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How to Create Customer Loyalty After the Product Purchase

Let’s say for every product you buy, there are one of three outcomes as far as your satisfaction with the purchase:

1 – Indifferent. The product does what you expected it to do, no more or no less.

2 – Upset. The product doesn’t meet your expectations.

3 – Excited. The product exceeds your expectations.

 

If you are indifferent toward your purchase, the odds are that you aren’t likely to praise or criticize the purchase to other customers. Likely, it was an inexpensive purchase, and you really didn’t have high expectations for it to begin with. For instance, if your purchase cost a dollar and was a complete disappointment, well you are only out a dollar, so you are less likely to be as upset with the quality of the product.

If you are upset or excited with your purchase, then that means you want to talk about it.  You want to share your experience with others. Interestingly, Guy Winch has found that 95% of the time when a customer is upset with a purchase, they will tell other customers, and won’t tell the company that made the product! According to Winch:

“Research has found that 95% of consumers who have a problem with a product don’t complain to the company, but they will tell their tale to eight to 16 people,” he says. “It’s unproductive because we’re not complaining to the people who can resolve our issue.”

Venting also floods the bloodstream with cortisol, the stress hormone. “We tell ourselves that we need to get it off our chest, but each time we do, we get upset all over again,” he adds. “We end up 10 to 12 times more aggravated.”

Isn’t that fascinating, in a depressing sort of way? But it makes complete sense that retelling a negative experience with a product to other customers would make us more upset with the purchase. And the customers we are talking to would likely want to be supportive and sympathetic toward our anger, so they may say they agree that the company was in the wrong, which would make us even MORE upset with the purchase!

Which is honestly a bit unfair to the company, when you think about it. Because we didn’t reach out to them and give them a chance to help us with our problem.

Let’s come back to this in a moment and talk about what happens when you are excited with a purchase. You tell other customers, right? We know this is true from our own experiences for many reasons. We want to share with others what worked for us. Also, we probably want to ‘brag’ on ourselves to a degree by sharing what a ‘smart’ purchase we made.

The point is, we talk to others about our purchase in either scenario. But if you think about it, even when we have a positive experience with a purchase, are we really that likely to reach out to the company and communicate that to them?  Probably not.

So the onus, rightly or wrongly, is on the company to do everything it can to encourage the customer to give feedback on the purchase. If the customer is indifferent toward the purchase, they will likely ignore the request.

But if the customer is either very upset or very excited with the purchase, an invitation to give feedback will be greatly appreciated.

Now, many companies aren’t thrilled with the prospect of hearing from angry customers. It’s just human nature. But, if you can give a customer the support they need post-purchase, you greatly increase your chances of converting the upset customer into a happy one.

And remember, happy customers are your best salespeople. They acquire new customers for you!

So think about how you can better connect with your customers after the purchase. This will only improve and enhance your customer loyalty efforts. And if you want to learn more, we will be discussing this topic tonight during #ContentCircus on Twitter, starting at 7pm Central. Follow me on Twitter, and watch my tweets, the topic will be How to Create Content For Each Stage of the Buyer’s Journey!

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Big Facebook Lawsuit, Radio Revival, Twitch/Wendy’s Team-Up

Happy Monday, y’all! I hope everyone is having a wonderful December and is getting ready for Christmas and the Holidays! On a personal note, I wanted to thank all of you for your support since I ‘re-launched’ this blog in late August. All of us have dealt with adversity this year, and 2020 was already off to a slow start for me before covid hit. I was forced to take a step back and refocus on how I managed my social connections as well as the content I create, and to what end. I’m starting to get the content focus dialed in, and have begun to see the bounce-back in engagement I was hoping for. Your support is what continues to make that possible, and I greatly appreciate it!  Let’s jump into this week’s news!

 

The FTC and 46 states have sued Facebook. In short, they want Instagram and WhatsApp to be split from Facebook, and also put any future acquisitions Facebook makes over $10M to be subject to certain restrictions. This is by far the biggest legal threat Facebook has faced to date. I don’t want to sound like I’m beating a dead horse, but regardless of who our president is on January 20th, 2021, big social media sites will come under increasing legal and regulatory scrutiny. If your company is actively creating content on social sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, you need to keep one eye on these developing stories, as they could have a massive impact on your digital content strategies in 2021 and beyond.

 

On of the themes I’ve been covering the last few months is how customer behavior has changed as a result of more people spending more time at home as a result of dealing with covid. This has even impacted radio, as people stopped commuting as much to work, audiences for terrestrial AM and FM radio slipped. Nielsen has found that radio listeners have now returned to 97% of pre-pandemic levels. But I don’t think that means we are all going back to our daily commutes to work. What I suspect it means is that some of us are still working from home, but we’ve changed our behavior to start listening to the radio at home. Apps like Tune-In make it very easy to listen to our favorite radio stations from home. So I suspect that once we are completely past the disruptions that the pandemic has caused to our workflows, that we will see radio listener numbers actually higher than they were prior to the pandemic.

 

Man, these kids on Twitch are making a boatload of money! I’ve written before about how Twitch streamers are expert content creators, and the site’s popularity was already growing by leaps and bounds. But so many of us being stuck at home more often during 2020 was perfect timing for Twitch, and the site has taken off like a rocket this year. Companies have been jumping on the bandwagon and sponsoring the most popular streamers. Recently I got an email from Wendy’s talking about a promotion they are doing with different Twitch streamers. It really makes great sense; these streamers often stream for 6-8 hours a day, and their subscribers are paying attention to those streams for hours. So it’s a perfect chance for a savvy company like Wendy’s to promote a service the streamers and audience will need; food!

Hope you have a wonderful week, see you back here tomorrow!

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Improve Your Content Marketing By Doing These Three Things

content marketingAbraham Lincoln famously said that if you gave him 6 hours to chop down a tree, he would spend the first 4 sharpening his axe. The point is that when you improve your process, you get better results.

Too many companies today are in a rush to ‘try something new’ when they aren’t getting the results they want from their content marketing efforts. I always advise companies to first look at their current processes and see if they can improve what they are already doing. Often, I find that companies complaining about not getting the results they need from their content marketing efforts also don’t have clearly defined strategies and proven tactics guiding those efforts.

To get the best results from your content marketing, you need an efficient system in place to produce your content. Think of your content marketing as a water hose, with the goal being to have as much water as possible flowing through that hose. If you have a 50-foot hose attached to a faucet and that hose is a tangled mess, what happens when you turn the faucet on?  Not much, right?  Maybe a small amount of water would drip out.  But as you start working out the kinks in the hose, more and more water comes out, and when you completely straighten the hose, water will be gushing out of the end of the hose.

If your content marketing isn’t getting the results you want, you probably have a lot of ‘kinks’ in your hose that you could remove and get more water flowing. There’s probably a lot of things you could be doing to improve your existing content marketing efforts that would net you better results. Let’s be honest, today more than ever, it’s better to improve your current efforts, than spending money on something new that may not work. I’d rather see you spend less to get the same or better results.

Let’s start with three areas you can work on to improve your content marketing efforts.

Define Your Who, What, and Why. 

Let’s follow Simon Sinek’s advice and Start With Why. The ‘why’ as it pertains to your content marketing, is your strategy. Why are you using content marketing, what are you trying to accomplish, and who are you trying to connect with. The ‘why’ comes first because it encompasses and guides all elements of your content marketing efforts.

The role of strategy development for your content marketing will fall to your Chief Content Officer in a more developed company with a larger content marketing team. For smaller companies with smaller teams, the strategy development function would fall to the most senior role on your content team, or perhaps to the most senior position on your marketing team. In terms of hierarchy within the organization, the Chief Content Officer will usually either report to the Chief Marketing Officer, or possibly report directly to the CEO.

Regardless of who has the responsibility, it is vital that your company’s content marketing efforts are guided by a solid strategy. This only ensures that your content marketing efforts will be more effective and efficient. That means less time on content creation and execution, along with better results. The head of your content marketing team will work with the head of your marketing team to ensure that your company’s content efforts are in sync with the company’s larger marketing strategy.

It all goes back to planning. The more planning you do, the better results you will achieve. So when fleshing out your content marketing strategy, ask and answer these three questions:

  1. What are we doing? (Why are we using content marketing?)
  2. Why are we doing it? (What do we hope to achieve?)
  3. Who are we doing it for? (Who is the audience we need to reach via our content?)

 

Now let’s look at ‘What’

In terms of your content marketing efforts, the ‘what’ refers to the tactics you will use to execute your content marketing strategy (the ‘why’). Many marketers get strategy and tactics confused. Tactics are used to execute the strategy. The strategy is what you want to accomplish, the tactics are how you will accomplish it.

The Director of Content Strategy will be responsible for helping to develop the tactics to support the larger content marketing strategy, and they will work with the Chief Content Officer toward this end. The Director of Content Strategy will also work with the content marketing team to execute the strategy through those tactics. For smaller companies with less developed content teams, this responsibility can fall to the Content Marketing Manager. In general, the Chief Content Officer designs the strategy, the Director of Content Strategy then determines the tactics that will be used to execute that strategy.

What does tactics include in this context? Anything that is used to deliver content marketing to the end audience. It could be certain digital tools, like blogs or podcasts. It also be certain social sites such as Twitter or Facebook. It could even be formats, such as white papers, or pamphlets to be included in print newspapers.

Think of tactics as being the battle plan to execute the strategy. Let’s say you are a war general and you are tasked with defeating an enemy city. You decide that the best way to do this is to cut off supplies to that city.  That is your strategy. To execute this strategy, you decide to position your navy in the harbor to block supplies from coming into the port. The naval blockcade of the port is the tactic you are using to execute the strategy of cutting off supplies to the enemy city.

So the Director of Content Strategy works with the Chief Content Officer to develop the tactics to execute the content marketing strategy, and they then work with the content marketing team to help facilitate content creation via those tactics. Based on the size and cope of your content marketing team, the Director of Content Strategy may or may not be tasked with actual content creation.

 

Finally, let’s look at ‘who’.

So ‘why’ is the strategy for your content marketing efforts, and ‘what’ are the tactics you will use to execute that strategy. ‘Who’, is the audience for your content marketing, the person you are trying to reach. The determination of who the audience is will come from your content marketing strategy, and tactics will be chosen based on who you want to connect with and what actions you want them to take as a result of interacting with your content. The ‘who’ is listed last simply because the members of your team tasked with content creation will have the most direct contact and engagement with your intended audience. Thusly, positions such as Content Marketing Manager or Content Strategist for smaller teams, will fill this role. In general, these roles will focus on content creation, but will also assist the Director of Content Strategy and Chief Content Officer in the development of content tactics and strategy.

So the workflow could look like this; The Chief Content Officer develops the strategy, the Director of Content Strategy develops the tactics, then the Content Marketing Manager creates content for those tactics, to reach the desired audience. This is the level where your content creators will live, so obviously, having multiple content creators with experience creating content via multiple mediums (audio, video, written, print, etc), is a big plus.

Now, when we are talking about ‘who’, the importance of creating quality personas to accurately define your ‘who’ cannot be overstated. Your content persona is your best ‘guess’ or summary of who the person you are creating content for really is. It can and should be as detailed as possible. The persona can include characteristics like:

  • Age
  • Gender
  • Occupation
  • Martial status
  • Where they live
  • Income
  • Number of children
  • Pain points or problems they are facing (this can be focused on either home life or workplace, as relevant)
  • Type of content they enjoy and prefer

The best buyer personas give the content creator an accurate view of who will be interacting with the content the manager or strategist creates. It tells the content creator ‘this is who you are writing for’. Personas that are an accurate representation of the desired audience can be a huge asset for the content creator.

 

A Well-Defined Content Strategy Pays For Itself

According to the Content Marketing Institute, 57% of B2B companies have no content marketing strategy. That’s a staggering stat. If you have no strategy guiding your content marketing efforts, then you will get worse results.

To improve your content marketing results, define your why (strategy), your what (tactics to execute that strategy), and who (people you want to reach via your content).

Need help designing a content strategy for your company or improving your current one? Email me, I can help with that.

 

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#ContentCircus 12-8-20 Recap: Where to Post Content

Last night we had our first #ContentCircus chat on Twitter! #ContentCircus happens every Tuesday night at 7pm Central, and we discuss a variety of topics, focusing on content creation, strategy and execution.

Our topic for last night was ‘How to Decide Where to Post Content’. One of the things I always try to do with all my content; whether it’s a post here or a Twitter chat discussion, is I want you to think strategically about the actions you are taking. If you have a sound strategy in place that guides your actions, that means you get better results, with less time and resources required. Thinking strategically about your content creation efforts will be a topic we will revisit often at #ContentCircus.

We had a great discussion last night and I wanted to highlight a few of the wonderful points made by participants:

I loved Becky and Paul’s answers here because they cover two important areas to consider when deciding where to create content. In general, it’s always best to create content that will connect with your desired audience. If you are a business, this is current and potential customers. But Paul makes a great point as well: If your goal is to build awareness and establish thought leadership, then you may want to post on sites with an established audience. Creating long-form content on sites such as LinkedIn and Medium has become popular in recent years because it can ‘fast-track’ your efforts to gain exposure and build an audience for your work. I think this approach can absolutely work, my caveat would be as your exposure grows, try to steer that audience’s attention back to platforms that you own, such as your blog or website.

 

This has always been a pet peeve of mine: Companies and content creators who try to create content for too many channels. It’s always better to focus on FEWER sites and channels, not more. Content creation is a bit of an art, and you can achieve better results when you focus your efforts. I love Becky’s point about focusing on fewer channels, and after you nail down your efforts there, then you can experiment with new sites or channels. I’ve seen so many companies burn themselves out on content marketing over the years by trying to do too much in too many places. Start with fewer sites, nail down the content creation process, then once you are seeing the results you want, experiment with new sites and channels. It will simply take time for your content creation efforts to gain traction, so grow slow and grow smart.

 

Social media channels are not ‘one-size-fits-all’ when it comes to content. Every channel is different with a different audience and its own expectations for the content there. The culture on Reddit is not the same as the on Twitter or the one on Line. It’s important to know the differences between the userbase for each channel.

 

So those are a few of the fascinating discussions we had in #ContentCircus last night.  Here’s a transcript of last night’s #ContentCircus, hope to see you there next week!

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Content Case Studies: How Wistia and Evernote Leverage Customer Stories to Promote its Products

One of the most effective ways to market your products and services is to have your current customers share their experiences with other customers. The reality is, we trust other customers more than we trust your brand. So if you can find a way to let your customers market for you to other customers, you want to be smart enough to do so. One way to do this, is by creating case studies or testimonials from your current customers and using those in your content strategy. I have testimonials on my homepage, I have short case studies from my clients here.

I wanted to look at how Evernote and Wistia are using Customer Stories to highlight how their customers and clients are using their products and services. I wanted to specifically highlight the efforts of these two companies ,because I think both are doing some things well, and I also see some areas for improvement. If you were to combine the best elements of both efforts, I think you would have a fantastic mechanism for sharing customer experiences.

Before I show you what these companies are doing with their customer case studies, I wanted to talk for a moment about the actual value of case studies. Case studies can be a wonderful learning tool IF you use them correctly. Case studies are so popular because we want to see what works for other companies similar to our own. But the potential problem from a presentation point of view can be that the audience will take the case study and understand how the case study applies to that company, but not be able to make the connection to how the same concepts could apply to THEIR company. In other words, they may understand how your product helped Apple achieve great results, but they don’t understand how to take what worked for Apple, and make it work for their brand.

You overcome this by including abstract examples that highlight the key concepts that you want the audience to understand. You spell out the key takeaways from the case study, and help the audience understand why and how your product or service helped another company, so the audience can better understand how your product or service could help them as well. Just remember that the brain is more likely to learn a concept if you give both literal (case studies) examples of the concept, as well as abstract (here’s an example of how your company could use…) examples.

 

Let’s first look at Evernote:

Evernote has a collection of short customer case studies which they are calling Customer Stories.

evernote customer stories

Here’s what I like about Evernote’s Customer Stories: You can immediately spot the feature of these Customer Stories that I really like: They include the industry the customer is in, as well as the size of their company. This helps establish the relevance of the Customer Stories. If I have a company running a fleet of 5 food trucks in the Atlanta area, the, Guayaki story on the right will immediately grab my attention because it’s coming from a similar background as my company.

Speaking of Guayaki, let’s look at their Customer Story:

As you can see, it’s pretty short. There’s not much information here. Oddly, it does include a link on the right to Download a PDF of this page, and that version actually includes another paragraph of information and also clarifies that the company used EverNote to cut training time. I’m not sure why that additional content wasn’t included on the website.

Here’s What Needs Improvement: I’ve already touched on how short these Customer Stories are. I think some additional information, especially speaking to a business problem that the customer solved by using Evernote would be helpful. I also think that some short videos from the customer talking about how Evernote helps them in running their business, would be great. Ideally, I’d like to see some screencasts from the customer showing them using Evernote as they do in their daily routine. This would help the audience understand how they too could use Evernote successfully. Plus, video content has such high engagement levels, I think some video content from the customers themselves would really take these Customer Stories to the next level. In fact, Evernote could even do a video podcast with their customers talking about their experience with using Evernote, and then post on a video hosting site such as YouTube, then embed the video on that Customer Stories page for each customer.

 

Now let’s switch gears and look at how Wistia is using Customer Stories on its site:

wistia customer stories

Here’s What I Like About Wistia’s Customer Stories: Wistia has dozens of Customer Stories on its site. Unlike the Evernote Customer Stories, the ones on Wistia’s site are really in depth for each company. Each Customer Story includes plenty of quotes from the company, carefully explaining how it has benefited from using Wistia. And the Customer Stories also include video content! Sometimes it’s an interview with someone at the customer’s company, other times it’s examples of work that the customer has created by using Wistia. I think the Customer Stories do a great job of explaining who the customer is, what they do, but also helps the audience understand how they are using Wistia to be more successful. Wistia has done a really nice job with their Customer Stories.

Here’s What Needs Improvement: I think the Customer Stories would be more useful to the audience if they followed Evernote’s example and gave us information about the customer’s industry, and number of employees on the front page for the section. But honestly, that almost feels like nit-picking at this point, since Wistia has done such a good job with the content on each Customer Stories entry.

 

And if you are curious, I noticed that both EverNote and Wistia have a Customer Stories entry for CoSchedule. So you can check out both and see which one you prefer. Here’s the CoSchedule page on Evernote’s site, and here it is on Wistia’s site.

 

So that gives you an idea of how your company can integrate customer testimonials into your site’s content. Just remember to help the audience understand the important concepts that you want them to learn, and also make sure the customer talks about how they are using your products or services to grow their businesses. And finally, use the testimonials as a way to promote the customer. Give them some link love, let them brag on themselves a bit. After all, they are helping your company, by agreeing to give the testimonial. I think one of the companies I looked at in this post did a much better job with this than the other one. Look for yourself and see what you think.

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Buyer Personas, Online Food Sales Spiking, #ContentCircus Debut

Happy Monday, y’all! I hope you had a great weekend and are ready to close out 2020 with a bang! Here’s a few marketing and business stories I found that I think you will like:

 

One of the themes I’ve been focusing on is how buyer behavior has changed in 2020, how your business can adjust, and what opportunities are created by the changes.  Bazaarvoice, a former client, has found that 42% of US shoppers, and 43% of European shoppers will be changing how they buy food and beverages. That means more online sales, and retailers are adjusting their ecommerce offerings to meet the increased demand. Now, this creates two scenarios that I want you to think about: If your company sells food and beverages, how can you make the purchase and delivery process more frictionless for customers? Remember that shoppers will pay for convenience. And secondly, if more shoppers will be buying food and beverages from home, that means they won’t be spending that time leaving their house to shop for food. What will they be spending that extra time on, and is there an opportunity for your company to take advantage of that additional time that shoppers will have? Could they spend that extra time with your products and services? Something to think about!

 

Buyer personas are so valuable to your marketng and content creation processes, but few companies use them and use them well. This very in-depth article from SEMRush walks you through the process of creating your own buyer personas. Well worth the time to improve your efforts to identify, and create a digital experience that connects with your ideal customer.

 

I am thrilled to announce that tomorrow night at 7pm Central will be the debut of #ContentCircus! This will be a weekly Twitter chat focused on content strategy, creation and execution. Think of it as a natural evolution of #Blogchat, but focusing on all content channels, not just blogs. Please join us, a recap will be posted here on Wednesday if you can’t make it!

 

Thanks so much for reading, I will see you back here tomorrow!

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Case Study: How Patagonia and Caterpillar Match Content to the Buyer’s Journey

Let’s review the Buyer’s Journey:

Buyer's Journey, Creating Better Content

In looking at this process, you can see that some customers would be at each of these four stages of the Buyer’s Journey leading up to a purchase. Let’s quickly review the type of content you should deliver to these customers at each stage:

Unaware: These are customers that don’t know who you are or what you do. The content you create for these customers should be focused heavily on the customer, and light on the brand. When you create content that talks about the customer, it gets their attention, and you will need their attention to move the customer closer to a sale. When you hear companies talk about wanting to ‘build awareness’ via social media and content marketing, these are the customers they are wanting to reach.

Slightly Aware: These are customers who are beginning to understand who your brand is, and what it does. Content aimed at these customers should help them understand how your brand’s products and services fit into their lives. So at this stage, you want to shift your content a bit to begin to discuss your product and services, but in the context of ‘Here’s how our stuff can help you”. In that way you are communicating that you know and understand who the customer is, and also that you know how your products and services can help them.

Interested: Customers at this stage are now considering making a purchase. So your content should shift more toward the product itself. NOW is when you can FINALLY start to sell your brand’s products and services. Customers at this stage are doing research in your products and services and those of your competitors, before making a purchase decision.

Ready to Buy! Customers at this stage are…ready to buy! Your content should do one thing, help them complete the sale.

 

Most company blogs create content that’s focused on either customers who are Unaware (building awareness) or customers who are Slightly Aware (helping customers understand how your products and services fit into their lives). So let’s look at two company blogs that cater its content to each of these groups. This will help you understand what such content would look like if you are trying to reach the same group for the same reason.

 

Case Study of a Company Blog that Focuses on Unaware Customers: Patagonia’s The Cleanest Line Blog

If you want to create content that raises awareness, you focus almost exclusively on what’s important to the audience you are trying to connect with, current and potential customers. You talk about the ideas, themes and beliefs that are important to your potential customers, because that’s how you get them to pay attention to your content.

Patagonia does a wonderful job of creating customer-centric content on its blog, The Cleanest Line. Its content is focused on ideas, themes and causes that are important to its customers, but which are also important to the brand and its founders:

  • Protecting the environment
  • Sustainability
  • Being active outdoors and enjoying nature

Almost all of the content on The Cleanest Line is focused on one or more of these areas. By positioning its content in this way, Patagonia is communicating the values and beliefs that are important to the brand. As a result, it attracts the awareness of people that share those same values and beliefs.

The content being created at The Cleanest Line is almost completely focused on topics other than the clothing that Patagonia sells. This is how you create content that builds awareness; By NOT directly selling to the customer.

As a sidenote, The Cleanest Line has changed a bit over the years, from a standalone site and blog, to now being completely integrated into Patagonia’s main website. Also, the posts are now called ‘Stories’, which I like and I think that encourages people to read the content by identifying it as being ‘stories’.

So check out The Cleanest Line, and note how the content is focused on what’s important to the customer, and almost none of it directly promotes its clothing or sells to those same customers. This is how you position your content if you want to build awareness.

 

Case Study of a Company Blog That Focuses on Slightly Aware Customers: Caterpillar’s On the Level Blog

Now let’s talk about how content changes when you create it for slightly aware customers. To reach customers at this stage, you still want to talk about what’s important to these customers, but you also want to talk about how your company’s products and services fit into the lives in your customer’s lives. Additionally, since this audience does have some awareness of your company, it will include some current customers. This is why your content transitions from being completely about the customer in the Unaware stage, to being about the connection between the customer and the company in the Slightly Aware stage.

With that in mind, let’s look at Caterpillar’s On the Level Blog. As soon as you see the topics of the posts on the blog, you can immediately see that the content is focused on connecting with project managers on construction sites. The content focuses on issues and problems that will be encountered on the construction site, and also focuses on how Caterpillar products and services will help managers succeed with their projects. Also note how the content here is different than the content you see on Patagonia’s The Cleanest Line blog. Patagonia almost never blogs about its products, Caterpillar does often. Also, note how the focus of the content is more narrowly defined on the Caterpillar blog.  This makes sense, as Caterpillar is speaking to a smaller audience. This is a byproduct of trying to reach an audience that is further along the Buyer’s Journey.

Here’s some of the posts up on the On the Level Construction Blog:

buyer's journey

As you can see, this is type of content is geared toward managers working on a construction site. Many of them are probably already using Caterpillar machinery, or are considering doing so,. The content is designed to be helpful and provide guidance for these construction site managers, but it also wants to help them understand how using Caterpillar machinery can make their projects go smoother.

 

So that gives you a good idea of the difference between the type of content you should create to reach Unaware customers (The Cleanest Line blog) and Slightly Aware customers (On the Level Construction blog) along the Buyer’s Journey.

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November’s Blogging Recap

November is the 3rd month of my ‘blogging relaunch’ that I started in September. Over the Summer, I decided that with changing work patterns due to covid, that it was a good time to double-down on blogging as a content creation tool. Plus, I fear that heavy regulation is soon coming to social media sites regardless of who is in the White House come January 20th. So all of this together prompted me to get serious again about writing and creating content here.

So here’s how traffic did in November vs October:

Sadly, traffic was down 11.45%. First, there was one more day in October, so that accounts for a bit of the drop.  And last week was Thanksgiving, that also accounted for a little bit of the decline. But the biggest reason for the decline was I went from 20 posts in October, down to 10 posts in November. Real life and work got in the way and I didn’t write as much as I should have.

When I first relaunched the blog in September, the goal was to write 6 posts a week. I kept that up for about 5 weeks, but I’ve now decided that I would like to settle in on a schedule of 4 new posts a week, Monday through Thursday.  Occasionally I might have a 5th post on Friday or Saturday.  Monday’s Marketing Minute is the post series I can stand by, and that results in one post every Monday.  I announced yesterday that I would be launching #ContentCircus on Tuesday. The goal is to have a recap post on every Wednesday that covers what we discussed the night before in #ContentCircus.  That will give me 2 posts a week.  The post on Tuesday will usually be an ‘opinion’ post, and the post on Thursday will be a ‘thought leadership’ or instructional post.

More than anything else, it’s so important to strive for consistency in blogging. These first 2-3 months of the relaunch here were mostly about me developing a schedule that I can set, and stick to. Nothing is worse than a blog that goes weeks or months with no posts. I started out shooting for 6 posts a week. I’ve now figured out I really can’t maintain that volume, so I’m going to try dialing it back to 4 posts a week. But again, the main point is consistency.

Thanks for reading, I hope this is helping you plan your own blogging strategy. I’ll be back here in a month to share December’s results.  And there WILL be more than 10 posts in December!

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Introducing #ContentCircus!

Starting one week from today on December 8th, I will be launching a new Twitter chat called #ContentCircus! #ContentCircus will be focused on three areas:

  • Content Creation
  • Content Strategy
  • Content Execution

#ContentCircus will be every Tuesday night at 7pm Central. We will have a topic related to each of these three areas every month, and the last Tuesday of every month will be OPEN MIC, just like we had with #Blogchat!

Helping companies improve their content strategies and creation efforts is the work I love. I love teaching companies how to create content that resonates with customers, while also achieving desired business outcomes. And while I will always be partial to content created on blogs, content in 2020 takes on so many forms across so many tools and platforms. I think there’s an opportunity to create a robust Twitter chat with content as a focus that can benefit both content creators as well as the companies that hire and work with them.

So why not just bring back #Blogchat? 

I started #Blogchat on a whim in 2009 as a way to better catalog a Twitter conversation around a blogging question I asked on Twitter. It quickly grew into one of the first chats on Twitter. It WAS the first Twitter chat to monetize with a sponsor, and ended up being live at events like South By Southwest, Content Marketing World and Blogworld and New Media Expo. Companies such as Dell, Adobe, Club Med, Pilot Pen and others have sponsored #Blogchat. Every important thought leader in the blogging and digital space co-hosted #Blogchat during it’s 10-year run and at its height, #Blogchat was generating 25 Million impressions in one hour on Sunday nights!

#Blogchat soon took on a life of its own, and was a wonderful way to connect with new and emerging bloggers, and give them valuable guidance on how to improve their craft. You sense the ‘but’ is coming, right? But…my clients weren’t individual bloggers. So over time, the audience for #Blogchat and my desired audience began to become fractured. But I loved doing #Blogchat so much, and I felt an obligation to give back and do all I could to help bloggers become better bloggers. But over time, #Blogchat began to become a big time sink and other than sponsorships, I really could get enough money back from it to justify the time I needed to spend with the chat to continue its success.

So in 2019 I finally decided to end #Blogchat. But I didn’t end my love of Twitter chats. I still believe that chats are the best source of value on Twitter. And I always had in the back of my mind maybe I could bring #Blogchat back, at least for a one-shot.

Then one day it hit me: Why not do a Twitter chat focused on content? Boom! That would allow me to cover a topic that’s more in line with my desired client base and which would let me better promote my business services. Additionally, we could cover content creation using tools other than just blogs. So since the topic would be more closely aligned with my business, I could justify spending more time with the chat, to help it grow and be more valuable to as many content creators as possible.

What will be the focus of #ContentCircus?

The topics for #ContentCircus will all fall into 3 buckets; Content Strategy, Content Creation and Content Execution. In most months, we will have 4 Tuesdays, so 4 topics.  We will pick one topic from each of these buckets, and the 4th topic will be OPEN MIC, held on the last Tuesday of the month. OPEN MIC is something I started with #Blogchat. During OPEN MIC there is no set topic, everyone can discuss anything they want related to content. It’s a great chance for anyone to ask questions on content topics that we haven’t yet touched on.

We will also be focusing on these buckets as they relate to content tools and platforms as well.  For instance, we might talk about how to create more engagement on Twitter one month, and how to take better photos for Instagram the next month.

Over time, as the community grows, we will bring in co-hosts who are subject matter experts. One of the things I loved about seeing the #Blogchat community grow was that it gave me the opportunity to bring in popular thought leaders who could not only offer valuable insights to the #Blogchat community, but the exposure from co-hosting #Blogchat was also great for the co-hosts. A true wn-win.

And yes, we will have sponsors for #ContentCircus. Lining up sponsors honestly is not a concern at this point, that will take care of itself later on. As with #Blogchat, any sponsorships with #ContentCircus will be structured so they add value to the community, and aren’t a distraction.

So I’m excited about #ContentCircus and I’m looking forward to creating another community that can help others become better content creators. See you next Tuesday at 7pm Central on Twitter!

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Tracking Sales to Social Media, Conducting Sweepstakes and Contests

Happy Monday, y’all! Hope you had a fantastic Holiday weekend, and are easing into the workweek slowly. Here’s some useful links to help you start the week smarter:

 

I always chuckle at how companies lament that they are having difficulty tying sales directly to its social media efforts. The reality is, social media as a channel is not the best channel to drive sales directly. First, most companies struggle to correctly attribute revenue to any channels, much less social media. The study in the tweet below found this as well. Social media has certain strengths and weaknesses for businesses. It does a great job at things like building brand awareness, a good job at things like customer service, and not that great at things like direct sales. All channels have strengths and weaknesses. Most companies are also having trouble attributing customer service success to billboards. The point is, focus on the strengths and weaknesses for each channel and don’t waste time and money trying to force a square block into a round hole.

 

One of the most misunderstood areas of social media is how to effectively and legally run sweepstakes and contests via social media. This great share from Mari gives you wonderful pointers on how to run either via social media channels.

 

I constantly talk to companies that want to build a fanbase of passionate customers, who have no idea how to get started. I always tell them to do the same thing; say ‘Thank you’. LA Chipper (and former Alabama Crimson Tide great) JaMycal Green recently left the LA Chippers, and when he did, he posted goodbye and said thank you to Clippers fans on Instagram. Then he went through and thanked every fan that replied. This is how you build a fanbase, by simply showing your current fans that you appreciate them. Look at your company’s Facebook page, or your Twitter replies. How many customers are commenting that they enjoy your products or services? Are you replying and thanking every one?  You should be. Don’t over complicate things, saying ‘Thank you’ still works.

 

I hope you have a great Monday! Speaking of news, I’ll have some news of my own to share here tomorrow. I think you’ll enjoy it!