MackCollier.com

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10 Keys to Having an Amazing Marketing and Social Media Conference

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.

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Every piece of content you create should have a specific goal

A friend teased me yesterday that the posts I wrote on Monday and Tuesday here hadn’t gotten as many comments as most of the posts here do.  I told her that I wasn’t writing the posts for comments, but for search engines.

What?  Yes, the primary goal for my post on creating a Social Media policy on Monday, and on Blogging policies on Tuesday were designed to do as well as possible for a specific search phrase.  Monday’s post is now the #2 Google result for the phrase creating a social media policy, while Tuesday’s post is now the #1 Google result for the phrase creating a corporate blogging policy.  And my own blog analytics show that Monday was a record day here for search traffic, and then I broke that record with yesterday’s post.

But I wanted to focus on the search value of those two posts because I knew that they were covering topics that companies have real questions about and need direction around.  I knew these were topics that people are looking for help with, and doing so via search engines.  So I made a point to optimize those posts to do well in search engines, and it’s worked very well.

Does that mean I didn’t want comments on those two posts?  Of course not, but my thinking was that those posts were ones that readers here would be more likely to bookmark and save for future reference, rather than comment on.  Other posts, such as my recent post on why introverts love social media WAS written primarily to get a discussion started in the comments, and it worked beautifully.

The point is, you need to give thought to what you are trying to accomplish with every post you write.  For me, it doesn’t make sense to write EVERY post to win a specific search term, just as it doesn’t make sense to write every post in an effort to get 50 comments.  For me, I need a balance, because I benefit from having higher search traffic as well as more interaction here.

This can help you as well, go back and look the posts you wrote in March, and make note of the primary reason why you wrote that post.  Some examples could include:

  • To generate comments
  • To do well in search rankings
  • To generate email contacts
  • To send traffic to the company website
  • To generate sales/leads

Now go back to your primary goals for your blog, and see how those goals compare to the goals for the content you have created.  For example, if the top goal for your blog is to improve search rankings for company-specific terms and you haven’t written any posts with that goal in mind since March 1st, then that sounds like a disconnect.

This approach will help you stay focused on what your larger goals are for your blog, and help you track if the blog posts you write are helping you reach those goals.

 

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10 Considerations When Creating a Social Media Policy

social media policy, blogging, twitter, facebookMore and more companies are adopting the Nike philosophy of ‘Just Do It’ when it comes to social media.  And while there is value in jumping in the water, companies and organizations are increasingly seeing the need for a social media policy that will help employees understand how these tools should be used on behalf of their employer.  If your company or organization is considering creating a formal social media policy, here are 10 areas to consider:

1 – Defining what ‘Social Media’ is to your business.  You can ask 10 different people what the term ‘social media’ means, and gets 10 different definitions.  Your employees are no different, you need to define exactly what sites/tools/etc fall under the ‘social media’ umbrella for the purposes of your policy.  For example, most people consider Twitter and Facebook to be social media, but what about email?  Your blog?  Your website?  See how clarity can help?

2 – Make employees aware of any special communication considerations involving your industry.  The pharmaceutical industry, for example, has strict guidelines as to what company representatives can and cannot say to current/potential customers via social media channels.  Make sure your legal team is involved to make you aware of what the boundaries are.

3 – Define what ‘acceptable behavior’ is for your employees via social media.  What language can they use?  How does their tone and the way they respond reflect on the company’s branding and culture.  Will what they post on the personal Facebook account impact their employment?  Spell everything out so there can be no confusion later.

4 – Define what employees should and should not disclose.  For example, employees should always disclose their affiliation with the employer when posting content to social media sites, and shouldn’t disclose financial information about the company that ‘isn’t for public consumption’.

5 – Make sure employees understand the ‘chain of command’ and who owns what.  If different groups/departments should handle responses based on content, etc, then clearly spell that out so the intern in product design doesn’t respond when the manager in PR should be.

6 – Spell out copyright usage in content creation.  Make sure employees understand and respect copyright laws regarding the usage of other people’s content.

7 – Make sure that employees understand they are responsible for the content they create and the responses they make.  Remember these three words: ‘Google Never Forgets’.

8 – Create stand-alone policies for additional social media presences that the company maintains.  For example, if your company has a blog, it should also have a corporate blogging policy.  Different tools have different audiences and goals, and require a slightly different approach.  For example, the Air Force has a fabulous flow-chart for responding to online comments.

9 – Make sure all employees understand what your social media strategy is.  Help them understand what you are trying to accomplish via social media, and that will help them understand how their efforts feed into that ultimate goal.

10 – Make sure employees understand that their social media usage on behalf of the company will be monitored.  Also remind them of employee guidelines, and how their behavior using social media is governed by this.

 

So if your company or organization is ready to start creating your social media policy, these are 10 points to consider.  If your company or organization has a formal social media policy for its employees, what other areas should be considered?

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Want to know what’s next in social media? Listen to your customers

On Monday I was lucky enough to speak to students and business owners from across the state of Alabama at the PRCA State Conference in Birmingham.  During my second session (here’s the slides), an attendee asked me ‘What’s next?  What will be hot in 5 years, or the hot tool in 5 months?‘

I answered by saying that she shouldn’t be focusing on the tools, but on how we use the tools.

Why did blogs rise in popularity?  Because they gave us a quick and easy way to create initially text-based content.  Then, over time, the platforms evolved and new functionality was added.  Then we could more easily add pictures, and video, and then widgets.  The concept of the blog itself evolved, now businesses could use the tool as a more traditional blog, or as a website.  Or some could combine elements of the two.

But at its heart, the blog gave us a tool to more easily create content.  That content might be our thoughts and opinions on a personal blog, or it could be our marketing and promotions on a business blog.  Or a combination of the two.

Then add in things like RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and ReTweets on Twitter, and Facebook Like buttons, and all these ways we have to more easily distribute our content.

So that presents a new consideration:  If everyone now can easily create and distribute their content, that means we all have a lot more information accessible to us, right?  Maybe even too much, so maybe we now need filters and ways to better organize that information.  We need sites like AllTop that will organize all this blog content by topic so we can find what we are looking for.

Then what about technology?  Smartphones and continuing to become more sophisticated, as mobile networks are trying to meet users’ demands for more bandwidth.  As the networks become more robust and even faster, that will change how we consume and interact with content while on the go.

So if you want to know what is next in social media, don’t focus on the tools, focus on why your customers are using the tools.  Why do they like Facebook now, where they used to love MySpace?  What is it about the experience or functionality of Twitter that they love?  Don’t think about what the tools offer your customers, but think about what your customers get from using those tools.

For example, 3 years ago if I had a major customer service issue with a company and wanted to get their attention, past traditional channels (contact them via website, toll-free number, etc), I might blog about my issue.  Now, I would go to Twitter.  Why?  Because I know that I can probably get their attention quicker via Twitter.  But if another channel existed that would let me get a quicker response and resolution to my problem, I would go with that channel.

Because I don’t care about the tool, I care about getting my problem solved as quickly, easily and satisfactorily as possible.  Whatever tool helps facilitate those outcomes, is the one I will use.

What do YOU think is next in social media?

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6 Reasons Why Your ‘Online Community’ Stinks

community building, building an online communityIn the past couple of years a lot of companies have tried to create an ‘online community’ of and for its customers.  A lot of these efforts are really bad, and a most of the time they are scrapped within a few months, if not sooner.

If your company is wanting to launch a community site for your customers, here’s some pitfalls to avoid:

1 – You can create a site, but you can’t create a community.  The ‘community’ half of ‘community site’ has to form organically, and from your efforts.  Those efforts have to resonate with the people you want to connect with.  Otherwise, all you’ll ever have is a lonely site, waiting for its community.

2 – Focus first on building a community, not on monetizing a community.  There are few absolutes in the world of online marketing and social media, but this is pretty ironclad: Communities do not form around the idea of being monetized.  There is no group of your customers that are biding their time and waiting for the day that you will create a community site that they can group and give you money.  If you want to monetize a community site, then the monetization has to be a byproduct of the experience you create for the community members.  Give the community an incentive to form, then the money will come.

3 – Value creation must be baked into the site from the get-go.  Why are people going to come to your community site?  What value are you creating for them?  That will play a huge role in whether or not your community forms, and it will also play a huge role in your ability to monetize that community site.

4 – You need to give your members the ability to connect and have fun with each other.  Also known as ‘Where do we account for the ability to throw sheep in this plan?‘  If you want a community to form on your site, you need to think about ways to give members to connect with each other.  To learn more about each other, to have fun with each other.  You want your members to instantly recognize other members when they see their names each time they return to your site.  So much of the success of your community site won’t have anything to do with the functionality you offer members, but rather the connections that members make with each other.  You want to think about adding ways to make the connection process easier for members.

5 – If your community starts to form, you MUST spotlight your advocates.  As your community begins to form, some of your members will take on a leadership role, and will try to accelerate that growth.  They will be the ones that are explaining to newbies what the site is for, what the rules are.  They will be the ones trying to make sure that everyone finds the right information. They are the ones that have ‘bought into’ the community here, and want to see it succeed.  These are your rockstars, and you should treat them with the respect they deserve (all your members deserve respect, but you must spotlight your advocates).

This is all about rewarding the type of behavior that you want to encourage.  You want to see your members take on an active role in growing your community, and you want to communicate to the entire community that you appreciate the efforts of your advocates in doing this.

6 – Building a community is HARD work.  Were you expecting a turn-key solution to your online community-building efforts?  Bless your heart.  You’re going to have to love the people in the community, and the ones you want in the community.  You’re going to have to love the idea of creating something valuable for these special people.  Because it really will be a labor of love, and that’s what will give you the incentive to stick with it.

 

So those are some pitfalls to avoid if you want your Online Community efforts to be a success.  It won’t be easy, but then again you didn’t really believe that social media was all rainbows and unicorns, did you? 😉

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Why do we apologize for wanting to make money?

There seems to be an unwritten rule in social media: “You don’t attempt to make money off the content you create via social media.”

I’m not sure who created this rule, but every time a content creator attempts to monetize their efforts, there is almost always a level of backlash.  Chris Brogan is probably the poster-boy for attempting to monetize his content, and today he announced that he was accepting ads on his blog.  That’s not what got my attention, what struck me was the almost apologetic tone of his post.  A few of Chris’ readers picked up on this tone as well, and commented on it.

I’ve never completely understood why this is an issue for some people.  To me, this is a win-win.  If the content creator can earn some money from the content they create, then they can afford to spend more time creating that content.  If I enjoy the content that the person is creating, then obviously, that’s a big WIN for me.

Still, some people are going to be upset by this.  When I announced back in October that I was going to start taking sponsorships for up to 1 #Blogchat a month, I had a few regular participants say they were leaving and never coming back.  I assured them that the #Blogchat experience would be almost exactly the same, that I would only accept sponsors that would make #Blogchat better, and that I was taking the sponsors so that I could afford to spend more time on expanding the offerings of #Blogchat so everyone benefited.  Still, people left, and that’s their choice.

Let’s clear the air right now: No one is going to get rich monetizing their social media content.

Seriously, every time Blogger X attempts to monetize their efforts, there are wild rumors about how this blogger is suddenly making ‘big money’.  Yes, everyone hears the same rumors, and they are so detached from reality in most cases that it’s laughable.  In fact, that’s one of the only things I dislike about this space, the wild rumors, and most of them are associated with what people make.

But the unfortunate side affect of all this backlash and rumor-mongering is that we are sending the message to ‘new’ bloggers that attempting to monetize their content is a distasteful act.  It isn’t.  In fact, that’s how we all learn to improve our own efforts, by studying what is working for others.  Have you noticed what Jason Falls is doing with Exploring Social Media?  I love that, and it’s giving me a ton of ideas for expanding the educational element of #Blogchat, and possibly extending the live experience into a classroom setting.

What do you think about bloggers monetizing their content?

Does this bother you?  If one of your favorite bloggers announced that they were taking ads or sponsors on their blog, would that be enough to make you stop reading that blog?  If you monetize your blog content, what have been your results?  Have your readers voiced their displeasure over this?

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How I increased traffic to my blog by 145% in three months

Over the past 3 months, I’ve made a concerted effort to post more often here.  During #Blogchat on Sunday night, a few people were asking me about my experiences, and I promised to do a recap post here, detailing what I have learned. First, as you might expect, traffic is up sharply.  Here’s how traffic here has done over the past 6 months. As you can see, a huge spike in traffic starting in January when I started posting more.  In fact, I found that the percentage increase in traffic almost exactly mirrored the percentage increase in number of posts.

From October through December, I averaged 8 posts a month.

From January through this month, I have averaged 21 posts a month.  That’s a 163% increase.

From October through December, my average traffic was 6,363 visitors a month.

From January through this month, I have averaged 15,570 visitors a month.  That’s a 145% increase.

Feed subscribers increased as well, here’s how my number of subscribers tracked over the past 6 months:

October 1st – 1,970

November 1st – 2,074

December 7th – 2,218

January 1st – 2,242

February 1st – 2,577

March 1st – 2,768

Today – 2,991

There you see the same thing, feed subscribers were growing at about 100 a month before I started posting more, since then, it’s up to 200-300 a month. So obviously, posting more often here has greatly increased my traffic, feed subscribers, and visibility.  I really noticed this a couple of weeks ago when I was in Austin for SXSW.  In my prior two visits to SXSW, a few people were kind enough to stop me and tell me they enjoyed my writings.  What I noticed this time was that far more people were mentioning they enjoyed my writing, but they were also referencing individual posts I had written. Additionally, over the past three months I’ve seen an increase in work and speaking requests as well, so it’s obvious that by simply creating more content (that hopefully hasn’t fallen in quality), that I am getting on more people’s radars.

Now, the big question for you is, should you try to post more often?  The big problem that many of you have (as referenced again by feedback from the last #Blogchat), is that most of you don’t have time to post more.  Personally, my biggest problem was finding ideas to post about. What I did up till January was shoot for 1-2 posts a week here.  So basically, my method for finding ideas was to basically wait for inspiration to strike, and hope that it hit at least once over the course of a week.

But when I made the commitment to post 4-5 times a week, it meant I had to start looking for new post ideas EVERY day.  That changed how I looked at my interactions and the other blogs I was reading, and I realized I was leaving a LOT of post ideas on the table.  In fact, at least one post I write here a week now comes directly from a conversation I have either participated in or observed on Twitter.

So what about the time issue?  The other big surprise to me has been that my time spent writing each post has been slashed.  Before, I would spend a couple of hours writing each post.  Now, I spend 30-45 mins.  The end result is that my output of posts has increased by 163%, but my overall writing time is the same as before, or slightly lower!

So if you want to try this experiment, here’s what I would suggest. Take the number of posts you are writing now every week.  If it’s 1 a week, triple that to 3.  If it’s 2 posts a week, double that to 4.  If you are writing 3 posts a week, increase that to 5. Then whatever your new number is, commit to writing that number of posts next week on your blog.

This will FORCE you to do two very important things:

1 – Come up with more ideas for posts

2 – Write faster

Try that experiment for one week, and see what your results are.  Then at the end of the week, you can decide if you want to commit to doing it for another week.  And you really won’t begin to see big changes in your traffic, subscribers, etc, until you’ve stuck with it for at least a couple of weeks.  So the longer you can stick with this method, the better results you’ll see. And also, pay close attention to the quality of your posts.  You don’t want to increase your posting output if it means that your overall quality of posts falls.  As I’ve already said, I found that ideas for posts were easier for me to come by, so I don’t think my post quality has fallen too much, in fact I’ve had many people tell me it’s higher now than it was last year.

So give this a spin, and see what you think!  If you have any questions about what has worked for me, or how it do this yourself, please leave a comment or email me.

UPDATE: The key takeaway for me from this experiment hasn’t been the increase in traffic and other metrics, I expected that.  What’s surprised me is that the content creation process has become much easier.  This totally blindsided me, and this is why I think you should consider trying this as well, to see if you have similar results.

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Two WordPress plugins to help convert new visitors into readers

According to Google Analytics, at least 25% of the traffic here is coming from Twitter and Facebook.  Which is great, but the problem is that a lot of these visitors are here for the 1st time, and often they will only be here long enough to read the latest post, maybe leave a comment, and then they are gone.  And they likely won’t be back unless someone in their network links to another of my posts.  We are beginning to use our networks as our newstand, we quickly check out shared links, but bounce to the next one just as quickly.

So I started thinking, if there was a way to convert just 10% of those new visitors that were coming from Twitter and Facebook every day, that could make a HUGE impact on this blog’s readership!  To help me do this, I’ve added two plugins that I wanted to share with you, to see if you can benefit from them as well.

1 – Comment Redirect.  I can tell that this plugin has been a BIG hit with yall, as I get a few emails every week on how much readers love this.  What comment redirect does is redirect FIRST time commenters to a page of your choice, after they leave their comment.  On that page you can put whatever information you want.  Since I am hoping to get first time commenters to become regular readers, my page thanks them for commenting, and then gives them a way to subscribe to this blog’s feed, and follow me on Twitter.  Also, I have an area where they can learn about my services.  Here’s where you can learn more about this plugin, or from your WordPress dashboard, go to plugins, and then search for it.  Thanks to Amy for introducing this one to me.  If you’ve never commented here before, you can leave one to see what my page looks like 😉

2 – WP Greet Box – I discovered this one on C.C.’s blog.  What WP Greet Box does is target new visitors based on where they came from, and offers you the ability to give them a custom welcome message!  For example, if you come here for the 1st time from Twitter, the plugin should notice that and offer a small message box above the post and welcome you.  For Twitter, you are giving a window box that gives you the options to tweet the post to Twitter, and follow me on Twitter.  You can learn more about the plugin here.  Below is a snapshot of what the box would look like for a new visitor from Twitter to my last post on introverts and social media.

To be honest, I’ve just started using this plugin and I’m not 100% sold on it.  It’s a good idea, but it’s also slightly intrusive at the top of the post.  I think a similar message at the end of the post might be a better idea.  I will track my number of readers/followers for a couple of weeks and see if there are noticeable changes.

But notice that for both these plugins, the idea is to focus on the type of behavior that I want to encourage.  I want more comments, so the Comment Redirect plugin is there to make sure that first time commenters know that I appreciate them and how they are helping to make the content here more interesting.  With the WP Greet Box, I want first time visitors to stay in touch with me, so I give them custom ways to do this, based on the site they came from.

What about you?  What plugins are you using to help convert first time visitors into readers?  What other options are there, or do you know of something similar to WP Greet Box?  I would like to see what else is available.  But I think the point is that it just makes sense to make it as easy as possible for new visitors to subscribe to your content, and to keep up with the new content you are creating.

 

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Fans aren’t just for Rockstars: A Framework for helping companies connect with their advocates and vice-versa

Warning: This is an uncharacteristically long post for this blog, but it’s a topic that I am pretty passionate about: Helping companies better connect with their brand advocates and customers, and vice versa.  If you’ve read this blog for any amount of time, you know how I often use the Rockstar analogy to explain how Rockstars have fans, while companies have customers.  This post attempts to address this point, and provide a framework for how companies can better connect to their customers and advocates.  And vice-versa, with the end goal being that both the customer and the company better understand each other, and the financial benefits that the business will enjoy as a result.

The best post on social media that you have likely never read is this one from Hugh in 2005.  In it, Hugh makes the case for corporate blogging (remember this was a year before Twitter was launched and the Goliath of the social media arena at the time was MySpace), and talks about the conversations that companies have internally, versus the one their customers are having externally.  The idea being that a corporate blog makes it easier for the customer to bring their external conversation to the company, and the company can more easily bring their internal conversation to the customer.

Ideally, both groups would become more closely aligned, as a result of better understanding each other.  As the customer’s external conversation begins to be heard and understood by the company, then the company’s internal conversation changes a bit.  And that change likely moves it closer to the external one, and in theory, as each group better understands the other, the two separate conversations will gravitate toward each other.  This is what I was talking about in my post on the promise of social media for businesses lies in FEWER conversations.

I was recently talking to Liz Strauss about this concept, about how businesses need to better understand the external conversation their customer are having, and how it will change the internal conversation. The idea is that businesses should be connected to their customers, especially their advocates, and bring that external conversation to the company, so they can better understand and connect with their customers.  And at the same time, find a way to connect with the customer so they can better understand the internal conversation the company is having, and the company itself.  Liz asked a very good question: “What’s the process for that?”

Uhhhhh…..

So I decided to come up with a process to do just that.  This is rough and I’ll no doubt be editing it constantly as time goes by.

To better understand what I’m suggesting, let’s look at a fictional B2C company, Carl’s Soda.  CS is middle of the pack in a crowded industry, and like most companies, can tell you their customer demographics, but doesn’t have a lot of direct interaction with their customers.  They have average customer satisfaction (avg to the beverage industry) scores, yet like most companies, do have their customer advocates.  Though the company does little to engage this group.  The majority of its marketing and advertising is done via traditional channels, with the pre-requisite experimenting being done online, especially with social media.

In short, they are pretty much lost in the shuffle in a crowded industry.  We want to see if we can change that by better connecting the company to its customers, and its customers to the company.

What we need to do is find a way to help CS get a better understanding of their customers via the external conversation that its customers are having about the brand.  At the same time, we need to take the internal conversation that the company is having about itself and its customers, and take that to its customers, in an effort to not only build brand awareness, but to also help its customers better understand the brand.  Because once both groups better understand each other, that’s going to facilitate more communication between both groups, which will increase understanding, which will lead to trust.  Which will move CS from middle of the pack, to the front of the pack.  As Steve Knox said:

As you’ll see as this process is fleshed out, it’s going to not only embrace and empower CS’s existing brand advocates, but cultivate new ones as well.

Step One: Creation of a Customer Insights Team

Responsibilites:

  • This group will be responsible for not only monitoring online and offline product and company mentions, but for preparing findings and providing them to relevant departments within the company, such as marketing, PR, customer services, product development/design, etc.
  • Additionally, this team will closely track changes in the volume of online mentions, as well as the sentiment.
  • Responsible for internal education of customers and interacting with them online.

Step Two: Creation of a Brand Ambassador Program for Carl’s Soda

As stated above, Carl’s Soda has its share of brand advocates, but really hasn’t done anything to engage them.  That starts with this program, which will be invitation-only and cap membership at 100.  This will give Carl’s Soda the ability to not only connect directly with its most passionate customers, but a mechanism to give them the tools to spread their love of Carl’s Soda to other customers.  If you’re looking at an existing model to compare this to, look at what Fiskars has done in creating The Fiskateers movement.

Step Three: Creation of an Internal Social Networking Site for Carl’s Soda’s employees

This would be a way for employees to learn more about each other, and share ideas and feedback.  This would also give employees a way to give feedback on the working environment, and suggestions for improvement.  Unlike the brand ambassador program, this should be open to any employees that want to participate.  Similar corporate models could be Best Buy’s Blue Shirt Nation, or Dell’s internal IdeaStorm for employees.

Now we need a mechanism in place to facilitate the flow of the external the customers are having to the internal walls of the company, and a separate mechanism in place that will facilitate the flow of the internal conversation that the company is having about itself and its customers, to the customers.  This leads to Steps Four and Five:

Step Four: Creation of a Brand Advisory Council

This will be a 6-person council comprised of 4 brand advocates for the company, and 2 customer advocates (who are company employees).  The 4 brand advocates will be chosen from the membership of the brand ambassador program.

Responsibilities:

  • The Brand Advisory Council will be over the Brand Ambassador Program.
  • The Brand Advisory Council will work with the Customer Insights Team to ensure that Carl’s Soda has the most accurate information about its customers
  • Will meet quarterly with key executives at Carl’s Soda to give them greater insights into the company’s customers and advocates.

Step Five: Creation of a Customer Advisory Council

This will be a 6-person council comprised of 4 customer advocates (who are company employees), and 2 brand advocates, who are also members of the Brand Advisory Council.

Responsibilities:

  • Will be over the internal social networking site for employees as detailed in Step Three.
  • The Customer Advisory Council will be responsible for bringing the internal conversation that the company is having about itself and its customers, to its customers.  This could be done via meetups, or even social media by highlighting employees and their thoughts via posts, video, etc.
  • Will meet quarterly with key executives at Carl’s Soda to give them greater insights into the company’s employees and the internal conversation they are having about the company, and its customers.

Now as I stated above, this is a rough draft and I will no doubt be altering this several times in the future.  But the entire reason for this process is based on this truth: Participating in a conversation changes that conversation.  This process is about finding a way to better align the external conversation that customers are having about the company, with the internal conversation that the company is having about its customers.

The benefits of this process include:

  • A better understanding of its customers, which leads the company to more effectively and efficiently market to its customers.  Which lowers marketing costs.
  • As the company better understands its customers, and vice versa, customer satisfaction improves.
  • As the company’s employees have a mechanism in place (internal socnet) to connect with each other and provide feedback on the company itself, employee satisfaction improves.


Why I think this is so important

Several times I’ve written here and elsewhere about how rockstars connect with their fans, and more or less have the same conversation.  Some companies, such as Harley-Davidson, have many brand advocates, and as a result, the internal and external conversations aren’t that far apart.  Harley-Davidson loves its products and brand for many of the same reasons its customers do.

But many companies have difficulty with this because the conversation the company is having and the one the customers are having about the company, are usually quite disjointed.  This process attempts to address that, and bring the two conversations more closely together.

At the end of the day, companies cannot afford to ignore their customers any longer.  Customers now have the tools available to them to mobilize and communicate with themselves far faster than the company can communicate on its own behalf.  Recent PR trainwrecks like Motrin Moms and Kenneth Cole’s #Egypt tweets on Twitter attest to this.  Companies have to not only be aware of what their customers are saying, but find a way to bring that conversation into their walls, and vice versa.  This process helps them get started along that path.

What have I missed? And there is a TON I have missed, trust me.  Does this make sense?  Again, it’s the starting point, the execution side hasn’t really been addressed yet.  What would that look like?

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My SXSW schedule

social media training, brand evangelists

This time next week, my plane will (hopefully) just be landing in Austin.  I’ve never been this excited about attending SXSW and I have a ton of events I’ll be attending, so I wanted to list everything here, so hopefully we can connect.  I’ll be at SXSW from next Friday through Monday afternoon.  The majority of my time on Friday and Monday during the day will be devoted to meetings, and I’ll be in the Austin Convention Center for the most part.

If you are a company (Especially big brand B2C) that:

  • Needs Social Media Training
  • Needs Social Media Consulting or Advisement
  • Needs help launching a brand ambassador or blogger/influencer outreach program
  • Want to discuss sponsoring a future #Blogchat or sponsoring a LIVE #Blogchat event

Then please email me and let’s set up a time to discuss your needs.  I’ve already got some meetings scheduled during Friday and Monday, but if you want to discuss how we can work together, I’ll make sure we get a chance to connect.

As for Saturday and Sunday (and Friday night), I am going to spend those days connecting with my old and new friends.  Here’s the events I will be at:

Friday Night: Ignite Social Media Party, starting at 7pm.

Saturday: Tequila Now party for the Now Revolution from 1:30 – 3:30pm.

Saturday Night: Either Wiley book party, or Frog Design’s Opening Party (which would be better?)

Sunday: #AllHat3 from 12:30 – 3:00pm

Sunday: #Blogchat LIVE at SXSW from 3:30-6:00pm (YES!)

Sunday Night: #Blogchat on Twitter from 7pm-9:30pm (probably from the Hilton lobby ;))

So if we haven’t met let’s please do so at SXSW!  Feel free to email me and we can get together and I can shake your hand, at least 😉