MackCollier.com

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The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show Episode 40: Writing Fan-Damn-Tastic Headlines

Hey y’all! Welcome to the 40th episode of #FanDamnShow! In this episode I talk about one of the surest ways you can improve your content; By writing better headlines.  It’s a vital tool for all content creators, but it does take some practice and know-how, and I talk about what you need to write better headlines in this episode of The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show.

Show Notes:

2:05 – There’s a continuous stream of content being shared on all social sites.  We scan and as a result, the headline has to immediately grab our attention or we won’t click.

3:10 – A lot of bloggers write the post’s headline as a short summation of what the post is about.  This is the WORST type of headline to write!  You cannot simply summarize the post with the headline, it has to immediately be impactful and tell others why the post is awesome.

4:10 – How I learned first hand the power of writing an impactful headline with the success of this post.  The headline grabbed attention and led to a big spike in traffic to my blog and shares, all because of the great headline.

8:25 – The claim you make in your headline has to be backed up by the content in the post.  What is the specific promise you are making to readers with this post?  The headline needs to reflect that.

10:50 – When writing your headlines, think about what is in the post that’s worthy of the attention of your readers.

12:50 – This post is another example of a great headline I wrote that immediately grabbed your attention, and was true to the content of the post.

[clickToTweet tweet=”‘What is the specific promise you are making to readers with this post? The headline needs to reflect that.’ ” quote=”‘What is the specific promise you are making to readers with this post? The headline needs to reflect that.'”]

Here’s where you can download and listen to the episode directly.  And if you can, please subscribe to The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show on iTunes, and I would *love* it if you could review the podcast on iTunes as well.  Also, #FanDamnShow is now available on Stitcher as well!

Also, don’t forget that sponsorships are now available for The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show. This page that has all the information on how your brand can sponsor #FanDamnShow and the rates. Please note that all available sponsor slots will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis, so please email me if you are interested in sponsoring #FanDamnShow.

We’ll talk again next episode!

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The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show Episode 39: How to Connect With Influencers

Hey y’all, it’s time for another episode of #FanDamnShow!  In this 39th episode, I tackle a topic that a LOT of companies want answers to: How to more effectively connect with influencers.  So sit back for 12 mins of smartitude!

Here’s where you can download and listen to the episode directly.  And if you can, please subscribe to The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show on iTunes, and I would *love* it if you could review the podcast on iTunes as well.  Also, #FanDamnShow is now available on Stitcher as well!

Also, don’t forget that sponsorships are now available for The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show. This page that has all the information on how your brand can sponsor #FanDamnShow and the rates. Please note that all available sponsor slots will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis, so please email me if you are interested in sponsoring #FanDamnShow.

We’ll talk again next episode!

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The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show Episode 38: Deeper Learning Via Cooking, Presidential Debates and 1980s Pro Wrestling!

Hey y’all!  Welcome to another episode of #FanDamnShow! Today I talk about deeper learning and why your fans want more intricate content that helps them learn more about the topics they love, especially the ones that relate to your products and services!

Show Notes:

1:55 – People that listen to podcasts want deeper insights into a topic, from my experience.  They want to go beyond the basic steps and want to actually learn how things work

4:15 – Consider your product or service and think about content you can create around this that dives deeper.

4:45 – Why I watch the Presidential Debates and listen to podcasts about 1980s Pro Wrestling to learn how to become a better speaker.

8:00 – Fans want deeper level content because they ARE fans.  They want deeper level content focused not on your product or service but the bigger themes and ideas that your product and services relate to.

9:40 – What is it that you can help your customers become better at?

10:10 – What are the bigger passion points that encircle your product or services?

11:20 – Podcasts can be a great way to deliver deeper level content for your fans.

Here’s where you can download and listen to the episode directly.  And if you can, please subscribe to The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show on iTunes, and I would *love* it if you could review the podcast on iTunes as well.  Also, #FanDamnShow is now available on Stitcher as well!

Also, don’t forget that sponsorships are now available for The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show. This page that has all the information on how your brand can sponsor #FanDamnShow and the rates. Please note that all available sponsor slots will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis, so please email me if you are interested in sponsoring #FanDamnShow.

We’ll talk again next episode!

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The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show Episode 37: Creating Content That Creates Cash

Welcome to the 37th episode of #FanDamnShow!  Today I talk about a topic that a lot of companies are struggling with:  How to sell products and services via social media, especially when no one knows who you are.  I delve into that in this episode as well as how to marry your sales pitch to content that’s relevant to your audience, so you gain their attention and as a result, increase the chance of actually selling to them!

Here’s the Show Notes:

1:50 – Creating content that sells if no one knows who you are

4:05 – How to create a more effective sales pitch if you are offering services

7:00 – How to create a more effective sales pitch if you are selling products

10:00 – Focus on creating content that covers the larger context that your product lives within in the customer’s mind

Here’s where you can download and listen to the episode directly.  And if you can, please subscribe to The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show on iTunes, and I would *love* it if you could review the podcast on iTunes as well.  Also, #FanDamnShow is now available on Stitcher as well!

Also, don’t forget that sponsorships are now available for The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show. This page that has all the information on how your brand can sponsor #FanDamnShow and the rates. Please note that all available sponsor slots will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis, so please email me if you are interested in sponsoring #FanDamnShow.

We’ll talk again next episode!

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My Blog Traffic and Podcast Audience Results For August

For every month in 2015, I’ve set specific goals for growing my blog readership, and podcast audience.  The end goal is that by December this blog will have at least 100,000 visitors for that month, and the podcast will be downloaded at least 10,000 times for December.  Every month I am going to write a post like this recapping how I did in the previous month, and share any lessons I have learned.  The goal is to help you learn how to build a blog readership and podcast audience as I do.

First, here were my goals for August:

Blog – At least 80,000 visitors

Podcast – At least 4,000 downloads

Blog Traffic Results For August

My blog traffic in August was 36,154 visitors versus 38,125 visitors in July.  That’s a decrease of 5.17%.  I had 10 new posts in August, which is about where I wanted to be with 2-3 new posts each week.

Here’s how each source of traffic did in August vs July:

Search – Down 5.8%

Direct – Up 13.42%

Referral – Down 17.9%

Social – Down 32.83%

Other – Up 7.75%

Email – Down 72.87%

Before I got into the numbers any deeper, I was interested to see if some of the decline could simply be a matter of people spending more time on vacation in August vs July.  So I decided to run the same numbers for August of 2014 vs July of 2014.  I saw that overall traffic actually increased in August over July of 2014 by 8%.  So it appears the decline is more likely a nagging side affect of the issue I’ve been facing for most of this year with search traffic going down.

I dove deeper into the search traffic for the entire year, and while the decline is steady with search traffic from Google, it’s less pronounced with Yahoo, and search traffic from Bing has more or less gone sideways, with June being the best month so far this year for traffic from Bing.  So it appears this is more a Google search issue than a search issue as a whole.  Then again since Google accounts for well over 90% of my search traffic, it kinda IS a search issue!

Earlier this month I went into Google Webmaster Tools and made a couple of tweaks to see if those would have any impact on search traffic.  I have noticed that so far this week, search traffic seems to be up slightly, but it’s really too soon to tell if the bump is likely coming from the changes I made.  I’ll keep an eye on it and if search traffic continues to increase, it will be a good sign that my tweaking worked, and I’ll talk more about what I did next month.

Podcast Numbers and Overview for August

The goal for August was at least 4,000 downloads of the podcast, and The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show actually had 5,330 downloads in August. This was up sharply from July and is the best month ever for the podcast.  Here’s the number of daily downloads so far this year:

PodcastDLsJan-Aug

 

As you can see, for the year the average daily download is right at 100.  A far cry from this time last year when there were only 128 downloads in the entire MONTH of August 2014!  I’m thrilled with the growth of the podcast but at the same time know it will hard to hit the monthly download goals for the rest of the year.

Speaking of which, here’s the blog audience and podcast download goals for September:

Blog Traffic – At least 85,000 visitors

Podcast Downloads – At least 5,000

This are the goals I set at the start of the year.  The blog’s goal will need a miracle to hit, but the 5,000 download number was hit in August so I just need to do that again in September to hit my goal for downloads.  I’ll check back in next month and let you know how I did!

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The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show Episode 36: Creating a Fan-Worthy Content Strategy

Welcome to the 36th episode of The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show! This week I talk about the five considerations in creating a Fan-Damn-Tastic Content Strategy!

Before I get into the Show Notes, I wanted to say thank y’all for the continued support, last week’s episode on Creating Loyalty to Your Brand vs Your Offer had over 900 downloads in its first week!  I appreciate the support and it looks like August will set the monthly record for the most downloads of #FanDamnShow.  If your company would like to sponsor #FanDamnShow, here’s details including rates.

Show Notes:

1:15 – The difference between a content marketing strategy and a content strategy.

2:10 – Five considerations for creating a content strategy

2:30 – How much bandwidth do you have for content creation?

3:38 – What are your goals for the content you create?

4:59 – Plant your flag when it comes to the content you create, what do you want to be known for?

7:25 – What tools will you use to execute your content strategy?

9:40 – Create your content calendar

 

Here’s where you can download and listen to the episode directly.  And if you can, please subscribe to The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show on iTunes, and I would *love* it if you could review the podcast on iTunes as well.  Also, #FanDamnShow is now available on Stitcher as well!

Also, don’t forget that sponsorships are now available for The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show. This page that has all the information on how your brand can sponsor #FanDamnShow and the rates. Please note that all available sponsor slots will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis, so please email me if you are interested in sponsoring #FanDamnShow.

We’ll talk again on Wednesday!

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The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show Episode 35: Creating Loyalty to Your Brand vs Your Offer

DishWelcome to the 35th episode of The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show!  Today I spend a few minutes talking about how some companies focus on getting customers to switch to their brand, and how this approach can actually backfire.  Think of satellite TV (Dish vs Direct TV) and smartphone carriers (ATT&T, Verizon, Sprint, etc) all giving great deals if you’ll switch to them.

Show Notes:

1:05 – The marketing dichotomy between how companies market to acquire new customers vs how rock stars market to existing fans

1:40 – The Zac Brown Band’s Eat and Greet for fans where the band prepares a meal and serves it to its fans before every concert

3:20 – How some companies market in a way that rewards new customers, while actually penalizing loyal customers

4:45 – A new customer has little to no loyalty toward your brand, so the new customer goes to ‘the highest bidder’, or the company that gives the most free stuff or the best deal.  This doesn’t build loyalty to the brand it builds loyalty to the offer.  The customer is loyal to the company as long as they have the best offer.

6:40 – When an existing customer sees that new customers are getting amazing deals, how does that make them feel?

9:30 – This approach conditions customers to look for the best deal, not the best brand

 

Here’s where you can download and listen to the episode directly.  And if you can, please subscribe to The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show on iTunes, and I would *love* it if you could review the podcast on iTunes as well.  Also, #FanDamnShow is now available on Stitcher as well!

Also, don’t forget that sponsorships are now available for The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show. This page that has all the information on how your brand can sponsor #FanDamnShow and the rates. Please note that all available sponsor slots will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis, so please email me if you are interested in sponsoring #FanDamnShow.

We’ll talk again on Wednesday!

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My Blog Traffic and Podcast Audience Results For July

For every month in 2015, I’ve set specific goals for growing my blog readership, and podcast audience.  The end goal is that by December this blog will have at least 100,000 visitors for that month, and the podcast will be downloaded at least 10,000 times for December.  Every month I am going to write a post like this recapping how I did in the previous month, and share any lessons I have learned.  The goal is to help you learn how to build a blog readership and podcast audience as I do.

First, here were my goals for July:

Blog – At least 75,000 visitors

Podcast – At least 3,000 downloads

Blog Traffic Results For July

My blog traffic in July was 38,125 visitors, averaging 1,229 visitors a day.  In June, the blog’s traffic was 40,721, averaging 1,357 a day.  So an overall decrease of 6%.  This is mostly due to the fact that I only posted 9 posts last month, and only 3 of those were new, original posts that weren’t associated with #Blogchat or #FanDamnShow or this update.  The goal is to have at least 2 such posts a week, so I missed that goal by 5 posts.  Writing those additional posts would have probably given me a slight traffic increase over the previous month.

Here’s how each category of traffic did in July vs June:

Search traffic – Down 1.05%

Direct traffic – Down 5.13%

Referral – Up 6.71%

Social – Down 37.08%

Other – Up 36.87%

Email – Down 87.59%

 

A mostly mixed bag but I am pleased that Search traffic was barely down, and Referral traffic was up for the 3rd month in a row.  Social being down was in large part due to my writing fewer posts last month.  Plus I think some of the overall decline in traffic could be due to blog readership falling a bit in the Summer.  It will be interesting to see how August does vs July.

One thing I haven’t really talked about so far with this series is the value of new content you create and the impact that new posts can have on your blog.  Here’s the Top 10 most viewed pages on this blog for July (according to Google Analytics):

BlogJuly

 

So only 1 post written in July ranked in the Top 10 for views in July, and that post was about my job search.   I want to see if I can change that for August, hopefully have 2-3 of the posts I write this month rank in the Top 10.

 

Podcast Numbers and Overview for July

The goal for July was at least 3,000 downloads of the podcast, and The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show actually had 3,662 downloads in July. That was actually down sharply from June, but I only recorded one new episode in July, aired on July 1st.  I got busy with a lot of side projects and the job search, so I plan on getting back on a weekly schedule starting with this week.  Here’s the number of daily downloads so far this year:

PodcastJanJulyThe Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show actually topped 20,000 lifetime downloads last month and has a chance to top 25,000 downloads this month.  For the last few months the podcast has been coasting comfortably and easily hitting monthly goals.  That’s about to change as the monthly goals are about to take big jumps each month as we’re now in August and the goal by the end of the year is to hit 10,000 downloads in December.  This month the goal jumps by 1,000, up to 4,000 downloads total.

 

So those are my blog and podcast results for July.  Here’s my goals for August:

Blog traffic – At least 80,000 visitors

Podcast – At least 4,000 downloads

These were the goals I set for both at the start of the year.  So it looks like the blog’s goal will be all but impossible to hit, and it looks like the podcast’s goal is very reachable.

I’ll be back in one month to share my results for August!

 

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My Blog Traffic and Podcast Audience Results for June

For every month in 2015, I’ve set specific goals for growing my blog readership, and podcast audience.  The end goal is that by December this blog will have at least 100,000 visitors for that month, and the podcast will be downloaded at least 10,000 times for December.  Every month I am going to write a post like this recapping how I did in the previous month, and share any lessons I have learned.  The goal is to help you learn how to build a blog readership and podcast audience as I do.

First, here were my goals for June:

Blog – At least 70,000 visitors

Podcast – At least 2,500 downloads

Blog Traffic Results For June

My blog traffic in June was 40,721 visitors, averaging 1,357 visitors a day.  In May, the blog’s traffic was 39,000, averaging 1,258 a day.  So a slight increase of 4%, which reverses the trend of the last few months.  I made some backend changes to the blog back in February, and since that time search traffic has decreased considerably, which was a big driver in the fall in overall traffic.  The hope has been that eventually search traffic would rise back to at least previous levels and bring overall traffic levels with it.

Here’s how each category of traffic did in June vs May:

Search traffic – Down 4.82%

Direct traffic – Up 19.85%

Email – Up 8,216%

Referral – Up 5.12%

Social – Up 86.61%

 

As you can see, search traffic was actually down again, but every other major source of traffic was up.  Email and Social had huge gains, and that was due primarily to the popularity of this post: Don’t Sweat the Technique: The Rock Star’s Guide to Content Creation, Content Marketing and Promotion.  This was by far the most popular post I wrote last month, and was a big driver in the jump in Social traffic.  An interesting byproduct of writing that post was that as it gained popularity on Twitter and Facebook, it caught the attention of Moz, who included it in their email roundup of interesting posts, and that generated about another 2,000 visitors via email.  So if I didn’t write that one post, the entire outlook for the month looks much different, traffic is probably down about 5% from May versus being up 4%.  It’s a testament to the potential power of every single post you write, and a good reminder to me as well.

Here’s how weekly search traffic has looked through June:

SearchThroughJune

You can see it was very high through mid-February, then the bottom fell out.  It continues to slightly decrease, I was hopeful that had ended earlier this month, last week was actually up about 10% and I thought the fever had finally broke.  But this week it’s back down slightly, so on we go.

I wrote 10 posts in June, which was about 2-3 lower than my monthly goals.

Podcast Numbers and Overview for June

While blog traffic was down again month, podcast downloads again did very well in June.

The goal for June was at least 2,500 downloads of the podcast, and The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show actually had 4,296 downloads in June. That was actually down slightly from May, but still far ahead of the goals for June.  Here’s the number of daily downloads so far this year:

PodcastDLsJan-June

 

The numbers were again strong in June.  One episode was unique, as I welcomed the first guest to The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show as Kerry Gorgone joined on the June 17th episode to discuss the legal concerns of social media.  This episode is already the most downloaded one, with well over 2,000 downloads, about 400 more than 2nd place.  Obviously Kerry was quite popular as was her topic, but I also think that having a guest helped make the episode more popular so I will look for ways to incorporate more guests into future episodes.

So those are my blog and podcast results for June.  Here’s my goals for July:

Blog traffic – At least 75,000 visitors

Podcast – At least 3,000 downloads

These were the goals I set for both at the start of the year.  So it looks like the blog’s goal will be all but impossible to hit, and it looks like the podcast’s goal will be all but impossible to miss.

I’ll be back in one month to share my results for July!

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The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show Episode 34: How to Show Support Without Showing Your Ass

Hey y’all!  Welcome to the 34th episode of The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show!  First, thanks again to everyone for supporting the show, June was another strong month for downloads and I’ll have the complete recap of how the podcast and blog did in June up here early next week so be looking for that.

In today’s episode I wanted to focus on how your brand can show support, without showing its ass.  Whether it’s a holiday, a court ruling, a tragedy, brands are looking to communicate to their customers that they support their feelings and empathize with them.  But there is definitely a right and wrong way to do this.  In this episode of #FanDamnShow I talk about three things to keep in mind:

1 – If you can’t send that tweet, Facebook update or post that picture to Instagram without promoting your brand, then don’t send it.  The idea isn’t to leverage a holiday or event to promote yourself, it’s to show support for your customers.  The circular is where you can run your sales.

2 – You shouldn’t directly promote your brand but you can promote ideas/themes that relate to your brand.  For example, if your company sells safety products, instead of promoting those items now for the Fourth of July, instead how about publishing a blog post on how to safely enjoy fireworks this weekend?  That content is related to your brand but it isn’t ABOUT your brand,  And it creates value for the customer.

3 – Never ever NEVER use a holiday, event, tragedy to promote your brand.  This is how your brand becomes a case study at the next social media conference.  Just say no.

 

Here’s where you can download and listen to the episode directly.  And if you can, please subscribe to The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show on iTunes, and I would *love* it if you could review the podcast on iTunes as well.  Also, #FanDamnShow is now available on Stitcher as well!

Also, don’t forget that sponsorships are now available for The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show. This page that has all the information on how your brand can sponsor #FanDamnShow and the rates. Please note that all available sponsor slots will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis, so please email me if you are interested in sponsoring #FanDamnShow.

We’ll talk again on Wednesday!

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