Social Media 101 Archives - MackCollier.com

May 22, 2014 by Kerry O'Shea Gorgone

Should Your Company Have a Social Media Policy?

By now, most companies use social media as part of their marketing mix, but only 63% have implemented a social media policy according to a 2014 study from Protiviti.

Jay Shepherd has suggested that organizations adopt a very simple, two-word policy relating to employee blogging (which he’s since extended to social media): “Be professional.”

I might double this in size and suggest “don’t be a moron,” although the results should be largely the same.

If you hire the right people (professional non-morons), their use of social media should not expose you to an inordinate amount of risk. In some instances, having a policy could cause problems you didn’t have before.

For instance, most employees are “at-will,” meaning they can be fired at any time for almost any legal, non-discriminatory reason. However, if you adopt a social media policy, then use that as the basis for firing someone, that employee might appeal their termination to the National Labor Relations Board.

Depending on the nature of their social media offense, they might be able to have their termination declared illegal. Posts complaining about working conditions, for instance, are protected according to the NLRB.

You now have a problem you didn’t have before, and even if you ultimately win the argument, you will lose money and time in the process.

If you do elect to formalize a social media policy, there are examples from which you could draw. (See 5 Great Corporate Social Media Policy Examples.)

Here are some provisions you’ll want to include.

What “social media” means.
Everyone has a slightly different idea of what is or isn’t covered. Most people would assume the policy covers Twitter and Facebook, but what else? Pinterest, for example, is a “taste graph,” technically speaking, and not a social network, but clearly it has social elements. Does your policy apply to Pinterest? Online forums? Comments on third-party sites or blogs? Define what’s included, but try and leave room for the evolution of new social networks and platforms. You don’t want to edit the policy every time a start-up gets funded!

A caution against sharing confidential information.
Explain what kinds of company information are confidential and should not be shared via social media, email, or other channels (client data, upcoming plans, trade secrets, other intellectual property, etc.). Take care not to be too broad in your phrasing: if your policy might apply to employees discussing working conditions or wages among themselves, it’s very likely that the NLRB would not enforce it.

A statement against speaking as the company’s official representative (unless you are the company’s official representative)
If your company is large, name the point-person (or position title) responsible for fielding certain kinds of inquiries.For instance, media inquiries should be directed to the Director of Public Relations, customer service inquiries should be directed to any member of the Customer Service department, employment inquiries go to the Human Resources Coordinator, etc.

However you want the workflow to go, specify it in your policy. Explain the protocol for crisis communications, as well. Otherwise, loyal employees might make well-intentioned posts that reveal information before the company’s ready, or else misstate the situation because you don’t yet have all the facts.

Specify who is authorized to speak on behalf of the company during a crisis situation, and consider assigning someone different for each type of crisis (your CFO for a financial issue, CMO for a social media gaffe, CEO for a general organizational crisis, etc.).

No anonymous posting
It’s natural for employees to feel protective of your brand: ideally, they are your biggest fans. However, employees posting anonymously in response to negative reviews or comments about your company will ultimately do more harm than good, because the identity of the commenter always comes to light sooner or later.

Let your employees know that if they speak publicly about your brand, they must use their own identity and disclose their relationship with your company.

State who owns your brand’s social channels
This should be an easy one. If someone at your company creates an official presence online, anywhere other than your site, the company owns it. Specify that any profiles or pages created by employees in their official capacity on behalf of the company are company-owned.

Require all online accounts be opened using a company email address (ideally, [email protected]) or something similar, so you can easily reset the passwords and restrict access if an employee leaves the company.

Clearly explain the consequences of violating the policy
This is the “or what?” If you tell employees they can’t do something, they need to know what happens if they do it.Typically, you’d want to extend the penalties for “real world” offenses to social media, as well. If calling another employee a “whore” offline would result in firing, the same should be true for an online posting.

Explain which person or department is in charge of enforcing the policy, and what procedures you will have in place for appealing decisions.

Overall, the benefits of implementing a social media policy outweigh the risks, because they help to clarify what’s expected of everyone involved.

Do consider the appeal of a four-word policy, though: most of the time, “don’t be a moron” just about covers it.

March 4, 2014 by Mack Collier

How to Get Started in Social Media When YOU Are the Business

I just had a reader send me an email with a problem that I think a lot of you are facing so instead of sharing this with only him via email, I decided to write this post. His issue is that he’s a small business owner with no employees, that wants to start using social media to grow his business. But the catch is he really has no time for social media and wants to know if it would be worth his time to hire someone to post updates for him on Twitter, Facebook, etc. Any of this sound familiar to y’all?

If you are in a similar situation with limited time and resources, you need to remember two things:

1 – You don’t have to do everything. You don’t HAVE to be on Twitter and Facebook and blogging, and on Instagram, etc etc. It’s far better to start small and grow bigger.

2 – You WILL need to invest time in your social media usage. Or you will need to pay someone else to do it for you. In almost every instance, I would rather see your business use social media itself since no one can speak in your voice as effectively as you can.

So since you have limited time (and money) but still need to find time, we need to start small, but also make smart usage of the limited time you have. In other words, it would be nice if the time we had to devote to social media was spent on activities we are already engaging in, so that way we can effectively ‘kill two birds with one stone’.

For these reasons, I would recommend starting out by blogging. Your mileage may vary, but for most small businesses that are trying to get their name out there, a blog is a great vehicle. As for what to blog about, here’s some ideas:

1 – Common questions you get from customers. What are the 5-10 questions that you are answering from customers all the time? Write a blog post for each question, and then you’ll have the answer on your blog. Because if people are asking you this question in person, they are likely going to Google and looking for the answer as well. And if your customers are asking these questions, the customers of your competitors are probably asking the same questions. ‘

2 – The 3-5 reasons why customers won’t do business with you. This is scary to deal with straight on, but a fabulous way to convert a skeptical customer into a new customer. Think about the reasons why customers won’t do business with you, and address those reasons head on. For example, customers might not want to buy your home improvement product because it’s 20% higher than the chain department stores. But what customers don’t realize is that your product is made of better quality materials that will actually save customers 15% more per year in energy costs than the product that the chains sell. So if you educate customers on the cost savings of your product over its lifetime, you may earn their business once they realize the actual savings from buying your product.

3 – Industry news. You are likely already reading up on the latest news in your space, so why not share that information with your readers? This isn’t quite as applicable in a B2C setting, but is a great idea if you are in the B2B space. Also, sharing industry news creates a valuable resource for current and potential clients, which helps establish your expertise. And again, this is likely information you are already searching for on your own, so just share your findings with your readers.

So the key with a small business is to start small with social media, and then grow as you can. You don’t have to start using 3 or more social media sites at once, in fact that’s often the fastest way to kill your social media strategy. Start small, and focus on the 1 or 2 channels that give you the best way to reach your goals for social media.

December 9, 2013 by Mack Collier

You Don’t Look Smarter By Making Other People Feel Stupid

One of the things I love about Marcus Sheridan is that he’s always sensitive to the point of view of someone that’s new to whatever topic he’s discussing, whether it’s social media, content marketing, etc. I loved this post of his, especially this part:

So let’s be willing to embrace imperfection, shall we? Let’s allow the artist to learn as he or she goes. Let’s applaud what appears to be “mediocrity” when in reality the piece of art that was created may just have been the start of something very, very special for the creator.

This also dovetails with something Kathy Sierra talked to me about when I was writing Think Like a Rock Star, (paraphrasing) “A lot of the things that the writer adds to make themselves look like an expert, actually makes the reader feel dumb”.

We all start at zero. The majority of people that are today considered ‘thought leaders’ when it comes to social media weren’t even using these tools 6-7 years ago. The ‘A-List’ was completely different in 2005 when I started blogging than it is today.

Yet the best of these teachers are the ones that gained knowledge and expertise, without losing the ability to share those ideas in terms that could be easily understood. If you are writing for others and using social media as a channel to build thought leadership you have to remember where your audience is along their path to understanding. You cannot talk over them, you have to lead them at a pace that is comfortable to them.

Make your ideas more accessible and empower your audience to learn at a pace that’s comfortable to them. Remember that if your words make the reader feel dumb then the reader might decide that you’re not an ‘expert’ after all.

Pic via Flickr

November 25, 2013 by Mack Collier

How to Use TweetDeck As a Brand Monitoring Platform For Twitter

It’s deceptively easy to monitor your brand and industry mentions online. Sure, you can do some amazingly sophisticated and valuable breakdowns with expensive monitoring suites, but for the average brand a lot of their basic monitoring needs can be covered by free tools. In this post I wanted to walk you through how you can do some very simple brand monitoring on Twitter with TweetDeck for Chrome.

Before we talk about using these tools, let’s backup and talk some basic monitoring for your brand on Twitter. First, what exactly should you be monitoring?

Start with brand mentions. Make sure you are aware of what’s being said about your brand and also who is saying it. You want to know what’s the conversation around your brand and who is driving it.

From there, you should also monitor industry mentions. You want to be able to keep up with what’s happening in your industry and also what your competitors are up to. You can literally extend this and monitor brand mentions for your competitors. It can give you a quick and easy way to see how your competitors respond to customers on Twitter or even if they respond.

Now based on your resources, at this point you can also break it down further and monitor mentions of specific product lines or key executives within your company. Or another example would be if your company has a major product reveal at an upcoming industry event, you could monitor the hashtag for that event and then track reaction to the reveal in real-time!

Now I want to show you how I do this with TweetDeck for Chrome:

There’s four columns showing”

1 – Interactions: This shows me replies as well as when someone retweets me or favorites one of my tweets. It also shows me when someone follows me or adds me to a list.

2 – Mentions: This shows me replies as well as retweets. A bit of redundancy here, so if you want to create several columns you could probably go with just Interactions. Pro Tip: You could also make a search term for your user name (ie mine would be ‘mackcollier’) and that would show you your replies as well as tweets you have left.

3 – #Blogchat tweets: This column is for a search I am doing for the #Blogchat hashtag. I typically use TweetDeck for Chrome to participate in #Blogchat. You can use this for search term you want.

4 – Super6: This is a private List I have created of a few marketing/social media pros that I follow because I know they create and share awesome content. These tweets help me stay up to date on what’s happening in my space, and it also helps me find valuable content to share with others. Twitter Lists are a very powerful tool for your social media marketing toolbelt and I’ll talk more about them here tomorrow.

But what’s great about TweetDeck is that it also gives you a very simple way to not only monitor for your brand, but to distribute information found and share it with your team.

Here’s an example. Look at the tweet from David Brown. When I click on the … under the tweet to the right, all these other options open up. I can Tweet to him, Unfollow, etc. But note the final two options: Link to this Tweet and Email this Tweet. This is very powerful because these two options give you a very easy way to share tweets with co-workers. For example, let’s say you work for a brand and in monitoring brand mentions, you come across a customer that leaves a reply to your Twitter account asking a technical question about one of your products that you can’t answer. With the Email this Tweet option, you can send an email off to a SME (Subject Matter Expert) within your brand that can give you the information you need to answer this customer’s issue!

Now I want to stress that obviously TweetDeck has some severe limitations in functionality and features that it can offer you. And a lot of this can also be accomplished by using similar tools such as HootSuite. The point I wanted to make with this post was to show you that social media monitoring doesn’t have to be complicated. And even if your brand isn’t getting thousands of mentions a day and can’t afford (or need) a robust social media monitoring suite like Radian6 or Sysomos doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be monitoring. I’d much rather you dip your toes in the waters and try some of this stuff for yourself vs just think ‘oh social media monitoring is something only big companies need to worry about’. If anyone is online taking about your brand and/or your industry, then you need to know what they are saying, period.

November 18, 2013 by Mack Collier

Post This, Not That: Social Media Etiquette for Brands

Note from Mack: This is a Guest Post from Kerry Gorgone, who is an instructor at Full Sail University, a lawyer, and Wonder Woman in her spare time. Check out her previous guest post here on protecting yourself and your works online.

Your brand needs to participate in the conversations that people are having about you in social media. 44% of Americans get information about brands via social networks, and more than half of consumers who mention a brand on Twitter expect a response within one hour. You can’t have a positive impact on brand sentiment or customer service until you join the discussion.

Consequently, going where your audience is makes good sense, provided the content you post there enhances your audience’s experience, rather than disrupting it. Here are some pointers.

Be conversational, not promotional.

For starters, don’t overtly shill. No matter which social network your brand is on, every post can’t be “Enjoy a hot cup of Brand X coffee!” People will unfollow you—or at least hide your posts—if your content is too self-serving.

Hidden posts are especially detrimental for marketers, because it looks as though you have a certain number of “Likes” for your business page, but people aren’t seeing your content, so engagement rates plummet.

Facebook’s algorithm already engineers things so that only a small percentage of people who have liked your page will see your posts, so you can’t afford to lose any. For some general guidelines on how to behave on Facebook, check out Jennifer Kane’s excellent primer.

Instead of pitching or selling via social, ask questions, share tips or quotes, or share photos. Visuals are playing an increasingly important role across the board. Multi-photo posts on Facebook increased engagement 1290% in one case (and that’s not a typo).

Exercise caution when “newsjacking”

“Newsjacking” done right can masterfully direct traffic to your social media profiles and site while the news story you’re playing off of remains “hot.” Newsjacking done wrong can really damage your brand.

Social media posts during a crisis demand extra-thoughtful consideration. While your brand may well want to express sympathy for people impacted by a tragedy, it’s better to say nothing than to post something that people perceive as insensitive or exploitive.

Entrepreneur suggests asking 5 questions to guide you through the decision-making process on social media posts about the news. Run through them before you post: you won’t regret taking the time to reflect.

Match the tone of the conversation

Also remember that each social network has its own culture, so people who follow you on Twitter will expect a different conversational tone than those who follow you on Facebook or Instagram. If you haven’t been active yet, spend some time observing how your audience posts on each social network, so you’ll know what they expect.

Amy Howell of Howell Marketing shared this apt explanation: “Twitter is like being in a crowded, noisy bar. Facebook is like your living room. LinkedIn is like the chamber of commerce.”

Know when and where to use #Hashtags

Including hashtags in your social media posts can help people to find your content and follow the conversation, but they don’t work on every social network, and even if the functionality is supported, they might not be a fit for the culture.

Tweets with hashtags get twice the engagement, but hashtags actually lower engagement for Facebook posts, and hashtags don’t work on LinkedIn at all.

Understand your unique audience

Social media statistics provide a good starting point, but understanding your own audience will help you to deliver the kind of content that users will truly appreciate. Gather information on your audience through analytics and customer surveys, and test different types of posts, as well as post times.

Whether you sit down in a “noisy bar” or network at the “chamber of commerce,” think of social media as an extension of your relationship with your audience.

Is a brand you follow doing it right (or wrong)? Post a comment and tell us about it!

Pic via Flickr user Brett Jordan

May 16, 2013 by Mack Collier

Why It’s So Important to Have a Strategy Guiding Your Social Media Engagement

I have a love-hate relationship with planning and strategy when it comes to social media. I hate the planning aspect, but I also understand it is necessary to see the best results. And I love it when I see those results!

If you’ve read this blog for any amount of time, you know that as often as I can, I like to show you examples of how I am putting the lessons that I am trying to share with you, into action. Yesterday’s post on social media engagement was a great example of this.

In the post, I talked about the importance of planning out the type of engagement you want from your social media efforts. Too often, we fail to plan our engagement efforts, then are disappointed with our results. Yesterday’s post was created to drive two specific types of engagement:

1 – New signups of my Think Like a Rock Star newsletter

2 – Social sharing to help the post rank higher in search engine results for the term “social media engagement”.

Additionally, the content itself was carefully created and crafted to help facilitate those types of engagement. For example, a very clear Call to Action was placed at the end asking readers to please sign up for my newsletter, and to share the post.

So 24 hours later, what have the results been? Let’s look at three areas:

1 – Newsletter signups. This was honestly the top goal for yesterday’s post. Previously, I had been averaging 3-4 new signups each day for my newsletter. Over the last 24 hours I have received 21 new signups. A pretty good jump.

2 – Social sharing. I wanted to see a lot of sharing of the post, especially on Twitter and Facebook. As you can see from the numbers at the end of each post, yesterday’s post was the most shared in weeks, with currently 82 retweets on Twitter and 70 Likes on Facebook. Additionally, yesterday was the 5th best day for traffic so far in 2013.

3 – Search engine results. I wanted yesterday’s post to rank as high as possible for the exact term “social media engagement”. When the post was first indexed by Google yesterday at around 10:00 am, it was on the 26th page of the results for the term “social media engagement”. By 5:00 pm it had moved up to page 10, and at 8:00 pm it was on page 9. At 6:30 am this morning it was all the way up to page 3, and a few minutes ago at 9:30 am it was on page 2 for “social media engagement”. Pretty darned good, and if I keep writing more posts with that term (as I did in this post) it will probably help push that post up further.

Pretty good results, right? My point in writing this post is to impress upon you the importance of planning out your social media efforts. Look at these results and think how quickly your blog could grow if you wrote just one post a week that was this successful? I am definitely thinking more along these lines!

So before you write that next post for your business blog, ask yourself these questions:

1 – What am I trying to accomplish with this post?

2 – What type of engagement am I trying to get?

3 – How can this post drive that type of engagement?

Start doing this before you write every post, and see if you don’t start seeing much better results from your blog. Oh and if you still aren’t seeing the type of engagement you want from your social media efforts, email me and I’ll be happy to discuss how I can help you!

May 15, 2013 by Mack Collier

The Ultimate Guide to Social Media Engagement

If you ask any company or even most individuals what their top questions are about using social media, one of the first answers you will hear is ‘How do I build more engagement on my blog/Facebook page/Twitter/etc?’ In my experience there are three main reasons why most of us struggle to get the level of engagement we want from social media:

1 – We aren’t creating engaging content.

2 – We aren’t making it easy for people to engage with our content.

3 – We don’t have an engagement strategy.

All of these three problems are inter-related. For example, if you have an engagement strategy, then you have a plan for creating the type of engagement that’s meaningful to you. Most people/companies don’t have an engagement strategy, they often go for whatever type of engagement is the easiest to measure, such as comments on a blog or Likes on Facebook.

We also struggle to creating engaging content, this one is trickier, but I think the problems start when we focus too much on trying to get people to engage with the type of content we create, versus trying to adapt the type of content we create in order to make it more engaging. More on this in a minute.

Finally, we aren’t making it easy for people to engage with our content. The interesting thing about social media is that engagement breeds engagement. So what we want to do is lower the barrier to engagement with our content. If we make it easier for people to engage with our content, then more people will engage with our content.

How #Blogchat Became One of the Most Engaging Chats on Twitter

#Blogchat started in March of 2009, so it’s been around for over 4 years now. Even during a ‘slow’ week, the hashtag still generates a few thousand tweets from a few hundred participants. So it’s a pretty ‘engaging’ chat. Here’s how I addressed each of the above three problem areas when it comes to building engagement in #Blogchat:

What’s the engagement strategy? For #Blogchat I wanted as much participation as possible. You might think that every chat wants this, but when you say you want as much participation as possible, it means you have to pay careful consideration to the topics of the chat. So for #Blogchat, I purposely gravitate toward 101-level topics, because that lowers the participation barrier for others, and makes them more comfortable engaging. If I picked say 201-level topics, the participation level would fall off a cliff. You could argue that the conversations might be ‘deeper’, but there would definitely be fewer people having them.

Also, since I want more people to be engaging, I try to reward engagement. One way I do this is I personally reply to anyone that I see tweet that they are joining #blogchat for the first time. Why? Because what better way to encourage someone to stay engaged than to reply to their first tweet and to have that reply come from the chat moderator? Plus, more people participating in the chat means more overall engagement.

How do you create engaging content? One of the things I do with #blogchat is I pay close attention to what people are discussing in the chat. Often, certain themes. ideas and questions will come up repeatedly. These are good indicators of future topics for the chat. Also, I will simply ask #Blogchat what topics they want to discuss. This also helps give the community ownership of the chat, which also makes it more likely they will engage with topics they want to discuss. And also, 101-level topics lower the engagement barrier so more people will engage. Because what I want to have happen is I want more people engaging and building off each other’s points. That’s where the really great discussions happen, but you have to get a LOT of people engaging to reach that point.

Making it easy for people to engage with #Blogchat. See the first two points. Everything done is designed to make it easier for people to engage and contribute. Whether it’s 101-level topics, using the community’s topic suggestions, or welcoming newbies when they arrive, a ‘culture’ is created that facilitiates and rewards engagement.

So how do you create more engagement around YOUR social media efforts?

First, you need a plan. Yes I know, no one wants to create an engagement strategy. And most of you don’t and this is the biggest reason why you aren’t getting the type of engagement you want. You need to think about what type of engagement you want from the content you are creating, then you need to think about how you can create content that’s valuable for your audience, and that encourages the type of engagement you want.

For example, I have a specific engagement and content marketing strategy for this post. As I said at the start, creating more engagement around social media IS a big problem for many companies. So this post was written to not only give companies a way to solve this problem, but it was also written so that it will do well in search results for the term ‘social media engagement’. That’s why that specific term is in the title, and why it’s used repeatedly in the post itself. Because it helps Google understand what this post is about. I want this post to do well in search results for these terms, because a big part of the work I do is helping companies create more engagement around the content they create.

Another form of engagement I am targeting is signups of my Think Like a Rock Star newsletter (note the Call to Action at the end). I want people to signup for the newsletter, because its content will help them solve their social media engagement, and it also gives me a way to connect with them, and hopefully we can do business later.

Note I haven’t mentioned ‘getting a lot of comments’ yet as a desired form of engagement. While I love getting comments and hearing from y’all, for this particular post, getting more comments isn’t my top priority. The type of engagement I want for this particular post is I want people to share the post via Twitter, Facebook, and email it to their friends, boss and co-workers. And I want them to signup for my TLAR newsletter. If I wanted the ‘easiest’ form of engagement, I would structure this post a bit differently in order to get more comments. But for what I wanted to accomplish, more shares and signups are the types of engagement that help me more than more comments. Again, always consider what you want to accomplish, and that will help you decide what type of engagement you want to encourage.

What About Creating Engaging Content? If you have an engagement strategy in place, then you know what type of engagement you want to see happen from your content. This feeds into creating engaging content because it makes creating engaging content easier because since you created a plan, you now know what type of engagement you want to see happen! (See? Creating a plan is paying off already!) In general, before your content can be engaging, it has to be valuable to your audience. If it’s valuable, then it will earn their attention, and then you have a chance to facilitate engagement. So first, the content needs to create value for your audience.

For example, this post is designed to help solve a common problem that companies have using social media: Creating more engagement around their efforts. I mentioned above the type of engagement I want to see happen (social shares that help boost search engine rankings and signups of my TLAR newsletter). Also note that the title professes this post to be the ULTIMATE guide to social media engagement! So I knew if I was going to write such a post, it would have to be extremely detailed and thorough. As a result, this post is probably the longest and most detailed post I’ve written in at least two years. And hopefully that will lead to a lot of you reading this post and thinking that there’s too much good content NOT to share, and you will. Which is the type of engagement I want.

Something else to keep in mind is that different tools are better at encouraging different types of engagement. You have to not only consider the type of engagement you want from your content, but you have to also consider which tools will help you get that level of engagement. There’s a reason why I am posting this here on my blog that’s easily accessed by Google, and not as a Note on Facebook. It also wouldn’t do very well broken down into 140-char tweets! But if I wanted to have a discussion with someone about the concepts in this post, Twitter would probably work better for that type of one-to-one engagement versus comments here.

Making it as easy as possible for people to engage with your content. Now that you have a specific engagement plan for your content and know the exact type of engagement you want, you need to think about ways to make it easier to encourage that type of engagement. Think carefully about the action you want others to take (leave a comment, signup for a newsletter, request a product demo), then make sure you are not only giving them the motivation to engage in this activity, but that you are also making it easy for them to do so.

For example, a dead simple way to get more comments is to simply end your post with these four magic words: What do you think? That signals to your readers that you are opening the floor for a discussion, and that you are interested in their thoughts. If you have followed your engagement plan and have created content that’s easy for them to engage with and then close your post by asking for their thoughts, the odds are that your readers will indeed share their thoughts. Then when readers do comment, if you engage them back and interact with them, that encourages the chance that they will respond again. Then as more readers see that others are leaving comments, that makes them more likely to leave a comment as well (comments breed comments). So if you are working to create content that helps facilitate the type of engagement you want, then you work to make that type of engagement as easy as possible for your audience to….engage in, then you’ll win!

So there it is, 2,000 words later, your complete attack plan for getting more engagement around your social media efforts. In closing, here’s your cheat-sheet for creating more engagement with social media:

1 – Create a plan. Figure out the exact type of engagement you want from the content you are creating (Hint: The answer is NOT ‘whatever’s easiest to measure’).

2 – Create engaging content. After you have figured out the type of engagement you want, focus on creating content that’s valuable to your audience, and that moves them toward the type of engagement you want with them.

3 – Make it easier to get the type of engagement you want. If you’ve done the first two, this step will be easy. Think about how you can not only motivate your audience to engage in the way you want them to, but make it as easy as possible for them to do so. Also, remember that every social media tool does better or worse at facilitating certain types of engagement, so consider the tools as well.

Hopefully this post has been and will be helpful to you. If so, please consider sharing it with your friends and co-workers on Facebook, Twitter, email, etc via the sharing buttons below. (Remember how I mentioned that ASKING for the type of engagement you want helps ensure that you get it?).

Also, if you want to learn more about how to not only build engagement around your social media and marketing efforts but to actually cultivate fans of your brand, then please consider subscribing to my Think Like a Rock Star newsletter. It goes out every week with actionable ideas that will help you create fans and become a rock star brand!

April 3, 2013 by Mack Collier

The Two Most Important Words in Social Media Are ‘Thank You’

Yesterday on Twitter I started getting tweets from people saying that their copy of Think Like a Rock Star had shipped, or a few even posted pictures of the book as it arrived. SUCH an amazing feeling for an author to see others excited about receiving my book!

And of course I made a point to thank anyone that tweeted that they had ordered the book. Then something interesting started happening. I began to notice that people were favoriting my tweets thanking them! Really? Are we so conditioned to being underappreciated that we feel the need to favorite a tweet where someone thanks us? I had people thanking ME for thanking them!

This is another reason why I think that most people, brands, organizations, etc make proper social media usage way more complicated than it has to be. When I say ‘thank you’ on Twitter to someone that has helped me, I’m not being a ‘social media expert’, I’m being a decent human being. In much the same way that using social media doesn’t make you a ‘social’ person, if you treat others with the same kindness and respect via social media that you do offline, you’ll be respected and appreciated online as well.

Don’t make this stuff harder than it needs to be.

Want to instantly get more comments on your blog? Get in the habit of saying ‘thank you!’ when someone comments.

Want more people to share your content on Twitter? Get in the habit of saying ‘thank you!’ when someone RTs you.

Reward the type of behavior that you want others to engage in. In other words, appreciate and thank the people that are helping you, and they will probably keep doing so.

PS: Thanks to everyone that has ordered Think Like a Rock Star. Amazon actually RAN OUT of copies but I’m being told there are more on the way. You can order your copy here, and if you are still on the fence as to whether or not you’ll enjoy the book, please check the reviews.

March 26, 2012 by Mack Collier

The Value of Creating a Customer-Centric Social Media Strategy

I have good news and bad news for you when it comes to your Social Media Strategy:

The Bad News – Social Media, in general, doesn’t function very well as a marketing and sales channel.

The Good News – Social Media is a great way to make things happen indirectly.

The problem that many companies have with their Social Media efforts is that they are trying to turn these personal communication tools into marketing channels, instead of understanding and accepting how their customers actually use these tools.

The companies that typically understand how their customers use these tools and craft their Social Media strategy accordingly, tend to have better results.

Here’s a couple of examples:

Orabrush – The company wanted to leverage YouTube as a channel to raise awareness for its tongue-cleaner. Now as anyone that’s spent 5 minutes on the video-sharing site knows, videos that are short and funny are wildly popular. So that’s exactly the type of videos that the company created:

http://youtu.be/SVvFD5JFnP4

“To my knowledge, there have been few, if any, products to go from no sales, online or offline, to full nationwide distribution by using YouTube videos in just two years,” said Jeff Davis, CEO of Orabrush.

Orabrush’s YouTube videos have over 46 million combined views. So the company’s strategy of creating the type of content that YouTube users want, has been wildly successful.

X-Box – The brand discovered that a lot of X-Box customers were taking to Twitter to complain about their problems with games and the console. So Microsoft created a full team of X-Box people to provide customer support for their customers that have issues with the console. The benefit to the company is it deflects calls from its call center, which is a cost-savings for the brand. But it happened because Microsoft was smart enough to understand how X-Box customers were using Twitter, and work with that behavior, not against it.

So how does this affect your Social Media Strategy?

Let’s go back to the Orabrush example. Orabrush wanted to use social media and digital content to sell its tongue cleaner. Here’s two ways they could have used YouTube to raise awareness of its products:

1 – Orabrush could have created short videos that demonstrate how to use the product. Perhaps a 30-45 second video showing someone using the tongue cleaner, then a link to the company’s website to buy the product.

2 – Orabrush could have created short videos that use humor to sell the NEED for the product.

The second approach is in line with what YouTube’s users expect from the content there. They aren’t going to YouTube to watch videos of a man scraping his tongue with a plastic utensil. They are there to watch short videos that make them laugh. Orabrush gave them that, and in the context of those videos ALSO explained what their product does, and the need for it.

A second example, what if you owned a business that sells lawncare products?

Let’s say you are wanting to use a blog to sell your products directly, and to also raise awareness for your local store as it competes against national chains like Lowes and Home Depot. One thing you could do is turn your blog into ‘brochureware’, basically making it an online circular.

Or, you could focus your blog on giving your customers content that helps them have a more beautiful lawn. Here’s some post ideas:

10 Steps to Having a Healthier Lawn by Memorial Day

Here’s How You Can Get Rid of Weeds in Your Lawn Without Damaging Your Grass

5 Common Pests That Can Wreck Havoc on Your Lawn and How to Get Rid of Them

The great thing about posts like this is that they not only provide value for your customers, but they also help establish your business’ expertise in lawn care. Which means these posts will not only do well in Google searches (because they solve specific problems customers are having), but they will also make it easier for customers to trust you, because you are teaching them how to take better care of your lawn.

So when you are crafting your Social Media and Content Strategy, think about how you can make your efforts customer-centric. Don’t try to force direct sales, but instead think about how you can create valuable content for your customers that will LEAD to sales.

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