MackCollier.com

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How to write blog posts your readers will fall in love with

One of the biggest challenges bloggers face is figuring out what the hell to write about.  And for company bloggers, this problem is magnified because many want to blog about their company and products, which doesn’t appeal to many readers.

So what do you do?  How do you create and frame content that appeals to readers, that makes them actually LOVE reading your blog?  Here’s some ideas:

1 – Focus on the bigger idea behind your products.  What this means is instead of blogging directly about your products, create blog posts that focus on how your customers USE your products, and WHY they buy them.  By doing this, you can still promote your product, but you do so INdirectly, and in the context of another topic that has more relevance to your readers.

Here’s some product examples, and how you could frame your content to focus on the Bigger Idea:

Cameras – Blog about photography and how to take better pictures

Hotels – Blog about travel and the local attractions

Crafting/Decorating products – Blog about home decorating

Organic food – Blog about healthy living

Think about WHY someone would buy your product.  Are they trying to solve a problem?  Become better at something?  Factor in the core motivations for why people buy your products, and craft your content accordingly.  This is something that so many companies miss, because they want to directly promote their products.  The end result is the content isn’t as appealing or valuable to the reader.  By shifting the focus to the Bigger Idea, then the content is more appealing and valuable and you can STILL promote your product, but in the context of a larger and more relevant topic.

Now there are certain cases where it’s ok to be more product-centric in your blog writing.  For example, if you’re a B2B company that sells massive tools that sell for several hundred thousand dollars, then potential buyers would be interested in specific product features and content.  But in general, too much self-promotion turns off readers.

2 – Check your site stats.  Start with your search terms.  What phrases are people using to find your blog?  This tells you the type of content they are looking for!  If you see that many people are searching for the same terms and phrases, that tells you that people are interested in seeing content about these subjects.

Now also keep in mind that people that arrive at your blog via search results are probably NOT regular readers of your blog.  So don’t assume that your REGULAR readers are also interested in the same type of content.  But it’s often a good indicator.

For example, if you see that people are constantly arriving at your blog by searching for “How to start a Facebook page”, then that’s a hint that you should write a post about….wait for it….How to Start a Facebook Page.

Also, which days have the most traffic?  What time of day?  Try to schedule your posts to publish when traffic is at its highest.  A general rule of thumb is that the middle of the week, middle of the day is good.

3 – Pay attention to the posts your readers are paying attention to.  Track how many page views and comments your posts are getting.  Look at the ones that are the most popular.  Do you see that posts covering certain topics usually get more comments and views?  That’s a good hint that your readers want to read more about those topics. I did this last week in a post on pricing social media services.

4 – Respond to requests from readers for content and POINT OUT when you write a post based on reader feedback.  Occasionally, you may have a reader that comments that they really wish you would cover a particular topic on the blog.  If it makes sense to you, absolutely blog about that topic AND when you do, make sure you point out and acknowledge the reader that suggested the topic.  This is a GREAT way to create more compelling content for your blog, but it also shows your readers that you value and appreciate their opinions.  Which means they will be more likely to give you MORE suggestions for content, and if you continue to listen to them, that means you’ll be creating more valuable and relevant topics for them!

So those are some ideas for improving the quality of the content on your company blog.  In general, LISTEN to your readers, they will usually tell you what they are interested in, either directly on the blog, or you can check your stats and see which posts/topics they are paying attention to.

Pic via Flickr user Lel4nd

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How your company can save money on social media services

Here are the 8 most popular search terms yesterday for this site:

So it’s pretty obvious that companies are looking for information on how much they should expect to pay for social media services.  If that’s what you are looking for, then you should definitely check out this post on how much you can expect to pay for social media services.

After looking at those search results (and I get similar results almost every day), I decided I needed to write another post about the cost of social media services.  But this time, I wanted to talk about ways that you can LOWER the cost you pay for social media services from consultants and agencies.  While I try to charge a ‘standard’ rate as much as possible, there are a few variables that go into my pricing that I wanted you to consider when attempting to get a price on services for your own business.

1 – Have plenty of company and market research on hand before asking for prices.  If a company approaches me about creating a social media strategy for them, the first thing I am going to do is begin researching them, their company resources, skill sets, etc, as well as their market and who they want to reach via social media, and how their competitors are using social media.  Obviously, if you can have some of this information on hand, it means I will need to spend less time on research, and that means you pay less.

2 – Be able/willing to handle most/all the execution yourself.  This can be a BIG money-saver for you, but comes with the caveat that you need to be in a position where you CAN handle the execution of a social media strategy.  Not every company is, and most need at least some heavy hand-holding at the start.  But the more of the execution and content creation you are willing to perform, the less money it costs you.  Would you rather pay me $150-200 an hour to train your 4 bloggers on how to create content for your blog, or would you rather pay me $150-200 an hour to do the work of 4 bloggers?  Yeah, that choice is obvious.

3 – Connect with me, or have a friend connect us.  I am always getting referrals from friends and people I have met, and I always try to give these companies a discounted rate if I can.  And if we have  a prior relationship, even if it’s just having met at a conference or event I spoke at, I will want to give you a break on pricing if I can.

4 – Have a long-term project. I tend to discount rates if the project exceeds 3 months, simply because that will be a source of income for a longer time-period.  Also, over the life of a longer project, the amount of work required at the end of the project is usually less than the front, so that lowers the cost as well.  BTW this also applies if you hire me to speak at your event.  The hourly rate I will charge for a 1-hour session is probably double the hourly rate I would charge for an all-day training session, for example.

5 – Pick a time when business isn’t as busy.  This one is tricky and usually just comes down to pure luck.  However from my own experience, business is usually a bit lower for me from around October – March.  That’s usually when I have some ‘bandwidth’ available to take on extra clients, and can give the ones I do, a better rate.

6 – Have a cool project.  This is also tricky, but if I really love the ideas you have, I will probably be willing to cut you a deal on price to get the work.  For example, if you are a mid-sized to large B2C company that wants to leverage social media to connect with your brand evangelists, I can almost guarantee that you will get my best rate, and that I’ll make every effort to take on that project, no matter how busy I am 😉

Anyway those are some tips for you, and are from my perspective, if you talk to another agency or consultant, they could have a completely different set of criteria.  But in general, the more work and execution you can handle yourself, the less your costs will be.  Hope this list helps!  Oh and BTW if you are interested in working with me on a social media project for your company, please email me!

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The key to building community via social media that you are totally missing

Do you have an engagement strategy built into your social media efforts?  Do you want more comments, more friends, more followers?  More interaction?

Many companies want this. If you use social media personally, you probably want this as well.  We want interaction because it tells us that we are creating something of value for others.

But in trying to get more interaction, we often ask the wrong question.  We ask “How can I get more comments on my blog?”

Instead, we should be asking “How will having more comments make this blog more valuable to my readers?”

Because when you shift your focus to what’s better for the reader, then how you approach comments changes.  Think about it, getting 15 comments to a post might be great for you.  But if those 15 comments are mostly ‘Dude, great post!’ type comments, then it strokes your ego, but really adds little for the reader.  On the other hand, if those 15 comments are all DEEP points that spark and encourage a discussion, then you are creating value for the reader via the comments.  Then a discussion is happening in the comments section, and THAT is valuable to your readers.

So when you are crafting an engagement strategy, make a list of the desired actions that you want others to take (leave comments, follow me, link to my site), then for each desired action, list the BENEFIT to that person for performing that action.

When you start viewing your engagement strategy through the lens of ‘what’s in it for them’, then the way you approach being engaging via social media will completely change.

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Planning/Hosting an upcoming Social Media conference? Don’t miss this opportunity…

Luck favors the prepared.

Last week I conducted a workshop on creating engagement and excitement around your social media efforts at the Social Media Optimization Summit in Dallas.  You can read my review of the event here. But the day before the event started, there was a tweetup scheduled in the sports bar at the Sheraton, where #OptSum was going to take place.  Myself and a few others were promoting the event on Twitter in the days leading up to the event, but on the Monday OF the tweetup, activity spiked.  Several tweets told the exact location of where the tweetup would be.

As the time for the tweetup drew near, I realized something.  Here were a buncha people on Twitter, that all have decent ‘followings’, all telling people in Dallas to come to the Sheraton for a tweetup.  If I were handling social media for The Sheraton in Dallas (and yes, the Sheraton in Dallas is on Twitter), then I would probably want to know that several people with anywhere from 5,000-25,000 followers each were promoting my business on Twitter, right?

Additionally, most of the speakers at #OptSum, were staying at the Sheraton.  So The Sheraton in Dallas had several speakers with large social media networks staying there, and had many people with large networks attending the tweetup in the hotel’s sports bar, and apparently did nothing to reach out to these people?  That seems like a pretty big missed opportunity, if you ask me.  BTW, we aren’t talking anything elaborate either, a simple hand-written note waiting in our rooms, or simply attending the tweetup and thanking everyone for coming (and promoting on Twitter), would have been nice.  These would have been very simple ways for The Sheraton to show that they appreciate us promoting their business, and by showing that appreciation, they would have given us the encouragement to CONTINUE to promote The Sheraton.

Jason Falls spoke at the Dallas Social Media Club chapter last Tuesday, and he mentioned a conversation he had with Klout’s CEO during SXSW.  Klout is a service that attempts to ‘measure’ the ‘influence’ of Twitter users, similarly to Twitter-Grader and the like.  Jason said he asked the CEO basically why he should care about Klout.  The CEO told him that they were working on ways to let companies leverage a customer’s Klout score.  For example, if an airline sees that a particular customer in coach has a high Klout score, they could upgrade their flight to first or business class if a seat was available.

I think it’s important to consider such issues as we get into the ‘conference season’.  Over the next couple of months there will be a lot of ‘power’ social media users traveling across the country.  This represents a big opportunity for hotels and tourist attractions in cities where these events will be held to reach out to these people.  A couple of years ago, Cirque Du Soleil’s social media manager Jessica Berlin invited a few hundred bloggers from Blog World Expo to attend one of Cirque’s shows in Las Vegas.  Great example of reaching out to influencers to help promote your product.

What do you think?  If you’re helping to organize an event, even a local one, are you paying attention to the chatter on social sites such as Twitter?  How could the feedback change the way you treat the event’s speakers and attendees?  Should it?

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The fast food approach to social media

“May I take your order?”

“Yes, I’d like a small Twitter presence, with 200 followers.  And a Facebook Fan Page, but could you upsize that to 5,000 fans?  And I’d like to add a side of 3 updates a day to each, and a daily status report.”

Amazingly, I got an email earlier asking for exactly that.  This person wasn’t interested in a social media strategy, they wanted to know what I would charge them to create a Twitter presence with X number of followers, and a Facebook Fan Page with X number of fans.

This request really scares me for two reasons:

1 – That many companies think that number of fans or followers alone is a metric that indicates a successful social media effort.  And they do, the above request is far from the only one I’ve received.

2 – A shady agency or consultant looking to make a fast buck will be all over this request.

Folks this apparently need to be repeated: The number of fans/followers your social media presences has is meaningless.  If you want to have 500 followers on Twitter, then just start an account and follow 2,000 people (the follower limit for new accounts).  You should eventually get about 500 follow-backs.

But unless those 500 followers either do business with you, or have some level of influence over the people that WILL do business with you, then they are all but worthless to you.

In the opening exchange, what’s the magic word that’s never mentioned?

Strategy.

Getting 5,000 fans on a Facebook fan page is NOT a social media strategy.  Getting 200 followers on Twitter is NOT a social media strategy.  Facebook and Twitter are tactics used to execute a social media strategy, getting on Facebook and Twitter is not a social media strategy.

If you want to know more about creating a social media strategy, I wrote just the post for you, Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Creating a Social Media Strategy (But were afraid to ask).  But please, don’t put the cart (tactics) before the horse (strategy).  And please don’t believe that more fans/followers = a more successful social media effort.  30 engaged and excited current/potential customers on your Facebook fan page will trump 300 disinterested followers ANY day of the week.

Pic via Flickr user Tony the Misfit

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How to be inspired by SXSW if you weren’t there

If you haven’t noticed on Twitter the past few days, geeks have been having a field day in Austin, otherwise known as SXSW-Interactive.  I’m often asked which social media conferences are ‘must attend’ events, and although I don’t think SXSW is right for everyone, I do think that anyone that’s active in the social media space should attend SXSWi at least once.

If you ask most attendees what makes SXSW so great, the response you will hear 99% of the time is ‘the people’.  In fact, it’s a bit of a stretch to call SXSW a conference, because most attendees aren’t there for the program, the sessions.  They are there for the discussions in the hallways.  The talks over dinner between 10 people that up till yesterday you only knew online.

But at its heart, SXSWi works because it gives us the chance to connect and share ideas.  Which is when the magic happens.  So how can you draw inspiration from SXSWi even if you weren’t there?  Here’s some ideas:

1 – Comment more on other blogs.  And don’t just comment to leave your feedback, become a participant in active conversations.  Talk to my friend Lisa Petrilli, she is doing an amazing job with this.

2 – Become an active participant in Twitter chats.  @JDEbberly is actively involved in several Twitter chats, including #blogchat.  I’m sure it’s greatly expanded his network because he’s constantly meeting and engaging with new people.

3 – Start a Twitter chat focusing on a topic you are passionate about.  Seriously, I have no idea why more people aren’t doing this.  Beth and Anna started #IMCchat because the need for integrated marketing is a topic they believe in.  But it could be anything, it could be about your love of NASCAR, Civil War memorabilia, or politics in Rhode Island.  Pick a topic you want to discuss and run with it.  I didn’t wait for anyone to tell me that it was ‘ok’ to start #blogchat, I just did it.  You don’t need permission to connect with other people that are just as passionate about a topic or idea as you are.

4 – Attend local social media events/Tweetups – And especially if it’s a Tweetup, wear a name tag with your Twitter name on it.  A great icebreaker!  Nothing in your area?  Float the idea out to your friends about having a Tweetup or maybe even a Barcamp/Podcamp type meetup.

These are some ideas to get those connections, both online and offline, going.  And if you DID attend SXSWi, how are you going to keep that level of inspiration going once you get back home?

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Do you always have your community’s best interests in mind?

How many of you have done this same thing?  Commented on a friend’s status or item then almost immediately you started getting emails from Facebook alerting you to other people that had commented as well.

This is perfect if you want to see what everyone else is saying.  But what if you didn’t?  What if you just wanted to leave a comment and move on.  And the constant stream of unwanted emails will now make you think twice about leaving that next comment on a Facebook update, won’t it?

Which is ironic, because Facebook is sending you those emails to try to ENCOURAGE you to go back to its site and check the updates.  To comment again.  But often, the persistent emails can lead to FEWER comments, not more.

I hate am not a fan of Disqus.  Partly because I always seem to have trouble getting the comment form to load properly to begin with, but mostly because it always seems to send me emails about new comments on a post after I leave a comment.  Even when I tell it not to.  It’s sending me these emails because it wants me to go back and re-read the comments to see what I have missed.  Instead, it makes me less likely to comment on blogs that have Disqus installed.

Everyone is buzzing about FourSquare.  But if you’re active on Twitter, you’ve no doubt seen that some of the buzzing is coming from people that are sick and tired of seeing constant FourSquare updates in their Twitter stream.  Seriously, I’m expecting someone to say they are at the right cushion on their couch, then the following tweet to be “I’ve just ousted my wife as Mayor of My Living Room”.

As with Facebook and Disqus, these updates are designed to get people to check out FourSquare.  The advantage to the user, and FourSquare, is obvious.  But what benefit do these constant updates have for the rest of us?  Often times, they are simply a nuisance.

And when you are trying to build awareness for your online community, you need to consider this.  You need to make sure that in attempting to build that awareness, that your efforts are also CREATING VALUE for the people you are trying to reach.

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How many filters does your message pass through?

Remember that game where a group of people sit in a circle and one person whispers a rumor to the person next to them?  Then that person whispers it to the next person, and so on until the rumor has worked its way around the circle.  Then the last person tells everyone what the rumor is, so they can see how the story changed from start to finish.

I was thinking about this game when Kevin Smith recently had his very public spat with Southwest Airlines.  I’ve already covered what happened and my thoughts over at The Viral Garden, and don’t want to rehash everything here.  But I think this case is an interesting study in how the number of filters or channels a message goes through can have a serious impact on when a company responds, and how they respond, and perhaps most importantly, WHAT they believe they are responding to.

Case in point, Kevin had the tools available to DIRECTLY communicate with 1.6 million followers on Twitter.  For Southwest, they had to have the flight attendants and pilot, and gate attendants all communicate with their PR dept, and at that point the message MIGHT have gotten in touch with someone that could respond to Kevin via the same tools he was using; social media.  So it’s obvious that Kevin could get HIS message out much quicker than Southwest could.

And to be fair, Southwest is very active in social media.  But even with that, their natural communication infrastructure dictated that their response to Kevin’s message couldn’t come as quickly.  All of the above people, the attendants on the plane and at the gate, the pilot, and perhaps others, all had to be consulted to get their version of the incident with Kevin.  Then when all the information was collected, the PR dept had to issue the appropriate response for Southwest.

So how does a company address this and get timely and accurate responses out via social media tools during a crisis situation?  I think it comes down to a two-part solution:

1 – Reduce the number of channels that a response must pass through

2 – Reduce the amount of friction in each channel

When there is a crisis situation, a timely, accurate and valuable response is essential.  Companies should be aware of social media and how these tools work, if for no other reason than to understand how their customers are utilizing these tools to create and share content.  Now granted, if you’re running a 1-man fruit stand, understanding how your customers could be using social media might not be your top priority.  But if you are a Fortune 50 B2C company that is ignoring how your customers communicate via social media, you have a ticking time bomb on your hands.

So companies (especially larger ones) should invest the time to educate their employees on social media tools, what they can and cannot do, and how their customers are using these tools to communicate with each other, and to create content about their company.  They should also create a social media policy so that employees understand not only how to use social media tools, but what usage is acceptable, and if any is not.  Many of your employees will be using social media anyway, so it’s best to put some guidelines in place to govern their usage on company time.  This will also give employees that aren’t familiar with social media and incentive to become active in using these tools to connect with customers.  IBM has a great social media policy, if you want an example to look at.

Next, companies should create internal tools that allow employees to connect with each other.  Tools like Yammer give employees a quick and easy way to connect with each other, and collaborate on projects.  Companies like Dell and LinkedIn have internal blogs and wikis set up that let their employees connect with each other and share information quickly and easily.  This helps reduce friction in the channels, but can also reduce the number of channels, if it allows a front-line employee to instantly connect with the appropriate person that can respond to a developing crisis situation.

But at the end of the day, the key to addressing a developing crisis situation via social media is to utilize the same tools that your customers are, in the same way.  If there’s a firestorm erupting via blogs, your customers will expect you to respond via those same blogs, not via a carefully-worded press release 4 days later.  If your company can educate its employees about how to use these tools, both external AND internal communication will be greatly improved, as will your ability to deal with future crisis situations.

PS: Thanks to Beth Harte for recommending I write this post.

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The ROI of giving a damn

This morning I was pleasantly surprised to see a tweet from Mike Myatt about an article FedEx’s Matt Ceniceros had written where he discussed how the company uses social media to connect with its customers.  He added this passage:

“Social media” can seem like a complex world of diverse and daunting technology. But the technology is fairly easy to learn if you spent some time with it. Social media is really just another channel to tell people about your business.  If you read any of the top online influencers like Chris Brogan, Mack Collier or Dan Schwabel they all give insights on how to be “social” and personal online.  They tackle many of the issues we have in face-to-face communication, but how to translate the learnings online.

I really appreciate Matt mentioning me in that context, and especially with Chris and Dan.  Matt’s doing a great job of leveraging social media to connect with Fed-Ex’s customers online, and he’s the only employee of ANY shipping company that I’ve ever interacted with on Twitter.  So he’s got a leg-up on the competition there.

Matt and I have talked on Twitter several times, some times about how companies can use social media, or how his company can use social media, or we’ve even chatted about college football a few times (Matt’s a big Texas fan).

If you’re like many people, and especially companies, you might look at social media and think “Ok how is talking to a bunch of people all day going to help me?  What’s the ROI of being friendly on Twitter?”

It’s a legitimate question, and one that many of us struggle with.  Hell I have to justify to myself the amount of time I spend using social media.

But I don’t ever feel the need to question if there is value in helping others.  In connecting friends, in sharing what I’ve learned.  Case in point; even though Matt and I have talked several times on Twitter, we may never work together, and technically I probably won’t get any direct business from interacting with him.  But because we’ve chatted before, because I’ve tried to help him, we became friends via Twitter, and that’s probably had something to do with him mentioning me in his article.  Which then got RTed several times, then Chris RTed it to his 100K or so followers, and a whole lot of people were exposed to a very positive endorsement by the guy that heads up social media for one of the largest companies in the world.

Not too shabby.

This is why I don’t think companies should obsess about the ROI of social media.  Should they, MUST they see a return on their time and money and effort?  Absolutely.  But if companies view every single interaction and minute spent with social media through the lens of ‘is this going to make us money?’, they are going to miss the big picture.  That social media works best at INDIRECTLY creating value for companies.  It’s not “If we tweet, we’ll sell more stuff”, it’s “If we can create value for our customers via Twitter, then that will increase their trust in us and the brand equity we have with them and then AS A RESULT of that, sales will increase.”

For example, let’s look at #blogchat.  Our weekly chat about personal and professional blogging on Twitter has been growing like a weed for 11 months.  Occasionally, friends will tell me “You need to find a way to get some business from #blogchat, you’re spending too much time with it not to.”  But I didn’t create #blogchat as a way to get more consulting business, I created it as a way for people to come together on Twitter and talk about blogging.  That’s it.  Now as a result of #blogchat I have connected with people that HAVE referred me to clients and that HAVE hired me to do work for them, but that’s been an INDIRECT result of creating the chat.  If I tried to make #blogchat a vehicle for DIRECTLY giving me business, it likely would be a lot less valuable to everyone else, and as a result a lot less popular.  Which means it probably wouldn’t be helping me get any business anyway.

So companies, be mindful of getting value from your social media efforts, but understand that the more value you CREATE for the people you are trying to connect with, the more value you’ll receive in return.

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Audio Post: Defining Online Influence

Hey guys, I wanted to try something different with this post. Lately I’ve been struggling to find time to get new posts up here and at The Viral Garden as frequently as I want. So I wanted to experiment with doing some audio posts like this one. I can do these quicker than writing a post, and if you guys like the format I might do one of these a week or so, and see how it goes. If you don’t like them, let me know that as well.

Thanks guys! And if you have any problem with the player or the audio, let me know!

[audio:https://mackcollier.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Post2-15.mp3|titles=Defining Online Influence]