MackCollier.com

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Case Study: National Geographic’s “Your Shot” Photography Community

One of the smart tactics many brands are leveraging is incorporating user-generated content into its social content streams. The idea is that you take content that your customers or fans are creating, and highlight it alongside your own. It gives the content creators a platform to get more exposure for their work, plus it helps the brand in getting more content. For example, Visit North Alabama is one of my favorite accounts to follow on Instagram. They often use pictures submitted by followers in their Instagram feed, such as this beauty:

National Geographic has taken this idea a step further with its Your Shot community. Your Shot invites photographers to submit their photos to ‘assignments’ that are posted on the site.  The assignments revolve around a particular theme, such as ‘Close Encounters’ or ‘Adventures in the City’. The submissions are reviewed by editors at National Geographic as well as the larger community on the site, and the best ones are selected to appear on the site.

When asking for customers/users/community members to submit content that you will use, there must be a clear benefit to the content creator in doing so. In this case, the benefit to National Geographic is obvious; They get a ton of gorgeous pictures submitted from talented photographers.

But what is the benefit to the photographers? Besides additional exposure for their work, these photographers also have a chance to have their work critiqued by National Geographic’s editors, as well as by the community at large:

This is invaluable advice from both the editors and the community at large. The community can comment on the work as well as select the elements of each shot that they appreciated. It can give the photographer detailed guidance on where his or her work is excelling as well as what they can improve on.

If you are going to test the user-generated content waters, make sure that the users you are appealing to have a clear incentive to share their content with you, and that there is a clear benefit to them from doing so. By agreeing to share their photos with National Geographic, the benefit these photographers get is clear, and who knows, a few spectacular shots might even land an aspiring photographer on National Geographic’s short list the next time they are hiring.

Remember, if you give your customers/users a clear benefit to share their content with you, they will be more likely to share content with you, and the content they do share will be of higher quality. The goal is to have a clear win-win for both you and your customers/users.

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Research: CMOs Say Social Media Budgets Are Surging, But Finding Solid Results Still a Struggle

Companies are spending more on social media marketing according to CMO Survey, but they also continue to struggle to see quantitative results from their digital efforts.

The survey of 324 marketers sheds light on where CMOs will be focusing their budgets and attention in 2019.

  • Spending on digital marketing will increase by 12.3% over the next 12 months, while spending on traditional marketing will fall by 1.2%
  • Currently, digital marketing accounts for 44.3% of all marketing budgets. Over the next 5 years, digital spending is forecast to increase to 54.1% of total marketing spend.
  • Spending on Social Media is expected to increase by 66% over the next 5 years

Even though spending on Social Media is surging, marketers are struggling to show the actual business impact of its Social Media efforts.

The CMO Survey found that 39.3% of respondents could not show any business impact from using Social Media. Another 36% said they are seeing a qualitative impact, with 24.7% seeing an quantitative impact.  In short, that means 25% of marketers can show the ROI for their Social Media efforts.

So obviously, companies won’t continue to increase spending on Social Media without being able to show a return on those dollars. Digging deeper into the numbers, I believe I spotted two reasons why some of these marketers are struggling to prove the effectiveness of Social Media for their companies.

First, one of the questions posed to respondents was “How Effectively Does Your Company Integrate Social Media?” The question was scaled from 1 to 7, with 1 being “not at all effectively” and 7 being “very effectively”. When it came to “integration level for linking social media to marketing strategy”, the score was 4.2.  When it came to “integration level for integrating customer information across purchasing, communication, and social media channels”, that score was 3.5. So while companies are doing better at integrating its social media strategies into their larger marketing strategies, they continue to fall short when it comes to sharing customer information and communications across the enterprise. This hurts overall marketing effectiveness and can lead to a disjointed and inconsistent service experience for the customer.

Second, only 3.9% of marketing budgets are devoted to employee training and development. This amount actually represents an 8% decline over the last 6 months. What’s worse, for B2C companies, that figure is only 2.8%.

So you can see how these two areas would be related, to a degree. First, I’m a big believer in equipping your employees with the proper training and skills they need to do their jobs effectively. It increases employee productivity, as well as their satisfaction with their work. And research has shown that just a 10% increase in the efficiency of your social media strategy nets a 2% increase in revenue. Corporate training is a smart way to increase production and employee satisfaction.

Check out the entire CMO Survey here. It’s got a ton of great takeaways on where marketers will be focusing their attention in 2019.

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Is it Better to Have a Centralized or Decentralized Social Web?

I recently came across a Fast Company article on how Tim Berners-Lee (credited with inventing the world wide web) is creating a new service called Solid that would decentralize your data and give you more control over it. This could potentially address the data protection and privacy concerns that many of us have when it comes to surfing the modern web.

But I got to thinking about this whole idea of decentralization vs centralization when it comes to social media. On the surface, centralization seems like the way to go.  You bring everyone together where they could share their thoughts and opinions and interact.

The problem is, whenever you bring everyone together, the overall user experience eventually degrades for everyone.

I’ve been online since 1988, or for the last 30 years. In that time, online activity has followed this pattern; Decentralized>Centralized and back.  Here’s what I mean:

In 1988 when I started getting online, BBSes (Bulletin Board Systems) were all the rage. These were typically smaller groups, and hyper-local. Usually the ‘geeky’ guy in a neighborhood or city had some software on a spare computer and could use it as a pseudo server that other people could call into (on dialup 300 baud modem, natch), and usually post on a message board. It was a very decentralized structure, small groups of people, but they typically had something in common, even if it was simply geography.

These grew more popular in the coming years, and then by the early 90s, online services like Prodigy, CompuServe and AOL popped up.  These were centralized networks. They were also expensive, whereas most BBSes were free to access, these online services typically cost $25 a month for 10 hours. Yeah. But they had a lot more people, incredibly crude ASCI ‘graphics’, and other ‘perks’ of the day. Oh and CHAT ROOMS! Really big deal. Prodigy eventually folded and it was CompuServe and AOL both offering a premium service. This was actually a good thing in many ways because only people that were ‘serious’ about being on these services would pay for them. And they had a lot of message boards and chat rooms that were topic-specific, so these places developed their own communities. I remember in the late 90s there was a chat room on CompuServe that was reserved for college students. At the time I was midway through my undergrad studies so I thought it was the coolest thing in the world to participate in a chat every Sunday night with other college students from around the country. Come to think of it, that habit of chatting on Sunday nights was probably one of the factors in my wanting to have #Blogchat on Sunday nights.

But around 1996 or so, AOL got the bright idea to ditch their hourly rate, and start charging everyone a flat $25 a month fee for UNLIMITED access.  If I recall correctly, at the time both AOL and CompuServe was charging like $25 for 25 hours, with $2,50 an hour for anything over 25 hours.  So switching from that to unlimited was a huge deal.

At first, it was awesome. Then, over a few months I noticed that something started to happen.  You see, when AOL switched to unlimited access, suddenly mom and dad who had before been using the 25 hours a month access, now had unlimited, so that meant they LET THEIR KIDS get on AOL. Suddenly, all these super cool message boards and chat rooms where intelligent adults had previously had engaging conversations, were flooded by teenagers and preteens POSING as adults. Needless to say, the overall user experience degraded significantly as the UNLIMITED floodgates opening meant all these ‘adult’ forums and chats were awash in a sea of fart and sex jokes from teens who were sneaking on mom’s AOL account.

Around 2000 or so, companies like Earthlink started offering straight internet access for around the same $25 price for unlimited. This really cut into AOL’s business and eventually it folded as well.

So we’d moved from a decentralized environment (BBSes) to a centralized one (AOL and CompuServe) to…….now what?

We went decentralized again. Around 2003 or so, weblogs started to gain traction. Blogs were like our own digital islands. We could create our own space where we could discuss whatever we want. And since a lot of us were still jonesing for a way to discuss our favorite topics in a post-AOL online world, it was perfect timing. Plus the great thing about blogs was that I could go read your blog, and immediately catch up on everything in your life (well everything that you were willing to share on your blog). Basically, if I wanted to reach you, I knew to go to your blog and there you were!

The problem was…not everyone wanted to have a blog. So it created an opportunity for someone to create a way for people that didn’t want to bare their souls everyday on a blog, to still have a way to create and share content. And maybe more easily interact with the content from others.

Enter social networking. Sites like MySpace and later Facebook and Twitter gave all of us centralized platforms where we could more easily connect with each other. Plus the great thing was, these platforms at first actually enhanced our blogs. It gave us a way to more easily create content for our blogs, and also to link to content we were creating on these platforms as well.  Plus, these social networking sites gave you immediate access to SO many more people! Especially hundreds of millions of people who weren’t blogging.

From 2006-2010 was the most fun and excitement I’ve ever had in 30 hours of being online. Blogging was hot and we had these wonderful communities springing up around our blogs, then sites like Facebook and Twitter launched and we had wonderful communities and discussions there as well.  It was truly the Golden Age of social media, even if we didn’t realize it at the time.

Then…..this happened:

Ashton Kutcher killed Twitter

Yep, the celebrities found social media.

This was the equivalent of AOL offering unlimited access for the first time, resulting in a flood of preteens with fart jokes. Suddenly Oprah, Britney and the Kardashians were on Twitter. Which meant that suddenly the MEDIA flooded to social media to follow them.

And within the span of a few months, Twitter and Facebook went mainstream. Suddenly, those of us who had been on these sites since the beginning and who loved the communities we had formed there, were flooded by new users who were mainly there to e-stalk their favorite celebrities.

Then the marketers followed, and that led to wait for it…..SELF PROMOTION!

When ‘everyone’ joins a centralized platform or service, the user experience for everyone degrades significantly. It happened when everyone joined AOL and CompuServe in the 90s, it happened to social media when ‘everyone’ joined Twitter and Facebook.

I’ll be honest: Social media really hasn’t been fun for me in about 5-6 years. It truly hasn’t. I’ve written previously about the problems these sites are having with transparency and trust issues. I think we are going to see Twitter and Facebook undergo radical changes in the coming year or two, if not go away completely.

Then the questions becomes, when that happens, do we revert back to a more decentralized web, and if so, what would that look like? I think we will, and I hope we’ll see our blogs become more prominent again. The interesting thing is that as a lot of people moved to social media sites, the functionality of blogs increased dramatically. Plus, people are more comfortable with the idea of blogging now, so I am hopeful that we’ll see a bit of a blogging Renaissance soon. It’s one reason I’ve doubled down on my blogging here and I’ve been advising clients to do the same for a while now.

However, there’s an even clearer pattern of this decentralized to centralized flow that we saw in the 90s and again over the last few years. When the shift from decentralized to centralized begins, that’s when the overall user experience is the best. But once EVERYONE floods into the centralized platforms, that’s when it all starts to go downhill.

Right now feels like about where we were in 2000. AOL was getting long in the tooth, and we were starting to look for other/better options. A year or two later, the mass-migration away from AOL had begun.

I think we’re in the same place now. A lot of people want to leave the popular social media sites, but really don’t see a better option. When we do, we’re gone.

I think that day is coming sooner rather than later.

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It’s Time for a Social Media Reboot, Based on Communication, Not Narcissism

It’s not getting a lot of coverage, but social media sites like Twitter and Facebook are facing serious trust issues right now from their users. And it’s hurting their stock prices, Twitter’s stock has gone from close to $50 a share in June, to $35 a share today at the end of August. Facebook’s stock has also been hit hard, going from around $220 a share in July, to around $175 a share now.

What’s causing the drop? It would be easy to say that concerns over how the social media platforms display content and worries over potential censorship based on political affiliation is driving the fall. This is definitely playing a role, but I think there’s a far bigger underlying issue that’s been at play since the sites were launched over a decade ago.

Over the years, social media has morphed from being communications tools, to being ego tools. It’s somewhat understandable, appeals to ego (number of followers you have, how many Likes and RTs your updates get) are very strong, perhaps even necessary to some degree to drive user growth. But these appeals to ego have fundamentally changed user behavior.

And in a very bad way.

The great promise of social media was always that everyone has a voice. We are all connected. Conversation changes the world.

Yet if you look around, there’s not a lot of conversation happening on social media these days. There’s a lot of broadcasting, and a lot of yelling.

I’m in a rare place among most social media users, in that I can remember being active online before Facebook and Twitter. Back then, we didn’t call it social media, we called it ‘blogging’.  There were blogs, and MySpace.  That was pretty much social media in the days before Likes and ReTweets.

In those days, there weren’t a lot of numbers to game.  It’s wasn’t about how many followers you had or how many Likes a post got, it was about the conversation that it started. I can still remember waking up at 2am on many nights simply because I couldn’t get a blog post I’d read earlier that day out of my head. I’d have to get up, open Word and write a comment.  Or if the comment grew long enough, just open Blogger and write a new blog post.

As Facebook and Twitter grew (then later Instagram and Pinterest, etc), we became sort of ‘trained’ to gravitate toward shorter and faster communications. Which led to broadcasting more than talking. I mean if you have a deep thought you want to get out there, you have to constraint it to 140 characters in a tweet. And hell, who can wait 2 mins to see if anyone responds, so just stick it in a blog post, tweet out the link, and wait for everyone to ignore it.

Social media has changed our thinking, and our behavior. We don’t talk to each other anymore, because we don’t have the patience to wait 5 mins to hear what the other person thinks. We send out a tweet and immediately start looking for RTs and hearts. When you do that, it changes your behavior. You create content (tweets or updates) in a way to drive engagement. That means less talking and more yelling.  Because yelling drives engagement. Being angry drives engagement.

Taking the time to listen to the other person’s perspective? Well you don’t get Likes or RTs for that, so to hell with it.

But How Can I Tell Who is the Most Popular or Influential on Social Media Without the Numbers?

The argument for Likes, Followers, Retweets, etc has always been that we need a way to measure who is ‘worth listening to’.  Who should you follow? The guy with the most followers, so the logic goes.

The problem with focusing on numbers is that numbers can be gamed. If you tell me that number of Twitter followers is the most important metric, then I can instantly get 1,000 followers in the next 24 hours by simply following 2,000 people.  About half will follow me back. Or I could simply buy 10,,000 followers, likely for a few bucks.

Again, if we just go by numbers, then someone will find a way to game the numbers. Look at Twitter, and note how many people you see with 50,000 followers who are following 50,000 people. Yet here you sit with 5,000 followers following 50 people, and you think that person is more influential than you are.

What if you had no idea how many Likes or RTs or Followers someone had on Social Media? What if all the numbers we currently use to decide if someone is worth following or listening to, were gone. How would we judge if someone is worth listening to?

By what they say. We would judge people based on the content they create. This is honestly how it should be. Our criteria for creating content shouldn’t be “Is this going to get social shares”, it should be “Is this going to make an impact on the people that read it?”

Think about the word ‘impact’. Think about something impacting another object. It changes that object. A literal impression is made.

Will your content make an impression on its audience? Because if it doesn’t, then what the hell are you doing?

 

BONUS: Great post from Kathy Sierra – More buzzwords, likes, RTs and followers are only a potential competitive advantage if both you and the competition are mediocre. Think about that.

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Social Media Demands Perfection and Punishes Mediocrity

I have a small list of political reporters that I follow on Twitter. I avoid political coverage on mainstream media at all costs since I know most of it is propaganda, but I follow a few trusted sources for actual political news. One of the reporters I follow is a huge St. Louis Cardinals fan. She tweets almost daily about their exploits, the home runs, the clutch wins, everything. I haven’t watched a pro baseball game in probably 20 years, and know nothing about the league. But from her tweets alone, I assumed the Cardinals must be one of the best teams. Yesterday she tweeted that the team had fired their manager.

For years, I was a big Dale Earnhardt Jr. fan. I promoted him on all my social media accounts, including here and even on my podcast. Last year after a frustrating race in a frustrating season, I left a rare critical tweet about Dale, which earned my first and only response from him:

To be fair, I took his advice. The whole episode reminded me of this scene from A Christmas Story, and I had pretty much the same reaction that Ralphie did:

Years ago, I was added to a private group on Facebook for frequent business travelers. At first, the group was incredible, several professional travelers sharing advice and tips on how to make business travel more convenient and efficient. I loved it, and the advice of the group led to my making several travel-related purchases (Social Media ROI). Unfortunately, the group quickly devolved into a game of social media one-upmanship as people began to use the group to brag about their first class travel or the upgrades and perks they were getting. The utility and value of the group decreased as the bragging increased.

A few weeks ago I was watching a particular Twitch streamer who constantly creates YouTube videos of his game-playing, which are very popular, mainly because of how well he plays in the videos. This particular streamer had just completed a game where he didn’t perform very well, and one of his followers asked him if he would be posting that game to YouTube later. “Hell no!”, he replied. “I didn’t get enough kills!”

There’s a common thread running through all these stories. The promise of social media was always in its ability to connect everyone to everyone. Everyone gets the chance to have a voice and we all get to see the world as it really is.

Social media has delivered spectacularly as a way to foster connections, and it has failed miserably as a way to show the world, and our lives, as they really are. To be fair, much of the sharing problem is of our own making. We are trained to only share our ‘highlights’ on social media. We brag about our ‘wins’ and never mention our ‘losses’. Every moment is viewed through the lens of “will this make a good picture on IG?’ instead of simply living IN the moment.

The problem with the ‘perfection’ of social media is that it’s too easy to compare yourself to a completely warped view of other people’s lives. I especially worry about the impact this can have on teenagers and millenials. In fact, many studies now suggest there could be a link between the rise of social media usage and the stark increase in teenage suicides over the last decade or so.

Ironically, when social media first began to take off on a widespread scale about 10 years ago, one of the unwritten ‘rules’ for brands using social media was ‘be authentic’. It seems like that’s a great rule for the rest of us to follow as well.

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This is Why Social Media is Making You Scared to Talk to Your Customers

There’s that guy in your office. You know the one, the guy that always wants to talk politics.

You do not like to talk politics. You also don’t like when this guy tries to talk politics with you, because inevitably, it ends up in a loud argument that attracts several of your co-workers that you really want no part of. So you tend to avoid the ‘politics’ guy because you know if you talk to him, an argument that you want no part of is going to be the result.

In many ways, thanks to social media, your customers have become that ‘politics’ guy in your office that always starts loud arguments that you want no part of.

When businesses began experimenting with social media about 10 years ago, many of us saw this as a breakthrough. Thanks to these ‘social’ tools, companies now had the ability to interact on an individual level with customers, and vice versa. The potential implications to customer service, brand loyalty, customer engagement and marketing in general were massive.

 

Customers Control the Interactions Between Most Brands and Their Customers, and It’s Not Pretty

Unfortunately, 10 years later, most customers are far more willing to use social media to interact with brands than most brands are to use social media to interact with customers.

And when most customers want to interact with brands, they typically want to complain to brands.

Check the average brand page on Facebook for example, and the majority of the time you will see the same thing.  You will see updates from the brand trying to promote itself and its products and services, then you will see that customers have taken over the comments to complain about issues and problems they are having with those same products and services.

For many brands, Facebook has become the place where their customers come to complain about them. The irony of ‘social’ media is that customers will complain about brands on social media, because they know that brands will be more likely to respond quickly, because if they don’t, it looks bad for the brand and the other customers notice.

Let me be clear: This is not the customers’ fault, it’s your fault as the brand. You have ceded control of the conversation with your customers, to your customers. As a result, those customers are going to act in their best interests, which means they are only going to talk to you when they want to talk to you.

Which means the only time most of them will talk to you, is when they have to. Like when they have a problem with your product or services.

Last week I spoke to a group of rural telecoms and electric providers in Huntsville. I presented Think Like a Rock Star, and part of that talk revolved around how rock stars proactively seek out interactions with their customers whereas most companies only interact with their customers when they have to. I was talking to a friend of mine who leads Customer Care for a global brand that you’ve all heard of about this, and she agreed that most companies only talk to their customers when the customer is complaining about something. The brand itself has little to no desire to initiate interactions with their customers.

Since rock stars proactively engage directly with their customers, they have a better understanding of who their customers are, and what they want. Rock stars then leverage this knowledge to improve the experience for their customers. This completely changes the conversation that rock stars have with their customers. Rock stars and their fans understand each other, so the conversation is more open and enjoyable for both parties. On the flip-side, most companies don’t understand their customers, and most customers don’t understand the companies they buy from, so it’s no wonder that the conversation between most brands and customers is completely one-sided and difficult!

This is the very simple framework that rock stars use to create fans. Note that every step in this process is deliberate, and applies to BOTH the rock star AND their fans:

1 – Interaction: Rock stars seek out ways to interact directly with their customers, and invite their customers to interact directly with them. These interactions lead to….

2 – Understanding: By interacting with their customers, rock stars begin to UNDERSTAND who their customers are and why they buy the products that the rock star makes. At the same time, the customers begin to understand who the rock star is, what drives them, why they write the music they do, what their stories are. The rock star becomes more relate-able to their fans and the fans become more relate-able to the rock star. And that understanding leads to…..

3 – Trust: When you understand who your customers are, then you can trust them. When your customers know who you are and why you are doing what you do, then they can trust you. And that trust leads to…..

4 – Advocacy: When you know someone and you TRUST them, you will advocate for them. This happens with customers that know and trust your brand, they tell other people about it.

 

Take Control of the Conversation You Have With Your Customers

But this process always starts with interactions. Your brand interacting with its customers and your customers interacting with your brand. This is why I am so passionate about helping companies better connect with their customers. I don’t want the only interactions you have with your customers to be when they complain about you on your Facebook page. I want your company to embrace a culture of curiosity about who your customers are.

Additionally, I want your brand to take control of how you interact with your customers. You’re going to have to interact with your customers anyway, so why not be proactive and engage with them first, and then apply what you learn to improve your business and marketing processes? The end result is that more you proactively engage with your customers on YOUR terms, the less you will have to engage with your customers on their terms. The less time you will spend fielding complains and problems.

So how do you go from only engaging with your customers via complaints on social media or calls and emails…to something more? By giving your customers more opportunities to interact with your brand, but on terms that your brand controls. Here’s some simple starting points:

1 – Surveys. Ask your customers who they are, what they like, what they dislike and more. This can be done via your website or email newsletter or even social media. Frame the survey as a way for you to better learn about your customers so you can offer them a better experience. Then make sure you take what you learn from your surveys and apply it to your ongoing communication efforts.

For instance, look how Marriott Resorts is leveraging #ParadiseChat as a way to better learn about its customers:

Also, note the engagement numbers: They are getting a LOT of comments on these tweets. This type of content is also proven to do the best job for brands in driving engagement. Content that is from the brand but not ABOUT the brand, instead it’s about how customers would interact with the brand and its products and services.

2 – Feedback from Customer Service. Every day your customers are calling/emailing/tweeting your customer service department. Make a point to actually note and catalog what your customers are saying when they contact you. There’s a tendency in customer service to handle as many customers as quickly as possible. But in ‘handling’ your customers, don’t simply discard what prompted their contact to begin with. The source of the contact should be noted so you can identify trends and prioritize how you respond. Make sure you are using a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) package that offers this functionality.

3 – Open Rates on Newsletters. If you’re utilizing email newsletter, pay close attention to each issue’s open rate. Specifically, you want to see which topics resonate with your customers. The topics that drive higher open rates indicate topics that are important to your customers, and you can also use this to better understand what’s important to your customers.

4 – Engagement on Social Media Content. Closely watch what types of content your customers are more likely to engage with. I’ll save you the suspense: Content that’s focused on your customers, who they are and how they would use your products and services, will always always ALWAYS get better engagement than content that directly promotes your products and services. Look at the Marriott Resorts example above; They aren’t promoting their resorts directly, they are creating content focused on how its customers would behave if they were at their resorts. This results in content that’s more interesting to the customers, and it provides Marriott Resorts with better insights into how and why their customers come to their resorts.

5 – Always Thank Customers For Complimenting Your Brand. This is so incredibly easy to do yet I see companies every single day that whiff on this. Whenever a customer compliments your brand, thank them. It doesn’t matter if they compliment you via email, phone call, social media, handwritten note, or carrier pigeon. Thank them. When you thank a customer for complimenting you, it signals to that customer that you APPRECIATE them enough to take a few seconds to thank them. That also ENCOURAGES them to CONTINUE to compliment your brand AND it encourages them to PROMOTE your brand. Yes I am going overboard with the ALL CAPS because this is VERY IMPORTANT! Also, you are signalling to all your other customers that if will respond to them and thank them if they compliment you.

Additionally, you are helping to shape and change the conversation around your brand, and you’re making it more positive. Which is always a good thing!

 

The reason why you don’t like talking to your customers is because the only time you DO talk to your customers is when you have to.  And that’s when they are yelling at you. This is precisely why I work with companies to help them build programs like outreach, loyalty and brand ambassador programs that help companies better connect with their customers.

Because I want your company to take control of the conversation you are having with your customers. If you give up control to your customers and only respond to them, your conversation is doomed to be nothing more than your company constantly fielding complaints from your customers.

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If I Ran a Social Media Conference…

Photo credit: Michael Sparks Keegan Photography

When my first book came out in 2013, I started getting a lot more speaking inquiries. Many of these requests came from industry-specific events. Such as automotive, tourism, financial, etc. Up till this point, I had pretty much only spoken at social media and digital marketing events. So I assumed these industry-specific events would be similar, the only difference being that the attendees would all come from the same industry.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. The environment at these industry-specific events was completely different. Everyone was there to work, and by work, I mean everyone was there to solve their business problems.  There was zero fluff, and very little discussion about the tools. Instead, the focus was on strategy, not tactics.

Basically, everyone attended these events to learn one thing: How is this going to help me get shit done?

I loved it. I absolutely loved seeing all the attendees on the same page and focusing on the bottom line instead of tweeting out a cool sound-byte. In fact, that’s a big reason why I have attended fewer ‘social media conferences’ over the last few years. Although these events are a lot of fun, while I see everyone rushing to take selfies with a speaker (and sometimes it was me), in the back of my mind I was thinking ‘How are 57 selfies taken going to justify the cost of this trip for you?’

It’s Not About the Cewebrities, It’s About the Learning

Over the years I’ve also been involved in helping to select the speakers for multiple events. Whenever I had a say in who the speakers would be, I always suggested speakers that were also good teachers.  Speakers who knew how to communicate a point to an audience, and how to put it in terms they would understand.  I was told long ago that were two types of speakers in the world: Those that speak to put the spotlight on themselves, and those that speak to put the spotlight on their amazing ideas.  I want the latter to speak at my event.

The problem with too many social media or content marketing events is that they have basically become a social function. Speakers are invited based on how many Twitter followers they have, then asked ‘What would you like to speak on?’  That approach tells you that the focus isn’t crafting a top-notch agenda, it’s getting a ‘cewebrity’ speaker there cause that’s who attendees want to take a selfie with.

And let me be clear: Popular speakers sell tickets. This is absolutely correct and events are smart to seek popular speakers ASSUMING they can also give attendees actionable ideas that they can take back to their company or agency and use to improve the bottom line. The best speakers can do this and strive to do this.

Keynotes Set the Tone, and Bring It Home

Keynotes are special. They are supposed to wake up attendees and set the tone for the event. As Ann Handley told me years ago, the choice in keynotes says a lot about the event and what it wants to accomplish. It’s a special slot and it should reserved for special speakers.

Unlike a lot of events, I don’t agree with having a keynote every day.  I think there should be an opening keynote, and a closing keynote.  The opening keynote should excite the attendees and open their mind to different possibilities.  And the closing keynote should take the natural excitement that’s been building with attendees and bring it all home.

Two Days, Maximum

Two full days is plenty for any event. There seems to be an almost ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ mentality going with many social media and digital events to stretch out as being longer and longer. If your event is 4-5 days, then the content and the experience becomes very watered down.  And often, these events will have multiple tracks going all day, every day. When you have 6 sessions covering the same topic, you probably have 5 sessions too many.

Think about it, when is the last time you thought ‘Wow, I could have spent another day or two there!’ about an event?  If you can remember doing that, you probably remember attending that same event the following year.  Because when you attend an event that offers that much value, it becomes very easy to justify the expense of going. On the other hand, if you paid $2,000.00 to attend a 4-day event that you felt was 2 days too long, you probably didn’t go back the next year.

Event planners: Force yourself to limit your event to 1 or 2 days.  This will also force you to get better content because you will be greatly restricted in what you can fit in.  This is how you go from contacting speakers and saying “hey, speak on whatever you like!’ to ‘I need someone to lead a session on this topic…can you do it?’

Fewer Sessions, More Workshops

There’s a dirty little secret about ‘thought leaders’. Anyone can explain how something worked for them, but only those that truly understand the concept can explain how it will work FOR YOU. This is why many books are full of case studies, but often lack abstract examples that explain the same concept. It’s vital to have both, because the brain needs both concrete AND abstract examples in order to fully understand a concept, and more importantly, how to implement it at their business.

For example, instead of a 50-min session on business podcasting, I want Kerry Gorgone to lead a 3-hour workshop on podcasting where she shows you exactly how to research guests, flesh out the questions, then record an episode live for you, then show you how to do post-production and editing.

Instead of a session on crisis management, I want Ike Pigott to lead a workshop on crisis management where he does a mock triage on how to handle incoming complaints from customers and has attendees come up with appropriate responses.

 

So I want fewer or no sessions at my event, and more workshops.  Workshops should have three elements:

1 – Concrete examples (case studies)

2 – Hypothetical examples (abstract)

3 – Group/Individual exercises where the attendees flesh out the concept in their business framework.

So for a 3-hour workshop, you’re looking at 60-90 minutes of interaction with the attendees.  We learn by doing, so less talk and more activities.

 

Look For New Speakers

If you look at the rosters for most social media conferences, you’ll see the same 10-15 speakers at almost every single one. Honestly, this is just sheer laziness by event planners as there are plenty of solid speakers that could easily replace some of these speakers so that events aren’t recycling the same speakers year after year. When your attendees see the same speakers at every event, it makes it harder for yours to stand out.

Here’s a few freebies, contact these speakers today:

Jessica Northey – Leveraging Social Media to generate PR for your business or clients.

Geno Church – Anything Word of Mouth. Probably my favorite speaker that you never see at social media/digital events.

Kelly Hungerford – Creating customer-advisory boards or brand ambassador programs

Joe Martin – Using insights from social media to create better content for your brand

Kami Huyse – Anything about PR, measurement or proving the ROI of SM/Digital

 

I will happily recommend any of these guys as they are gems, feel free to email me about them or if you need any other recommendations.

 

Here’s how I would set the agenda for a 2-day event:

Day One

9:00-10:30 – Introduction and Opening Keynote

10:30-11:00 – Break

11:00-12:00 – Sessions (2-3 tracks maximum) (Session topics should ideally be an overview of a workshop topic covered in the afternoon, preferrably by same speaker)

12:00-1:30 – Lunch

1:30-3:00 – Workshops (first half), 2 tracks maximum

3:00-3:30 – Afternoon break

3:30-5:00 – Workshops (second half)

5:00-6:00 Reception/Mixer

 

Day Two

8:30-10:00 – Workshops (first half), 2 tracks maximum

10:00-10:15 – Morning break

10:15-12:00 – Workshops (second half)

12:00-1:00 – Lunch

1:00-2:30 – Workshops (first half)

2:30-3:00 – Afternoon Break

3:00-4:00 – Workshops (second half)

4:10 – 5:00 – Closing Keynote, Goodbye

 

Social Media Conferences Need to Stop Being Social Events and Focus on Teaching

Too many speakers agree to speak at events just to ‘hang out’ with other speakers and attendees. Too many attendees decide to go to events for the same reason.  When you go to an industry-specific event, you see people wearing business attire and bringing briefcases. The attendees approach the event as being another workday, and they come in with the mindset that they are there to get work done. The social part comes at the evening mixer.

Social media and content marketing events need to adopt the mindset that they are offering training to attendees. Nuts and bolts, strategy and processes. They need to stop bringing in the speakers based on Twitter followers and start bringing them in based on their ability to connect the dots for attendees in a way that makes a meaningful impact on their businesses.

And guess what?  You can charge more for an event that gives more value to attendees. You should also fairly compensate speakers, but that’s another argument for another day.

And in closing, let me be clear that this post isn’t directed or about any one particular event. And it has nothing to do with my attending Adobe’s Summit user conference last week.

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How to Sell With Social Media

Perhaps the reason companies cite the most for wanting to use social media is to ‘Build Awareness’. They want to get the word out via social media about who they are, and what they do. The thinking is that if people know who we are, they can and will buy from us.

There’s a fundamental flaw with this line of thinking: You are selling to a group of people who don’t know who you are, so by extension, they don’t know why they should buy from you. Yet companies do this every single day, and are confounded by the fact that their social media strategy isn’t driving sales.

So if you want to create a social media and content strategy that drives sales, when you create content you have to consider whether or not the customer is ready to buy. And if they aren’t, you need to understand what type of content creates the most value for them, and at the same time puts them in a position where they ARE ready to buy from you.

The concept of understanding the Buyer’s Journey has become a hot topic in regards to digital marketing in recent years. The idea is that most customers take a specific path before actually purchasing a product. What you want to do is create a content strategy that allows you create the appropriate type of content for your customers at each step of this journey.

For simplification purposes we are going to look at four stages of the buying process, and then discuss creating content for each stage:

Buyer's Journey, Creating Better Content

1 – Unaware, AKA Who the hell are you?. The buyer has no idea who you are, or why they should want to listen to you, much less buy anything from you. When companies talk about using social media to ‘Build Awareness’, this is the group they are targeting.

2 – Slightly aware and slightly interested. This group has begun to understand who you are, and can start to see how your products and services can fit into their lives.

3 – Interested and considering buying. This group knows who you are, knows what you sell, and knows how those products and services fit into their lives. Now they are trying to decide who to buy from, you or a competitor.

4 – Ready to buy. Take my money!

 

Now the problem is that most companies create a social media strategy that’s based on ‘Build Awareness’, and then create content that’s aimed at customers that are at Stage 4 (Take my money!) when the reality is since they have an awareness problem, the company’s customers are going to be at Stage 1 (Who the hell are you?). So this strategy is doomed to failure from the start.

So let’s look at each stage and the appropriate content you should create to not only give the customer the content they need, but the content that will move them to the next stage in the buying process.

Stage 1 – Unaware, AKA Who the Hell Are You?

At this stage, the customer has no idea who you are, or why they should care. So any company or product-related content you create for this group is likely going to be completely ignored. What does that leave you? Obviously if you can’t create product-related content or company-related content, the only thing left is customer-centric content. You create content about the customer you want to connect with. More specifically, you create content that focuses on common Passion Points that connect the customer and your company.

Wait, what the hell is a Passion Point?

I’ve blogged about the power of Passion Points before. Basically, a Passion Point is an idea or theme or belief that relates to your company and products, that your customers feel passionately about. For example, dog owners are passionate about making sure that their dog is happy and healthy. So Pedigree focuses its marketing and content on these Passion Points, happy and healthy dogs. As a result, dog owners are drawn to Pedigree because the brand is focusing its marketing on ideas and beliefs that dog owners are passionate about.

Now if Pedigree was a new brand just entering the marketplace, how would it create content focused on the Passion Points of happy and healthy dogs? It could create blog posts focused these topics. Some examples of blog posts it could create are:

“Ten Games You Can Play With Your Dog Every Day to Ensure It Gets All the Exercise It Needs”
“Want a Happier Dog? Science Says You Should Do These Five Things”
“Healthier Dogs Have These Three Traits in Common”

 

Notice these topics are focused solely on the dog and the dog owner. Each post is also connected to either the ‘Happy Dogs’ or ‘Heathy Dogs’ Passion Point. By focusing strictly on the Passion Point that is important to the dog owner, Pedigree can create content that interests them. And that’s the starting point.

On the other hand, if Pedigree would have written a blog post that was nothing more than a digital coupon for 55 cents off a can of its dog food, that content would have been ignored because the dog owner already has a source of dog food. But by switching its focus to creating customer-centric content that’s married to Passion Points that are relevant to the dog owner, Pedigree has gotten their attention.

 

Stage 2 – Slightly aware and slightly interested. At this point, the content created in Stage 1 has resonated with the customer, and they are paying some attention. But you still aren’t at a point where you should create content that directly sells your product. You want to shift your focus slightly from Stage 1, where you focused solely on creating content that connected to a Passion Point that interested your customer. Now in Stage 2, you want to create content that connects those same Passion Points to your brand. In the first step you connected these Passion Points to the customer, now in Stage 2, you want to connect those same Passion Points to your brand and its products.

Let’s return to the Pedigree example.  In Stage 1, they created content that was focused on the ‘happy dogs’ and ‘healthy dogs’ Passion Points.  Now in Stage two, the content will shift to focus on how Pedigree and its dog food connects with these Passion Points.  Here’s an example of some of the blog posts Pedigree could write in Stage 2:

“Want a Healthier Dog? Science says these five vitamins will boost your dog’s immune system.”  And the post itself could explain the five vitamins, then show how Pedigree dog food includes all these vitamins.

“Support Pedigree’s Adopt-A-Dog Program and connect loving families with loving dogs.” This post explains how Pedigree supports dog adoption and shelter programs around the country.

“Wet or Dry: What type of food is the healthiest for your dog?”  This post gives dog owners vital information on how to set their dog’s diet, but also give Pedigree an opportunity to explain how its wet and dry dog food can help dogs have healthier diets.

 

Notice these blog posts are still connected to the happy and healthier dogs Passion Points, but this content also makes the connection between Pedigree and these Passion Points.  It’s also helping readers to understand what Pedigree and its products are doing to help improve both the health and happiness of dogs.

 

Stage 3 – Interested, and considering buying.  At this point, the customer has read your content, and has made the connection between the Passion Points they care about, and your brand.  They are interested in buying your products, and as a result, want more product-specific information for comparison purposes.

Going back to the Pedigree example, this could be a case where a potential customer is coming to your blog or website looking for the exact ingredients that your dog food contains.  Maybe they are looking for these vitamins or these minerals.  The point is that they want detailed, product-specific information because they are informed customers that are ready to buy.

In many cases, you can attach Calls to Action for Stage 3 content while publishing Stage 2 content.  For example, one of the blog posts Pedigree could write in Stage 2 was “Want a Healthier Dog? Science says these five vitamins will boost your dog’s immune system.”  This post could explain what these five vitamins are, detail how Pedigree dog food includes those five vitamins, then also include a link to a more specific product page that includes all the vitamins and minerals included in Pedigree dog food.  This could be for a customer that reads the blog post, and decides they are interesting in learning more about exactly what ingredients are included in the dog food (meaning they have moved to Stage 3, they are interested and considering buying.)

 

Stage 4 – Ready to buy, take my money! This is pretty self-explanatory, you want to give customers a clear Call to Action for how they can buy your product.  If you are selling your product on your blog or website, give them a link to where they can purchase directly.

For the Pedigree example, this could include a link on where they can buy dog food on the main Pedigree website, or a link to where they can find a local dealer or grocery that sells Pedigree products.

Note: If you want to use social media to sell your products, you have to actually give customers a way to BUY your products! I know this sounds simple, but think about it: If you were a customer and came to your company’s website, how would you buy a product or service?  How simple or difficult is the buying process?  Are you actually selling anything directly on your website?  This alone could explain why you are having difficulty selling with social media!

Want to know How to Sell With Social Media? Here’s all 4 steps!

sellingwithsocialmedia

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When Popularity Turns Bad: 5 Things to Remember When Dealing With Criticism of Your Content

kony 2012, online criticism, jason russell, invisible children

In 2012, the Kony 2012 video was at the time the most viral video ever. That’s meant a lot of sudden exposure to the organization behind the video, Invisible Children, and a lot of criticism.  Critics have said the video oversimplifies the current state of affairs in Uganda, and there’s also been questions about how the organization/charity spends its money.  And there have even been rumors that the video’s creator, Jason Russell, has suffered a mental breakdown due to the criticism the film has received.

“Because of how personal the film is, many of the attacks against it were also very personal and Jason took them very hard,” Jason’s wife Danica explained in a statement.

To be fair, Kony 2012 is an extreme example.  No one, not even the video’s creators expected, or were prepared for it to receive 80+ million views.  But it did, and that’s the funny and amazing thing about creating digital content: You never really know when your message is going to strike a cord and spread like wildfire.

And when that happens, that means your message leaves the ‘safe’ bubble of your devoted friends/family/readers, and a completely new audience is exposed to your content for the first time.  And that means YOU are open to criticism as well.  When it comes, here’s how to deal with it:

1 – Remember that the criticism is NOT personal.  It can’t be personal if it’s coming from Joe Jones in Washington that had never heard of you before he read your post this morning.  Even if the criticism is harsh and attacking, it’s aimed at your ideas, not you.

2 – Remember that criticism means your idea is spreading.  Receiving criticism on your blog post or video or picture almost always means you’ve struck a cord with someone.  And when that happens, your content is more likely to be shared, and that means more people are exposed to it.

3 – Remember that criticism means more debate.  Nothing spikes a conversation more than someone jumping into the middle of a comment thread where everyone is agreeing, and saying ‘yeah I think everyone here is full of crap!’  Differing viewpoints breed more interaction and comments.  Which feeds back into the above point: It means your idea is spreading.

4 – Remember that how you HANDLE the criticism greatly determines if you will get more or less of it.  In the first point I mentioned that the criticism you’ll receive initially isn’t personal.  But if you attack your critics, then you open the door for far more criticism.  And you also pull the rug out from anyone that was defending you.  But if you keep your wits about you and keep the interaction focused on the ideas and not the people, then the chance of receiving further criticism falls dramatically.

5 – Remember that if everyone agrees with your idea, then it’s not reaching enough people.  Seriously, if every blog post you ever write is only viewed by your friends and family, you’ll likely never hear a bit of criticism, and you’ll be told every day that you’re the best blogger in the world.

When your idea leaves your safe little bubble, that’s when it begins to make an impact.  And I think that’s what most/all of us want.  We want to create content that others find value in.  We want others to interact with our content, and be moved to action.

We want to make an impact.  And making an impact means upsetting some people, and drawing criticism.  Accept this, and understand that criticism isn’t a bad thing, it usually means your idea is winning.

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Companies Encouraging Employees to Use Social Media is Increasingly Popular Heading Into 2016

16034335445_0ba754b746_zA new article from eMarketer sheds light on how popular Social Employee Advocacy Programs are becoming.  These are programs where employees are encouraged to promote their brand via social media.  You can immediately see why it would be popular with many companies.

In crafting such programs, it is important for the company to also create guidelines for any employees that decide to participate.  These include such things as letting the employee know what type of behavior/conduct is expected, identifying themselves as representatives/employees of the brand when they create content that promotes it, etc.

Also, such programs should be offered as an option, not as being mandatory.  Just as you wouldn’t require every employee in your country to deal with customers directly in a retail setting, you shouldn’t ask all of them to do so online.  The last thing you want to do is make employees feel obligated to engage in a task that they don’t want.  Instead, you want to attract the employees that love your brand and who are already singing your praises online.  Their voice is authentic and their ability to attract others to your brand is far greater than the employees that feel ‘forced’ to participate in a program that they feel isn’t worth their time.

Pic via Flickr user MSLGroupGlobal