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February 7, 2011 by Mack Collier

What every company needs to understand about influencers and reaching them

Last week I received a package from Klout and TBS. It was a Sony PSP 3000 loaded with a 1-min clip promoting TBS’ show Are We There Yet?

First, it should be noted that I am not a fan of this show, in fact I’ve never seen it. The only reason why I can think that I might have been targeted for this promotion was that I sometimes tweet about TV shows (Mostly BURN NOTICE!).

Second, this was part of the Klout Perks program, where Klout apparently works with certain companies to offer certain products/services to people that are deemed to be influencers. I got this offer right after my Klout score hit 70, so I assume that’s the activation point for the Perks program.

In 2011, many companies are now looking for a way to connect with online influencers. If you are wanting to reach influencers, here’s some points to keep in mind:

1 – Target people that already have an interest in promoting you. Too many programs attempt to give an influencer a product hoping that will convince them to promote the company/product to their networks. It’s far better to connect with an evangelist for your company/product. This is someone that is likely already promoting you/your product to their networks.

But perhaps the bigger point is, an evangelist is passionate about you. You can’t buy my passion for a show I have never seen by giving me a $150 toy.

2 – Giving someone access to something they want often works as well or better than giving them products. In this case, the approach of giving me a 1-min clip of a show on a PSP really doesn’t make me any more likely to blog about how amazing the show is. But since I cover how companies can and are using social media effectively, that would be a great way to reach me. What TBS could have done is reach out to me and see if I wanted an exclusive interview with the company’s CMO about how they are using Klout. Or maybe when I am in Austin next month for SXSW, offer to take me out to dinner and tell me what your company is doing in the social media space. THAT is access that has value for me.

3 – People that are influencers (especially online) often become influential by creating value for others. Klout sending me a PSP isn’t going to convince me to blog about Are We There Yet because doing so won’t create value for my network. If you want to gain access to the network that I am influential over, then you first need to give ME an incentive to connect you with them. That incentive is value. If you can give me a way to create value for my network, then you’ll win my attention. This goes back to the previous point about giving me access to how TBS is using social media, vs a toy. Because if you give me that access, then I can create content that will have value for my network.

4 – Target influential evangelists. Let’s again look at what TBS did: They sent me a PSP with a 1-min clip about a show that I have never seen, and never tweeted about. I’ve already said that access would have worked better in this case. Such as TBS giving me access to how they are using social media to connect with viewers online.

But notice I mentioned that while I never tweet about Are We There Yet, I do frequently tweet about the USA Networks show Burn Notice. So what if USA contacted me and offered me access to their Social Media Director to tell me exactly how Burn Notice is leveraging social media to connect with viewers?

THAT would be the best of both worlds. USA would be targeting an influencer correctly, but also an influencer that is a huge FAN of Burn Notice. It wouldn’t be a question of if I would promote Burn Notice and how they are using social media to my network, but how soon and how often 😉 Again, target people that are already passionate about you and your product.

Here’s how I think TBS could have improved this effort:

1 – Give influencers real exposure to the show. As I said, I have never seen Are We There Yet? The promotion should have included a couple of episodes so I could actually watch it and decide if I liked the show. A few ‘behind the scenes’ clips would have been nice as well.

2 – Give influencers customized content. What TBS could have easily have done was have one of the stars of the show, or Ice Cube, create a ‘customized’ greeting. A very short video, about 10 seconds in length, where the star says ‘Hey Mack, thanks for participating in the TBS/Klout Are We There Yet? Promotion. We wanted to show you what we are up to so check out the clips and media we’ve included, and thanks for watching!’ And of course, the name of each influencer could be changed, so all of the ‘customized’ clips could have been recorded in an hour, tops. That would have definitely prompted me and anyone else that got the video to want to include it in a blog post.

3 – Give influencers a Social Media Pack. Include a ton of high-resolution pics and videos with instructions for how they can be embedded/shared on my blog and with my networks. Again, if you are wanting to target influencers so they will promote your show to their networks, make the content creation process as seamless as possible for me.

4 – Focus on more than just Klout score. I’m not certain how I was chosen for this promotion, but it seems that my Klout score hitting 70 was the activation point. For example, I would have also looked at how often influencers are tweeting about TBS/Are We There Yet?, and what the sentiment of those tweets are.

Then TBS could have decided: Is it better to target someone that has a Klout score of 70 that never tweets about our show, or someone with a Klout score of 45, that tweets about Are We There Yet? every week while the show is on?

Those are my suggestions, what am I missing? How can we build a better way for companies to connect with influencers?

Disclaimer: Klout sent me the PSP3000, along with TBS. Here’s the details, Klout didn’t pay me for this post, and my receiving the product wasn’t dependent on my posting about it or receiving it.

BTW if you enjoyed this post and want to have new posts delivered straight to your inbox every day, please subscribe via Feedburner by clicking here.

February 2, 2011 by Mack Collier

Interested in finding Social Media ROI? Get better metrics.

The above is from slide 20 of the Altimeter Group’s deck on Social Business Forecast 2011. The previous slide said that the top thing that corporate social media strategists are focused on in 2011 is creating ROI measurements.

In order to do that, you need to be measuring the right metrics. Look at the above slide and note that the most popular metrics that corp social media strategists are tracking are ones associated with engagement. Now if your goal for using social media is to build engagement, then that’s fine. But if your goal is to generate sales, then measuring your number of Twitter followers is a terribly weak metric to measure.

If you want to improve your ability to measure the value of your social media efforts then start measuring metrics associated with the action you want people to take.

For example, if you want to use your blog as a tool to generate sales, then you need to focus on metrics that are tied to product sales, or interest. Such as, signups for a product demo, number of times you are contacted for more information about a product, downloads of brochures etc associated with the product, referrals from the blog to a specific product page. Or….actual sales generated on the blog.

All of those metrics are tied to the action you want the user to take, buying a product. They all indicate someone that is interested in the product and that indicates a potential customer.

On the flipside, if you are using your blog to generate sales, why measure traffic? Traffic is almost meaningless, you need to measure what people do AFTER they arrive on your blog.

Here’s some examples of picking better metrics:

Notice as you go down that list of metrics, you are getting closer to your actual goal of generating sales. That’s what you need to be striving to do. A lot of the chatter we’ve heard over the past couple of years is about the inability to accurately measure the ROI of social media. A good deal of that isn’t due to deficiencies in the tools, but rather in the measurement process.

Put your metrics on trial, and make sure that you are measuring what you should be.

BTW need help designing a better measurement program for your social media efforts? Check out my social media training options.

February 1, 2011 by Mack Collier

3 Reasons Why Social Media Training is Critical for Companies in 2011

The above is a graph from EMarketer listing the top areas that corporate social media strategists will be investing in 2011. Note that the most important investment area for these strategists, behind only measuring SM ROI, was internal education and training. I think there are 3 reasons why social media training is so critical for companies, especially larger ones, in 2011.

1 – Social media for companies has evolved, teams are now in place. Larger companies are no longer experimenting with social media, they’ve now committed and staffs have been hired. It’s very important for companies to invest in training these teams and not only that, but that they get the same training. And that open interaction and collaboration is facilitated. In many cases, the people that spearheaded a company’s social media efforts a couple of years ago, are now training all areas of the company on using these same tools.

2 – Social media training is cost-efficient. I’ve seen this far too often over the past 2-3 years. A company sends an employee to a social media conference, then that person takes copious notes all day in every session, then goes back to her office and tries to explain to her team what she learned. So the end result is the company paid $1,500-$2,000 to send one person to a conference, and all they get is a notepad full of hastily scribbled notes that no one can really explain.

This is exactly why last year I shifted the focus of my consulting to providing on-site social media training for companies. I realized that for about the same amount that a company could send an employee or 2 to a social media conference, I could give them on-site social media training for an entire day, to their entire team. This is a huge cost-savings to the company, and helps the entire team be more efficient in its social media efforts, meaning the investment in social media training easily pays for itself several times over. Please check out my Social Media Training and Workshops page to see exactly how this service works.

3 – Social media training helps get everyone on the same page. Instead of having ‘the blogging guy’ and ‘the Facebook gal’, your entire team can be up to speed on how your company is using these tools, and more importantly, what you are trying to accomplish. That means that the efforts of the individuals will be more effective, and as a result, the output of the entire team will increase dramatically.

So if your company now has an organized social media team, there’s three reasons why I think it’s critical for you to invest in social media training in 2011. If your company has started a social media training program, either internally, or by bringing in external consultants or agencies, how has that worked for you?

And if your company would like to hire me to either provide on-site social media training to your team, and/or to help your company organize an internal social media training program for your employees, please email me.

January 19, 2011 by Mack Collier

Guess what bloggers? Self-promotion is just fine, as long as it is relevant

Amy Africa is one of my favorite people. One of the things I like about Amy is that she has a very different perspective toward blogging and social media than most of my friends that are immersed in using these tools. In fact, she often does things the exact opposite of many social media ‘experts’, and her favorite hashtag is #yousocialmediapeoplekillme.

I was thinking of this when I read Amy’s fantabulous post today on how bloggers can create an email newsletter (Seriously the post is must-read. Please go, we’ll be here when you get back). But as I was reading the post, I quickly noticed something: She had a TON of links in her post. So I counted, and she had EIGHT links! And what’s worse, SIX of them were to HER CONTENT! And then she was bold enough to add a call-to-action at the end asking readers to email her!

And you know what? It all works out perfectly. Every link, even the 6 to her own content, are enhancing the post. They are offering reference points that make us smarter. Sure, they are links to Amy’s content, but she’s not positioning the links as being self-promotional, she’s adding the links cause they expand upon points she is making in the post.

And then she closes with a perfect c all to action: “Any more questions? Jot them in the comments below or send me an e-mail to [email protected]. Thanks for writing!”

Sheer smartitude. But how many of us would cringe at linking to our own content even twice in one post, much less 6 freakin’ times!

I don’t think most of us would, so to test my theory, I visited the latest post from a few of my favorite bloggers. These are all people and blogs that are very well-known and popular. But I wanted to see how often they link to their own content. Here’s what I found:

1 – Convince and Convert – Post: Can Courtney Love Be Sued For Tweeting.

# of links to bloggers’ content in the post: 0 (but 2 in the bio before post)

2 – Chris Brogan – Post: Bartering in the Digital Age.

# of links to bloggers’ content in the post: 1 (company)

3 – The Harte of Marketing – Post: Saturday Morning Reads: Personas…Do You Really Know Your Customers?

# of links to bloggers’ content in the post: 2 (Both to past posts)

4 – Conversation Agent – Post: Michael Port Wants You to Think Big.

# of links to bloggers’ content in the post: 0

5 – Social Media Explorer – Post: The Cowbell of Communications.

# of links to bloggers’ content in the post: 0

And to be fair, I only added one link to my content in my last post, to The Viral Garden. So in ONE post, Amy added as many links to her content as all SIX of us did in our last post. I think this is another example of how some bloggers, especially in the social media space, need to get over our hangups about self-promotion. If you told most bloggers that someone added 6 links to their own content in each post they wrote, many people would call them ‘shameless self-promoters’. But every one of Amy’s links makes perfect sense, and improves the overall quality of the post.

Remember when I recently blogged about the Popular Posts plugin for WordPress and how smart it is to give your readers a way to find your older content? How is what Amy did in her post any different?

How often do YOU link to your older posts in your newer ones? If you do this often, what benefits have you seen on your blog?

January 10, 2011 by Mack Collier

Thoughts and Images from CES 2011

Last week I was able to attend CES (The Consumer Electronics Show) for the first time. I was in town working with TMG on a Citi Webcast for its Citi 2G and Thank You Card programs, and decided to spend an extra day in Vegas to check out CES. I wanted to see the pretty toys, but also wanted to see some of the marketing tactics that companies were using to drive attention to their setup. And, of course, I was hoping to meet a few of my friends in the social media space.

The 1st thing I noticed about CES when I arrived at the Convention Center is that I had a LOT of walking ahead of me. Partly because the show is so spread out, and partly because I am directionally-challenged and couldn’t find anything. I seriously believe I lost 2 hours on Friday walking in the wrong direction looking for a session or an exhibit hall. And the fact that CES was an absolute madhouse didn’t help, there were about 3 times as many people as SXSW, confined in a smaller convention center.

After catching a couple of social media sessions, I headed to the exhibit floor. I quickly learned that almost every exhibit had at least one of the following:

A pretty car
A pretty girl
iPad/iPhone skins

The 3rd one surprised me, but accessories for the iPad and iPhone were the most common products I saw. Also saw a lot of 3D technology, especially for TVs.

After walking around for a bit, most of the booths started to blend together, and many were setup as having a small desk area where a couple of people were giving info about the products. But I did notice a few booths that at least had interesting visuals, such as this one for a product that claimed to ‘clean your music files’:

As you might expect, the big brands had huge exhibit spaces and splashy guests. As luck would have it, I missed the biggest guest of all, as Lady Gaga showed up at the Polaroid booth on Thursday, while I was at The Mirage working on the Citi Webcast. But I did get over on Friday to the Sony area to see the ESPN crew doing a live remote:

And I think Panasonic had an exhibit space larger than some of the towns in North Alabama. Probably the coolest thing I saw at CES was this huge sand sculpture that the artist was finishing up as I found it. Not sure this makes me any more likely to buy a Panasonic product, but it was cool nonetheless:

The biggest problem I had at CES (and it was a problem for a lot of the people I talked to) was getting around and also finding where I wanted to go. This is where I think companies missed some opportunities for connecting with attendees and influencers.

First, when I landed in Las Vegas, I made my way outside and to the longest taxi line I had ever seen. I was in this line for at least an hour. I was updating my movement on Twitter, when @Sue_Anne had a great suggestion: Branded shuttles. A company could have provided shuttle runs for 50 or so attendees at a pop, and for the next 15-30 mins, they could give us a commercial for their products while we were on the shuttle. We would have arrived at our hotel happy because we would have avoided the taxi line, the taxi fare, and we’d know exactly where their booth was at CES, and probably would have showed up. At least I know I would have. Oh and we would have blogged and tweeted about how amazing the company was for helping us out.

Another problem I had when I arrived at CES was that I had no idea where anything was. Even the few maps I could find were very hard to read, and when I finally found an information desk, they weren’t sure where the conference track was located that I was trying to get to. So I needed help getting around and figuring out directions, sounds like a great opp for brands such as Garmin and Tom Tom (Who both had exhibits at CES), right? I think I lost at least 2 hours on Friday simply walking around aimlessly LOOKING for a session or exhibit hall. If a smart brand could have helped me and saved me those 2 hours, I would have gladly promoted them during the event, and I would be blogging about them right now.

All said, CES is an event that seems to be very hard on first-timers. I talked to a few CES veterans, and they told me that after you’ve been a couple of times, the event is much easier to navigate. If I had been able to stay one more day, I probably could have seen a lot of people and things that I missed. But I did get to see plenty of new and old friends:

If you were at CES, what stuck out to you? BTW here’s all the pictures I took at CES on Flickr.

PS: For those of you that are interested, here is a link to watch the Citi webcast. After a quick registration you should be able to view it. I won’t give it away, but the technology behind the Citi 2G card is VERY interesting and something that will instantly get your attention. As I told Jeff, credit cards don’t normally get me very excited, but the technology behind the Citi 2G card is obviously a big deal as soon as you see it. So check it out if you like, but I do have to apologize for not wearing the cowboy hat 😉

November 2, 2010 by Mack Collier

#Blogchat Schedule for November

New to #Blogchat and want to figure out what the deal is with the hottest chat on Twitter? Then click here.

After a stellar October lineup we’re going to start November off with a bang with another awesome co-host!

November 7th – Darren Rowse (@ProBlogger) co-hosting on “How to Monetize Your Blog”. Darren will discuss ways we can monetize our blogging efforts, and also give us ideas for creating content that can be monetized. The topic of ‘how do I make money off my blog?’ is one that #Blogchat regulars have constantly asked about, and I wanted to make sure we could get Darren to co-host this topic, as he’s probably the best person on the planet to help us in this area! There will be a followup post here on Friday with more information about Darren’s session this Sunday, so please check back for that!

November 14th – Sponsored #Blogchat. The second #Blogchat for this month will be reserved for sponsors, however, if a suitable one hasn’t been found by the 8th (Next Monday), then well have a ‘normal’ #Blogchat. So if your company wants to pitch for sponsoring this slot, please email me with your topic ideas ASAP. If you want to learn more about how the #Blogchat sponsorships work, click here.

November 21st – Topic TBA

November 28th – OPEN MIC #Blogchat! There still seems to be a bit of confusion from some people, especially those new to #Blogchat, over exactly what the OPEN MIC nites are about. The last Sunday of every month is an OPEN MIC #Blogchat. What that means is that there is NO set topic. Everyone comes and discusses whatever blogging topic they want. It sounds like it would be complete chaos, but it’s actually a lot of fun, and these are probably the most popular #Blogchats over the last 20 months. So if you keep pitching a certain topic for #Blogchat that we aren’t covering, then come to OPEN MIC and get a conversation started around this topic!

Finally, if you aren’t already, please follow me on Twitter. As the topics for the 2nd and 3rd weeks are set, I’ll be tweeting information out on those weeks, plus I always share links to the transcripts and other info about #Blogchat. Hope to see you this Sunday!

September 14, 2010 by Mack Collier

The difference between a customer and a fan…

Depends on the company. More importantly, it depends on how the company views the person that buys their products.

On Friday I’ll be conducting a workshop at #Optsum that will center on one key question: Why do rockstars have ‘fans’ while companies have ‘customers’? Because at the end of the day, both groups are making a product that is being sold to people. But when we go to categorize those people, we think of rockstars as almost always having fans, and we almost always think of companies as having customers. Not fans.

Why? Do rockstars simply have a natural advantage in that they are selling a type of product that somehow makes it easier for them to have fans instead of customers? Perhaps to a degree, but at the same time companies Fiskars that sell products like scissors and products like WD-40 also have evangelists. So ‘it’s the type of product’ doesn’t tell the whole story.

I think what matters far more than the type of product, is how the company views its customers. Most rockstars have fans and most rockstars view their fans as people that they love and WANT to embrace. While many companies want to keep their customers at arm’s length. Some companies seem to even take an adversarial tone toward their customers.

I think rockstars feed off interaction with their fans, while many companies fear interacting with their customers. I’ll talk more about what I think that is in Dallas this week, and I’ll share my slide deck here on next week.

But I wanted to give you that something to think about. How does your company view its customers? How do you think your customers view you? If that perception was more positive on both ends, could those customers then become fans?

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