MackCollier.com

by

Welcome!

Thanks for stopping by, let me give you a quick run-down of what you will find on this site. The information here is divided into three areas:

1 – My blog and social media consulting services. Click here if you want to learn more about my blog consulting services, or here if you want to learn more about my social media consulting services, or here if you would like to learn more about where I will be speaking, or how to hire me to speak at your event. Each page also has my prices for these services, and please email me if you’d like a custom quote, or want to discuss your particular needs. And don’t hesitate to email me if you have a general question.

2 -Social Media Library.  Here you’ll find some of the best posts I’ve written on social media over the last 4 years.  These were written as instructional posts to help you with your social media efforts, and are organized according to the following subjects: Blogging 101, Social Media Case Studies, Social Media Monitoring, and Twitter 101.  I’ll be updating these sections often, so please check back!

Thanks for stopping by!

by

Your Social Media Strategy Starts With Monitoring

If your company is ready to dive into the social media waters, which tools such they examine first? Blogs? Facebook? Twitter? Wrong. Try Google.

Before you can launch a successful social media strategy, you must begin monitoring existing conversations about your company. This has several advantages:

1 – It lets you be proactive in responding to complaints from customers. Want to impress a customer that’s blogged about a problem they are having with your product? Leave a comment 15 mins after their post goes up, then follow up with an email attempting to help them with their problem. If you are sincere in trying to help that customer, you’re almost assured of flipping her from being an angry customer, to a passionate advocate for you.

2 – It helps create evangelists for your brand. See above. Not only are you giving angry customers a reason to become a fan, but you’re validating to your existing fans why they love your company. If Bob is passionately promoting your company on his blog, but stopping by his blog and leaving a quick ‘Thank You!’ comment, you validate why he loves you to begin with.

3 – It increases your brand equity. By actively monitoring the blogosphere and other social sites, your company can develop a reputation of reaching out to and helping customers. Also, as you gain a reputation for being responsive, it helps set you apart from competitors that aren’t as responsive.

4 – It makes you more familiar with social media tools and sites. Once you begin monitoring the blogosphere and social media sites for company mentions, you’ll begin to better understand how ideas spread in this space, and how blogs work. You get a better understand of how your customers are communicating with each other and how those interactions change based on the site they are on at that moment.

 

Remember that monitoring what customers are already saying about your company and your space simply improves your chances of communicating effectively with those customers.