MackCollier.com

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Breaking Marketing Barriers From the Top of a Harley

In 2007 I was honored to be one of over 100 authors that contributed to the first Age of Conversation edition.  The project was conceived and executed by Gavin Heaton and Drew McLellan.  Gavin and Drew brought together over 100 of the smartest marketing minds to give their thoughts on what The Age of Conversation meant to them.  What’s fascinating about the book is it’s a snapshot of an online world in 2006-2007 where social media was still very new for many companies.  We were writing with eyes wide open about the possibilities of a hyper-connected world where customers were more empowered than ever.

The proceeds from this edition benefited Variety, The Children’s Charity, which is a big reason why I was so excited to be involved.  The book itself was written by over 100 of the smartest online marketers on the planet (Gavin and Drew, Ann Handley, David Armano, CK, Scott Monty, etc etc etc) and Amazon still has a few copies of the original edition left.

For the first time ever, here is my chapter from The Age of Conversation, I hope you enjoy it:

Breaking Marketing Barriers From the Top of a Harley

How Companies Can Better Understand Their Customers, By Joining Them

Willie Davidson, the Chief Styling Officer at Harley-Davidson, was once asked if the company makes any special efforts to better understand its customers.  Davidson replied that the motorcycle maker was in constant contact with its customers, because they rode with them all the time.

What may at first seem like a flippant response, actually makes perfect business sense.  What better way to understand your customers, than by using your product with them in their space?  When Davidson rides his Harley with fellow Harley owners, he is able to not only experience the motorcycle as other owners do, but to also share that experience with them.  The company/customer barrier is removed, and Willie instead becomes a member of the community of Harley riders.

Why is this so important?  Because people don’t trust advertising, they trust each other.  And companies can’t market their products effectively if they don’t understand their customers’ wants and needs.  When a company begins to interact with its customers in their space, they begin to communicate with them.  This communication leads to understanding.  And when a company better understands the wants and needs of its customers, it can more effectively market its products to them.  And more efficient marketing is cheaper marketing.

Willie knows that he could spend thousands of dollars on marketing research and surveys that would be designed to tell him more about Harley-Davidson’s customers.  Or he could simply hit the open highway with fellow Harley owners, and become a part of their community.  He could hear firsthand what fellow Harley owners liked and disliked about their motorcycle.  He could better explain Harley Davidson’s products and marketing.  By communicating, both parties have a better understanding of each other.

The problem is that in many cases there are two communities; the company, and its customers.  Each community has its own wants and needs, and its own way of talking to each other.  As a result, neither group really understands or trusts the other.

But when a company makes an effort to join its customers in its space, that barrier begins to fall.  The ideas and language of the company begins to seep into the customers’ space.  Likewise, the thoughts and opinions of the customers start to become understood by the company, and shape its marketing messages.  Slowly, the line that divides a company from its customers begins to disappear.

Eventually, conducting market research can become as simple as riding a Harley with your friends.  Wouldn’t that be nice?

Pic of Harleys on the Open Road by Flickr user DanieVDM

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How to Fix a Broken Social Media Strategy

Let’s say three months ago you convinced your boss to let you put up a page for the business on Facebook.  Then a couple of weeks later, the boss gave you the go-ahead on spending a few minutes a day on Twitter.

But that was three months ago.  And you’ve been spending more and more time on Facebook and Twitter, and the boss is noticing.  So tomorrow, the boss is going to mention all this to you, how he’s noticing that the 5 mins a day you used to spend on Facebook has ballooned into an hour a day.

He’s going to ask you the logical business question: What are we getting for that hour a day you spend on Facebook and Twitter?

Choose your next words VERY carefully.  The natural thought process may be to tell the boss that the company has X number of Likes on Facebook, and X number of Twitter followers.  But the problem is, your boss doesn’t care about the conversation.

If you want to be successful at social media, you pick the strategy first, then the tactics.  You can’t pick the tactics first, then the strategy.

Here’s some examples of strategies for companies that want to use social media:

  • Establish thought leadership
  • Build brand awareness
  • Generate sales
  • Lower customer service costs

And here are some examples of social media tactics:

  • A blog
  • A Facebook page
  • A Twitter presence
  • A YouTube channel

See how the strategy has to come first?  The tactics flow from the strategy.

Now comes the fun part: “Mack this is great information that I wish I’d had 3 months ago.  Now I have a Facebook page and I think we should have launched a blog.  What should we do?”

First, let’s start with this: How are you measuring the impact of your social media efforts?  How are you ‘moving the needle’?  Your strategy will tell you what you should be measuring.  Let’s go back to the strategies, then look at the metrics you could be measuring:

  • Establish thought leadership (Inbound links, Search Traffic, Coverage on Industry Sites/Blogs)
  • Build brand awareness (Online mentions, Search Traffic, Comments)
  • Generate sales (Sales, Calls/Emails about Products, Email Newsletter subscribers)
  • Lower customer service costs (Customer Service issues resolved via social media, Volume of customer service calls/emails)

And here’s a tip: Make sure the metric you measure is helping you reach your goals.  For example, a lot of companies think traffic is a good metric to measure.  But traffic only indicates people that have visited your blog (for example).  You still need for these people to perform an ACTION.  So you don’t measure metrics associated with the people (such as traffic), you measure metrics associated with the actions you want the people to take.  Such as signing up for an email newsletter, leaving a comment, or emailing you about a product.

So to review:

1 – Pick the strategy for what you want to accomplish via social media

2 – Pick social media tactics based on the strategy you have chosen

3 – Measure your efforts by choosing metrics that tie back to the desired outcomes, based on your strategy.  BONUS: Baseline your metrics if at all possible.  For example, if you decide that you want to use social media to build brand awareness and you want to measure online mentions.  Wouldn’t it be helpful to know what your volume of online mentions was when you LAUNCHED your social media strategy?  Then 3 months later you could look at the CHANGE in online mentions, and report back to your boss that your strategy to build brand awareness via social media had netted a 27% increase in online mentions.

4 – Don’t be afraid to tweak, adjust, or outright change your strategy.  You should constantly track, measure and study your efforts, and the results you are seeing.  As you start to execute your strategy, you might see that you need to shift gears and move in a slightly different direction.  There’s no harm in changing, all you’re really doing is improving your efforts.

Does this help?  What did I miss?  Have some questions about how your company can fix its social media strategy?  Please ask in the comments, or if you want, email me.

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Guess what bloggers? Self-promotion is just fine, as long as it is relevant

Amy Africa is one of my favorite people.  One of the things I like about Amy is that she has a very different perspective toward blogging and social media than most of my friends that are immersed in using these tools.  In fact, she often does things the exact opposite of many social media ‘experts’, and her favorite hashtag is #yousocialmediapeoplekillme.

I was thinking of this when I read Amy’s fantabulous post today on how bloggers can create an email newsletter (Seriously the post is must-read.  Please go, we’ll be here when you get back).  But as I was reading the post, I quickly noticed something: She had a TON of links in her post.  So I counted, and she had EIGHT links!  And what’s worse, SIX of them were to HER CONTENT!  And then she was bold enough to add a call-to-action at the end asking readers to email her!

And you know what?  It all works out perfectly.  Every link, even the 6 to her own content, are enhancing the post.  They are offering reference points that make us smarter.  Sure, they are links to Amy’s content, but she’s not positioning the links as being self-promotional, she’s adding the links cause they expand upon points she is making in the post.

And then she closes with a perfect call to action: “Any more questions?  Jot them in the comments below or send me an e-mail to [email protected].  Thanks for writing!”

Sheer smartitude.  But how many of us would cringe at linking to our own content even twice in one post, much less 6 freakin’ times!

I don’t think most of us would, so to test my theory, I visited the latest post from a few of my favorite bloggers.  These are all people and blogs that are very well-known and popular.  But I wanted to see how often they link to their own content.  Here’s what I found:

1 – Convince and Convert – Post: Can Courtney Love Be Sued For Tweeting.

# of links to bloggers’ content in the post: 0 (but 2 in the bio before post)

2 – Chris Brogan – Post: Bartering in the Digital Age.

# of links to bloggers’ content in the post: 1 (company)

3 – The Harte of Marketing – Post: Saturday Morning Reads: Personas…Do You Really Know Your Customers?

# of links to bloggers’ content in the post: 2 (Both to past posts)

4 – Conversation Agent – Post: Michael Port Wants You to Think Big.

# of links to bloggers’ content in the post: 0

5 – Social Media Explorer – Post: The Cowbell of Communications.

# of links to bloggers’ content in the post: 0

And to be fair, I only added one link to my content in my last post, to The Viral Garden.  So in ONE post, Amy added as many links to her content as all SIX of us did in our last post.  I think this is another example of how some bloggers, especially in the social media space, need to get over our hangups about self-promotion.  If you told most bloggers that someone added 6 links to their own content in each post they wrote, many people would call them ‘shameless self-promoters’.  But every one of Amy’s links makes perfect sense, and improves the overall quality of the post.

Remember when I recently blogged about the Popular Posts plugin for WordPress and how smart it is to give your readers a way to find your older content?  How is what Amy did in her post any different?

How often do YOU link to your older posts in your newer ones?  If you do this often, what benefits have you seen on your blog?

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What Plurk can teach you about building an online community, and killing it

If you’re a long-time reader of The Viral Garden, you know that in the summer of 2008, I was pretty much in love with Plurk.  If you’ve never heard of Plurk, it’s a micro-blogging site like Twitter, but the main difference is that its timeline doesn’t scroll vertically, it scrolls horizontally.  And when you leave a Plurk (as opposed to a Tweet on Twitter), you can click on the Plurk and reply directly on it, very similar to the old IM windows on AOL.  So it’s possible to have a conversation among several people right below one Plurk.  This bit of functionality addresses one of the problems that Twitter users have always encountered: Keeping up with the conversation flow among multiple users.

In 2008, a lot of people started checking out Plurk because Twitter was having a ton of outages at the time.  Since many of us couldn’t get on Twitter, so we experimented with Plurk.

One of the tenents of building an online community, whether it’s on a site or a blog, is to reward the type of behavior you want to encourage.  Plurk users are given a Karma score when they sign-up, which starts at 0.00.  As they use Plurk more, their karma score rises, and when they reach certain point totals, additionally functionality is unlocked.  I believe most/all of the functionality revolved around additional emoticons (dancin’ nanner FTW!).  The point is, Plurk did a great job of rewarding users for engaging in the exact type of behavior they were trying to encourage.

But the problem is, just as your karma score rises on Plurk as you use the site, it falls back down if you stop using the site.  By the fall of 2008, Twitter had become much more stable, and a lot of us that were trying out Plurk over the summer started spending more time on Twitter.  Which meant we were spending less time on Plurk.  In my case, I didn’t spend a lot of time on Plurk in the early fall, and the few times I did visit Plurk, I noticed that each time my karma had dropped a dozen or more points.  And so had my access to certain emoticons and what not.

So just as Plurk had encouraged me to use the site more by giving me additional functionality in the early summer, by the fall as my karma score fell, they were taking that functionality back away from me.  And as you might have guessed, they were also taking away my desire to use the site anymore.

So Plurk did one thing really well:  It rewarded the type of behavior it wanted to encourage via the Karma score.  The problem was, it also PUNISHED you if you did NOT engage in the type of behavior it wanted to encourage.  Which would lead to some users changing their behavior, and it would lead to some users leaving the site.

Which is what I did.

This can happen on blogs as well.  I’ve seen plenty of bloggers that replied to every blog comment when they were 1st getting started, then after their blog got popular and they went from getting 5 comments a post to 50, suddenly they stopped replying to comments as often.  Which then led to fewer comments.

So if you are trying to build a community on your site or blog, make sure you are rewarding the type of behavior you want to encourage, but also make sure you are NOT punishing users as well.

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Do you REALLY want more traffic on your blog?

We’ve had two #Blogchats so far in 2011, and the focus of both has been to help us get our blogging house in order for 2011.  Figuring out what we want to accomplish on our blogs over the next 12 months.

We also spent a lot of time talking about goals for our blogs in 2011.  Probably the most common goal that #Blogchat participants had for their blog in 2011 was getting more traffic.

How many of you nodded because you have the same goal for your blog this year?  Did you know that’s one of the worst goals you can have for your blog?

Let’s say your goal for today is to get an extra 100 visitors on your blog.  Let’s say you reach that goal, and 100 new visitors that have never read your blog before today, visit it.

And let’s say every single one of them stay for 10 seconds, leave, and never come back.

You met your goal of getting an additional 100 visitors to your blog, and yet you got zero CONVERSIONS from those 100 visitors.  This is why I don’t want you to think about getting more visitors to your blog, I want you to think about getting more conversions.  What do I mean by conversions?  That means that you want your visitors to perform a certain action(s) on your blog.

Some examples of conversions you could want from visitors:

  • A comment
  • Signing up for your blog feed via email
  • Signing up for your email newsletter
  • Buying a product directly from your blog
  • Leaving the blog to visit a product page on your website

I have been harping on this topic a LOT in the past couple of weeks on Twitter.  Because I want you to have a real PLAN for your blog in 2011.  I want you to know WHO you are targeting and what actions you want them to take on your blog.

Let me give you examples from my own plan for this blog in 2011.

I have two goals for this blog, primary and secondary.  The primary goal, is to generate more training and consulting business directly from the blog.  The secondary goal is to use the blog to build awareness and visibility for myself and my services.  Here’s how measure the effectiveness of the blog in helping me reach these goals.

Primary goal – Generate more training and consulting business directly from the blog.

What I look for – Clients contacting me directly asking about my speaking/training/consulting services.  After that, I look at how many times my speaking/training/consulting pages are being viewed.  For example, notice the ‘Need Social Media Training? Click Here’ banner I have on the top of the 1st sidebar?  That was created specifically to see if I could drive interest in my social media training services.  It’s been up for about a month now, and is generating views every day, but so far not any business directly.  So I am getting views on that training page, but no conversions.  See why just having traffic isn’t enough?

Secondary goal – Build awareness and visibility for myself and my services.

What I look for – This is where I look for how y’all are reacting to the content I am creating.  I track comments, but also number of RTs and where traffic is coming from.  Because if I am creating valuable content that’s generating interaction and being shared, then it boosts my visibility.  Which means I have more exposure to potential clients.  Email subscribers to my blog’s feed is another thing I look at.

And this isn’t perfect, and I constantly look at what I am tracking and what my goals are.  But the point is, I have a plan.  I have an idea of what I am trying to accomplish, and how it fits into the larger strategy I have for the blog and what I am trying to accomplish.

What’s your plan for your blog in 2011?

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How much does Social Media cost companies in 2011?

Click here to get the 2012 Price Update to this post.

Last February I wrote a post about the prices companies could expect to pay for basic social media services.  It ended up being the most viewed post here in 2010, by more than a 3 to 1 margin.  And interestingly, it gets a TON of search traffic, terms like ‘social media cost’, ‘cost of a blog’, ‘social media fees’, etc.  That tells me that there’s still a lot of confusion and a lack of clarity about what prices companies should expect to pay for basic social media services.

So I wanted to update that post for 2011, with a bit more information, and greater clarity around the numbers. These figures come from rates shared with me by fellow consultants and agencies that specialize in social media marketing, in addition to my own research, as well as what I charge for similar services.   Last year I only included ranges for each service, this year I’ve added a Most Charge distinction to give everyone a greater idea of what they will probably pay.  I’ve also added a few more services, such as training workshops, speaking, hourly consulting rates, and even ghostwriting fees (yes companies pay for this).

As I mentioned last year, when you are trying to set your social media budget for a project, there are several questions you need to ask yourself, such as:

  • What are your goals for using social media?  Brand awareness? Generate sales or leads?  This greatly determines the tools necessary to achieve those goals
  • What are your resources?  Can you handle everything in-house, or will you need to outsource some of the work?  All of the work?
  • What is the length of the project?  Obviously, a 6-month project will cost more than a 3-month project.

When you contact a consultant or agency, they should be asking you questions as well.  They should want to know why you want to use social media, what are you trying to accomplish.  If they try to give you prices without asking you questions, that is a red flag.  They really can’t give you prices until they know more about your company, your resources, and what you are wanting to accomplish.

Here’s the prices:

Blog:

Launch a blog from the ground-up, outsource all content creation (including customer interaction, handling responses to comments, etc) – $1,000-$12,000 a month

Most Charge – $3,000 – $5,000 a month

Launch a blog from the ground-up, outsource some content creation – $1,000-$8,000 a month

Most Charge – $2,000-$3,500 a month

Restructure an existing blog to improve your efforts – $1,000-$5,000 a month for 3-6 months

Most Charge – $2,000-$4,000 a month for 3-6 months

Ghostwriting blog posts – $50-$500 per

Most Charge – $100-$250 per

Twitter:

Launch a new presence on Twitter and outsource all content creation and customer interaction – $1,000-$7,500 a month

Most Charge – $2,000-$4,000 a month

Launch a new presence on Twitter and then provide ongoing training for company – $1,000-$6,000 a month

Most Charge – $1,000-$3,000 a month

Restructure an existing Twitter presence to improve your efforts – $1,000-$4,000 a month for 3-6 months

Most Charge – $1,000-$2,500 a month

Limited coaching to improve your existing efforts on Twitter – $1,000-$4,000 a month

Most Charge – $1,000-$2,500 a month

Facebook:

Launch a Facebook Page from the ground-up, outsourcing all content creation and customer interactions – $2,000-$9,000 a month

Most Charge – $2,500-$5,000 a month

Launch a Facebook Page from the ground-up, with limited ongoing training – $1,500-$7,500 a month for 3-6 months

Most Charge – $2,000-$4,000 a month

Social Media Strategy:

Comprehensive Social Media Strategy Creation, assuming outsourcing of all content creation through all channels(minimum 2) – $3,000-$20,000 a month

Most Charge – $4,000-$7,000 a month

Comprehensive Social Media Strategy Creation, assuming limited outsourcing of content creation and/or ongoing training –$3,000-$15,000 a month for 4-12 months

Most Charge – $3,000-$6,000 a month

Audit of existing Social Media Strategy Including Recommendations for Improvement – $2,000-$10,000

Most Charge – $2,000-$5,000

Social Media Consulting:

Hourly rates – $50-$500/Hr

Most Charge – $75-$200/Hr

Note: These prices are based on buying just one hour of a consultant’s time.  Many consultants also offer their consulting time in blocks of time.  These hours are usually offered at a discounted rate.  For example, a consultant might charge $100 for one hour of her time, but if you buy 5 hours of her time, she’ll give you a 25% discount to $375 for 5 hours.  Progressive discounts are sometimes offered as the volume of hours bought increases, with final discounts being as high as 33-50% off hourly rates.

On-Site Training/Workshops (All fees excluding travel expenses)

1-2 Hours – $500-$5,000

Most Charge – $500-$2,000

Half-Day (4 hours) – $1,000 – $10,000

Most Charge – $1,000 – $4,000

Full-Day (6-8 hours) – $2,000 – $50,000

Most Charge – $2,500-$5,000

Note: Keep in mind that consultants (at least the ones worth hiring) will invest several hours of prep time in assembling and customizing their training materials for you.  So while you might buy a full-day workshop, the total time investment for the consultant (including the workshop) could easily be 20-40 hours.  Plus they will likely lose at least a full day in travel to and from your company.

As with volume discounts on hourly consulting rates, many consultants will charge more at an hourly rate for workshops shorter than a full day.  For example, one consultant might charge $2,000 for a 2-hour workshop, and $5,000 for an 8-hour workshop.

A final word about prices: Don’t be afraid to negotiate.  If the quoted price is past your budget, ask for a break, especially if the project will be longer than 3 months.  A consultant might not be willing to give you a 15% discount on a 2-month project, but they might for a 6-month project.

So hopefully this post will be of some value to you as your company finalizes its 2011 budgets.  And if you need help fleshing out your own social media strategy, or if you need social media training, please email me for a custom quote.

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How adding one plugin boosted my blog traffic by almost 700%

That graph is the hourly traffic here on Saturday, New Year’s Day.  There’s a pretty obvious spike that happened at 2pm, and raised the traffic level for the rest of the day.

But what triggered that spike?  This tweet did:

@TweetSmarter currently has over 225,000 followers.  Within the 1st hour of @TweetSmarter RTing the link to my post on Five Reasons Why No One Likes You on Twitter, I got 363 visitors here and 36 RTs.  In 60 minutes.

On New Year’s Day.

But that post was written about 18 months ago.  So how did @TweetSmarter find it?  My guess is they saw it at the top of my blog under Popular Posts.  That is a plugin that I added here several months ago that pulls the 5 most popular posts here (based on views, I believe), and links to them.  Here’s the plugin I use.

This is about the 5th time this year that a major site/tweeter has linked to one of the 5 posts served up by the Popular Posts plugin.  Each time has resulted in a major traffic spike, which means more awareness and visibility for this site.  My combined traffic here in the WEEK before New Year’s Day was 573 visitors (76 visitors on New Year’s Eve), and the traffic for JUST Saturday was 575 visitors.

All from adding a simple plugin.  Not a bad deal.

The bigger lesson here is, don’t bury your blog’s best posts.  If certain posts are resonating with your readers, find a way make sure that NEW readers can find these posts as well.  Maybe it could be via a plugin or widget, or maybe it could simply be by linking to your older posts, when you write new ones.  Remember, most blogs have a high percentage of 1st-time visitors, so you want to let them see your good stuff.

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Heading to CES & Digital Marketing World

Hey guys, I hope Santa was good to everyone (even if you were a bit naughty), and hope everyone is excited about 2011!  I have a big January on tap, and I wanted to let you know about a couple of events that I’ll be participating in.

Next week I am heading to Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show (CES).  I’ll be there on the 6th and 7th.  On the 6th, I will be moderating a live webcast, a collaboration with Tami McCarthy of TMG Brand Communications who works with Citi Cards.  This webcast will feature an interactive discussion on the latest news from Citi Cards, such as its next-generation Citi 2G card which gives cardholders the choice to use either their reward points or their credit line toward their purchase by simply pressing a button on their credit card wherever a credit card is swiped at the register.  We’ll also be having a discussion with Jeff Mullen, who is the CEO of Dynamics, Inc. which provides the technology that is behind the Citi 2G card, and is also being honored asThe 2011 CES Best Innovation in Personal Electronics .  Additionally, we’ll also chat about these offerings and the innovative technology behind them with several expert panelists, including:

It should be a great discussion and if you’ll be attending CES, please stop by as we’ll be at The Mirage, Room Trindad A, starting at 11:30 PST on the 6th.  And if you can’t join us in person on the 6th, you can still view it online live, ask questions, and join the discussion by registering here.

Additionally, if you’ll be at CES, we’ll be having a Tweetup at Nine Fine Irishmen which is at the New York New York hotel.  The Tweetup will start at 5:00 PM PST, and run till about 6:30 PM, at which time we’ll all go over to the Mashable Awards, which will also be at the New York New York hotel.  So we’d love to meet you there, and some of the Citi team will also be there if you want to bend their ears (and vice versa), so please do stop by, and you can sign up for the Tweetup by clicking here.

I will also be at CES on Friday the 7th, so if you’ll be there I would love to connect.  Especially if your company is having success with social media, or if you’d like to discuss how I could help you take your efforts to the next level, I’d love to connect.  Please email me so we can get together!

Next Wednesday I will also be joining the amazing Lisa Petrilli at Marketing Profs free virtual conference, Digital Marketing World!  Lisa and I will be teaching you The 3 Critical Cs of Profitable Business Blogging at 3pm EST.  This course is designed to help you get your business blog off the ground and help you take your efforts to the next level.  The main areas we’ll be covering are:

  • Measuring and gauging the effectiveness of your blogging strategy.
  • How to create more valuable, interesting and engaging content that helps you reach your blogging objectives.
  • Creating and leveraging more dynamic interactions and activity on your blog to reach your blogging goals.

This is a FREE event and you can register here.  We will have  a Q&A chat after the session, and would love to talk to you!

So I wanted to let everyone know about both of these events, and I have updated my Speaking Page to note these appearances.  Again, if you’ll be in Las Vegas next week for CES, I’d love to connect and do try to attend the webcast and Tweetup if you can!

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The promise of social media for business lies in FEWER conversations

Last Wednesday I held my Think Like a Rockstar blogging class for the Content Marketing Crash Course at Marketing Profs.  The course is over, but if you want to view all 17 classes, here’s information on how you can.  I’ve been spending a lot of time on the Rockstar analogy this year, covering why rockstars have fans and companies have customers.  I’ve done so, because there’s an extremely important lesson for companies in the rockstar analogy:

Rockstars and their fans have the same conversation.

Or at the very least, they have more similar conversations than most companies and their customers have.  The disconnect between how the rockstar views its fans and how the fans view its rockstar, is far less pronounced.  Which means the conversations that each group is having about the other, is more similar.  A big reason why is because most rockstars SEEK engagement with their customers.  They not only listen to the conversation that their customers are having, they participate in it.

Contrast this to most companies, who not only lack engagement with their customers, they often FEAR that engagement.  As a result, the company is having an internal conversation about the customer with little to no input from or interaction with the customer.  And likewise, the customer is having an external conversation about that company, without any involvement and interaction with that company.

Participating in a conversation changes that conversation.

Prior to launching its company blog, Graco discovered that 68% of the online conversation that customers were having about and around the Graco brand, was positive.  That’s not bad, but 18 months AFTER launching its company blog, Graco found that the tone of the online conversation its customers were having had shifted to 83% positive.  Additionally, the company found that 99% of the additional online mentions that the company gained in the 18 months AFTER launching the blog, were positive.  The blog gave Graco a vehicle to directly connect with customers and interact with them.  As a result, the online conversation that Graco’s customers were having about the brand, changed.

Interaction breaks down walls.

Likewise, a lack of interaction between the company and the customer strengthens walls and silos conversations.  Then you are left with two groups that each are having a conversation with the other group, without actually knowing that group.  Which means neither group really understands the other, and as a result, doesn’t trust the other group.

But as interaction between the two groups happens, the conversation the customers are having begins to be understood by the company.  And the customers begin to better understand the company’s point of view.  Hugh was talking about this five years ago.  As the company begins to understand the customers’ point of view and incorporate it into THEIR conversation, that conversation that the company is having becomes more familiar to the customers.  Because the company is starting to speak in a language that’s more easily recognizable to them.

Interaction leads to understanding, and understanding leads to trust.

So this interaction is prompting change in both the internal and external conversations.  By better understanding the company, the external conversation the customers are having about the company, changes a bit.  And likewise, as the company begins to interact with its customers and better understand them, that internal conversation it is having about its customers, changes a bit.

Most importantly, the walls around both conversations weaken a bit.  The distance between the two groups shortens.  Both conversations become a little bit more familiar to the other group, and as a result, both groups begin to trust the other a little more.  Four years ago I wrote this on The Viral Garden:

As we correctly anticipate the consumers’ wants and needs, and fill them, a trust is developed, which leads to the consumer lowering their defenses and letting us interact with them on a deeper level. This leads to a greater understanding of their needs, which means we can more quickly and effectively meet these needs, and thus the cycle is created.

And that cycle creates an incredibly powerful barrier to entry for other companies.  It also creates fans and advocates for that company.

Trust leads to advocacy.

At this point, the company has interacted with the customer and become so familiar with their conversation that the walls around each conversation are starting to blur.  The voice that the company speaks in becomes more familiar to the customer.  Which makes it easier for the customer to trust the company, because they are speaking in a voice they recognize.

Their own.

And that makes it much easier for customers to advocate on behalf of a company that they believe have their best interests in mind.

Wait, this isn’t about smart social media usage, this is about smart business.

Exactly.  Customer conversations are increasingly shifting online and to mobile devices.  Customers are finding new tools and technologies every day to help them more effectively and efficiently communicate with each other.  And they are getting up to speed on these tools and technologies faster than companies are.  But if companies can follow the lead of their customers and become efficient at using these tools and in the same way their customers are, then they’ll win.  It’s not about becoming a better marketer, it’s about becoming a better communicator.

Here’s to better communication in 2011.

by

Join me today at Marketing Profs’ Content Marketing Crash Course!

As many of you know, Marketing Profs has been conducting its Content Marketing Crash Course for the last week or so.  Tomorrow I am finally up, and at 1:30-2:30pm CT, I’ll be teaching my class, Think Like a Rockstar: How to Build Fans and Engagement Around Your Blog.  This is the blogging version of my Think Like a Rockstar presentation that’s my most popular session.  Here’s what we’ll cover:

Engagement and interaction are key to a successful blog. So many companies want more participation on their blogs, but so few truly get it. What lessons can we learn from rock stars about how they convert customers into fans? How to rock stars ignite passion? And more to the point, can you take these lessons and use them to build a community around YOUR business blogging efforts?

In this session you’ll learn:

  • The four reasons why rock stars have fans instead of just customers
  • How you can apply each of these lessons to your existing business blogging efforts in order to increase interaction and engagement with your readers
  • Examples of blogging companies that are adopting these lessons to build fans and community on their own blogs

If you’ve ever seen me speak or train then you know the drill:  I’ll show you what works, explain why it works, then give you real-world examples of blogging companies that are using these same concepts to improve their own blogging efforts.  I’ll also walk you through what Rockstars do to attract fans and show you exactly how to work these same concepts into your blogging efforts to build excitement and engagement.  So as soon as you log-off, you’ll have the advice and instructions you need to start improving your blogging engagement efforts!

Now here is the BEST part.  If you register for this class via this link, and are a basic Marketing Profs member or even if you AREN’T a member of Marketing Profs, you’ll save $200 off the course price.  So you’ll get the entire 17-part course for just $395.00.  That’s a flat bargain to get a full 17 hours of expert content, for less than $400.  But again, to get this discount you have to be a Marketing Profs basic member or if you aren’t a Marketing Profs member, you can also click here to register for the $395 rate.

You can see exactly what courses are provided, and who the instructors are by clicking here.  For tomorrow’s classes, CK will be covering 10 Tips, Tools and To-Do’s to Mobilize Your Marketing at 11:00am CT, then Jay Baer will present on Rapid-Fire Ways to Atomize Your Content at 12:30pm CT, and my Rockstar class will close out the day at 1:30pm CT.

But remember if you want the special discount you need to make sure you register via this link.  That will add the special ROCKSTAR code to your registration.  That gets you a nice discount, and I get a cut from it as well, so it’s a win-win!

And if you do register, THANK YOU!  Hope to see you at the session!