MackCollier.com

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Do you REALLY want more traffic to your blog?

Chris Brogan wrote a post today on a sure-fire way to get more traffic to your blog: Write more posts.  He’s exactly right, I’ve seen it here on my blog, as have many of you if you’ve ramped up the volume of your posts, I am sure.  I also know that in general, the exact opposite happens when I stop writing, that traffic usually falls.

Here’s the thing about traffic and Retweets on Twitter or ‘Shares’ on Facebook and other sites: They can fool you.  Let’s be honest, it feels good when you write a post that immediately gets a lot of RTs and it feels good to see a traffic spike for that day.

It all makes you really feel like you accomplished something, doesn’t it?

But did you?  If traffic alone is how you define the success of your blog, then you’re probably pretty satisfied.  But what if your goal is something else?  What if you don’t need more traffic in general, but more potential clients?   Or what if you are a jobseeker that wants more potential employers to read your blog?

My point is, you shouldn’t be chasing more traffic simply for the sake of getting it.  Let’s go back to Chris’ example.  In his case, he is trying to directly monetize the content on his blog, to a degree.  So more traffic probably helps him.  But if you are NOT trying to directly monetize the content on your blog, then more traffic doesn’t help you unless that more traffic performs some other action.  It may be that you want them to email you for information about your company, or maybe you want them to download your resume, or sign up for your email newsletter.  But simply getting more traffic might not be enough.  Sure, it might stroke your ego, but unless that extra traffic is also helping you meet a larger goal for your blog, then who cares?

BTW this is just on a personal note, but I am growing very weary of blogs that publish multiple posts a day.  In fact Chris’ is one of the few that I still subscribe to that do this (and Chris is great, so I subscribe).  For example, I unsubbed from Mashable for 2 reasons:

1 – I was tired of getting 10 new posts a day

2 – I knew that my friends would SHARE the really good ones via Twitter and Google Reader, so I didn’t need to sub anyway.

Something to think about.  Chasing numbers if fine, if you understand the value of catching them.

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Think negative comments/reviews online hurt your company? Guess again.

For as long as I have been working with companies to help them improve their social media efforts, I have heard them explain how worried they are about what their customers are saying online.  “How do we make it go away?” or “How do we get this off the 1st page of Google results?” are questions I have heard all too often.

One area where this really comes into play is the issue of adding product reviews to your e-commerce site.  Many companies do NOT want to do this, because they fear that letting customers post reviews on their site will hurt sales.

I was discussing this on Twitter last week, and Ian at Bazaarvoice started chatting with me.  If you haven’t heard of them, Bazaarvoice works with companies to add functionality to their e-commerce sites, including Ratings and Reviews.  Ian sent me a ton of useful information and data about companies that using ratings and reviews on their sites, and I wanted to share some of the key points with you.

First, Bazaarvoice has found that 80% of the people that review products with its US clients give those products a 4 or 5 star rating (out of 5 stars).  For its clients in the UK, that figure jumps up to 88%.

Second, there’s the case study of how QuickBooks added the functionality of reviews to its Pro Advisors (Quick Book experts that help customers use the software).  Quick Books found that Pro Advisors with reviews had their profiles clicked on 555% more than those with no reviews.  Quick Book also found that volume trumped rating, as some Pro Advisors with more reviews got more clicks than Pro Advisors with higher overall ratings, but far fewer reviews.

Another key advantage to reviews that Ian shared with me is that reviews are great sources of customer feedback.  If you see that several customers are complaining about a particular aspect of your product and/or service, then obviously that’s alerting you to a pain point for your customers that you need to address.

One final tip from Ian: product reviews lower the number of returns (and the associated restocking fees/costs) cause customers have a better idea of exactly what they are getting before they order it.  Makes complete sense, eh?

But at the end of the day, the key lesson here is to be proactive in monitoring online mentions (even if its reviews on your site), and responding to them when appropriate.  We talked recently about examples of ‘social media backlashes‘ that brands have endured.  In each instance, the problem grew over time, due to the company not monitoring the situation.  The company not responding in a timely fashion was the main culprit behind the problem for them.

Most customers that complain online do NOT want to ‘hurt’ your company.  They just want you to listen to them, and help them with their problem.  If you’ll do that, you’ll often flip a detractor into an evangelist.  Hopefully these stats will help debunk the myth that any negative mention/review online hurts your company.  In reality, it’s often an opportunity.

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Finding your rockstars and giving them the stage

The introduction to the book Creating Customer Evangelists tells the story of  Southwest customer Ann McGee-Cooper.  One month after the September 11 terrorist attacks, with the airline industry in complete chaos, Ms. McGee-Cooper send Southwest a check for $500, and a letter which included the following explanation:

We are encouraging our clients to fly Southwest Airlines.  We are buying more stock…and we stand ready to do anything else to help.  Count on our continuing support.

As for the $500 check, she explained that she sent it because Southwest needed the money “more than I do”.

If your company is lucky enough to have just ONE Ann McGee-Cooper as a customer, then no amount of advertising or marketing you could ever do, will be more effective than what she does every single day.  Customers like McGee-Cooper are fans of your company.  They go out of their way to tell others about you, and they try their damnest to convince everyone they know to give you their business.  Because they believe in who you are, and what you are doing.

I left this comment to a post on Brains on Fire’s blog:

Find the people that are already singing your song, and give them the stage, the spotlight, and a microphone. We all want to be rockstars, and we tend to love the companies that make us feel like we are.

This is what I love about social media.  Now all your customers have these new content creation tools to take the word of mouth that was formerly trapped offline, and bring it online.  Now you have the ability to FIND that WOM, and can easily identify who your fans are.

And when you do, all that’s left is to give them the stage, the spotlight, and a microphone.

Oh and a hug and saying ‘Thank you!’ wouldn’t be a bad idea, either.

PS: Helping companies connect with their online evangelists is the type of work that I love doing.  If your company is considering such a project, please email me as I’d love to work with you to help get such a project off the ground.

Pic via Flickr user Hiddedevries

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#Blogchat topic for 8-22, Managing Your Sidebars!

If you are new to #Blogchat and want to know what the deal is, here’s the lowdown.

Tonite’s topic, which was inspired by @JudyHelfand, is managing your blog’s sidebars!  We’ll hit on two main areas:

1 – Before we discuss what content to include on our sidebars, I think we need to first figure out our blogging goals.  That will help decide which information we should be highlighting.  A business blog will likely want to put different information on its sidebars than a personal blog does.  We’ll also talk about the importance of putting the most important information on the sidebars ABOVE THE FOLD.  This topic will cover the first 30 mins or so of #Blogchat.

2 – Then we’ll move to a discussion of how much information should our sidebars have?  Do we REALLY have enough information to justify two sidebars, or will one be enough?  Also, are we not including some sidebar elements that we should be adding, like subscriber buttons, or a list of the most popular posts?  We’ll discuss this area from 8:30 to 9:00.

After 9:00, the discussion will be more open, and we’ll hit on any areas concerning sidebars that you want to discuss!

BTW, as a way to say ‘Thank You’ to you guys for coming out and making #Blogchat so amazing each and every week, I’ll be giving out a few #Optsum passes tonite.  Judy I’ve got one for you for suggesting tonite’s topic.  Thanks guys, see you at 8pm Central tonite!  And if you want to join at 7pm Central, we’ll be having our ‘pregame’ where everyone can say hi and share their blog and get to know each other.

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The rockstars are coming to Dallas next month and YOU can join them for free!

Some of the biggest names in digital and new media will be converging on Dallas next month for Optimization Summits!  People like Geno Church, Jason Falls, CK, Brian Solis, Lauren Fernandez and a TON of other great leaders.  They’ll even let me lead a workshop and sorry, Lady Gaga will only be appearing via Powerpoint (Le Sigh).  I spoke in March at #optsum and loved the event.  It’s not focused on having speakers up behind a podium.  Instead of sessions, there are workshops, so attendees can immediately take something home with them to get started improving their marketing and social media efforts.  The attendees in March were extremely smart and laser-focused on how the content they were being exposed to could help THEIR businesses.

The workshops themselves will be broken into 2-hour blocks, and my topic will be Think Like a Rockstar: How to Build Fans and Community Around Your Social Media Efforts.  My March workshop for #optsum was on this same topic, and it was Standing Room Only.  I was thrilled with the turnout, and had attendees telling me later that the workshop justified their trip.

And the BEST news of all is that Tami and the good folks at #optsum have given me a few free passes to #optsum PLUS a sweet discount code for anyone that wants to attend.

So here’s what I thought we’d do:  If you want to get a steep discount on the $525 ticket price, then click here and register for #0ptsum for only $200.00! Now that’s an affiliate link, and I’ll get $50 for every ticket that you buy there.  So it works out great for you, in that you get a huge discount, and you’ll be helping me, cause I’ll get a cut.

But if you want to try to win a pass to #optsum, I’ll be giving away THREE free passes to the 2-day event! Now as we all know, a lot of the contests you see on blogs have some really lame processes for entry.  Maybe you have to leave a comment on a blog, or link back to whoever is holding the contest.  I didn’t want us to do that.  I wanted to make it so your entry into the contest was ALSO creating value for everyone else.

So here’s how you can enter to win one of the three free passes to #optsum:

All you have to do is write a blog post with your best idea on how to build community via social media.  That is it.  It can be a post on how to get more blog comments and interaction, it can be a case study of how your company grew a community of customers via social media, whatever.  The idea is that by entering the contest you are ALSO writing a great post that will help others.  Which is infinitely cooler than simply throwing up a link on your blog to this post, right?  In fact, I do NOT want you to link here from your post, or even mention this contest.  This is all about creating value for YOUR readers, not as a way to promote me.

So if you want to enter the contest, all you have to do is write your post and THEN leave a comment here to this post and add a link to your post.  The contest will end next Friday the 27th, at midnight.  On Saturday I’ll announce the THREE winners of a free pass.  Now again, if you don’t want to enter the contest and just want to buy your ticket at the discounted rate of $200, PLEASE do so and you can by clicking this link.

Pretty cool, eh?  And as the entrants come in, I can promote those posts on Twitter, which will give y’all more exposure.  So all you have to do to enter to win a $525 pass to an awesome 2-day marketing/social media conference is write a post with your best ideas for building community via social media.  So even if you don’t win, you’ll still have written a great post that will help others and probably get you some extra exposure.

So if you want to enter for a chance to win a free pass to #Optsum (normally $525) then all you have to do is:

1 – Write a post with your best idea for building community via social media.

2 – Leave a comment here with a link to your post, once it’s published.

That’s it!  The deadline is Friday the 27th at midnight, and winners will be announced on Saturday the 28th!  Sound good?  And remember, if you want to buy your tickets to #Optsum at the discounted rate of $200, then click here!  Either way, I hope I get the chance to see you in Dallas!  If you have any questions about the contest, please leave a comment or email me!

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Does sharing links to other blogs on Twitter boost traffic to your blog?

I haven’t done a post here in a while analyzing my stats, so I wanted to share with you something interesting I’ve found over the past two weeks.  Going back a month, and not counting this post, I’ve published 10 posts here since July the 20th.  The posts have been a bit infrequent, until last week and this week.

Last week I published 4 posts here, and this post will mark the 3rd post so far here this week.  Here is how my daily traffic has been for the last month:

Note that the days with the red X above them are the days when a new post was published.  Also notice that traffic was down a bit from July 21st through the 8th of this month.   Then it about doubled last week when I published 4 posts, and it’s spiked this week.

Now at first glance, you might assume that since I posted more last week, that it helped boost this week’s traffic as I was actively posting this week as well.  I think there’s some truth to that.

But I’ve done something different this week.  Each day I have shared links on Twitter to other interesting blog posts or articles, starting at 8am each morning, with a new link each 10 mins.  I scheduled these ahead of time with HootSuite.  Also, I’ve mixed in the newest post from here, each day.  For example, today I started sharing links at 8am on Twitter, and at 9am, I shared a link to this post.  I didn’t do this at all last week.

Now my hunch, and it’s just that, is that sharing links this week is driving more traffic to my blog posts.  The links I am sharing every morning are generating a LOT of retweets, and I think that’s getting a lot of people to pay attention to them.  And in the process, they will also be checking out my posts.  Also I think it’s interesting to note that LAST week’s 4 posts averaged about 130 retweets each, while the 2 posts written on Monday and Tuesday have averaged about 40.  And even though this week’s posts are getting far fewer RTs, as you can see, traffic is much higher so far this week.

I’ll keep watching this to see if sharing really is driving traffic.  BTW in case you are wondering, the sources I use for finding content to share are:

1 – Google Reader.  I use new posts from blogs/sites I am subscribed to PLUS shared items from people I am following.  Shared items are a GREAT source of killer blog posts and articles.

2 – AllTop.  Another good source that gives you access to articles from many sites in just a few minutes.  Great for scanning dozens of sites and seeing what everyone is writing about.

Normally these two sources give me enough links to cover 2 or 3 hours.  If I need additional links, Delicious is another good alternative.  Also, as I see my friends sharing interesting links during the day, I will RT these as well.  This, plus the links I share in the morning, mean I can share 25-30 links a day.  And then I can RT a link to my newest post 2-3 times that day.  That means I will share other posts from other bloggers about 8-10 times as often as my own posts.  Not as high as the 12:1 ratio that Chris Brogan suggested during #blogchat this week, but close!

Does this help any?  And if you try to post daily, and also use Twitter to promote your posts, have you also noticed any type of traffic bump from sharing links from OTHER sites?  I would love to know what y’all are seeing in your stats!

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You don’t need perfection to be a good blogger, but you do need passion

I’ve talked a bit about this before, but a lot of the work I do for companies involves consulting with them on how they can best use social media.  I will study the company’s current social media efforts (if any), their marketplace, their competitors’ efforts, their resources, their goals for social media, and then give them an evaluation of their current situation and a recommended course of action moving forward.

Earlier this year, I performed this social media strategy audit for a smaller company.  After presenting the results and my findings to the company, I was on a conference call with the owner and his son, who was the marketing manager, discussing what their next steps should be.  My findings, coupled with the company’s resources and what they wanted to accomplish via social media, suggested that they could probably benefit from launching a company blog.

But I wasn’t convinced that the company could handle running a blog.  In my previous talks with the marketing manager, I got the impression that they could only devote 1 person to the blog, and I didn’t feel that they really understood how much of a workload would be required.  I was recapping my findings with the owner and his son, and the owner remained silent while the son did all the talking.

After about 30 mins, I wasn’t at all convinced that the company was ready to commit to writing the blog, and was willing to put the time and effort into it.  And quite frankly, I didn’t think the company had the passion that would be required to maintain it.

I finally decided that it was time to cut to the chase, and see if they were serious or not.  So I told the son that I thought that a blog could work for his company, but that I didn’t believe they had the resources available to commit to the project long-term, and that I quite frankly didn’t think they could devote the time and energy necessary to sustain the blog.

The owner decided to speak up for the first time. “Look” he said in a slightly irritated tone, “I can DO this! I love this business and I know how to talk to my customers! I can do this, I want to do this!”

I was grinning from ear to ear as I told the owner that was exactly what I wanted to hear!  “You just hit on the reason why you need to blog. You have a passion for your business and your customers.  THAT is what you need to pour into your blog.”

This is the main point I was trying to make in my previous post about how having a strategy doesn’t make you social.  Social is what you ARE.  It’s how you use the tools.  Companies tend to forget that social media tools are tools that people use to communicate with each other, as well as create and share content.

It’s not a set of tools to exchange marketing messages.  So if you want to connect with people via these tools, you need to have your head and heart in the right place.  Not to spread a marketing message, but to CONNECT with them.

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Here’s why you shouldn’t treat social media as being ‘free’

I fear conversations just like this are happening all over the country right now:

Employee: “Boss, I think we should launch a company blog.  Lots of companies have them now, even a couple of our competitors!”

Boss: “Yeah, I keep hearing more about companies using blogs. How much will it cost us?”

Employee: “Nothing, the ‘software’ is free!”

Boss: “Oh!  Wow ok, lets do it then!”

Second conversation:

Employee: “Boss I know we want to have the site redesign completed by the 1st of the year, but I really think we need to invest in having someone look at our site and make sure it’s optimized properly for search.”

Boss: “Yeah I have been hearing about how companies are investing in SEO when they redesign their sites. How much would it cost us?”

Employee: “I’ve gotten some estimates and the average figure is around $50,000.”

Boss: “Whoa, that’s a lot of money, what will we get for that?”

Notice that when the boss sees an upfront investment being necessary with SEO, then he automatically wants accountability for those efforts.  But if the blog is free, then cool, go for it.  There isn’t the urgency to measure and qualify the efforts that will go into the blog, because it’s ‘free’.  Yet with the SEO expense, you better believe the company will want to talk with the agency and will have to understand how they are going to benefit from that $50,000 SEO expense, before the boss signs that check.

Even IF you can launch a blog for your company and even IF the only expense is your time, you STILL need to quantify and measure your efforts.  You can’t fall into the ‘well it’s free so it doesn’t matter if we measure it’ trap.  Yes I have been harping on the topic of measuring your blogging and social media efforts a lot lately.  Because it’s damn important.

If you don’t measure your social media efforts and make them accountable, then no one will take them seriously.  Period.

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Chris Brogan will be joining #blogchat Sunday nite!

If you haven’t heard, @ChrisBrogan has agreed to co-host #blogchat tonite!  We’ll be discussing how to use other social media sites in order to improve and grow your blog.  I think Chris probably does this better than anyone, so I am thrilled that he’s agreed to share what he’s learned with us.

Now if you are a regular of #blogchat, you know how batshit-insanely fast the chat can get.  It can be danged tough to keep up with, even if you are a veteran.  Add in Chris co-hosting and bringing his 150K followers, and it could be a recipe for complete chaos.  Hopefully in a good way 😉

So in an attempt to make sure that everyone has a grand time, I wanted to try to have a little more background and structure to tomorrow’s chat.  As #blogchat regulars can tell you, #blogchat is pretty much a freeform discussion, and that’s honestly the biggest reason why #blogchat is the most popular chat on Twitter.  But if the volume picks up like I think it will, the ‘freeform’ flow could be too much for some (especially those that are new to #blogchat), unless we have a bit more organization in place.

With that in mind, keep the following in mind:

1 – The topic is How to Use Other Social Sites/Presences to Grow Your Blog.  Please try to keep your tweets on this topic.

2 – For the 1st 30 mins of the chat, we’ll discuss this particular question: “How do you decide which sites you should be active on in order to help your blog?”  I’m not talking about ‘Is Twitter better than Facebook?”, but rather we will be talking about your strategy for growing your blog, and what you are trying to accomplish.  In other words, we won’t be talking about specific tools so much, but rather what do you look for from the sites in order to see if they would be a good fit for what you are trying to accomplish with your blog?  Chris will walk us through his thinking here, and help us figure out which sites will work best to support our blogging strategies.  This area of the discussion will carry us through about 8:30 or so.

3 – At around 8:30, we’ll start talking about how to decide if one of the social sites you have a presence on should just be an ‘outpost’ for you.  Chris has written before about this, here and here.  Please take a few minutes to read these posts to familiarize yourself with the idea.

Now if you have some blog questions that are NOT related to this week’s topic, I would ask you to please join #blogchat after 9pm Central. Chris can likely only stay till around 9pm Central, and we want to make sure that we give as many people as possible a chance to connect with him.  Besides, if you have a question about the best WordPress theme, for example, if you ask it at 8:15, it will just get lost in the sea of #blogchat tweets anyway.  So please, as a courtesy to your fellow #blogchatters, please wait and join us around 9pm Central if you have non-topic questions.  We’ll be happy to help you with those if we can!

For the record, the most active #blogchat ever had a shade over 4,000 tweets in 2 hours.  And ironically, the topic was using Twitter to promote and grow your blog.  A similar topic to tomorrow nite, PLUS Chris Brogan will be co-hosting that topic.  So I wouldn’t be surprised to see tonite’s volume set the record.  Which is a big reason why I wanted to write this post, so everyone can work together so that we have organized chaos, not complete chaos 😉

Sound good?  If you have any questions, please feel free to add them in the comments!

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Having a strategy doesn’t make you social

Let me clear up front: If you are going to use social media, you absetively should have a strategy driving your efforts.  Totally.

But simply creating a social media strategy and executing it doesn’t mean you are using social media correctly.  I can create a blogging strategy for your company and tell you exactly what to do, but that still doesn’t mean you’ll have a successful blog.  You still have to follow-through.

Having a strategy isn’t enough, you still have to BE social.  You still have to WANT to connect with your customers.

So many companies today are resistant to communicating with their customers.  I think in most cases, it’s simply because they never have, and really don’t know how to get started.

But many companies fear blogs and social media because they fear that their customers will say bad things about them.  Or worse, that there will be a social media backlash against their brand.

Folks, social media backlashes don’t just happen, they are created.  Let’s look at a few examples:

Dell Hell – This is the original social media backlash story.  This centered around Jeff Jarvis endlessly blogging his problems with his Dell laptop and the in-home service he paid for, right?  It did, but the spark that lit the fuse of this episode was probably when Dell was contacted about its stance toward bloggers.  The company clarified that it had a ‘look, don’t touch’ policy toward bloggers, and added that if a blogger wanted to get their attention, they needed to contact them directly, cause Dell wouldn’t respond to their blog.  You can imagine that bloggers didn’t cotton to that stance, and that’s when this story started to spread like wildfire throughout the infant blogosphere.  If Dell had been proactive about reaching out to Jarvis via his blog from the get-go, this episode would have likely never happened.

Motrin Moms – Motrin put an ad on its website on a Saturday in late 2008 and some moms found offensive, and they took to Twitter to voice their displeasure.  Throughout the day, the discussion got more heated, and by the end of the day, it was the most popular topic on Twitter.  There was no response whatsoever from Motrin on Twitter, which played a BIG role in the backlash escalating.

The next day, a few bloggers figured out who the agency was that created the ad, and got them on the phone to ask what their response was to the growing backlash on Twitter about the new Motrin ad on their site.  The agency’s response? “What’s Twitter?”.  Apparently, the agency hadn’t been monitoring any of the online feedback to the new ad going up, and neither they nor Motrin had any idea what was happening.  As with Dell Hell, this episode didn’t just happen, it was created by a lack of response from Motrin.

Nestle’s Clash with Greenpeace – This was two-pronged.  First, Greenpeace put up a few videos on YouTube that claimed that the candy company was killing orangutans by harvesting forests for the palm oil that went into their Kit-Kat candy bars.  The videos DID make Nestle look very bad, but really weren’t getting many views on YouTube until…..Nestle stepped in and tried to get them taken down from YouTube.  Now that CONTROVERSY entered into the equation, the videos suddenly became a LOT more popular.

Then Greenpeace and its supporters started going to Nestle’s Facebook page and posting derrogatory comments and images, including those ripping off the company’s logo.  Again, Nestle didn’t handle this as well as it could, first threatening to remove such comments, and then their reps started arguing with commenters on their page!  Of course, these actions simply drew more negative attention to the unfolding episode.

In all three cases, the social media backlash could have very easily been avoided if the company in question had reacted differently.  But this goes to show that companies should understand that their customers aren’t just waiting to use social media to attack them.  These type of episodes don’t happen by accident, they are created by the company not responding correctly to a developing issue.

So how do you avoid a social media backlash and better connect with your customers?

1 – Monitor what is being said online about your company.  I’ve got an entire page set up just for articles on how to get started monitoring what’s being said online about your company.

2 – Start responding to bloggers.  Target ones that are critical of your company, and the ones that are praising your company.  You should leave a comment on their blog, but if you don’t feel completely comfortable doing this, email them directly.  Most bloggers have their contact information on their blog.  Or for extra-credit, do both.

If you can do those two things, you’ll be on your way.  Note that in all three examples at the top, that the company in question waited too long to respond, and when they DID respond, they said the wrong thing.  If you are proactively monitoring your online reputation, and proactively reaching out to customers that have issues, you’ll all but remove any chance of a backlash.

Plus you’ll be on your way to being social, via social media.  Awesome, I was able to tie it back to the post’s title 😉