MackCollier.com

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How to Write Better Blog Posts That Both Google and Twitter Will Love

writing better blog posts, google, twitter, how to get more retweetsThere is a definite art form to writing blog posts that can give you both the short-term gain of being shareable on Social Media sites, and the long-term gain of ranking well with search engines.  Mainly, because you’re trying to reach two different audiences at the same time.  Content that’s shared on Social Media sites typically has a lifespan of a few minutes at best as it is quickly replaced on the person’s timeline/stream with additional items.  But with search engines, content is cataloged and then retrieved later when a relevant search is made.

So let’s think about the differences in those audiences, and how we reach each:

1 – Social Media sites – Blog post title needs to be catchy and attention-grabbing.  An interesting photo that grabs attention also helps for content shared on Facebook and Plus.  But the idea is, how can you grab the person’s attention for even a few seconds so you can convince them to click your link?

2 – Search Engine – Here, we need to write content that’s consistent with the search query.  You can already see a potential conflict with writing for Social Media sites in that we need that catchy, attention-grabbing title and blog post, but both also have to be CONSISTENT with the content of the blog post.  IOW, if we have a cute and sparkly title, but the blog post is crap/inconsistent with blog post title, it not only won’t be Liked, RTed and +1ed, it won’t rank well in search results either.

So we need to write a blog post that has both a catchy title that immediately grabs your attention PLUS one that will include content consistent with the blog post title that will also rank well in search engines.  Whew, glad we didn’t make it tough on ourselves 😉

Let’s tackle the blog post title first.  As I’ve blogged about before, when writing blog post titles the cardinal sin you can make is to simply summarize the post.  I think a lot of bloggers do that because they view the blog post title as an almost ‘throwaway’ item.  But the reality is, if your blog post title stinks, it kills the chance that anyone will click to read the post.

For example, let’s say you wanted to write a post about a recent study you had done on what type of tweets get retweeted on Twitter.  Let’s also say your research determined that there were 5 specific ways to increase the number of RTs you get.

So if we wanted to write a blog post title that simply summarized the blog post, we might go with ‘How to Get More Retweets’.  Because that’s a summary in the post in just a few words.

But Dan Zarrella actually did the study.  Look at the blog post title he chose: [Infographic]: 5 Scientifically Proven Ways to Get More ReTweets.  Isn’t that a great title?  Here’s what I like about the title:

1 – It makes a specific claim that the blog post backs up.  Dan’s research found 5 specific ways to get RTs, so that’s in the title.  Instantly makes it clickable.

2 – It solves a problem.  Want to know how to get more RTs?  Here’s 5 proven ways to do so.  This makes the blog post not only more clickable on social media sites, but also it helps with search engine results.  Now the one caveat to this approach is that by including an infographic, Dan isn’t including many words in the post, so that might hurt its ability to rank in search results versus a blog post someone else writes on how to get more retweets.

3 – It has the shiny word INFOGRAPHIC in the title!  This doesn’t really help with search engines, but does make the blog post do better when shared on social media sites.

 

Now I had to do a bit of revising to the title for this post.  Originally, I was going to go with ‘How to Write Posts That Google and Twitter Will Love’.  That’s ok, but then I realized that it wasn’t specific enough, and it was leaning a bit toward simply summarizing.  So I changed it to ‘How to Write BETTER BLOG Posts That Google and Twitter Will Love’.

Why the change?  Think about it, what are most people more likely to search for ‘how do I write better blog posts’ or ‘how do I write posts’?  So by adding ‘better’ and ‘blog’ to posts, I make the title more descriptive, and more search-friendly.

But I also need to make sure that the content of the post actually backs up the title, plus it helps if the same terms in the title, are in the post.  Note how many times the phrase ‘blog post’ is in this post?  Several times, and especially near the beginning of this blog post (see there it is again!).  That’s a cue to Google that the content of the blog post is consistent with the title.

So if you are wanting to optimize your blog posts for both search engines and social media, keep these tips in mind:

1 – Pick a catchy blog post title that’s also relevant to the blog post.  You want something that immediately grabs the attention of the reader because on social media sites, you’ll probably only have a few seconds to grab the reader’s attention before they move onto the next tweet.

2 – Focus on relevant keywords and phrases in the blog post title as well as the blog post itself.  Note that the term ‘blog post’ is in the title as well as the post, several times.  That’s a keyword phrase that I am focusing on because I want this blog post to rank well when someone searches for this term.

3 – Putting ‘Twitter’ in your blog post title gets you more retweets.  Dan proved this in his blog post linked above 😉

 

UPDATE: To prove the point that Social Media traffic (especially Twitter) can be fleeting, 20 mins ago Dan Zarrella RTed this post, and within 5 minutes there were 60 people online here, according to Google Analytics. That’s a record for this blog.  15 mins later, that number had fallen all the way to 8.

Traffic from Twitter is fleeting, if you are only optimizing your posts to grab traffic from Twitter, you can get a short-term bang, but you might miss the long-term views.  It’s best to optimize for both Search and Social.

NOTHER UPDATE: I just did a Google search for the exact phrase ‘How to Write Better Blog Posts’.  This post was published about 5 hours ago, and already it’s the #3 result on the internet for this term, out of over 50,000.  Not too shabby and with Dan’s RTing example above shows that this post is doing well for both Search and Social.

How to write better blog posts

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Stop Chasing the Next Pinterest

Pinterest for business, social media marketing

I have to admit, the so-called ‘thought leaders’ in the Social Media space really do send out some contradictory advice at times.  We tell companies to focus not on the social media tools themselves, but HOW our customers are using them.  We tell companies to let their markets dictate if we should even be using social media, and how we need to approach social media as a whole as just another tool in our marketing belt.

And yet…every few months, another social media site gets ‘discovered’ by the social media bubble, and we hype the tool to the skies.  Now, the same group that’s preached avoiding the Shiny Object Syndrome is telling every company that they MUST be on Pinterest.  It’s too big to ignore, and will only get bigger.

Just like every company needs to be on Plus, and Quora, and Indenti.ca.  The same ‘social media experts’ that were hyping their Quora profiles this time last year, are all over Pinterest doing the same.

Now, I will be the first to admit that I am nothing close to a Pinterest expert.  I’ve only spent a few hours with the site, but I can see where the emphasis on visuals and pinning could definitely benefit SOME businesses.  In fact, I feel like Pinterest has more potential for companies in general than most of the other Socnets Come Lately that the bubble likes to tout.

But as is always the case, as a company you should never let hype drive your social media strategy.  Should Pinterest be a part of your social media strategy?  That’s for you and your customers to decide, not the ‘expert’ that hypes every new social media site as a ‘must-be-on’ site for companies.

And BTW, in case another thinks I am slamming Pinterest, I gave the exact same advice when the hypefest was touting Google Plus as the site that all companies HAD to be on.

For now, my advice is to be aware of what Pinterest’s functionality is, and to monitor how your customers and competitors are using the site.  If you see that your customers and competitors aren’t there, that’s a good sign that maybe its not the best place for you to spend your time.  On the other hand, if your customers are there, it’s a very sharp sign that you probably should be as well.

Remember, don’t focus on the tools, focus on the connections that the tools help facilitate.

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The Value of Clearing Paths in Marketing

“Oh we’re in constant contact with our customers, we ride with them all the time.” – Harley-Davidson CSO Willie Davidson when asked if HD does market research to better understand their customers.

For years, brands have had it beaten over their heads that ‘The Customer’s in charge now’ and that they need to ‘Give up control and get the hell out of the way!’

Horrible advice, at best.  Customers don’t want to take complete control from brands, they want to love brands that they see themselves in.  We gravitate to brands that are smart enough to understand us, and what we want.

We want companies to make it easier for us to engage in the activities we are already doing.  We want companies to understand where we are headed, and to clear a path to make it easier for us to arrive at our destination.  And we’ll pay good money to the companies that can do this.

Apple understood this with iTunes.  They took the concept of Napster (music located in a central place that was accessible to others) and greatly improved on the stability of the service, and we were willing to pay for it as a result.  The popularity of Napster (In its original form circa 2000) proved that we wanted the ability to log into a service and download songs.  But anyone that used Napster in those early days knows that the quality of the songs was often horrible, and you were at the mercy of whoever was online when you were as to what songs you could get.

Apple understood that we would pay 99 cents a song for a stable download, and a high-quality song.  Plus, they also removed the guilt we may have had over downloading music without paying for it.

They took an activity we were already engaging in, and cleared a path for us to more effectively and efficiently get there, and we are quite willing to pay them for offering this service.

There’s a world of difference between trying to push someone in a direction versus clearing the path they are already headed down.  The smart brands understand this, and are winning as a result.

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How Much Does Social Media Cost Companies in 2012?

Social Media Marketing, Social Media Consulting, Social Media Marketing Fees, Twitter, Facebook, Blog, Google Plus, YouTube, Pinterest

Two years ago I wrote a post entitled So How Much Will a Social Media Strategy Cost, which was designed to give businesses and organizations an idea of how much they should expect to pay consultants and agencies for basic social media marketing services.  As you might expect, that post was insanely popular, so I followed it up with How Much Does Social Media Cost Companies in 2011 last year, and now this year those prices are being updated again with this post.  For all three, these prices are taken from published rates found online, as well as what other agencies and consultants have told me they charge for these services.

In general, both posts in 2010 and 2011 were designed to give companies basic price information around the most common services, such as setup and execution of a blog, Twitter and Facebook page, as well as basic Social Media Training.  In the comments of both posts, many of you mentioned that there were additional areas that you would like to see addressed in the future.

With that in mind, I reached out specifically to some friends and fellow consultants that offer Social Media Marketing services to their clients either as independents, or as part of an agency (their own, or someone else’s).  I would like to thank the following experts for helping me by giving me their rates for these services so I could have the most accurate price information(And on short-notice during the Holidays!):

Jason Falls, Tom Martin, Jay Baer, Tamar Weinberg, Nick Westergaard, Mitch Canter, Lisa Petrilli, David Griner, Drew McLellan, Bobby Rettew, DJ Waldow, Jennifer Kane and Kary Delaria.  If you have any questions about these services or need to hire a consultant or agency to help you with your Social Media Marketing efforts, please email me and I will be happy to work with you, or refer you to one or more of these fine people.  Also, please click their names to visit their blog/site and learn more about their services.

Before I get to the prices, I wanted to talk a bit about how the area of Social Media Consulting has changed over the last few years.  In 2008 and 2009, Social Media Consultants were in fairly high demand, especially the more well-known and established ones.  Companies were realizing that they needed to start using Social Media as a way to listen to and connect with their customers, yet they had little to no idea how to do so. Enter the Social Media Consultant.  A shift in marketing philosophy by many companies created a real demand for professionals that could create and execute social media strategies for companies.

By 2010 and 2011, most companies began to understand that Social Media wasn’t simply a fad, and it was a business necessity that they needed to address via hiring.  Many companies, especially larger brands, hired Social Media Managers, and then entire Social Media Marketing teams.  This shift had a profound impact on the area of Social Media Consulting in two ways:

1 – Many of these companies hired existing Social Media Consultants to be their Social Media Managers and fill their Social Media Marketing teams.  Companies like Radian 6 and Edelman PR aggressively hired independent consultants as well as professionals at other agencies to build and compliment their own Social Media Marketing teams.

2 – Many of these companies stopped (or slowed in) hiring Social Media Consultants for execution work, instead giving that to their in-house team.  The successful consultants and agencies today are usually the ones that adapted the quickest to this change.

As a result, the average Social Media Consultant today is doing less execution work, and is spending more time actually consulting with and training companies on how to use Social Media properly.  Diversification is a good thing.

Now, on with the prices.  As with last year’s post, for every service I am providing a range, as well as a Most Charge distinction.  In general, the fees associated with setup of basic social media tools like a company blog, Twitter or Facebook page have gone down.  On the other hand, rates for comprehensive Social Media Strategy auditing, creation and training services have generally increased.

In general, smaller businesses and non-profits can expect to pay prices that are closer to the low end of the price range, while large companies and organizations will probably see their quoted rates closer to the top end of the range.

Also, when looking at rates for monthly content curation and management of individual social media tools, remember that the more content the consultant/agency has to curate and create/edit for you, the higher the rates.  Likewise, if you can handle the content creation and just need training and some light editing, then your rates will usually be lower.

Here’s the prices:

Blog

Custom design and template creation – $1,000 – $5,000

Most Charge – $1,000-$3,000 

Writing/Editing Content for the blog plus ongoing training – $500-$4,000 a month (Assume 1-2 posts a week at this rate)

Most Charge – $1,000-$3,000

Ghostwriting blog posts – $50-$500 per

Most Charge – $75-$200 per

 

Twitter

Account Setup – $500-$2,000

Most Charge – $500-$1,000 

Ongoing Account Management and Training – $500-$3,000 a month (For this service, the more content you need provided for you, the higher the fees)

Most Charge – $500-$1,500 a month

 

Facebook

Initial Page Setup – $500-$2,500

Most Charge – $500-$1,500

Monthly Content Management and Curation – $500-$3,000 a month 

Most Charge – $1,000-$2,000 a month

Facebook Promotion Creation

Short-Term (1-3 months) Contest, including branding for the app, limited promotion on other channels such as Facebook and Twitter to promote the contest.  Fee doesn’t include prize and Facebook Ads to promote – $1,500-$20,000

Long-Term (3-6 months) Contest, including above, more elaborate promotion based on client’s needs – $25,000-$75,000

Note: These are the ‘Big Three’ tools when it comes to Social Media for business, and many consultants and agencies will offer companies a package deal on setting up and maintaining all three.  For other tools such as Google Plus, Pinterest, MySpace (yes many entertainment and music-related businesses especially still use it) and others, assume that rates in general will be consistent for what you could expect to pay for similar services with Facebook or Twitter.

 

Video

Total to shoot, produce and edit video – $500 – $30,000 (Note:  Obviously, the complexity and length of the video plays a huge role in the final cost.  If you want custom animation, several scenes and a 30-minute video, obviously that’s going to cost far more than a simple, 2-minute one-on-one video.  One expert told me that they charge $1,000 per minute of finished product.)

 

Social Media Strategy 

Social Media Monitoring (Note – Number of keywords/phrases tracked here has a big impact on fees.  More costs more.):

Setup – $500-$5,000

Most Charge – $1,000-$2,000

Ongoing Reports and Advisement – $500-$7,500 a month

Most Charge – $1,000-$2,000

Social Media Strategy Audit (Examine existing Social Media Strategy and give detailed recommendations on what strategy should look like moving forward, with instructions on how to measure results) – $2,000-$25,000

Most Charge – $5,000-$10,000

Social Media Strategy Creation and Integration with Existing Marketing Efforts (Note – Most consultants and agencies will require that this service be married to a Social Media Strategy Audit, as they will then create the strategy recommended in the audit) – $10,000-$30,000

Most Charge – $10,000-$15,000

 

Social Media Training and Consulting

Hourly Training/Consulting – $50-$500 an hour

Most Charge – $100-$250 an hour

Note: These rates are for 1 hour of work.  If you can commit to a certain number of hours a month, for example, consultants and agencies will almost always give you a discount.

Social Media Workshops(All fees exclude travel and are for ON-SITE Workshops, not online):

Half-Day (Up to 4 hours): $500-$7,500

Most Charge – $2,000-$3,500

Full-Day (6-8 hours): $1,000-$15,000

Most Charge – $4,000-$6,000

Note: Keep in mind that these rates represent a significant amount of training and content creation time.  So if you pay a consultant $5,000 for a day-long workshop, that consultant might have spent 20 or 30 hours creating that workshop.  So the prep time has to be considered in addition to the actual time delivering the workshop when looking at fees.

 

Rates to Hire a Social Media Speaker

Individual session (Up to 90 minutes, usually 1 hour): $1,000-$5,000

Most Charge: $2,000-$3,000

Keynote: $1,000-$15,000

Most Charge: $5,000-$10,000

All rates exclude travel.

Finally, I wanted to close with some advice on choosing a Social Media Consultant.  First, before you begin the process of hiring a Social Media Consultant, you need to address a few areas:

  • Figure out what you want to accomplish via Social Media.  Do you want to generate sales?  Increase brand awareness?  Establish thought leadership for your CEO or company?  Connect with donors?  Giving some thought to what you want to accomplish via your social media efforts will make the rest of the process smoother.
  • What are your human resources?  How many people can work on your social media efforts?  If you have a team of 10 at the ready, then the amount of assistance you will need is far less than if you are the only person for your company that will be handling your social media efforts.  Know how many people can work on your social media efforts and how much time they can devote, because if you plan on executing a Social Media Strategy that will require a team of 5, and you only have 2, that shortcoming will have to be addressed either through hiring, or outsourcing to the agency/consultant.  Either way, it costs you money.
  • How long is your project going to be?  You probably can’t pin this down exactly without talking to the consultant first, but it helps to give some thought to this.

When you contact a consultant or agency, they should be asking you questions as well.  They should want to know why you want to use social media, what are you trying to accomplish.  If they try to give you prices or push you toward using a particular tool without asking you questions, that is a red flag.  They really can’t give you prices until they know more about your company, your resources, and what you are wanting to accomplish.  Even if you contact them and tell them you need prices on creating and launching a blog, they should still ask you some questions to determine if you do need a blog to reach your intended business goals for your social media strategy.

As always, I hope this helps you in creating your Social Media budgets for 2012.  If you have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment.

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The promise of Social Media isn’t in leveraging your customers, it’s in better understanding them

Geno Church tapping into the mindset of far too many marketers at the FIRE Sessions

The company found Social Media and thought it was glorious to see, “I can use this tool to help them talk about me!”

I saw this update on Facebook from Toby: ‘BIG pr agency VIP “our job is no longer control in social media; job is to arm fans with talking points to spread wom thru their social graph.” Sigh Is the “social” of social media gone forever?’

When I saw this, I realized that this thought had been bubbling up with me for a while: Most companies aren’t trying to leverage how their customers use social media to better understand them, they are trying to leverage how their customers use social media to create a new promotional channel for the company.  I noticed during last Friday’s Blog World keynote with Ford’s CMO Jim Farley that he kept talking about how powerful social media was because it let Ford spread its message through its customers.  I heard similar stories in other sessions and from other companies.

Good companies/organizations of Planet Earth, please understand that the promise of social media isn’t that it will let customers tell your story, but it will help you to better understand their’s.

At the Live #Blogchat at the FIRE Sessions in September, John Moore made a fabulous point: “In a way, it can be so easy and yet so difficult to engage with customers using social media.  Easy meaning it’s a tool we all have at out disposal to use.  Big companies, small companies, they’re using the same tools.  This allows you to scale the conversation, but just because you can scale the conversation, doesn’t mean you should scale the conversation.  The theme we have here today is ‘Let’s Get Dirty’, meaning hands-on…Doing it dirty, getting dirty is going in and understanding the passion and motivations behind the individual that is tweeting, blogging, updating, whatever….The ‘Easy’ part is the blast, the difficult part is to get your hands dirty, getting hands-on, and getting to know people.  That takes time.  Social media, for many of us, makes us lazy….Social media is so easy, but yet so difficult.  We’re losing the personal touches of getting our hands dirty and taking the time to truly and individually connect on a personal level.”

John’s right.  The promise of Social Media for many companies is that it provides them with a new promotional channel to reach their customers.  Or better still, to connect with their customers and help them promote the brand.  There is a shift in the idea of embracing a brand’s advocates, but as I told Toby on Facebook, what brands need to understand is that their advocates don’t love them for their talking points.  There is some common thread that runs through the brand, that binds them.  Figuring out what those ties are and truly understanding your advocates takes digging and work.

The great promise of social media is that it can help brands better communicate with, and understand their customers.  With a higher level of understanding comes more effective and efficient communication, which leads to even more understanding between the brand and its customers.  At some point, both groups begin to trust the other a bit, and that’s when advocacy on behalf of the customers can come into play.  The end result is the brand can use social media to better understand its customers, to build trust and advocacy with them, and improve their marketing and communication efforts, making them more efficient and saving the brand money.  All while improving customer satisfaction, growing customer retention rates and lowering customer acquisition costs.

Or companies can go on thinking that the beauty of social media is that it allows them to use their customers to RT their press release.

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An honest look at being a Social Media consultant

Typically, I am loathe to write personal posts here, because I think I am boring y’all to tears, but I wanted to do so today.  Over the past few months, I’ve had several discussions with people that are working in this space as the umbrella term of a ‘social media consultant’.  What prompted me to write this post was because several times I have heard from friends that are struggling, and they assume that since they are struggling, that it’s a direct reflection on their abilities as a consultant.  They also assume that most consultants are doing extremely well, so if they aren’t, that further cements the idea that they just aren’t ‘cut out’ for this type of work.

I think there are a LOT of misconceptions about being a social media consultant.  The first is that many people think that ‘big name’ consultants are out there getting $20K every day to swoop into companies and spend a few hours with them.  So the logic becomes ‘if I can make a big name for myself, I will get big bucks too.’

From my experience and talking to others, this is fantasyland.  Not saying 1 or 2 consultants don’t do/get this, but for the consultants I know and talk to, nothing could be further from the truth.  A lot of times they are working on monthly projects, with a monthly fee.  That’s probably a lot closer to $1K than $20K.

The second misconception seems to be that social media consulting is a much more stable and profitable way to go than simply doing similar work for a company.  The downturn in the economy that’s been going on for years now has affected social media consultants as much as anyone.  Probably more, since companies tend to only allocate marketing dollars to the ‘tried and true’ when funds run low.  So if you can’t find a job and are thinking that becoming a ‘social media consultant’ will save you, good luck.

Now that I’ve set the stage with all this doom and gloom, I wanted to circle back to why I wanted to write this post.  It was mainly to talk about the misconception my friends seemed to be having that if they were struggling in consulting, it was more a reflection on them and their skills, versus the reality of the space.  I think it’s more of the latter.  I’m not saying that you can’t make good money and be successful as a social media consultant.  But it is a LOT of work.  Personally, I’ve been doing this for about 5 years now, and 2011 is the 1st year where I’ve really felt like I was getting my feet under me.  There are a TON of ups and downs, so if you are a social media consultant or considering becoming one, please keep these things in mind:

1 – Figure out what you are offering, and who you are offering it to.  And be aware that this likely will change over time, but you need to start out trying to decide who you are wanting to work with, and what you can offer them.  Do you want to work with small businesses, or large companies?  Do you want to work with local clients, or virtually with national clients?  What services do you want to offer?  Campaign/project creation and execution?  Training?  Speaking?  Actual consulting?  Again, this will likely change a bit over time, but a big reason why I think a lot of people struggle with social media consulting is that they don’t clearly have their preferred clients decided upon, and their value proposition for those clients.  Remember, you can’t get work until others know what you do, and a ton of your work will come from referrals.  So the sooner you can clearly define your role and niche, the better.

2 – Realize that there WILL be downtime in work, and how to capitalize on that.  One of the things I have always hated about being a social media consultant is that it seemed like I would have 3 months with little to no work, then 3 months with more work than I could handle.  It was such a relief to talk to other consultants, and find that most of them go through the same feast or famine work cycle.  Their best advice was that when you know a lull is coming, to shift your focus to working on YOUR business, and make yourself your client.  Freshen up your blog/website, re-evaluate your marketing strategy, etc.  For example, I was crazy busy from May-September, but I knew looking ahead that October-December would probably be slower.  So I took some of the personal business projects that I wanted to work on, and moved them to the end of the year.  Now that work is slower, I still have some things to keep me busy.

3 – Be creative in finding sources of income.  The great thing about social media consulting is that this space is so new.  And as such, there’s a ton of new possibilities, and things that have never been tried yet.  For example, my biggest source of income this year has been from doing Live #Blogchats, something that I’d never even considered offering this time last year.  But I decided to try doing one this year at SXSW to see what the reaction would be, and the rest is history.  Other consultants have had much success with thinking ‘outside the box’, for example, look at what Tom Martin has done with getting Emma to sponsor his TalkingWithTom.com, or look at how Jim Kukral is crowd-sourcing the funding of his next book.

 

These are a few ideas, but I know from my own experience that my first few years of being a social media consultant would have been easier if I had known the above.  But if you are struggling as a consultant, don’t assume it means that simply aren’t ‘smart enough’ to do the work, it could simply mean that you need to better organize your marketing and business efforts.  It’s often true that we can offer far better marketing advice for our clients than ourselves.  Look at your business situation as if you were hiring yourself, and see what advice you would give yourself on how to improve your situation.

Those of you that are consulting now, what are some of the potholes you’ve encountered, and how did you move past them?  Or if you are having troubles now, maybe we could give you some advice on moving past them?

 

PS: I meant to add this in the post under #3 but got sidetracked, but Lee Odden last night was telling us about Live-Blogging an event during #Blogchat.  He said that because of his Live-Blogging, he’s gotten passes to over 50 events in the last 5 years.  And of course, being at all those events has opened a ton of doors and opportunities for him.  Check out his post today where he walks you through the process, and talks about some of the benefits he’s enjoyed as a result.

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Should Social Media/Marketing Consultants List Their Prices?

I am totally piggybacking on Marcus’ post over at Spin Sucks, but this is a question I have been pondering for a LONG time.

The two most popular posts so far this year (by a mile) are this post on How Much Social Media Costs in 2011, and this one on How Much Social Media Costs in 2010.  Also, three of the top 7 keywords that send search traffic to this blog are associated with the price of social media services.  So I only have to look at my Google Analytics to tell that there is a HUGE interest in the price of social media services.

And yet, most social media and/or marketing consultants don’t list their prices.  Or if they do, this information is usually buried on their site, in doing research for both of the above posts on the price of social media services, I found several ‘name’ consultants that did have prices for their services, but it was like hunting on their site for a needle in a haystack to find the numbers.  It seems that the few consultants that do quote prices are quoting prices that are so far and above what most of their peers charge that it seems to simply draw ridicule from their peers.  Which might be the plan, cause it also draws a lot of attention to their prices!

I did start listing prices for my Social Media Strategy and Blogging Strategy Audits, but that’s really all I have solid prices down for.  And I also offer a Satisfaction guarantee on both, which is something else I am experimenting with.

But really I want to know what y’all think about this issue.  And I can completely see both sides:  I can see why it would be better to list prices, but I can also see why it would be hard/impossible to quote exact prices for some services.  And to further stump me, I have very good friends and business professionals that have told me I should absolutely list my prices, and others that tell me I absolutely should not!

What do you think?  Should every consultant/agency list prices for their services, or nothing?  If you are a consultant or work for an agency, what’s your policy?

Should consultants list what they charge for social media and marketing services on their site?  Yes or no?

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#Blogchat LIVE video plus info on my Social Media and Blog Strategy Audits

One of the ‘problems’ I am running into when I talk to event organizers and potential sponsors about doing a LIVE #Blogchat is that it’s sometimes difficult for them to understand what a LIVE version of a Twitter chat would look like.  I try telling them that a buncha smart people get in a room and talk to each other, but somehow that still doesn’t get the point across very well 😉  Thankfully, Chris and his team from Huddle Productions created a short video with footage from the LIVE #Blogchat that Dell sponsored last week prior to the start of its #DellCAP event.  This should give you a better idea of what a LIVE #Blogchat is like (Hint: Smartitude galore!):

If you are interested in learning more information about adding a live #Blogchat to your existing event, or in sponsoring one, click here.

The second area I wanted to point your attention to is an update I am making to my consulting services.  For a couple of years now, I have been offering Social Media Strategy Audits to clients.  This service has proven to be very popular so I’ve decided to begin offering Blog Strategy Audits to clients as well.  For many companies, a blog is the only social media tool they are using, so for these companies, a Blog Strategy Audit makes more sense.  Both of these audits will analyze what the company’s competition is doing, as well as assess how the client is currently using blogging/social media, and give them a blueprint and recommendations on what they should do moving forward.  And perhaps most importantly, both audits will include a section on how to measure the results of your strategy.  So I’m not only going to tell you exactly what your strategy should look like, but I’m also going to show you exactly how to measure your efforts.  This is a key area that’s often missing from most blogging/social media strategies.

Both the Social Media Strategy Audit and the Blog Strategy Audit are two-month projects.  For each, you’ll make three payments: You will be billed for the first payment when you agree to purchase the audit, and I must have this payment before I can begin work on your audit.  At the end of the first month, you will be billed for the second payment, and I must have this payment before I can deliver the finished audit.  At the end of the second month, the finished audit will be delivered, along with a bill for the third and final payment.

The price and billing schedule for each audit is:

Social Media Strategy Audit – Price is $7,500.00.  You will be billed in three equal payments of $2,500.00.

Blog Strategy Audit – Price is $5,000.00.  You will be billed in three payments of $1,600.00, $1,700.00 and $1,700.00.

Now, the big change I am making to these services is that as of now, I am adding a guarantee to both of these audits.  Note that above it states that you will be billed for three payments, and that for each audit, you will receive the finished audit, along with a bill for the final payment.  When you receive the finished audit and if you are not satisfied with the audit, then you do not have to make the third and final payment.  I *only* want you to make that third and final payment if you are thrilled with the audit.

I often ask my close friends to give me advice on my work, and to be honest, when I told them that I was thinking of adding this guarantee to these audits, most of them did not think it was a good idea.  As they correctly pointed out, if the client is under no obligation to make the final payment, then why would they?  But I am ok with that.  Because I want companies to understand that I am willing to take that risk because I believe in the quality of the work I will produce for them.

So if your company is interested in either service, please click here for more information on the Social Media Strategy Audit, and click here for more information on the Blog Strategy Audit.  And if you have any additional questions about either audit, or about Live #Blogchat, please do email me.

PS: If you want your blog to be considered for one of the three review slots for this Sunday’s #Blogchat, please leave a comment on this post!

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The Three Pillars of Modern Customer Communication

My first recollections of getting ‘online’ are in the late 1980s, and local electronic BBSes (Bulletin Board Systems).  These were basically where someone would turn their computer into a network where others could call into it with a modem, and we could chat with each other, post messages, etc.  Extremely basic functionality, ‘graphics’, etc, and again, reserved to a very small local packet of people.  The great thing about BBSes was you got to meet local people, and we’d occasionally have ‘meetups’ which of course was the forerunner to the Tweetups we have today.

As the late 80s turned into the early 90s, those BBSes started linking to one another.  I could get on one BBS, and go to a special forum and see messages from another BBS in Denver.  Then the messages we were leaving there, would be sent to the BBS in Denver.  So a very crude form of online communication and network beyond just the one BBS was developing.  Of course, CompuServe had been around since the early 80s, and then Prodigy in the early 90s, and of course AOL in the mid 90s.  These ‘online services’ marked a way for people around the country, and even around the globe, to more easily connect with each other.  The internet itself was becoming more widely used, and websites started popping up like Kudzu in the South.

Which began to mark a change in how people got their information.  No longer did you have to watch CNN to get the latest news, now you could go directly to CNN’s website and get the latest news at a time that was convenient to you.  So as such, we began to talk about news, events, and companies online.  We still didn’t have the best tools to organize and connect with each other, but still, word of mouth was no longer reserved for the offline world only.

Then around a decade or so ago, blogs started popping up among the early adopters.  By 2004 and 2005, blogs were becoming more well-known, and growing in popularity by leaps and bounds.  By 2007, Technorati was tracking over 70 million blogs.  In 2006 we got YouTube and Twitter, and a year later the ‘social media kids’ discovered a social networking site that had already been popular on college campuses for a few years called ‘Facebook’.

As social media tools gave us the ability to quickly and easily create and distribute online content, we began to hear a debate about which was more important: online ‘word of mouse’, or offline word of mouth?  The ‘social media’ camp often argues that social media is the ‘wave of the future’, and that every is headed online.  The people that favor offline word of mouth will point to studies that suggest that 90% of word of mouth still happens offline, and that it trumps social media.

To me, this debate over which is ‘better’, ‘word of mouse’ or ‘word of mouth’ misses two key points:

1 – Both online and offline conversations and experiences feed INTO each other.  Look at your own experiences: How often have you been with friends and discussed something you read online?  Or how often have you gone on a trip, and taken a ton of pictures that you shared with your friends on Facebook as soon as you got home?  The line between our offline and online experiences is blurring.  We can no longer separate the content and conversations we have online with those we have offline.  For most of us, they are feeding into each other, and as a result, both our online and offline activities are richer.

2 – Mobile is greatly accelerating the blurring between online and offline.  Remember the title of this post is the THREE pillars of modern customer communication?  Mobile is the third pillar.  Think about what’s on your smartphone, on mine right now I have an app that lets me access Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, even my WordPress blog if I want.  Add in a camera, a video player, and I have all the tools necessary to link the online content that I and others create, to the offline world that I am in right now.  Note above how I mentioned you could take pictures from a trip then upload them to Flickr when you get back home?  With the proper mobile device, you can cut out the middle man, and take pictures right there, and immediately upload them straight to Twitter or Facebook, all from your smartphone.

The line between what is our offline and our online experiences is blurring and will soon disappear.  It’s pointless to think about which one of these three is the most important, as each is feeding into the other.

Look at this picture.  In terms of this post, Online or Social Media would be the locomotive.  It pulls the load behind it, which is Offline Word of Mouth.  Sometimes the load gets enough momentum that it can even push the locomotive.  They both work together.  But the tracks are mobile.  Mobile makes it much easier for the locomotive to pull the load, and for the load to move because it has the nice smooth tracks under it, instead of a rocky and uneven terrain.

All three work together to create something bigger than the individual parts.  Your company has to understand that your customers are likely going to use all three channels to get, share, create, and distribute content.  There’s no ‘winner’ among these three, they are all on the same team.

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Think Like a Rockstar: Create something amazing for the people that love you

So I was on Twitter late Friday night, and I saw this tweet from @AmandaPalmer.  It got my interest, so I did some checking.  I found dozens of tweets from Amanda’s fans either gushing about her and thanking her for letting them attend the secret show, or those that were angry that they missed it.

From Amanda’s blog, here’s how the secret show was set up:

p.s. for those of you who were waiting on more info about the SECRET-BOSTON-AREA-SHOW next saturday, we put together a little contest. if you wanna come, we’re picking about 50 lucky people who’re gonna join in on our crazy little loft party in arlington, and it’s your LAST CHANCE TO ENTER. get in on this shizzle NOW:

* head over to my profile on GetGlue. you can find it right here:http://getglue.com/recording_artists/amanda_palmer
– don’t have a GetGlue profile, yet? it takes about 20 seconds and you can do so athttp://getglue.com/signup (they also have an app for iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch, Blackberry, and Android – you can sign up on those, too)
* “Check-in” and tell us your favorite AFP-related concert memory, starting with something along the lines of I really want to see Amanda on tour this summer http://bit.ly/AFPtour or My favorite AFP-concert memory was…
– feel free to get creative about how you say that you wanna come, just make sure to include a link to the tour page
– if you haven’t ever seen me or the dolls or evelyn evelyn live, post a link to your favorite live YouTube or Vimeo clip and tell us why you’re excited to (hopefully) come
– bonus points for cross-posting to Twitter and Facebook, and for clicking “Favorite” on AFP (and other AFP-related stuff like The Dolls, Evelyn Evelyn, 8in8, etc)

and that’s it. any questions? post HERE and sean’ll get back to you, asap. we’ll be going through and contacting winners throughout tonight and tomorrow, getting e-mail addresses so that we can get your name for the guestlist, and know where to tell you the location of the show.

 

So Amanda created a free show for her biggest fans, with the requirement for getting in being that her biggest fans would have to share why they loved Amanda.  Which is something they were already doing anyway.  The lucky fans that got to attend were then treated to an amazing show, and they now love Amanda even more.  The fans that didn’t make the show are now extremely jealous of the ones that did, but still love Amanda for going out of her way to connect with her fans.

Attention big companies: You usually make this ‘marketing’ stuff a lot harder than it has to be.

I will once again go back to that wonderful quote from Steve Knox:

Think about what Amanda did here.  She didn’t use social media as a channel to generate sales, or connect with new customers.  She used social media to embrace her biggest fans, and give them a reason to love her even more.  Totally flies in the face of what most companies try to do, which is generate sales from new customers.  Instead, Amanda said she was going to create something totally amazing that customers want, but she not only wasn’t going to charge for it, she was going to give it to her existing customers.

This is why we don’t call these people ‘Amanda’s customers’, we call them ‘Amanda’s fans‘.  The next time Amanda has a paying gig, her fans that attended this show will be even more likely to pay to attend (because they love Amanda even more now) and they will be more likely to encourage their friends to come with them (because they want their friends to love Amanda like they do).  Amanda has created a way to embrace her biggest fans, and to let them do her ‘marketing’ for her.

Why is it that companies can’t get this?

To be fair, some companies are trying.  Ford recently had an event where they flew in influential bloggers to spend a day with them.  The focus was on Ford and its products, but there was also live entertainment and interesting speakers such as Malcolm Gladwell.  That’s definitely not the same as Amanda’s secret show, I think the focus with Forward with Ford was ‘how can we show you what we are doing and get you to like us more?’ while the focus with Amanda’s show was ‘how can I show you how much I love you?’

Which is a big reason why I think rockstars have fans, and companies have customers.  Because most companies view the relationship with their customers as being transactional, while most rockstars view the relationship with their fans as being emotional.

Companies, if you want to be successful, follow Amanda’s approach: Find a way to connect with your biggest advocates, and delight them.  Don’t worry about selling anything to them, create something amazing for them, and then watch as they take the initiative and promote you and maybe even gush about you to their friends and networks.  The end result is that you’ll get those sales you wanted to begin with, but the added bonus will be that you’ll also create a way to excite and delight your biggest advocates in the process.

Again, y’all make this ‘marketing’ stuff a lot harder than it has to be.