MackCollier.com

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#Blogchat schedule for September

Guys I’m proud to announce our co-host for September, and a couple of other goodies in this post!

First, our special co-host for this month will be Shani Sammons who will be discussing how musicians can use social media to connect with their fans! Shani has helped music artists in the past use social media to connect with their fans, most notably Country supergroup Sugarland!  She’s just started her own digital/music marketing company, Bamsmash.  In past lives, she’s worked in the marketing and customer service areas for Delta Airlines and Turner Broadcasting.  She’ll be joining us for the next #Blogchat, on the 5th.

Now as #Blogchat regulars know, we usually cover blogging-centric topics only.  But I am a big fan of music marketing, and I think that a lot of how artists connect with fans can help bloggers in their efforts to grow more interaction on their blog, and readership.  So this will be one of those rare #Blogchat topics that will be more on social media as a whole, instead of just on blogging.  On Sunday I’ll have up another post that will have a more detailed rundown of the topic areas that Shani and I will cover!

Also, I wanted to let y’all know of a couple of changes that we’ll be making to the #Blogchat format.  The first is with co-hosts.  The #Blogchats that have co-hosts are always very popular, and I am going to have at least one a month from now on.  In fact, the 1st Sunday of every month will be devoted to co-hosts.  If there are 5 Sundays in the month (As there are in October), then we’ll have a co-host on the 1st and 3rd Sunday of the month.

The last Sunday of every month will still be OPEN MIC.

The big change will be that starting immediately, the 2nd Sunday of every month will be reserved for a company to sponsor #Blogchat.  I’ve created a new page here just for companies that are interested in sponsoring #Blogchat, so they can see what they are getting.

The content of these sponsored #Blogchats will be completely consistent with what we talk about every Sunday nite at #Blogchat. In other words, you won’t see a #Blogchat sponsored by McDonalds, where they discuss their new line of Happy Meals 😉  But you might see a large industrial company sponsoring a #Blogchat about how B2B companies can use a blogging strategy to better connect with their customers.  Any topic that’s picked for a sponsored #Blogchat will have to have the same teaching element that we try to have present at every #Blogchat.

So again, if your company is interested in learning more about a potential sponsorship, click here.  Or if you have some questions about how it would work, please email me.

So that would mean that our schedule for #Blogchat moving forward would look like this for each month:

1st Sunday – Co-Host

2nd Sunday – Sponsor

3rd Sunday – Topic to be determined

4th Sunday – OPEN MIC

That sound good to everyone?  If you have any questions or suggestions, let me know!

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#FIRESessions 2010: My 24-hour glimpse of the future

Last week I got to spend a day in Greenville, SC.  I was exposed to a day full of fabulous conversations and presentations involving many of the topics covered at most social media events:

  • Community empowerment
  • The power of conversations
  • Why customer advocacy is so important
  • Creating something of value for customers, in order to earn their attention and business

But the interesting thing is, I wasn’t hearing all this smartitude at a social media conference.  In fact, I barely heard the term ‘social media’ uttered all day long by any of the presenters or attendees.  I had been invited by the Brains on Fire gang to live-blog/tweet their F.I.R.E. Sessions last Weds. (Disc – BOF paid for my travel to the event)  You can read my blog posts recapping the #firesessions over at their blog.

I’m lucky enough to be asked to speak at industry events on a fairly regular basis.  The best ones seem to give you an overview of what’s cutting edge right NOW, with a glimpse of what might be hot in 6-12 months.  But the #firesessions was the first event that really made me feel like I was seeing the future.  It’s wasn’t focused on smart social media tactics.  It was focused on smart communication tactics.  It was focused on a marketing world somewhere in the future when interacting directly with customers and having real conversations with them aren’t scary (or as scary) propositions.

One of my favorite quotes from the #firesessions was ““Victory in marketing doesn’t happen when you sell something, but when you cultivate advocates for your brand”. I loved the quote, but also loved WHO was saying it, Steve Knox, who is the CEO of P&G’s Word of Mouth unit, Tremor.  Folks, it’s one thing for marketing/social media consultants to talk about the importance of empowering and embracing your most passionate customers, but when one of the world’s biggest companies is singing from the same hymnal, then you’ve got something.

And that’s what I loved about #firesessions.  The speakers, the BOF gang, all approached the attendees as if they were smart.  We all knew the basics, we know that marketing has changed, we know that social media is big, we know that listening to the customer is paramount.  The theme seemed to be ‘How can we take the stuff we already know, and take it to the next level to create something meaningful?’  And perhaps more importantly, what IS that next level?

“The way to think big in this world is to create experiences without expecting anything in return, and customers will follow” – Max Lenderman

The bottom line is that this event left me energized and excited.  You can’t ask for much more than that.  If you are lucky enough to be invited to next year’s #firesessions, please make every effort to be there.

In closing, I want to point out how amazing the BoF gang was.  Everyone; Robbin, Geno, Eric, Elizabeth and everyone else made me feel like part of their family, as they did for everyone there.  Getting to attend the #firesessions confirmed everything about these people that I had suspected from reading their blog and interacting with them.  They are brilliant people doing brilliant work for clients that love them.  We should ALL be so lucky.

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5 smart ways to create additional content for your company blog!

How many of you have considered starting a blog for your company, but really have no idea how you could blog on a regular basis?  I get it, most bloggers have this problem, hell I constantly struggle with getting posts out on a regular basis and keeping the content fresh here.

But over time, many bloggers have learned how to either repurpose existing content, or to create new content that can be distributed via multiple social channels.  Here’s some ideas for taking content that your company is already creating, and using it on your blog.

1 – White papers.  Or case studies, or research papers.  You’re likely already sharing these with your non-blog audience, why not turn them into blog posts for your blog?  Did you write a white paper on ‘5 Ways the Cattle Industry Can Modernize For the Next Decade’?  Then why not turn that into a 5-part series of posts?  Maybe update the content a bit, add a tweak here and there, and you’ve gotten a couple weeks worth of blog posts right there!

2 – Internal Power Point presentations.  Some of these will definitely have content that you don’t want to share publicly, but if it’s fair game, add them to SlideShare, then embed them on your blog!  Each deck can be a separate blog post!  Just add a quick explanation, and there you go!

3 – Video interviews with company executives and customers.  This is how Robert Scoble made a name for himself at Microsoft.  He went around Microsoft interviewing the people that worked there, and blogged it.   The videos were remarkably effective in letting Microsoft’s customers ‘get to know’ the people that worked there.  You could do the same thing for your executives as well as customers!  The videos could not only be embedded into posts on your blog, they could also be housed on your YouTube channel!

4 – Industry events and conferences.  Oh you can create a TON of content at events that can benefit your blog and other social media efforts!  First, you can take pictures.  Those pictures can then be posted to Flickr, or Twitpic, or Facebook, or…..in a blog post!  Next you have video, you can create a ton of video about the event itself, and also you can interview company execs about the event, or thought leaders in the industry and speakers at the event!  Finally, you can write a blog post recapping the event itself!  THEN when you write that post recapping the event, you can also use the pictures and video you shot during the event!  Now you start to see why bloggers love attending social media conferences, eh? 😉

BONUS:  If you have a Twitter account, you can live-tweet the event!  Another favorite among conference attendees!

5 – Answer questions from your customers.  Many websites have a section or contact form where you can ask a question about the company, it’s products, or both.  Mine these questions for potential blog post ideas!  And when possible, mention the customer that asked the question you are answering, and link to her site or blog!  This just increases the chance that she will comment on your post AND promote the post to HER social network!

So there you go!  That’s 5 quick and easy ways to take existing content that you’re already creating, and use it for new blog posts.  Seriously, between these 5 ideas, couldn’t you get at least one more post a week up on your blog?

BTW if your company has been reluctant to start blogging simply because they aren’t sure where to get content from, show them this post.  Then I bet you can start brainstorming and come up with even more ways to leverage existing content your company is creating, into additional blog posts!

I want to thank CK for this post idea, and if you are a B2B company that needs help with social media and/or mobile marketing, definintely check out CK’s blog!

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Teaching a Brontosaurus to run; My review of #DellCAP


Last Monday, as the driver approached Round Rock and Dell’s HQs, he informed me that “I’ll be taking you to Building #1.  That’s where Michael Dell is!”  Unfortunately, Michael was out of the country last week, so I didn’t get a chance to meet him.

However, when we arrived at ‘Dell’s campus’, the driver explained that there were 37 buildings.  That when it hit me; whatever good works Dell is hoping to accomplish via social media will have to permeate and take hold in all 37 buildings.  And that’s just in the world HQs, Dell has offices in several other cities around the world.  That just drove home the enormity of a company as large as Dell trying to introduce a ‘new’ way of communicating with customers, and via a new set of channels.

Yet Dell has been using social media to communicate with its customers for at least 4 years now.  That effort took a very brave step forward last week, when Dell hosted its first CAP Days.  CAP stands for Customer Advisory Panel, and you can get more background on the event here, which was spread out over 2 days, involving Dell interacting directly with 30 of its most passionate customers.  I was hired by Dell to help them plan the event, and moderate it both days.  I wanted to share some of what I learned from being involved in the project.

Prior to the event, Dell sent out surveys to all 30 participants to try to get a better feel for what issues were most important to them.  These results would then play a large role in determining the structure of the topics to be covered for both days.  On the first day, Dell met with 15 customers that had had a negative experience with Dell’s products or service (or both), and had used social media to voice their displeasure.  Since customer service had been a problem area for several of the participants, it dominated discussion during the day.  At first, many of the participants were able to share their negative experiences, or ‘vent’ about what had happened to them.  Then later in the day, the discussion turned toward companies that provided exceptional customer service, and ideas were given for how Dell could improve their own efforts.

I noticed two things that surprised me a bit, from both the customers, and Dell employees, during the first day of CAP.

Several times I heard the customers explain that even though they had been involved in a negative experience with Dell, that they wanted to see Dell succeed, and they were happy to be involved with #DellCAP.  One participant even asked me at one point ‘So did Dell think we were going to be the antagonists?’  I’m not sure Dell knew what to expect, but I think they were thrilled with the honest and helpful information they got from the participants.

And on the Dell side, I was surprised a bit that there was very little ‘PR speak’ (almost none, actually), and that the employees present at each session, were honestly listening and processing what the customers were telling them.  I lost count how many times I heard a Dell employee say “Ok so based on what you’ve told us so far, what if we tried to do this? Would that work for you?”  It showed the customers that Dell was listening, and taking their problems seriously.

The second day featured 15 or so Dell evangelists, and 3 hours of the most enjoyable conversations I have ever had in the last 5 years of being involved in social media.  Picture this: I got to lead a discussion on branding, marketing, customer evangelism, and social media with Dell’s Chief Marketing Officer Erin Nelson, Michelle Brigman; Senior Manager of Customer Experience for Dell, social media geniuses like Liz Strauss, Susan Beebe and Connie Bensen, and a dozen or so Dell evangelists.  It was an amazing experience, and possibly the highlight of the week for me.

Also, the morning sessions perfectly illustrated the value that such an event can hold for companies.  A portion of the morning session on Day Two focused on customer service (This had been a VERY hot topic during Day One’s chats as well).  The general sentiment being expressed by the #dellCAP participants was that they loved Dell’s products, but the customer service, especially when it was outsourced to another country, was letting them down.  Dell’s participants explained that the company purposely outsourced a good deal of customer support overseas for consumer products, in order to keep the price of the laptops and desktops lower.  Dell seemed to be telling the participants that this was a conscious choice because they believed that most customers weren’t willing to pay higher prices just to get better service.

But the participants mostly agreed that they WOULD be willing to pay more for a desktop or laptop, if they knew they would receive exceptional customer service if they had a problem with it.  This seemed to be a marketing disconnect for Dell, and the feedback from #DellCAP participants was no doubt invaluable to the company.

And in the end, I think the true value for Dell came from them getting a chance to interact directly with their customers.  Honestly, I was a bit worried that Dell might be using this as a one-off event to simply ‘build some buzz’ online.  But I noticed as soon as the sessions started on the first day that Dell’s participants were listening, and then probing the #DellCAP participants with follow-up questions, based on the feedback they were getting from them.  And of course, when Dell’s CMO Erin Nelson kicked off the second day, that removed any doubts as to whether or not the C-Suite was taking this initiative seriously.

I’ve always said that perhaps the smartest thing a big company can do is connect directly with its most passionate online customers, and Dell did exactly that with #DellCAP.  I was beyond excited to be a part of it, and cannot wait to see what the next steps are.

BTW, this event has generated a ton of feedback on blogs, etc.  I wanted to close by listing some of these posts and videos, so you can see for yourself what everyone thought.  And if you were at #DellCAP, what did you think?  What did you like, what did you dislike?  What would you like to see Dell do moving forward?

Dave’s review of #DellCAP Day One for Fast Company

Allen’s review of #DellCAP Day One

Lauren’s video review of #DellCAP Day One

Vance Morton’s review of #DellCAP on Direct2Dell

Sarah’s #DellCAP Day Two review

Liz Strauss’ #DellCAP Day Two review

Susan’s #DellCAP Day Two review

Dell’s Flickr sets of #DellCap Day One, and Day Two

BTW, each #DellCAP session was ‘visually recorded’ by the fantabulous Sunni Brown.  Dell will be sending us digital copies of the work she created during #DellCAP, but this shot from Susan gives you an idea of her work

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Are you tracking your blog’s stats in real-time?

A fair number of you probably use Google Analytics for your blog’s stats.  GA is great for tracking information about your blog, and the trends that emerge from users interacting with your content.

But GA doesn’t give you real-time information on your blog.  For example, let’s say your blog averages 10 visitors an hour.  But let’s also assume that in the first 15 minutes of this hour, it’s suddenly gotten 237 visitors.

Obviously, something has happened to trigger that huge spike in traffic.  But if you are only using Google Analytics to track your blog’s stats, it will at best be a few hours before you can find out what is happening NOW to trigger a traffic spike.

This is where you really need a way to track your blog’s statistics in real-time.  There are several sites that will track your blog’s stats in real-time, for free.  I use Site Meter, and it installs almost exactly like Google Analytics does, you simply sign up for a free account, and add a small bit of code to your blog’s template, and you are done.

But the BIG reason why I love Site Meter, because it shows me what sites/sources are SENDING traffic to my site.  Here’s an example:

That’s a screenshot of the last 20 visitors here.  Now I’m not getting as much traffic so far today (mainly because I haven’t posted since Monday), but I can quickly see that those circled visitors all came from the same source.  That source ended up being a link that a Twitter user shared with his followers:

Notice that Tom linked to my post here, but didn’t mention me in the tweet.  So unless I was actively checking my referral traffic via SiteMeter, I would have probably never caught this.  And what’s worse, I checked Tom’s Twitter profile and found out he was following me and I was NOT following him!  So I quickly remedied that, and left this tweet:

So this is a quick example of the importance of checking your referral traffic via SiteMeter.  Here are some of the options I use the most:


Those options can give you a ton of real-time information about your visitors.  For example, if you just wrote a post about Kodak’s social media efforts, you can click on Details and it will show you if any of your recent visitors are coming from Kodak.com.  Or if you are attending an event in Tulsa, Oklahoma, you can use Location to see how many people from Tulsa are checking out your site.  Or Outclicks is a good one to see how visitors left your site.  If you just wrote a post asking visitors to subscribe, and you see most of the recent visitors are leaving via the link to subscribe via Feedburner, that’s a good thing!

So while I think Google Analytics is invaluable in tracking your blog’s statistics, for real-time information, I use SiteMeter.  Now you don’t have to use SiteMeter, there are other similar free services such as StatCounter, that more or less give you the same information.

Any other fans of SiteMeter?  Or StatCounter?  What do you use to get real-time information on your blog’s visitors?

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The next evolution of social media for business is…

Two weeks from today I’ll be at Dell’s world headquarters in Round Rock, Texas. (Disclosure: Dell is a client) Part of the reason why I’ll be there will be to moderate and help facilitate an event called CAP Days.  CAP stands for Customer Advisory Panel, and on the 15th and 17th, Dell will be bringing in 30 of its most passionate customers, 15 of them on the 15th, and another 15 of them on the 17th.  These are customers that are actively engaged in social media, whether it’s as bloggers, or on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, or other sites.  On both days, Dell will be meeting with these customers during sessions that will run throughout the day in an effort to get to know them, and learn more about their opinions of Dell.

Here’s the twist that makes this event so interesting to me; The 15 customers Dell will meet on the 15th are customers that have issues with Dell, and want to voice those issues to the company.  The 15 customers Dell will meet on the 17th are evangelists of the company.  So over the course of 2 days, Dell will be meeting with 30 of its most passionate customers, from both ends of the spectrum.  I think this event is also an example of the next evolution of social media for companies.

Connecting with customers to improve both product and marketing development.

If you think about it, this is a natural progression of social media usage for a company.  They might start out blogging, maybe using Facebook, primarily as tools to ‘get their message out’.  But along the way, they begin to interact with customers, and see the value in those interactions.  Then maybe they’ll start using Twitter and encourage their employees to as well.  Maybe more of their employees will start blogging, or individual departments/areas of the business will.

Eventually, and simply as a byproduct of being comfortable using these tools to interact with customers, the company will want to reach out directly to their customers in an effort to better understand them.  This is where I think the ‘magic’ starts to happen, because when the company starts making a sincere effort to connect with the customer via social media, they get a much better understanding of where the customer is coming from.  And vice versa, the customer begins to better understand the company, which means both sides lower their ‘guard’ a bit, and more open communication is the result.  The customers begin to see their actual fingerprints on the company’s marketing and communication efforts, which will make them far more effective.

I think this is a natural progression of how you’ll see companies, especially big companies such as Dell, using social media.  I also think if a company can reach this point in their social media usage, that they’ll have reached the point where they can see huge improvements to their product development, and marketing efficiencies.  Simply connecting with customers and communicating to them that you WANT to connect with them, will go a long way toward lowering the communication barriers between both groups.

So I’m pretty excited to be involved in CAP Days, and hope to see more examples in the coming months of companies trying to use social media to establish deeper connections with their customers.  BTW if you will be in the Austin area next month, Dell will be having a tweetup/meetup on the 16th.  I’ll be there, as will several members of Dell’s team that are putting CAP Days on, and hopefully some of the CAP Days participants as well.  I don’t believe the location and time have been nailed down, so make sure you are following Richard, Lionel and Vance on Twitter to get the latest updates!  Hope to see you there!

Pic via Flickr user Lance Shields

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I threw a (Twitter) party and all these strangers showed up…

A fascinating series of conversations (and a couple of arguments) sprung up on Twitter last nite about managing your followers.  Some people, like my good friend Beth Harte are considering ‘resetting’ their Twitter account.  Beth’s rationale is that she wants to get back to following fewer people, and having strong connections with the people she does follow.  She lamented the fact that she doesn’t know most of the people that follow her, and have no idea why they are.

I have to admit, I have the same issue.

But while we were having this discussion on Twitter, Linda left this tweet:

That was the first time I can ever remember Linda sending me a message, and I followed her as soon as she did.  And Linda’s tweet explains perfectly why I could never reset my account.  If it meant unfollowing 99 spammers and 1 person such as Linda, who is following me because she gets value from my tweets, then it’s not worth it.

This is why I believe in following people back liberally, and then pruning followers later if they end up being spammers. And I guess I have always seen the power in the ‘little guy’, and I know that far too often, today’s little guy is tomorrow’s Chris Brogan.  Also as an introvert, I understand that just because someone isn’t connecting with me, doesn’t mean that they don’t WANT to.  They may just be looking for the opening that makes them feel comfortable doing so.

So moving forward, I am going to grow my Twitter network by liberally following back people that follow me, and following anyone that either RTs me, or replies to me.  The only exception would be someone would someone that’s an obvious spammer.  I think that method means I am following the people that are engaged in the type of activity I want to encourage.

What about you?  How do you manage your network on Twitter?  Would you be willing to reset your account and start over?  I will say this: I would be completely in favor of Twitter removing all mention of how many followers someone has from the site.  It’s mainly there to stroke egos, and doing so would make the site less attractive to those that are simply there to pad their numbers.

BTW if you enjoyed this post, please consider subscribing so you can have posts from this blog sent to your reader for free! Or if you would rather have posts emailed to you, please enter your email in the Feedburner email form above. I will never share your email with anyone! Thank you!

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How I got 20,000 followers on Twitter

Last week I hit a milestone on Twitter, reaching 20,000 followers.  Plenty of people, myself included, have said that your follower number isn’t as important as it’s made out to be.  I think the term ‘follower’ implies that 20,000 people are actively attempting to engage with me.  In reality, I would guess it’s only a small fraction, possibly as low as 1%.

But I know many people on Twitter want more followers, so I decided to share what I’ve learned in the last 3 years of using the site:

1 – Be helpful.  I use Twitter primarily as a tool to connect with others.  As such, I am always looking for ways to share something of value with others.  Twitter, most than any other social media tool I use, works amazingly well as a networking tool, and that’s primarily how I use it.

Thing of it this way; what if you were at an offline networking event in a room of 100 potential employers.  What if you could show everyone in that room one thing that would make them more productive the next day?  At the very least, you would suddenly have 100 potential employers telling each other about what a great guy/gal you were for helping them.

But what’s more powerful than that, you wouldn’t have to go around the room promoting yourself to everyone, they would be telling each other about you.

Sidenote: I swear as I typed that out I switched to Tweetdeck to check my replies, and this one just came in on Twitter:

2 – Connect with people that want to connect with you.  I am continually refining and changing how I use Twitter.  Currently, I place a premium on following anyone that either RTs or replies to me.  Because they are engaging in the type of behavior that I want to ‘reward’.  I want to interact and engage with as many people as possible on Twitter, so when people are trying to connect with me, I want to encourage that.

3 – Introduce people of value to your network.  One of the things I love to do is meet interesting people and help them connect with the people I already know.  One reason is because I am appreciative for this person, and another is that I know my network will value from their insights, so it’s also a way to say ‘thanks’ to my existing network.

4 – Help people get started.  I *love* helping people get their feet wet either with Twitter, or blogging, or social media in general.  More than once I’ve had someone tell me they were grateful for my trying to help them, that others just ‘told me I was doing it wrong’.  We need to remember that we have all been newbies at one time, and if you help someone take their first steps, they will be even more grateful down the road.

5 – Give back to your network.  Look for ways to show your network that you appreciate and value them.  For me, #blogchat is a good example of this.  I try to use #blogchat as a tool to help others become better personal/professional/business bloggers.

6 – Promote others.  Complete no-brainer.  As I write this post, HootSuite is sending a tweet every 5 mins with links to posts that I picked over the weekend that I thought my network would value.  My network is then RTing these posts to THEIR networks, and when I publish this post in a few minutes, it’s probably going to be RTed a few more times by the people that saw me link to their posts, and my network, which is (hopefully) appreciative of the great links I have been sharing with them this morning.

The upshot of all this is obviously, I use Twitter as a way to help others.  But there still needs to be a financial gain for me as a consultant, or else this is all a hobby.

Last year I made more income on a yearly basis than I have in my life, and roughly 50% of that income came from sources that I connected with via Twitter.  Within the last 12 hours I have received both work and speaking invitations from people via Twitter.

As with most areas of social media, Twitter is a great way to make things happen indirectly.  Help others and create something of value for your network, and your network will attempt to return the favor.  At least that’s how it’s worked for me.

Those are my tips for getting more followers on Twitter.  What’s working for you?

PS: I thought I should clarify the timeline for how I reached 20,000.  Simply to make the point that it took me a long time.

As of the fall of 2007, I had about 100 followers.  I started really ramping up my Twitter usage in December of 2007, and by March of 2008 I had about 500 followers.

I had almost 7,000 followers by March of 2009, and am at 20K now.  I add about 20-50 followers a day, on average.

BTW if you enjoyed this post, please consider subscribing so you can have posts from this blog sent to your reader for free!  Or if you would rather have posts emailed to you, please enter your email in the Feedburner email form above.  I will never share your email with anyone!  Thank you!

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The key to building community via social media that you are totally missing

Do you have an engagement strategy built into your social media efforts?  Do you want more comments, more friends, more followers?  More interaction?

Many companies want this. If you use social media personally, you probably want this as well.  We want interaction because it tells us that we are creating something of value for others.

But in trying to get more interaction, we often ask the wrong question.  We ask “How can I get more comments on my blog?”

Instead, we should be asking “How will having more comments make this blog more valuable to my readers?”

Because when you shift your focus to what’s better for the reader, then how you approach comments changes.  Think about it, getting 15 comments to a post might be great for you.  But if those 15 comments are mostly ‘Dude, great post!’ type comments, then it strokes your ego, but really adds little for the reader.  On the other hand, if those 15 comments are all DEEP points that spark and encourage a discussion, then you are creating value for the reader via the comments.  Then a discussion is happening in the comments section, and THAT is valuable to your readers.

So when you are crafting an engagement strategy, make a list of the desired actions that you want others to take (leave comments, follow me, link to my site), then for each desired action, list the BENEFIT to that person for performing that action.

When you start viewing your engagement strategy through the lens of ‘what’s in it for them’, then the way you approach being engaging via social media will completely change.

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How to be inspired by SXSW if you weren’t there

If you haven’t noticed on Twitter the past few days, geeks have been having a field day in Austin, otherwise known as SXSW-Interactive.  I’m often asked which social media conferences are ‘must attend’ events, and although I don’t think SXSW is right for everyone, I do think that anyone that’s active in the social media space should attend SXSWi at least once.

If you ask most attendees what makes SXSW so great, the response you will hear 99% of the time is ‘the people’.  In fact, it’s a bit of a stretch to call SXSW a conference, because most attendees aren’t there for the program, the sessions.  They are there for the discussions in the hallways.  The talks over dinner between 10 people that up till yesterday you only knew online.

But at its heart, SXSWi works because it gives us the chance to connect and share ideas.  Which is when the magic happens.  So how can you draw inspiration from SXSWi even if you weren’t there?  Here’s some ideas:

1 – Comment more on other blogs.  And don’t just comment to leave your feedback, become a participant in active conversations.  Talk to my friend Lisa Petrilli, she is doing an amazing job with this.

2 – Become an active participant in Twitter chats.  @JDEbberly is actively involved in several Twitter chats, including #blogchat.  I’m sure it’s greatly expanded his network because he’s constantly meeting and engaging with new people.

3 – Start a Twitter chat focusing on a topic you are passionate about.  Seriously, I have no idea why more people aren’t doing this.  Beth and Anna started #IMCchat because the need for integrated marketing is a topic they believe in.  But it could be anything, it could be about your love of NASCAR, Civil War memorabilia, or politics in Rhode Island.  Pick a topic you want to discuss and run with it.  I didn’t wait for anyone to tell me that it was ‘ok’ to start #blogchat, I just did it.  You don’t need permission to connect with other people that are just as passionate about a topic or idea as you are.

4 – Attend local social media events/Tweetups – And especially if it’s a Tweetup, wear a name tag with your Twitter name on it.  A great icebreaker!  Nothing in your area?  Float the idea out to your friends about having a Tweetup or maybe even a Barcamp/Podcamp type meetup.

These are some ideas to get those connections, both online and offline, going.  And if you DID attend SXSWi, how are you going to keep that level of inspiration going once you get back home?