MackCollier.com

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Fans Create Cash

Last month Jackie wrote a post on her blog with a pretty significant business nugget that I think a lot of people missed:

“Dell has been using the Net Promoter Score (NPS) to measure customer advocacy for the last three years. According to Bobbi Dangerfield, Dell’s VP of Commercial Sales Operations, the company is now able to show that improvements in NPS score directly tie to revenue growth”

Net Promoter Score is a system that attempts to ‘score’ your customer base and tell you if they are fans or detractors.  A score of -100 indicates that all your customers are detractors, while a score of +100 indicates all your customers are fans. Now NPS isn’t perfect and does have its detractors.  But what this means is that as the percentage of Dell’s customers that promote the brand increases, the company’s revenue also grows.

Fans create cash.

How many times have I said here and elsewhere don’t focus on the tools, focus on the connections that the tools help facilitate.  Understanding Twitter is meaningless if you don’t understand how and why your customers are using it.

Understanding your customers trumps understanding marketing/communication channels.  Understanding your fans is even more important.  Here’s what we do know about fans:

1 – They will look for opportunities to promote you

2 – They assume ownership of your brand and will act in what they perceive to be your brand’s best interests

3 – They have high/extremely high levels of loyalty to your brand, which means they spend more than the average customer that has little to no brand loyalty

4 – Their opinions about your brand is more reliable to the average customer than your brand’s advertising.

5 – When they encounter a problem with your brand (bad customer service, defective product or low quality) they will look for ways to bring this to your attention so you can correct the problem.

 

Let’s look at each of these individually:

Fans will look for opportunities to promote you

You know when you find an amazing blog post that really resonated with you?  You just have to run to Twitter and Facebook and share it with your friends, right?  Why is that?  Because you found value in the post, and want to share that value with others.  Your brand’s fans have the same mentality, they believe that your brand is simply better than other brands, and by extension they feel that if their friends buy your brand, they will also be better.  This is why your fans will go out of their way to promote your brand, because they love your brand and they love their friends.

Fans assume ownership of your brand and act in what they believe to be its best interests 

This honestly scares many brands because they don’t like the idea of having fans out there speaking on the brand’s behalf unchecked.  But this concern is easily overcome by simply connecting with your brand’s fans.  Communicate to them and give them instruction on how to represent your brand.  Your fans want you to connect with them and give them a sense of direction.

Your fans have high levels of brand loyalty and spend more

Your fans support your brand with their wallet.  They buy your products, and then they try to convince other customers to do the same thing.  This is exactly why rock stars don’t focus the majority of their time and marketing on their new customers, they focus their attention on their fans.  Because rocks stars have always understood that their ability to bring in new customers tomorrow, depends on how well they connect with their biggest fans, today.

Your fan’s opinion is more reliable to the average customer than your brand’s advertising

This ties in with the previous point.  Fans spend more, and they also refer business to your brand.  Your fans promote you and that carries more weight with the average customer than your advertising and marketing efforts.  This is another reason why rock stars connect with their fan because they understand that their fans drive new business for the rock star.  Brands are mostly counting on acquiring new customers via overpriced advertising.  Super Bowl spots have already sold out at $4M a pop for a 30-second spot.  All for the hope that each brand’s spot will be the hit of the night and go viral and draw millions of views.  Creating buzz is the name of the game.

Yet for a tiny fraction of that amount, each brand could create and launch a robust brand ambassador program that would provide sustained revenue, improved customer satisfaction, and lower marketing costs for years to come.

When your fans encounter a problem with your brand, they will bring it to your attention to you can fix it

Want to know the difference between a detractor and a fan?  A detractor will say ‘Your brand sucks!’  A fan will say ‘Your brand sucks, here’s how I think we can work together to fix it’.  Your fans assume ownership of your brand, and thusly have a vested interest in seeing it succeed.  They will actively look for problems with your brand, because they want to bring it to your attention so it can be corrected.

 

So what’s stopping your brand from connecting with its fans and seeing real business growth as a result like Dell has?  And if you need a plan for how to get started embracing and empowering your fans to grow your business, here it is.

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The Biggest Mistake Companies Make When Engaging Their Fans Via Social Media

A few years ago I was attending a conference, and the keynote was the CMO for an extremely large brand talking about how they used social media.  At one point he said ‘What we love about social media is that it gives us a way to help our customers tell our story’.  There was much smiling and head nodding in the audience, but my jaw was on the ground.

Sadly, many companies are starting to realize the ‘power’ of connecting with their fans, especially via social media tools.  And like this CMO, they are attracted to connecting with their fans because they view their fans as an exciting new promotional channel to spread that brand’s message.

Sigh.

Let me clear the air for you: The greatest value of your fans is not as a promotional channel, but as a feedback channel.

This seems counter-intuitive, after all aren’t your fans actively promoting your brand already?  And aren’t we all on the same page that a positive endorsement from a customer about a brand is more credible than an advertisement from that same brand?

Yes and yes.  Your fans are actively promoting your brand, and doing a better job of it than you ever will.  Why?  Because your fans have direct contact with your current and potential customers.

Your fans are the passionate customers that are in the grocery store isles and the department stores, encouraging other customers to try your brand’s products.  But they are also there to hear feedback from those customers.

For example, let’s say your brand is Tide.  One of your fans is in Target and sees a customer looking at different washing detergents.  She tells the customer that they should try Tide.  Think about what the customer’s response might be:

1 – ‘Well I’ve tried Tide before, and I don’t really like it as much as Joy because…’

2 – ‘Hmmm….well the water where I live is extremely hard, would that affect it?’

3 – ‘Yes I’ve tried Tide and I love how it…’

As soon as your fan engages with the customer, they are getting incredibly valuable feedback from that customer not only about the customer herself, but about the product and how she uses it.

Think about if you had an army of just 100 fans that you worked with, and each one had say 50 encounters like this a month with other customers.  That’s 5,000 opportunities per month to get valuable feedback from current and potential customers of your brand.

The best part?  Your fans will still be promoting your product to other customers, but they’ll also be collecting incredibly valuable feedback from other customers.  Once you begin collecting that feedback regularly, you can begin to spot trends in the feedback you receive, and then make changes to your marketing as a result.  Which makes your marketing more effectively and lowers marketing costs.

Now ideally, you should have a formal program in place to stay connected with your brand’s fans, and you can coach them on how to better collect feedback from customers they encounter.  And Think Like a Rock Star goes into exactly how to do all of this.  But if you don’t have a program or Brand Ambassador effort in place, there’s several quick and easy ways to collect feedback from your customers.

One example is by checking Amazon reviews.  You can do this for your product, as well as for your competitors.  I actually did this for my book.

Think Like a Rock Star isn’t technically a social media book.  I actually walk readers through how to engage with their fans in both an online and offline setting, but a good portion of the book does deal with connecting with your fans via social media tools.  And since I knew a lot of people would compare it to other social media marketing books, I carefully studied the Amazon reviews of the most popular social media marketing books.

But I wasn’t focused on the 4 and 5-star reviews.  I was far more interested in the 1 and 2-star reviews, in other words, what were people complaining about with these books?  After checking reviews for a few dozen books, the most comment complaint I found was something along the lines of ‘The author spends a lot of time telling us ‘why’ to use social media, but not a lot of time telling us ‘how’ to do what he suggests’.  I saw this same complaint over and over again.  So as a result of this feedback, I decided to alter the proposed flow of my book and incorporate detailed how-tos into every chapter.  Basically I made myself commit to giving a ‘how-to’ for every ‘why-to’.  And while this created a lot of headaches while writing the book, it kept me honest and it forced me to carefully explain to readers HOW to do everything I was talking about.  The end result is that the book will be much more valuable to readers.

That’s just a simple example, but you hopefully get the idea.  If you are a brand that’s getting excited about connecting with your fans to help them ‘tell your story’, don’t forget that the value they can give you as a feedback channel can be far greater.

At the end of the day, your fans are far too special to simply hold a megaphone for you.

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Lady Gaga Starts Offering Free Counseling to Little Monsters at Concerts Via #BornBraveBus

In the foreword for Think Like a Rock Star, Kathy Sierra talks about how rock stars want to make their fans better.  Rock stars, unlike most brands, have a great connection and empathy for their fans and who they are as well as their wants and needs.  I’ve blogged several times about how Lady Gaga consistently communicates to her fans (her Little Monsters) that she appreciates and loves them.

Now she’s upping the ante again:  On the US leg of her Born This Way Ball tour, Gaga will have as part of the experience a bus that will provide free counseling for her fans.  As she explains on Facebook:

At the BornBrave Bus you have access to professional private or group chats about mental health, depression, bullying, school & friends. There will also be food and games, DJ White Shadow andLady Starlight will DJ with host BREEDLOVE to keep the experience fun.

BornBrave Bus Is a place where mental health + depression are taken seriously w/ no judgement, FREE real help available to all. I feel like most kids don’t look for help because they feel embarrassed so mom + I wanted to break the stigmas around “help” and make it fun.

Now this move may draw some criticism and questions about these counselors and concerns over who they are and if they are qualified to provide counseling to troubled children and teens.  That’s understandable, but what you cannot question is Gaga’s devotion to her fans as people, not just as customers.

And this is the difference between how many rock stars cultivate fans, and how many brands do so.   At best, a brand will create an amazing product that delights its customers.  Perhaps so that those customers evangelize the brand to other customers.

But rock stars go out of their way to show their fans that they appreciate their support.  They don’t try to have a strictly transactional relationship with their fans, they strive to have an emotional one.  That means they invest a lot of time and money in doing things that don’t directly generate sales.  Like signing autographs for an entire day for free, or giving their fans a free concert or free counseling.  These efforts are met with a confusing shoulder shrug by some marketers because they don’t lead directly to sales.

But that’s not the intent.  The goal for the rock star is connect with their fans and strengthen that emotional connection.

Because that leads to sales.  The rock star’s fans don’t evangelize the rock star’s music because they love it, they love the rock star.  They love the rock star for their music, but also for how they love their fans, it means their devotion for the rock star is much deeper, as is their motivation to see other people support the rock star by buying their merchandise.  When a rock star like Lady Gaga does something like offering free counseling to her fans, it communicates to them that she truly loves them, and as a result, it gives the fan a greater incentive to promote that rock star to others.  The fans become vested in helping the rock star become better, because the rock star is invested in helping their fans become better.

But all this starts because rock stars don’t view their fans as potential marketing channels.  The view their fans as special people that they truly love and strive to have an emotional connection with.  Because rock stars have long understood that people don’t support someone or something because you give them a coupon or ask them to.  They support things and people that they believe in, that they love, and that love them back.

Which is a big reason why rock stars have fans, and companies have customers.

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Why It Took Me Six Years to Write Think Like A Rock Star

In 2008, I attended my first ‘social media’ event, South By Southwest.  At one point I was chatting with Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba, and we were talking social media and the state of the blossoming industry.  I remember specifically telling them that while social media was great, that the future of marketing was what they were doing, showing companies the power of connecting with and empowering their fans.

I believe that even more four years later.  You won’t find the future of marketing in tools and technology, you will find it in your fans.

In 2005 I began blogging at Beyond Madison Avenue.  It’s a blog that’s undergone many transformations and now looks nothing like it did from 2005-2007 when I was actively blogging there.  A year later in 2006 I started blogging at The Viral Garden, then in 2009 I moved my semi-regularly blogging here.

But in 2005 and 2006 I blogged extensively about two seemingly (at the time) divergent themes: Music-marketing and online community-building.  Oh I blogged about a lot of the same things I do now, the latest news in the social media marketing space, how companies can better use these tools to connect with customers, etc.  But the posts that excited me the most were the ones where I detailed how a particular rock star was connecting with their fans, or how a particular company was building an online community.

The problem was, no one seemed to care.  I could write a post about the latest example of how Company A is using Twitter to connect with customers, and get dozens of comments and RTs.  But if I wrote about how this rock star was leveraging digital technologies to connect with her fans, there were no comments, no emails, no response.  If I wrote about how companies could and should embrace and empower their fans, nothing, but the next post I’d write on Five Steps to Getting More ReTweets would get 33 comments and 87 RTs.

It honestly pissed the shit out of me.  Sure, I get that people want to learn how to get more RTs or subscribers or whatever, and if I can help them learn how to do that more effectively, I am happy to do so.  But I was (and continue to be) passionately in love with the idea of helping companies embrace and empower their fans to be something amazing.  And it honestly broke my heart that other people didn’t seem to be as excited about this idea as I was.

At some point in 2008, I realized there were only two possibilities for why these posts weren’t getting any feedback or interest:

1 – The idea that companies can benefit from connecting with their fans just isn’t an idea that has merit.

2 – The idea has merit, but I wasn’t explaining it so that companies could see the value of the idea.

I am extremely stubborn, so I decided that it was #2.  I kept fleshing out my ideas and toying with ways to make them more appealing to companies.  What was the ‘hook’ that I could give companies to make them see the value in connecting with their fans?

In 2009, Scott Schablow asked me to speak at Social South in Birmingham.  I said yes, and when he asked for a topic my first thought was that it needs to be something standard like ‘Five Ways a Business Blog Can Benefit Your Company’ or something straightforward like that.

But then I got an idea: What if I took these two themes I was passionate about (how rock stars embrace their fans and how companies can use social media to connect with their customers), and combined them into one presentation?  The result was What Rock Stars Can Teach You About Kicking Ass With Social Media.  I was honestly scared to death about what the reaction to this presentation would be.  Sure, it was one thing to post about this stuff on a blog and get no response, but if I did a presentation and no one showed up, it would be a pretty big indictment against the idea itself.

Instead, I had a standing-room-only crowd for the session, and there was a ring of people standing up against the wall of the room.  I cannot tell you how rewarding it was to see people finally see the value of this idea as I had!

The problem wasn’t the idea, it was how I was presenting the idea.  Before when I talked about how rock stars connect with their fans, people that worked for companies dismissed these posts because well…they weren’t rock stars, so it was hard for them to see the significance.  When I talked about how companies should connect with their brand evangelists, it didn’t resonate because most companies had no idea how to do that.  And even if I tried to explain the process, they couldn’t visualize the benefit because they didn’t have a reference point that inspired them to take action.

But when I married the two ideas, they became something more.  Companies can’t always see the value of cultivating brand evangelists, but if you talk to them about how they can have raving fans like rock stars do, suddenly they perk up because you’ve given them a reference point that they understand.  The rock star analogy was the ‘hook’ that got people to pay attention to the larger idea: The value that brands can create for themselves by embracing and empowering their fans.  I started showing people how rock stars benefited from connecting with their fans.  Then I showed them how other companies just like their own are applying these same lessons to cultivate fans just like rock stars do.

The idea resonated when I started putting it in terms that companies could understand and that they saw the value in.  After another year or so of fleshing out the ideas behind Think Like A Rock Star, I decided it was ready to present to publishers.  Over the course of about 12 months my agent and I pitched the book idea to over 30 publishers.  Finally, McGraw-Hill said yes, and my editor Casey Ebro immediately ‘got’ why the idea behind the book was so powerful.  And thanks to her and amazing help from Kathy Sierra, I’ve continued to build the ideas this year and the book has become a complete tutorial and framework for how brands can not only connect with their biggest fans, but how they can transform (step by step) into a truly fan-centric company.

The point in all this is, if you truly love an idea, don’t give up on it.  I didn’t write Think Like A Rock Star because I wanted to speak more or make money, those will hopefully be happy byproducts.  I wrote it because I believe in the power of an idea.  The idea that your brand isn’t the rock star, your fans are.

I don’t know what idea you are in love with, but I do know this:  If you truly love your idea, then you owe it to us, and yourself, to not give up on it.

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The Power Of Creating Something Amazing For the People That Love You

One of the things that rock stars do amazingly well is they create something amazing for the people that love them.  They find ways to bring their biggest fans together and create a uniquely amazing experience that’s totally unexpected.  The end result is that their fans are shocked, amazed, and love that rock star even more.

We saw that last night during the American Music Awards.  Psy was slated to close the show performing his internet sensation Gangham Style.  But halfway through, something unexpected happened…

http://youtu.be/qlUyF6q0zKg

Now I have to admit, I was a huge MC Hammer fan in the early 90s.  Down to even buying every VHS tape of his music videos and studying them to perform dance moves in clubs.  Sigh…

But Hammer joining Psy isn’t why I love this performance.  Watch it the first time just to appreciate it, then watch it again and pay close attention to the audience.

Notice that the audience is having an absolute blast as Psy is singing.  It’s a party, but notice what happens when Psy says STOP…Hammertime!  You can immediately hear the audience go NOOOOOO!!!!!! because they know what’s about to happen.  Then when 2 Legit 2 Quit starts playing and they see Hammer is on stage, the audience goes apeshit!

Psy and Hammer just created an amazing experience for their fans that they weren’t expecting.  The sheer joy on the faces of the members of the audience is infectious, isn’t it?  A big reason why I wanted to write Think Like A Rock Star was to help companies understand how to create a relationship  where they delight and amaze their biggest fans in this same way.

Because there’s nothing more powerful than giving your fans something amazing that they weren’t expecting.  How is your brand delighting and amazing its biggest fans?

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A ‘Like’ Is Not ‘Engagement’ On Facebook

Over the past few months I’ve been spending a lot more time on Facebook, actually I’ve been spending more time there than on Twitter.  As a result, I’ve seen how a lot of different brands and organizations are attempting to build engagement with the people that are following their page.

Typically, brands are trying to get people to Like or Share their posts.  An example of what I’m talking about might be a brand sharing a picture of someone lying on the beach and then saying ‘Its Friday!  Like this if you are ready for the weekend!’

Folks, that is not engagement.  How much effort is involved for me to see that in my News Feed, click Like, and move on?  It takes one mouse click.  That’s all the ‘engagement’ that picture earned you for your brand.

And yes, I understand the impact Likes and Shares can have on your page’s EdgeRank.  But wouldn’t it make more sense to actually create engaging content?  Because engaging content not only engages people, it gets Likes and Shares!

The good news is, it’s a lot easier to create engaging content on Facebook than you might realize, it just requires that you think a bit about how to be more engaging.

For example, how often have you seen a brand or page post a picture of a cute puppy and then ask you to Like if you think this puppy is just impossibly cute.  Seriously, it happens all the time, right?

But check out how a slight tweak in this approach can work wonders:

Aw….impossibly cute puppy alert!!!  But notice what they did, they didn’t simply ask you to Like the picture, they asked you to share a story with others about your dog!  And when you do share your story, you’ll also read all the other stories that other dog owners are sharing in the comments.  You’ll probably laugh, have a few ‘my dog does the same thing!’ moments, and who knows, you might even make a new friend just from interacting via the comments!   And you’ll also have a deeper affinity for this page, because they found a way to actually engage you.

Now, let’s say you are tasked with building engagement on a page about a TV show that hasn’t been on the air in 27 years.  That’s right, you need to build engagement around a TV show that most Facebook users have probably never seen.

So how do you do it?  By appealing to their fans, of course!  Check out how TVLand engages fans of 70s Sitcom classic M*A*S*H:

Every day TVLand posts a picture from one of the episodes of M*A*S*H that it’s airing that night, and asks fans a trivia question about that episode.  I am a huge fan of the series, so I freaking love these.  In the above episode, Frank is wearing a pair of hunting socks, which are heated.  Which is a big deal, because everyone else is freezing and there’s no heat!

So what happens is everyone leaves a comment answering that Frank has hunting socks.  But then something happens, people start answering the question by repeating lines from the episode.  Such as:

1 – Radar tells Colonel Blake “They’re hunting socks, sir!” and Blake replies “At this hour?”

2 – Or when Klinger says they are socks that get warm, and then adds “I have a bra like that!”

And before you know it, we are all laughing and remembering what a hilarious episode this is!  Which means we will probably remember how funny this episode was, and decide to watch it that night on TVLand.  But that happened because TVLand is smart enough to engage its fans, and to create a way for them to interact with each other.  The M*A*S*H updates from TVLand are honestly a highlight of my day on Facebook, and I often Like the update, comment on it, plus Like comments from other fans.

So when you are trying to build engagement on Facebook, think of ways to actually build engagement.  Creating a way for people to share stories, as you see in these two examples, is an incredibly powerful way to build engagement.

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The Power of Embracing Your Fans As A Feedback Channel

In the last year or so, brands have been increasingly aware of the power of connecting with their fans.  Unfortunately, most brands are excited about the potential of connecting with their fans as a way to help their customers ‘tell our story’.  The thinking is that brands can leverage their fans as a way to share the brand’s message to other customers.  Because we all generally accept that interactions we have with our friends and family are more trustworthy than those with brands, right?  So Brand A thinks ‘Hey, if we could get our fans to promote our brand to their friends and family, that would be awesome!’

What most brands are missing is the massive potential that their fans offer as a feedback channel.  Not only for their own experiences with the brand and its competitors, but with other customers.

For example, let’s say you’re a fan of Vizio, and the brand is training you on how to connect with other customers.  If a friend says they are thinking of buying a new 32-inch television, which question should you, as a fan of Vizio, ask?

1 – Have you considered a Vizio?

2 – What features are you looking for in a new television?

Many brands want their fans to ask the first question because they think it will generate more sales, but the second one is far more valuable for the brand.  The first question helps Vizio determine if customers are considering its brand, while the second question helps Vizio determine what customers want from a new television.

Another what-if scenario:  Let’s say Vizio has 100 fans that all meet another customer that’s in the market for a 32″ television.  If after asking these 100 customers what features they are looking for, they find that 64 customers say they want a new television that has 1080P resolution, and 57 say they want a new television with a 120Hz refresh rate.  39 customers want their television to have both these features.

If Vizio is focused on manufacturing 32″ televisions with 720P resolution and a 60Hz refresh rate, this information might could as a bit of a surprise to the brand!

One of the core lessons I cover in Think Like A Rock Star is that your brand cannot truly cultivate fans until you make a sincere effort to understand your customers and they understand you.  Your customers will not advocate on your behalf until they trust you.  And they will not trust you until they understand you.

Your goal as a brand is not to solely leverage your fans as a channel to market on your behalf.  Your goal is to better understand your fans, and to create a relationship with them that benefits your fans and creates value for them.  A wonderful byproduct of such a relationship is that it will lead to sales for your brand.

Oh and in case you were wondering, Think Like A Rock Star shows you exactly how to connect with your fans, as well as how to structure your staff internally and exactly what you need to do to grow a deeper connection with your fans.  As well as how to leverage that connection into growth for your business.  Amazon currently has Think Like A Rock Star on sale for its lowest price so far, only $14.21!

 

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Have You Pre-Ordered Think Like A Rock Star Yet?

Right now, Amazon is running a sale on Think Like A Rock Star, for only $14.36!  That’s the lowest price Amazon has had for Think Like A Rock Star, and the best part is if you’ve already pre-ordered the book, you’ll now get it at this price!  Amazon will price-match the lowest price on any item you pre-order, which means the price you pay for the book can only go down!

BTW Amazon Prime members will also get free 2-day shipping!  If you’ve been thinking about buying Think Like A Rock Star, please go ahead and pre-order it, you will be greatly helping the book be a success.  More pre-orders impact how much shelf-space retailers will give the book, as well as its placement on bestseller lists, which also impacts how many copies retailer buy.

Plus, its a pretty kick-ass book 😉  Final edits are going to my editor this week, as well as Kathy Sierra’s foreword.  Then the manuscript will go to a copy editor, and the process will be done in a couple of months!  After the manuscript goes to my copy editor, I’ll give y’all a more complete breakdown of exactly what is in the book.

So please pre-order your copy of Think Like A Rock Star!  Thank you SO much!

 

PS:  Also join #Blogchat tonight at 8pm Central, we’ll be joined by my friend Tom Martin!  Tom is an absolute whiz at using his iPhone to create social media content, and he’ll be sharing a lot of his secrets tonight!  So if you want to know how to use your smartphone as a content creation tool, join #Blogchat on Twitter at 8pm Central!

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Think Like A Rock Star is Done and Available For Pre-Order!

Whew!

After 5 months of writing, the manuscript for Think Like a Rock Star has been handed off to my editor at McGraw-Hill, and the book is now available for pre-order on Amazon!

There’s still the editing process to go through, but I wanted to give you a bit more information on what the book will include and why you should buy it.

  • Tons and tons of case studies and insights from some of the top rock stars and brands in the world.  The book will have dozens of examples from the world’s top rock stars and brands showing how they connect with their fans.  Rock stars like Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Amanda Palmer, Sarah McLachlan, Blink 182, and brands like Billboard, Dell, Ford, Patagonia, The Red Cross, Red Bull, YouTube, and many more.
  • Specific How-Tos throughout the book that show your brand how to cultivate and connect with your fans.  Perhaps the biggest rule I had for myself when writing this book was that if I told you why you should do anything, I had to then tell you HOW to as well.
  • Step-By-Step instructions.  Want to know how to launch a brand ambassador program?  I walk you through the steps that need to happen.  Want to know how to respond to negative customers online and convert them into fans of your brand?  I give you the exact steps that you need to follow.
  • Everything your brand needs to know to become a truly fan-centric brand, even down to staffing requirements and what internal and external teams will look like.  Every position will be broken down and their specific responsibilities will be described.  You officially have no more excuses!
  • This was a fun book to write and it will be a fun book to read.  My pet peeve when it comes to most business books is that they read like a textbook.  Not Think Like a Rock Star, it has a ton of wonderful stories woven throughout and it’s the business book for people that hate reading business books.
  • If you want more Likes on Facebook or RTs on Twitter, this is not the book for you.  This book won’t teach you how to use social media to spread your message or how to turn your customers into mindless billboards.  Instead, it will teach you how to see the true value in your fans and to understand how to cultivate a relationship with them that benefits you both.

Thankfully, Amazon has finally updated its system and Think Like A Rock Star is available for pre-order!  The book won’t be released until April 19th, 2013.  Here’s how Amazon’s pre-order process works:  If you order the book now, your credit card isn’t charged until the book ships in 6 months.  Additionally (and this is the best part!), if the price drops AFTER you pre-order the book, you get it at that price.  For example, as I am writing this post, the current price on Amazon for Think Like A Rock Star is $22.00, which is the list price.  A couple of days ago it was $14.96, which means if you had ordered the book a couple of weeks ago when it was still $22.00, you’d actually get it for only $14.96.  The price has been going up and down for the last couple of weeks and my guess is it will eventually settle in at around $14.96.

If you are considering ordering Think Like A Rock Star, I would ask you to please pre-order it now.  There’s a couple of big reasons why pre-orders will help:

  • More pre-orders signals to Amazon and other online booksellers that they need to order more copies of the book from the publisher.  Which also signals to McGraw-Hill that they need to print more copies of the book.  This increases the marketing support that my publisher will give the book, which only improves its chances of being successful.
  • Pre-orders are counted toward book sales on the day the book is first available for sale.  This is important because it means the book will have a much higher sales rank when it is published, which greatly increases its chances of making those nifty bestseller lists.  Which also means more copies will be ordered and stocked by booksellers!

So if you have been considering ordering Think Like A Rock Star anyway, please do go ahead and pre-order it.  That would be a great help to me and $15 or so for the book isn’t that much.  I’ve heard from a few of you that you’ve already pre-ordered the book.  Thank you SO much for your support, it truly means the world to me!

If you want to pre-order Think Like A Rock Star from Amazon, click this link.  Thank you!

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Heading to MarketingProfs B2B Forum & Social Brand Forum in October

Wanted to let y’all know about a couple of events I’ll be speaking at in October.  The first is the MarketingProfs B2B Forum in Boston on October the 3rd through the 5th.  On the 4th we’ll cap off the first full day with a LIVE #Blogchat!  The LIVE #Blogchat is only open to B2B Forum attendees, so if you want to attend, use code BLOGCHAT to get a $200 discount on registration!  If you’ve never attended a LIVE #Blogchat, they are a blast.  It’s all the #Blogchat, without all the Twitter 😉

BTW Marketing Profs is also looking for a sponsor for the Live #Blogchat.  If your company is looking for a way to get involved in the B2B Forum this is a killer opportunity to not only be associated with a stellar event, but to help make the Live #Blogchat possible.  Remember there will be a ton of brand marketers and small/medium business owners in attendance, so if you want to reach those crowds, a LIVE #Blogchat sponsorship makes a ton of sense.  If you’re interested in learning more about terms and pricing, please email me and I’ll connect you with MarketingProfs so they can help you out.

Marketing Profs always puts on a great event, and once again has a killer speaker lineup.  Hope to see everyone there!

The second event I’ll be speaking at in October is the Social Brand Forum in Iowa.  I’ll be delivering Think Like a Rock Star for the first time as a keynote, and it looks like for the first time since completing the book.  Ann Handley and DJ Waldow will also be keynoting plus there will also be a LIVE #Blogchat at the Social Brand Forum as well!  Perhaps the best part is the rate is just $195 for the first 100 registrations plus that will get you a copy of Think Like a Rock Star PLUS Ann’s book Content Rules PLUS DJ’s new book Rebel’s Guide to Email Marketing!

As for Think Like a Rock Star, I am thankfully almost done writing it!  The manuscript is due to McGraw-Hill on September 10th, and I am finishing up the final chapters now.  It has been an incredibly rewarding/inspiring/frustrating/exhausting process, all at the same time 😉  So look for semi-regular blogging here to resume in the next couple of weeks, I’ve missed y’all!