Here’s a tip for getting more content on your blog: Interview smart people.  Case in point, I was checking the profiles of some of the people I follow on Twitter, and I clicked on @REBlogGirl’s profile, which says she does “Something Something at a Major Record Label.”  I had to learn more, so I DMed Mary and she told she works with artists on reputation management as well as social media and mobile marketing.  As we all know, I am a big music marketing nerd, so I begged Mary to let me interview her, and she was gracious enough to share the following with us:

Mary: You know this is such a great question because we self identify in different ways with different brands and even with different personalities and most of that is due to the ways in which those things reach us through media channels.

For example: Justin Beiber had a huge following on YouTube long before he signed with label and produced his first album. He was his own marketing machine. He marketed himself as a human being and as a talent through mostly cover songs. It wasn’t really his music he was showcasing at the time, it was his talent and himself. We identified with Justin himself and his talent. That made it easier for us to start identifying with his original music once he was signed and had a produced album and singles. His brand is authentic, delivered in his own words through a very personal Youtube channel.

On the other hand take someone like Britney Spears that has had the full media power and protection of labels, studios and PR teams since she was a child. She reached us through the mass media and the PR machine of a major record label.  Her brand is wholly different from Justin’s we identify with her and her talent but she never really spoke to us one on one and pushed her own talent, music brand. When we think of Britney we think of her videos, her songs, her album, not her personality. We see her as a parent company to her endorsed products/merchandise (perfumes and Candies clothing lines), her albums and songs and her tours. We see her life played out through tabloids and magazines in the words of others. Her brand is very produced and managed. That’s not to say we don’t love her any less than Justin, but we see her as slightly more mysterious and question the authenticity more.

Why did I wax on about the difference between the fame machines of Justin and Britney – because they really aren’t any different from the marketing behind brands like Virgin or Pepsi. Both companies that have done great jobs at marketing themselves through personalities… When we think Virgin, we think Richard Branson. When we think Pepsi we think their long line of famous spokespeople from Michael Jackson to Britney Spears. And in those ways, we are fans of brands. We have loyalties to brands. You could never get me to switch from Coke to Pepsi or trade my Mac in for a PC. I identify those brands with personalities and ideals I cling to in the same ways I cling to the traits of artists I identify with.

We find connection and authenticity where it is presented to us. It’s the quality of marketing behind any brand that personalizes it, gives it a face and an ideal we can relate to. When you think Ford, do you think American values? When you think Disney, do you think smiling kids? When you think Jessica Simpson, do you think adorably dumb? All these brands have coupled themselves to a concept or value that resonates with people on personal levels. Good brands and good celebrities do this. There are rock stars out there that fail to differentiate themselves just like there are brands that fail at this. Consider how many pop stars you have to occasional wonder “What ever happened to?” about. Those are brands that failed to differentiate and maintain their markets.

So, in answer to the question, no, rockstars as a group are not better at authentically engaging fans. Some rockstars just know how to market better than others. Britney Spears is the Pepsi of Rockstars – she has a good product, a recognizable brand and cash in the coiffeurs to spend on the marketing necessary to launch an album or a perfume successfully.

Mack: Social Media Marketing or Mobile Marketing.  Which will be bigger for artists in 2011?

Mary: Mobile’s big year is still a few years out by all accounts, but with more smart phones in the market than ever before, it shouldn’t be long before social and mobile meet to offer artists something unique. The idea of the social entertainment checkin is what everyone is talking about. Imagine being able to checkin in at a not just a location but a concert itself, or to check in on Vevo or Hulu when you watch a video or movie.  The value that offers marketers, viewers (who can engage with other fans virtually and online) and simultaneously share is really very interesting. That day is not too far off, not with Facebook and Google both trying to leverage their place based applications on mobile devices.

However, the key for artists right now is to leverage their fan base with exclusive content they drip through channels like Facebook, Twitter, Vevo, mobile ads on Pandora and in app advertising that allow the distribution of exclusive content that drives sales through to their itunes, endorsement and tour properties. Mobile, at least for now, can be best leveraged for download and concert sales. Social on the other hand needs to be leveraged for engagement and the building of personal and brand equity.  Small to mid sized artists need to use their social channels to engage with fans in controlled ways – over engagements creates a false sense of connectivity one cannot maintain over times, but real occasional question and answer format or thanks for retweeting are really valuable. You never want to create a false expectation that you will answer all your fans – that would be impossible but by creating a standardized format for regular engagement you can manage the expectation of your fan base. Contests and Q&A sessions are the easiest and most effective engagement tools.

Example: Katy Perry Fire Work Contest

Mack: So do you get to go touring with an artists?  What are your days like?

Mary: I don’t tour with artists – I just help them manage their reputation online so fans can be engaged in positive events in their lives, their endorsed products and tour rather than on negativity. For example, should someone (not mentioning any names here) think it might be edgy to post a photo of themselves half or wholly naked on Twitter, I work to make sure those images get dispatched quickly. I also help artists and their PR teams build engaged social presences on Facebook, Myspace, YouTube and Twitter and make sure these channels work together for a common goal – to sell merchandise, tickets, downloads and albums. The real key here is to manage the expectation of the fan when it comes to engagement. Making sure an artist can communicate effectively and authentically with their fans is important and making sure the fans understand how the artist shares and how they like to engage is really critical to the success of their social profiles.

Example: Lady GaGa’s Facebook page is booming with activity. She personally shares exclusive insight into her thoughts and life and wants to truly engage with her fan base, but her page makes it clear through the content she shares she is an unbelievably busy woman. That is what manages the expectation for the fan.

Mack: What’s the next ‘big thing’ in music marketing?

Mary: While everyone has had their eye on Spotify, I think the smartest thing the music industry has done is really build out Vevo. Based on the Hulu model, Vevo has really taken off. It serves exclusive content, hosts all the artists videos in one unified label owned place and is driving in more people than Hulu! What Universal CEO, Doug Morris said last yeat at launch, still rings true today, “What we’re really doing is taking back control of everything…this is really like MTV on steroids. We’re starting with that kind of audience. But now we’re in control of it. We don’t have to go through a middleman anymore.” The premium content model is leveraging fan base against both artist brand and artist product to deliver exactly what the fan wants – the ON DEMAND ALL ACCESS PASS to their favorite artist. It’s a simple model and it is working on Vevo. I see this as the way labels and artist can survive in the face of piracy, faltering 360 Deals and crumbling recorded music sales infrastructure.

Yowza! Thanks again to @REBlogGirl (who’s secret identity is Mary McKnight) for dropping that music marketing smartitude on us.  Do me a big favor and please follow Mary on Twitter, and subscribe to her blog.

Last week I spent a few days providing social media training for a company that probably provides social media services for more clients than any other company in the country, if not the world.

Where was I?  Well I wasn’t working with a hotshot PR firm, or a branding agency.  In fact, you’ve probably never heard of the company.  But they currently provide and execute social media strategies for well over a thousand clients.  The company currently creates over 2,500 blog posts a week for over 1,200 clients, and adds 30-75 new ones every month.  And their renewal rate for those clients is right at 90%.

I was in Atlanta training with the good people at Network Communications, Inc.  NCI is the largest national publisher of local printed and online magazines for the real estate market, and my guess is they probably provide social media services for more clients than anyone else in the country, if not the world.  They offer social media services to property managers, realtors, architects, interior designers, and contractors, just to name a few of their client areas.

And they’ve gone from 0 to 1,200 social media clients in just a year’s time.  All while providing an extremely affordable social media solution for clients.  Those clients get a blog (with 2 new posts every week), a Twitter presence, and a Facebook page, for usually $350-395 a month.

Blogging is a big part of what NCI is hanging its hat on as far as driving success via social media for its clients.  And that’s why I was in Atlanta last week, to work with 60 or so of the company’s bloggers on how they can better create blog posts that help them reach their client’s objectives.

What struck me in the weeks leading up to the training sessions, and during my time with the team in Atlanta, was that the engagement level on the blogs was often non-existent.  Few, if any comments, no retweets, no ‘signs of life’.  In fact, I was thinking to myself that many ‘social media people’ would look at these blogs, see little to no engagement, and view them as failures.

But obviously they aren’t failing their clients, who keep jumping on board.  So how does NCI create value for its clients via blogging?

“Our goal is to drive leads for clients on the web.” explains Adam Japko, the Senior VP and President of the Home & Design Area for NCI.

Customer leads for clients.  This is one of the points I keep stressing to those of you that are trying to get buy-in from your boss for your social media ideas.  You have to make the business case for social media.  NCI is doing that.  They are delivering a tangible return on their client’s investment.  As a matter of fact, Adam shared a case study with me from one of their clients that I will be sharing here with you on Thursday.  Let’s just say this client saw a pretty huge cost savings from letting NCI guide its social media efforts.

Now everything is not perfect sledding for NCI.  What they’ve done in the last year is literally invent a business model.  There’s few if any other companies that are providing social media services on such a widescale level.  So NCI is having to invent the template here, and that’s created some problems for them over the last year.

One of the company’s biggest challenges was that they grew quicker than they expected. “Our volume of clients came in faster and bigger bunches than anybody would have imagined. We have hired and trained more than 70 people this year as we ramped” explains Japko.  I saw that NCI is still dealing with managing the workload for workers, as well as shuffling people around and trying to find the best fit for everyone.  There are clearly growing pains at work here, but they ARE growing.

And I don’t see that growth slowing down any time soon, in fact, as they continue to improve their existing business processes, the growth should only accelerate.  Thanks again to Adam (who is also a wine buff with a great blog), Rick, Ed, Keith, Melissa, the bloggers, OCMs and all the good people at NCI for having me last week.  I hope to make it back again soon, and thanks to my dear friend Charity Hisle, who is also one of NCI’s shining stars, for the picture to this post.

(Disclosure – NCI is a client, but did not pay me to write this post.  I wrote it cause I think their business model and how they are breaking new ground in providing a low-cost social media solution to clients is pretty interesting.  Plus, I enjoyed meeting all the managers and executives, as well as the bloggers and OCMs such as Amanda, Keenan, Craig, Justin, Natasha, Jo Anne, Deidre, Ashley, Lynda, Kali and the rest of the NCI team.)

If you missed last nite’s #Blogchat, here is the transcript.

I’ve been so excited about the lineup for October that I could barely wait till today to get this post up!  We’ll have TWO amazing co-hosts plus #Blogchat will have its first sponsor!  Here’s the lineup:

October 3rd – Brian Clark (@CopyBlogger) Co-Host on “How to Create Compelling Content For Your Blog”.  Brian will teach us how to create content that is not only search engine-friendly, but that also engages our readers.  And he will also show us how to improve our headline writing, including making them more interesting, but also consider SEO implications and making them more ‘shareable’ on social sites.  Brian is an absolute genius at improving boring headlines, as well as creating more interesting content.  I cannot wait to have him join us so we can learn from him!

October 10th – SPONSORED #Blogchat – Grant Griffiths (@GrantGriffiths) from Headway Themes will join us to discuss “How to Choose a Template For Your Blog”.  This will be the first sponsored #Blogchat, and it will be broken into 2 parts.  The first 30 mins will focus on discussing which elements you should consider when choosing a blog template.  Then in the 2nd 30 mins, we’ll discuss if you should go with a free blog template, or if you should purchase a premium template such as the one Headway offers.  This would be the perfect opportunity for #Blogchat participants to learn more about what premium blog templates offer, and to ask Grant any questions you have about Headway, such as its price, features, and support.  Or if you’re undecided if you should stick with a free template or go with a premium, we’ll try to help you decide!

October 17th – Shannon Paul (@ShannonPaul)  Co-Host on “How to Respond to Comments on Your Company Blog”. Shannon has one of the most extensive corporate social media backgrounds on the planet.  Before taking on her current role as Social Media Manager for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, she helped shape the social media strategies for WeSeed and the Detroit Red Wings.  She’ll be joining us to tackle a topic she’s been successfully dealing with for years, how companies should handle and respond to comments on their blog.  She just wrote a fabulous post detailing how to handle this, with a bonus slideshare deck!

October 24th – TBA

October 31st – OPEN MIC ON HALLOWEEN! Holy crap this might be more awesomeness than I can stand.  We’ll have to have some fun with this, maybe show up in our favorite monster avatars?  Hmmmm….let me think on this.

Seriously, is that one incredible line-up, or what?  Now I wanted to close with a word on sponsors and co-hosts.  If your company is interested in sponsoring a future #Blogchat, then please check out this page for more information.  The 2nd Sunday of every month is reserved for sponsorship, with November the 14th being the first available slot.  All sponsorship slots are available on a first-come, first-served basis.  If you want to reserve a slot, you’ll need to contact me at least 2 weeks before the slot you want, so we can get your payment processed, plus I want at least a week prior to properly promote your sponsored #Blogchat.  The link above has more information on topic matter, but for the most part, I am looking for topics that will promote your company/offerings, but that also address topics that #Blogchat participants need help with.  Check out the topic for this month’s sponsored #Blogchat above, as an example of what I am talking about.  And also think about ways that your sponsorship could also benefit #Blogchat participants.  Maybe a 10% off coupon, or a trial subscription to your site/service.  If your sponsorship creates value for #Blogchat participants, then it will benefit you by creating goodwill with and positive reviews from #Blogchat participants.

Now, as for Co-Hosts.  As #Blogchat has grown in popularity in the last few months, a lot of people have started asking me if they could co-host a #Blogchat.  Moving forward, #Blogchat will have one co-host a month, on the 1st Sunday of every month.  Currently, I have November’s co-host booked (And it’s another amazing co-host, I can’t wait to share who it is!), and am talking to a couple of people about co-hosting in December and January of next year.  So if you are interested in co-hosting, please understand that we’ll need to come up with a blogging topic that you can teach on that makes sense for the #Blogchat audience, and also understand that the earliest you could join as co-host would probably be January of 2011.

That’s it! Once again, thank y’all SO much for coming every week to #Blogchat!  The bar just keeps getting higher but I think we’ll have an awesome November in store for y’all as well 😉

Last week in Dallas I led a workshop at #Optsum called Think Like a Rockstar, that looked at how rockstars connect with their customers and turn them into fans.  And what companies can learn from rockstars in cultivating their own brand advocates.  I included several examples of how rockstars connect with and embrace their fans.

But a couple of days ago I realized that I left out one of the best examples of a rockstar embracing his fans.

By the late 1960s, Johnny Cash’s career was on its downward slide.  His constant problems with drugs, as well as the fading popularity of country music, had conspired against Cash to leave his star shining at a flicker of what it had once been.  That’s when fate intervened in 1968 in the form of a California prison.

In 1955, Cash recorded the song “Folsom Prison Blues’, a song that was immediately popular with inmates across the country.  In fact, many of them would write to Cash asking him to perform at their prison, and Cash actually did this several times over the next decade.

“John looks as mean as they do, and they identify with him”, Cash’s wife June would later explain.

Still, a decade later by 1968, Cash’s career needed a jumpstart before it drifted away.  This was when Cash made the bold move of requesting that his label allow him to perform another prison concert, but this time he suggested that the label record the concert as an album.  His label at the time, Columbia, agreed, and Cash along with The Statler Brothers, Carl Perkins and the Tennessee Three as well as June, went to California to rehearse for the trip.

One of the main focuses of the rehearsal time was to learn a song called Greystone Chapel, a song written by Folsom inmate Glen Sherley.  Cash performed two sets at Folsom Prison on the morning of January 13th, 1968.  Both sets closed with Greystone Chapel, and featured Cash performing for hours just a few feet away from hundreds of screaming fans, some of who also happened to be murderers.

Yet when this concert was released to the public, it instantly became a huge success.  The energy at the prison on that day was electric, and Cash fed off that and gave the performance of his career.  The performance and album revitalized Cash’s career, and resulted in what many rock historians view as one of the greatest performances of all-time.  All this happened because Johnny Cash was willing to embrace his fans, even if it meant going to prison to do so.

But companies aren’t always so willing to embrace their fans if they don’t approve of their behavior.

In 2006, Fritz Grobe and Stephen Voltz became the darlings of the internet with a series of videos where they dropped Mentos candies into Diet Coke, then filmed the geysers that resulted.  The videos went viral and brought instant internet fame to Grobe and Voltz, and sparked imitators all across the world to start buying Mentos and Diet Coke for their own ‘experiments’.

But the two companies that make Mentos and Diet Coke had decidedly different reactions to this sudden fanfare.  While Mentos completely embraced this playful activity (and the surge in visibility that it gave their candy), Coke all but chided their customers for ‘playing’ with their product, when they should be drinking it.  Eventually, Coke realized that their customers weren’t going to stop ‘playing’ with Coke, and tried to launch their own version of these videos in the form of a contest on their own site.  Of course, the popularity of this move paled in comparison to the original videos created by Grobe and Voltz.

Yet on the other hand, Mentos scored a big payday as a result of the videos, seeing sales spike 20% in 2006, the largest such increase for the company at the time.  Mentos realized that ultimately their customers were buying and enjoying their product, so they embraced them for doing so.

How far would your company go to embrace its fans?

Pic via Flickr user PearlyV

At one point on Thursday during her session at Optimization Summits in Dallas, CK mentioned a type of technology and how marketers could utilize it effectively.  Then she mentioned another, and the audience was so enthralled that an hour-long discussion on just these tools commenced.

Was she talking Twitter?  Facebook?  Blogs? Hell no, she was talking QR codes and Geo-Fencing.

Want more? Chris Penn was talking email marketing, Geno Church was talking creating customer evangelist movements. Even those of us that did discuss social media, did so in the context of combining it with other areas.  Jason Falls talked about improving the SEO of your company blog, I talked about learning from rockstars to use social media to cultivate brand advocates.

This is one of the things I loved about #Optsum, Tami put together a stellar speaking lineup.  Yes, I am probably biased since I am friends with most of these speakers, but I learned something new in EVERY session I sat in.  And you have to remember that most of these speakers I had already heard before.  But they brought something completely new to the table for attendees, and gave them a completely new way of thinking about improving their marketing efforts.  In fact I would rank the speaking lineup at this event on par with Social South 2009 and the first Digital Marketing Mixer in 2008 as being the best group of speakers at any event I’ve attended.

The sessions were all engaging, and the speakers made a point of getting the audience involved.  Most of the sessions were fairly well-attended, even though there were up to 8 tracks available for some slots.  More on that in a moment.

The content was top-notch, and the speakers were excellent.  At the end of the day, that’s probably the most important factor in determining if an event was worth your time.

Here are the things I didn’t like about #Optsum, and I want to mention these to help other event planners in organizing similar events.  But I should point out that Tami has been interacting with attendees and based on their feedback, will likely improve most or all of these points for the next event.  Which is another reason why Tami rocks!

First, #Optsum was running alongside Brainstorming, which is a much larger event aimed primarily at the Apartment industry.  #Optsum usually had 4 tracks going at once, and if Brainstorming did as well (as it did for much of Thurs), then attendees had to choose between EIGHT tracks, assuming they bought tickets to both.  I noticed higher attendance in the sessions on Friday, and I am sure this factored into it.

Second, I hated the layout of the hotel.  It was absolutely huge, so big that it covered two adjacent blocks.  Which meant that knowing that the session you wanted to go to was on the 1st floor wasn’t enough, you also needed to know which side of the street on the 1st floor it was!  Which made for a LOT of running around.  And the directions posted in the hotel weren’t very helpful and the maps were very hard to read.  This wasn’t really Tami’s fault, it was a byproduct of the Sheraton just being too damn big and confusing.

Other than those two areas, the event itself was wonderful and at $500 or so for admission, it was an absolute steal of a bargain for attendees for 2 days of learning.  And I have to say that Tami and her team did a fabulous job working with me as a speaker to get me to the event on time, on coordinating all my travel, and everything.  In fact it was probably the best experience I have had so far with event organizers.

Below is the deck from my Think Like a Rockstar workshop.  I was proud to say that the session was very well-received, and the deck itself was the biggest I’ve ever made.  If you attended, thank you SO much for doing so, I was thrilled with the turnout, I believe the room was full by the time the session got started.

All in all, I would heartily recommend #Optsum to anyone that is considering it, and if Tami asks me to speak at the next one, I would accept in a second.  It was a wonderfully informative and valuable event, and I honestly didn’t hear one negative word about any of the speakers or sessions, which is actually quite rare.

If you attended #Optsum, what did you think?