers, or that you created an ebook that made you $20K in its first month of sales?

2 – Get sponsors for the content you create.  Do you know how I ended up in Austin for SXSW this year doing the first-ever Live #Blogchat with two amazing sponsors?  I asked.  The event was an amazing success, and as a result I’ve had multiple events approach me since then about adding a Live #Blogchat to its program (one has already been announced), and I’m talking to multiple events about a Live #Blogchat to their program.

But you could get sponsors for your blog content.  Approach a company in your space and ask them if they’d like to purchase a 200X200 banner on your blog’s sidebar for a week.  What do you charge?  That’s up to you, personally, I would start very low, like $25 or so a week.  If your blog content is worth monetizing, then you’ll likely get a glowing recommendation from your sponsor, which will mean you can raise your prices PLUS, that recommendation will make it easier for you to sell additional sponsorships.  After a few weeks you could be making a few hundred dollars a month from blog sponsorships.  That’s a car payment, and if you create other forms of content (say, a podcast), then you could have sponsors there as well.

And after a few months of successfully gaining content sponsorships, then you can write an ebook on how to secure sponsorships, and sell it 😉

3 – Offer consulting to individuals versus companies.  If you know how to build up a network of 50,000 people on Twitter that follow and adore you, then think about the type of individuals that might be interested in those skills?  Maybe….politicians?  Athletes?  Maybe you could partner with PR firms that sign on politicians and athletes and work with them?  I think this area has HUGE untapped potential for a lot of the people that are trying to market themselves as social media consultants.

 

But at the end of the day, you have to realize two things:

1 – Simply growing a large following via social media channels does NOT mean you are qualified to offer social media consulting services to companies.  Doesn’t mean you can’t, but also doesn’t mean you’ll have much success.

2 – Being able to grow a large community around the content you create is a skill that you should be able to monetize, if you want.  And being a social media consultant is NOT your only option, and in many cases, it’s not your best one.  Start with the list above, but there are many more options available to you, if you are smart.

 

What do you think?  What are some other smart monetization options for content creators?

PS: I didn’t write this post to bash any ‘social media expert’ that I think is unqualified.  Honestly, the constant sniping back and forth about how so-and-so is a hack is killing the credibility of the ENTIRE space.  The focus of this post is to show that there are other options for making money off social media than diving into consulting.  And often, there are much better options, based on your skillsets.  I’m not trying to name-call, I’m trying to get a discussion started about what the monetization options are for content-creators.

Over the past 3 years I’ve spoken at and attended a few dozen marketing and social media conferences.  Luckily, most of these events have been solid, and even when I have spoken at events, I try to stay around for the rest of the event as an attendee.  Now is the time when a lot of events are gearing up for Fall planning, so wanted to share some of what I’ve learned over the years as a conference organizer, speaker, and attendee.

How to make your event better from the speaker’s point of view:

1 – Pay your speakers. Seriously, don’t you dare ask your speakers to work for free, so that you can profit.  I put in an average of 40 hours of time in preparing and rehearsing every session I lead at an event.  That’s a full workweek of time, and any speaker would having at your event will do the same, or more.  Yet there are many events that will charge $500-$1,000 per attendee (or more), and not even offer to cover travel for speakers.  If you are charging $1,000 a head and can’t afford to compensate your speakers, then you shouldn’t be organizing events.  And no, offering a free pass is NOT considered compensation, it’s expected from the speaker’s POV.

Now sometimes you can’t pay speakers.  I get that, so what you need to do is make every effort possible to make your speakers comfortable and make them feel appreciated.  Pick them up at the airport so they don’t have to get a cab.  Leave a gift basket waiting for them in their room with a thank-you note.  Make sure they know where their room/venue is, and that they have all the equipment they need.

2 – Give speakers as much information as possible on who will be attending your event, and what they want from the speaker’s session.  Work with them to make sure that the content they are creating will be consistent with what the audience is expecting.  If the speaker is better prepared, then they will deliver better information, and the attendees will get more value from the event.  And it will save the speakers time.

3 – Make sure all Audio and Video equipment is working BEFORE the speaker arrives.  Check with each room and make sure the setup is correct.  This should be done in the morning before each day’s sessions start.  Then throughout the day have as many people as possible going to each room and making sure each speaker gets their laptop set up properly.  And check with the venue and see if they have any additional Powerpoint clickers that your speakers can use.  Most speakers will have their own, but a few always seem to need one.

4 – Introduce the speaker when their session starts.  This isn’t a huge thing, but it saves the speaker from walking around the room at 1 min prior to starting and telling the room to please be quiet because it’s time to start.  And it saves us from reading our own bio, which really isn’t something that a lot of speakers look forward to.

5 – Record each speaker’s session and offer them a copy of the video.  This is also an incentive, so if you absolutely cannot afford to pay speakers, remind them that they’ll be provided with a copy of their presentation that they can use for their own promotional purposes.

 

From the attendee’s point of view:

1 – Let the agenda dictate the speakers, not the other way around.  Too many conference mess this one up.  You need to pick speakers based on their background being suitable to the topics covered at the conference.  You don’t want to pick a ‘name’ speaker and then tell her ‘you can speak on whatever you want!’  Your attendees aren’t paying to see popular speakers, they are being sent there by their company to learn how to improve the company’s marketing and social media efforts.  You need to give them speakers that will help them learn how to do this.

2 – Give attendees the opportunity to interact before, DURING and after the sessions.  A lot of events have gotten much better about adding in networking opportunities as well as tweetups/meetups at the end of each day’s sessions.  That’s great, but you also want to build ways for attendees to interact into the actual sessions.  And it goes beyond having Q&A in the last 10 mins of each session.  At the events where I have worked with the organizers, I have always pushed for sessions that follow a ‘core conversation’ format, where the session isn’t led by a speaker, but rather a moderator or 2 that are there to facilitate a free-flowing discussion among the attendees.  Because attendees learn more by discussing with each other what they have learned.  For example, in the morning there might be separate sessions on creating a social media strategy, and the ROI of social media.  Then in the afternoon, there could be a ‘core conversation’ on how to improve the ROI of your social media strategy.  Where the attendees carry over the thoughts and questions they had from the morning’s sessions, and discuss them with the two people that led the morning’s sessions.

3 – Make sure the venue has space available where impromptu meetings can be held, and work can be done.  A happy byproduct of attendees connecting with each other, is that they might actually get some work done.  Attendees might discover a potential partnership, or they might want to connect with a speaker about hiring them.  Or some of us introverts might simply need to duck out into a quiet hallways for a few minutes on a comfy couch to check our email 😉 Big hallways are also a great place for a speaker to meet with a few attendees to give them more personalized help dealing with the topic they spoke on.  The bottom line is that you don’t want to make sure that all your attendees are in every session, you want to make sure that when they leave the event, they feel like it was a good business investment.  This year’s SXSW was easily the most valuable event I have ever been to from a business perspective, and I attended a grand total of TWO sessions in FOUR days.

4 – Encourage speakers to attend and participate in the sessions of other speakers.  Let’s be honest, not every audience feels comfortable asking questions, and there can sometimes be a lull, especially waiting for that 1st question.  If this happens, it’s a good idea to have a few speakers in the session (who are likely fellow experts on the topic of the session), that will have a good idea of some of the questions that the audience will likely have, and can jumpstart the conversation around those points.  Additionally, attendees may want to reference a point raised in another speaker’s session, during their answer.  For example, if an attendee is making a point about mobile marketing, she might reference the discussion that occurred that morning in CK’s session.

5 – Give attendees something unexpected.  The 1st Small Business Marketing Unleashed I spoke at in 2008 was held in a hotel that was a replica of The Alamo.  At one of the evening dinners at a Marketing Profs event, we were entertained by a magician.  Most events are very boring, you are shuttled from one session to another for 2-3 days.  Give attendees a unique experience, do something different to make your event stick out from the others they will attend this year.

 

What other things have stood out to you from the events you have attended?  What are some examples of events that delighted you?  What has been disappointing to you?  If you were in charge of organizing a marketing/social media event, what would YOU change?

UPDATE: Speaking of speaking, I would be remiss if I didn’t let you know that the latest LIVE #Blogchat event has just been announced!  It will be in September in Atlanta as part of #SMIATL.