MackCollier.com

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Are We Misunderstanding the Purpose of a Business Blog?

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Earlier this week, Gini had an interesting post on her efforts to drive revenue from her site SpinSucks.com:

We batted around some ideas. Should we sell content? Should we create a subscription-based professional development site? Should we host paid webinars?

The answer to all of those questions was yes and we embarked on trying to generate revenue from each of them.

We created eBooks and sold them for $9.99. We built monthly webinars and charged $50 to attend. We even developed a professional development site calledSpin Sucks Pro that cost $50 per month to join.

It all flopped.

 

I sympathized with Gini’s post because I’ve had the same success in trying to sell digital products and services here.  In fact most of the companies I talk to show little to no direct revenue as a result of their blogging.

So then why the hell are we doing this?

Blogging and social media have never been the best ways to directly sell to others.  Sure some people and companies can make it work, but some people can sell ice to Eskimos.  For most of us, it’s a struggle to use channels that most people view as personal communication channels, and sell stuff via these channels.

The mistake typically happens when we view blogging strictly through the ‘how can this make us money?’ lense.

What about considering the amount of money that blogging can save you?  Blogs are a great way for a business to draw exposure to itself and that exposure is a marketing cost savings.  Or what about using your blog as a tool to provide customer service?  Every call to customer service that’s avoided because someone read your post and solved the problem themselves is a customer service cost savings.

Here’s another example:  Six years ago I wrote a blog post critiquing Dell’s company blog. As a result of that post, I got to know several of the first member’s of Dell’s social media team.  That led to:

  • My speaking at South By SouthWest in 2008 (which by itself led to a ton of other opportunities)
  • Multiple projects with Dell
  • Meeting Michael Dell
  • Getting to know probably 20 or so key members of Dell’s social media team.  Some of those people have moved on to major brands such as Adobe, Citi, Wal-Mart and Perdue.

But I had no idea any of that would happen when I wrote the post.  In fact while most of my efforts to directly monetize this blog have failed, most of the money I’ve made over the last 8 years, in fact probably all of it, has happened indirectly because of this blog.

So instead of focusing on how you can directly monetize your blog, think about how you can directly create value for your readers.  Then once you create that value, the money will follow.

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You’re Marketing to the Wrong People

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This week I am headed to Louisiana to present Think Like a Rock Star to New Orleans’ AMA chapter.  One of the things I’ll talk about with that group is one of the key takeaways I had from researching and writing the book.

In doing research for the book, I wanted to learn how it was that rock stars could so easily create and cultivate fans.  I wanted to learn how rock stars create fans so effortlessly, then take that ‘secret’ and show brands how to create fans just as easily.

But the secret, isn’t what rock stars are doing, it’s what brands are not.  Brands aren’t marketing to the very customers that are most poised to drive real business growth.

Consider these stats:

  • Fans spend 13% more than the average customer – Satmetrix
  • Fans refer business equal to 45% of the money they spend – Satmetrix
  • Customers referred by another customer have a 37% higher retention rate

In short, fans create cash.  Rock stars have always understood this, and that’s why almost all of their marketing efforts are focused on their most passionate customers.  Rock stars go out of their way to create amazing experiences for the people that love them.  Because rocks stars understand that the best marketing in the world is spoken in a voice that the customer pays attention to.

Their own.

By embracing their fans, rock stars put their marketing in the hands of their most passionate customers.

In contrast, consider this final stat:  The top marketing goal for US companies is to acquire new customers.

Wait, what?

This was the most surprising thing I learned in writing Think Like a Rock Star.  Rock stars focus almost all of their marketing efforts toward connecting with their most passionate fans, the customers that are already giving them their business.

While in contrast, most brands focus almost all of their marketing efforts toward connecting with people that have never bought from that brand.

As a result, almost all of the rock star’s marketing is via word of mouth, from satisfied customer to satisfied customer.

On the other hand, almost all of the average brand’s marketing is via traditional marketing channels.

Who do you trust more:  Your best friend, or the commercial that just ran during Monday Night Football?

 

But the greatest irony is this:  Brands don’t embrace their fans because they want total control over their marketing efforts.  Yet rock stars have learned that when they give up control and freely give their marketing to their fans, they then earn the trust of their fans.

Those fans then willingly spread their marketing for them.  Funny how that works out.

PS: A special treat for you, I’ve done a free 50-minute webinar for Cision on Fans vs Influencers: Which is Better For Your Brand?  Hope you enjoy it!

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How Do You Create Content For a Niche Audience? Tonight’s #Blogchat topic!

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Here’s the transcript from tonight’s #Blogchat (Click Transcript on the left).

Tonight’s #Blogchat topic (10-13-13) will be How Do You Create Content For a Niche Audience?  #Blogchat begins at 8pm Central, and you can follow the hashtag on Twitter.  In October every #Blogchat is sponsored by AllergEase, and you can click here to receive a completely free 21-pack lozenge product sample, just for #Blogchat participants!  AllergEase makes an all natural allergy lozenge that’s designed to help relieve the affects of seasonal allergies.  You can learn more about their products here.

If your company would like to sponsor #Blogchat, the first available month is December, here’s the price and details.

Here’s what we’ll be discussing tonight during #Blogchat:

8:00pm-8:20pm Central – How do you create content for a niche audience?  

8:20-8:40pm – How can a business blog create that’s valuable for readers, yet not overly promotional?  What are some examples of companies that do a good job of this?

8:40-9:00pm – How does the recent Hummingbird update to Google’s search engine change how we should write content?  

 

So that’s what we’ll be discussing tonight during #blogchat, starting at 8pm central!  Hope to see you there and please follow October’s sponsor, AllergEase on Twitter!

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How to Get Books to Review and How to Connect With Bloggers to Review Your Book

TLARS-KGSo last night we had a fabulous #Blogchat discussion on blogger outreach with Sheila.  At one point we were discussing doing an outreach that involved a product, such as asking bloggers for book reviews.  Many of the #blogchat participants said that they would like to be pitched books to review, so I wanted to talk about that here.

Here’s what worked for me:  Start reviewing books.  Waaaaay back in 2006 I had a blogging buddy ask me if I would review his new book on my blog if he sent me a copy.  He did, and I did.  Almost immediately, other marketers with books coming out started contacting me asking if I wanted a copy of their book in exchange for a review, and it continues to this day.

So if you are a blogger that wants to be pitched on getting books and other products to review, here’s what I would suggest you do:

1 – Write a Pitch Me page on your blog.  I have one here, and it basically outlines how I want to be pitched.  And as you can see I mention that I don’t do book reviews and rarely do.  That’s mostly there because most of the books I am pitched to review I have no interest in reading.  In fact most of the pitches I get are completely irrelevant to what I cover here.  Which is why this whole getting pitched business is a double-edged sword:  Those that have never been pitched typically wish they were and those that are pitched typically wish they weren’t!  It’s definitely a ‘be careful what you wish for’ deal.

2 – Review the type of products you want to be pitched on getting and write about the type of stories you want to be pitched on.  If you want to receive review copies of books, then start reviewing books on your blog.  But make sure you are reviewing the type of books you want to receive.  If you want to be sent review copies of marketing books, then you don’t want to review 50 Shades of Gray on your blog.

3 – Fall in love with any PR person that actually sends you relevant pitches.  Seriously the good ones are harder to find than a member of Congress that’s doing his/her job right now.  They are so rare that I wrote about one I loved in my book.  I have been known to proactively email my favorite people and BEG them to tell me what they have that they need coverage on.  I do this because the good ones understand who you are and what your audience wants and they will only pitch you on relevant content.

Now, part of last night’s discussion was how to get bloggers to review your product.  I wanted to write about how I’ve done this with Think Like a Rock Star.  This is simply how I did it, this is not a one-size-fits-all way to get bloggers to review your product, especially if it’s a book.  I’m simply offering this as an example of how I did it, and hopefully it will help some of you.

First, I needed a plan.  I asked and answered these questions:

1 – Who did I want to review the book?  I wanted people that believed in the idea of the power of a brand embracing its fans to be the people that reviewed this book.  These people would be the ones that would realize why the book was so valuable, and as a result they could give better and more in-depth reviews of the book.

2 – What type of reviews did I want?  Surprisingly, I wanted Amazon reviews more than blog reviews.  I think blog reviews have enormous value, but I preferred Amazon reviews because all the reviews are in one place where people do their book shopping.  When you are considering buying a book, do you Google the book’s reviews on the web, or do you go to Amazon to read the reviews?  If you’re like me, you go to Amazon first.

3 – How would I select who I wanted to review the book?  One of the things I talk about in Think Like a Rock Star is that your fans will self-select, or raise their hand and reach out to you instead of you hunting for them.  So when someone reached out to me and identified themselves as a fan of the book, I asked them to please review it on Amazon!

 

I am pretty thrilled with the results from this strategy.  Think Like a Rock Star is one of the best-reviewed social media/marketing/business books available.  On Amazon it has 48 reviews after being on sale for 6 months, and the star average for those reviews is 4.9 out of 5 stars (85% of the reviews are 5-star).  On GoodReads its star average is 4.45 out of 5-stars.  This is an incredibly high average for that site, in fact I could not find a single social media or marketing book that had a higher star average on GoodReads.

The one thing I did that really spurred reviews was to aggressively engage with readers of the book.  This seems like common sense, but whenever I saw anyone mention the book on Twitter or Facebook or ANYWHERE I connected with them and THANKED them for reading the book or for even considering it.  You would not believe how many people thanked ME because I reached out to them and thanked THEM for promoting my book.  Unbelievable.  I am incredibly lucky to have anyone mention TLARS, and I made sure they knew it.  THEY are the real rock stars to me, and I did my best to treat them as such, and I think most people appreciated that!

When I engaged someone that mentioned the book, if they then told me that they enjoyed the book THEN I would ask them to please review it on Amazon, and I would include a link directly to the page on Amazon where they could write the review.  Not everyone did, but many people reviewed the book and told me they were happy to do so.  But the key is, I only asked people to review the book who first communicated to me that they enjoyed it.  They were self-identifying as being fans of the book and those were the people that I wanted to review it.  Yes it took a lot of time to engage with each fan/reader of the book individually, but it was so worth it.

So Think Like a Rock Star might not be a New York Times Bestseller yet, but it sure is better reviewed than most books that make the bestseller lists, and I have the book’s fans to thank for that.  Which is as it should be 🙂

 

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Sheila Scarborough Co-Hosts #Blogchat Tonight Discussing Blogger Outreach Programs!

Here’s tonight’s #Blogchat transcript, click Transcript on the left!

I’m thrilled to announce that Sheila Scarborough will be joining #Blogchat tonight (10-6-13) to teach us about how to create and execute effective Blogger Outreach programs!  #Blogchat starts tonight at 8pm Central, and is sponsored this month by AllergEase!  Please make sure you are following both Sheila and AllergEase on Twitter!

Here’s the schedule for tonight’s #Blogchat discussion on Blogger Outreach programs starting at 8pm Central:

8:00-8:15pm – How to get started with a blogger outreach program

8:15-8:30PM – How to decide who you are targeting with your outreach program

8:30-8:45PM – How to structure the outreach if a product is involved

8:45-9:00PM – How Blogger Outreach campaigns can generate more WOM and product reviews, and how to encourage these

 

It will be a fabulous discussion tonight, and I hope you can join us!  I’ll be posting the transcript here when the chat ends.

Also, as part of AllergEase’s #Blogchat sponsorship this month, they are offering a special product giveaway just for #Blogchat members!

1 – Go to Aedrops.com, and add the AllergEase 3-pack into your cart.

2 – Enter code AEBLOGCHAT.

3 – This will reduce your order and shipping total to $0.00 and you will receive a free pack of 21 AllergEase lozenges!

Each pack has 21 lozenges, and by entering the code AEBLOGCHAT you’ll get 21 lozenges for free, and AllergEase will even cover the shipping, so there’s no risk for you!  I don’t deal with allergies, thankfully, but my sister does and she tried the lozenges and said they really did work!

So please take advantage of this special offer that AllergEase has for us, and claim your free pack of 21 AllergEase lozenges.

Hope to see you at #Blogchat tonight!

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AllergEase is #Blogchat’s Sponsor For October!

AllergEaseLogoI’m thrilled to announce that AllergEase is the #Blogchat sponsor for October!  AllergEase makes an all natural allergy lozenge that’s designed to help relieve the affects of seasonal allergies.  You can learn more about their products here.

As part of their sponsorship, AllergEase has come up with a special product giveaway just for #Blogchat members!

1 – Go to Aedrops.com, and add the AllergEase 3-pack into your cart.

2 – Enter code AEBLOGCHAT.

3 – This will reduce your order and shipping total to $0.00 and you will receive a free pack of 21 AllergEase lozenges!

Each pack has 21 lozenges, and by entering the code AEBLOGCHAT you’ll get 21 lozenges for free, and AllergEase will even cover the shipping, so there’s no risk for you!  I don’t deal with allergies, thankfully, but my sister does and she tried the lozenges and said they really did work!

So please take advantage of this special offer that AllergEase has for us, and claim your free pack of 21 AllergEase lozenges.

Now as for #Blogchat this month, here’s the topics we’ll be covering:

This Sunday (October 6th) we’ll be covering Blogger Outreach Programs with a special co-host, Sheila Scarborough!  Sheila is a long-time friend of #Blogchat and will have a ton of great advice for us on how to properly craft and execute blogger outreach campaigns.  I’ll have more information on this topic coming up here this Sunday.  For now, if you aren’t already make sure you are following Sheila on Twitter!

October 13th we’ll be chatting about how to find and connect with niche bloggers.

October 20th we’ll be chatting about the issues involved with marketing to a specialized or narrow group online via social media.  Such as connecting with children, what are the issues involved, etc.

October 27th we’ll have OPEN MIC!

I’m so excited to have both AllergEase sponsoring #Blogchat this month and Sheila joining us on Sunday!  Please make sure you take advantage of AllergEase’s offer of 21 free lozenges! And make sure you follow them on Twitter!  See y’all on Sunday!

PS: Want to sponsor #Blogchat? November’s sponsorship is on hold but December’s is still available, here’s price plus details.

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I’m Still Not Sold on Klout

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I stopped checking my Klout score/profile about a year ago because I simply can’t understand how the score is calculated.  Plus, my score seems to always stay in a range of 74-78 when I do check it, so I stopped looking.  I got an email from Klout about a week ago telling me that my score had just gone up, so of course I clicked to check it.  It seems my score had been 74, but had suddenly jumped up to 78.  No explanation why, and a quick scan of my scoring history shows this had happened often.  A couple of days later I get a second email from Klout telling me my score had again gone up.  Whoa, it might be 80 now, I think!  I click over and it shows that my score has gone ‘up’ to 78.  It seems that right after Klout sent me the first email saying my score had gone up to 78. that the next day it fell back down to 74, then a day or so later it bounced back up to 78.

With no explanation for why any of that happened.

Klout was social media’s ‘it’ company a couple of years ago.  The promise was that Klout would accurately measure your level of influence online.  The promise for brands was that it would allow them to connect with true influencers.  The promise for users was that it would let brands that created products that you are influential and passionate about connect with you and give you free stuff.

It’s now almost 2014 and we are still waiting for Klout to fulfill on its promises on either the brand or user end.  Despite promise and claims to the contrary, Klout has never effectively measured online influence for the average user.  Instead it attempts to measure online activity, and correlate influence to that level of activity.  A shaky conclusion to draw at best.

As a Klout user, Klout says my score is 78.  IOW, Klout thinks I am pretty influential.  So as such, Klout needs to understand that I won’t promote its service to other people (that Klout says I have influence over) until the service is relevant to me.

Klout can become relevant to me by seeing that I get Perks that are relevant to me.  The last Perk I received was, I kid you not, a Kobe Bryant poster.  I have left 80K tweets on Twitter since 2007, and I would be shocked if a combined 0.000001% of my tweets were about Kobe, the Lakers, and the NBA.

That’s the last Perk I got.  The last Perk I wanted was to see my last 3-day Enterprise car rental be bumped up to a full week based on my high Klout score.  Or to see my coach ticket get upgraded to first class, for the same reason.

That would have been relevant to me.  That would have led to me positively promoting Klout as well as the brands that leveraged the service to connect with me.  Unlike Kobe and the NBA, I am constantly tweeting about travel.  I am constantly tweeting about driving or flying to an event or for client work.  How Klout can’t see my ‘influence’ on those topics and connect me with travel brands but can see that I am influential about Kobe Bryant is a complete mystery to me.

If Klout wants to become relevant to me it needs to do two things:

1 – Accurately identify products/people/ideas I am not only influential about but passionate about as well
2 – Tie perks to those products.

That’s it.  Until then, my Klout score is just another social media number that bounces up and down that I have no seeming control over or understanding of.

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Sponsored Post: CCF Introduces ‘The Conscious Consumer’

Note from Mack: This is a sponsored post from #Blogchat’s sponsor in September, Clarity Coverdale Fury.  Check out their blog here, and please follow them on Twitter.  Here’s their new post, How Brands Can Win With Conscious Consumers.

 

“My consumption impacts myself, my family, my community and the world at large. I consider issues of health, environment and social responsibilities when I make decisions.” – The Conscious Consumer

More and more people are adapting habits and behaviors that are based on shared values versus the “winner take all” mentality of our not-so-distant past. They are considering how their actions impact others and the world around them. What was once a small percentage of the population is now at a tipping point. This notion of “conscious consumption” and a more Conscious Consumer is no longer on the fringes but is heading mainstream.

American consumers who are practicing yoga or meditation, shopping organic or at Whole Foods, eating vegan or vegetarian are no longer in the millions, but rather the tens of millions. As we wrote in our definition of Conscious Consumer (you can read it above) they are being more mindful. More mindful of not only their own health and personal wellness but how their actions impact the world around them.

As we’ve written about this over the past year we have discovered a lot. Not only are consumers taking action but many companies are as well. In our backyard, General Mills has created Small Planet Foods, an offshoot that houses brands such as Food Should Taste Good, Cascadian Farms and Larabar. LifeTime Fitness has gotten into the business of conducting running and biking races by expanding on their triathlons with nationwide events like Commitment Day held on New Year’s Day. They have also purchased others like the famed Leadville series in Leadville, Colorado. And by doing so, have given themselves a platform to sell other services to an audience of fit-minded individuals. You can visit our blog and read more at blog.claritycoverdalefury.com.

To learn more we recently completed a study with Mintel. It shows just how much momentum there is behind Conscious Consumerism. Over the past month and through November we are releasing a large part of this data in a series we are calling Think. Every two weeks we issue a new Think report highlighting information and insights from the study. You can access the reports here.

Please feel free to use the information in your posts, presentations or articles.

We believe the momentum is there. The question for us is how entrepreneurs and marketers will leverage this momentum. And how consumers will take to manufacturers and service providers who adapt along with them.

We’ve enjoyed the journey, including our sponsorship of #Blogchat. And we hope that through this data we can provide you with some insights. Or maybe more importantly, some inspiration.

For more insights on the Conscious Consumer, follow us on our weekly blog.

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The Science of Happiness; What Makes You Happy and How Rock Stars Knew This All Along

I recently saw this video thanks to a share by Amy Taylor.  The video talks about a scientific study into one of the key drivers of happiness: Sharing gratitude.

As soon as I saw this, I immediately recalled Katy Perry’s Firework Video Contest.  Katy asked her fans to create a video telling the world who their ‘Firework’ was, someone that inspired them and that made them a happier person.  Basically, these were videos that thousands of Katy Perry fans created showing gratitude to the most important people in their lives.

And each video ended with the person talking about how important Katy was to them.  Katy gave her fans a way to show their appreciation for the people they care most about, and as a result, Katy gave her fans another reason to care for and love her even more.

So now we have the scientific reason why rock stars tell their fans that they love them: Because it makes them happy.  And if giving gratitude is a key driver of happiness then no doubt receiving gratitude is as well.  And I don’t know about you, but I find it easier to promote and gush about people and ideas that make me happy.

We’ve already established that connecting with your fans will help drive business growth and improve things like customer loyalty and make your marketing more efficient.  Now we have scientific proof that it will make you a happier person as well.

Sounds like a winner to me!

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How Blogs Impact Purchase Decisions, Tonight’s #Blogchat Topic!

Here’s tonight’s #Blogchat transcript (Click Transcript on the left).

Tonight (9-22-2013) at #Blogchat we’ll be chatting about how blogs impact purchase decisions.  All month long #Blogchat is sponsored by CCF.  Tonight’s topic ties into CCF’s latest blog post about the role of brands in easing the mind of consumers.  CCF also references Chiptotle’s viral video The Scarecrow, which is embedded here:

Here’s the flow for tonight’s topic, which begins at 8pm Central:

8:00-8:20 pm – When researching a purchase, are blogger reviews more or less credible than reviews from ‘professional’ site?

8:20-8:40 pm – Have you ever influenced someone via social media to buy a product? If so, what did you do?

8:40-9:00 pm – Are certain products or services easier to sell via a blog? If so, which ones?

BTW a sidenote:  CCF’s team selected this week’s topic as they did last week’s.  Last Sunday night’s #Blogchat was one of the biggest chats in the 4-year history of #blogchat.  It was a very interesting topic and discussion, and I think tonight’s chat will be equally engaging.  Please check out CCF’s newest post to help reference tonight’s topic.

So make sure you are following CCF on Twitter, and also follow Rob, who will be joining in as well.

You can follow #blogchat right here: