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How to Create and Market a ‘Cool’ Product with Social Media

Harley

I recently got this email from a reader of Think Like a Rock Star that’s interested learning how to use social media to connect with her fans and market a ‘cool’ product.

“I loved your book and not only found it extremely helpful from an execution perspective of how to put an advocate program together, but your mentality and approach to social media was truly eye opening and has reignited my passion for my business and connecting with my fans.

While your book discussed selling the benefit rather than the product I feel that my customers buy my product for the “cool factor” which is a bit harder to put into words than say it makes a faster breakfast or cleans your clothes better. If I dig a bit deeper I have researched and seen that exclusivity and originality are essential in this area of fashion. If some one did it already fans aren’t afraid to point fingers.”

One of the things that the book also talks about is how to create content that taps into the ‘Bigger Idea’ behind your product.  But if one of the big reasons why someone buys your product is because it’s ‘cool’, then how do you create content around ‘cool’?

Another way to think about having a ‘cool’ product is to have one that, as Kathy Sierra says, ‘inspires The Nod’.  Your product is ‘cool’ to other people that get why it is cool.  Your product says something about them as a person.  Maybe that they’re smarter than the rest, or more selective, or maybe that they’ve been a fan of your brand for a longer period of time.  Harley-Davidson is cool because the brand says something about the owner and their lifestyle that Victory motorcycles do not.

In the Introduction to Think Like a Rock Star I talk about how Jewel connected with her fans to empower them to organize the JewelStock concerts.  Wearing a Jewel ‘Intuition’ t-shirt likely wouldn’t impress anyone, not even hardcore Jewel fans.  But if an EDA sees you wearing a JewelStock tee, it would instantly grab their attention.  Wearing the JewelStock tee communicates to other long-time Jewel fans that you were there in the beginning, and if you were seen wearing it by another long-time Jewel fan, they would likely run up to you ask ‘OMG were you there?’  Within that very small community, it communicates status, that you were part of a rare moment that helped launch Jewel’s career.  But what if that same person passed by a girl that had a JewelStock sticker on her Bug?

They’d share The Nod.  Because they’d both instantly have a bond that most Jewel fans don’t share.

So if you want to create content that taps into the ‘cool’ factor about your product, then you need to figure out what it is about your product that makes it cool?  And you have to remember that the ‘what’ ties back to the person that bought the product, it says something about them.

For example, one of the other examples in the book is how Fiskars connected with scrapbookers to drive sales.  Any pair of scissors can be used in scrapbooking, but an orange-handled pair of Fiskars scissors communicates that you are serious about your scrapbooking.  That you take your projects more seriously and that perfection is important to you.  Owning a pair of that particular brand in that particular color communicates something about you as a scrapbooker.

Now my friend’s email also mentioned looking to appeal to the brand’s fans and that they are interested in exclusivity and originality.  Back to the Fiskars’ example. The orange-handled scissor is a ‘cool’ product to scrapbookers.  But Fiskars has also created The Fiskateers movement that’s just for scrapbookers.  If you want to join this movement, you have to be approved to join by the existing members.  But if you are, you get your own numbered orange-handled scissor that’s only available to Fiskateers!  The orange-handled scissor is already cool to members of the scrapbooking community, but the fact that it’s numbered also communicates that that person is a Fiskateer!  Extra cool points!

So if you want to want to market a ‘cool’ product, focus on two areas:

1 – What makes the product cool and what does it say about the person owning it?  Are they smarter?  Concerned with the environment?  Geekier?  Bolder?  More active?

2 – How will others be able to spot someone else that has your ‘cool’ product?  This goes beyond the product itself, especially if it’s a clothing product.  But if it’s not a clothing product, maybe a t-shirt or a sticker could work.  Or, in the case of Fiskars, maybe its the same product (orange-handled scissors) with a special modification (numbered) that’s only available to a select group of customers (such as your biggest fans).  Maybe this could be a special color of an existing shirt that’s only sold to your fans, or maybe your fans create the modification, and that’s added to the shirt, it becomes a ‘badge’ or ‘marker’ to other members of that community of fans.

And finally, go back to the qualities listed in the first step above.  Think of those attributes (smarter, more active, bolder) as Superpowers.  How is your product going to help your customers be smarter, more active or bolder?  Red Bull gives you the fuel and energy you need to do bold and daring stunts and activities.  Patagonia creates clothes that last longer, that also environmentally-friendly.   Think about what it is that your customers find ‘cool’ about your product, then focus on how you can enable that coolness.

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Fan Organizes Global Movement Celebrating Nutella, So the Brand Sends Her a C&D Letter

NutellaSara Rosso is definitely what you would call a ‘superfan’ for Nutella.  So much so that in 2007, Rosso decided that the chocolate-hazlenut spread deserved its own holiday and created World Nutella Day.  Over the past 6 years, the ‘holiday’ has grown into first a community for fellow Nutella fans, and now a movement celebrating the brand.  The stated goal for creating the holiday was to ” encourage Nutella enthusiasts worldwide to enjoy and get creative with Nutella.”  The event has its own Facebook page with 40K Likes, and a Twitter account with almost 7K followers.  On the event’s website, fans have currently submitted over 700 recipes for Nutella, and the entire platform is obviously driving interest, fandom and sales for the brand.

And Nutella just told Rosso to shut the whole thing down.  Last month, Rosso received a Cease and Desist letter from Ferrero, the parent company of the Nutella brand.

“They asked me to take down the site because they consider it to be an unauthorized use of their intellectual property and trademarks—the Nutella logo and brand,” Rosso explains.

In Think Like a Rock Star, I devote an entire chapter to helping brands understand who their fans are, and what motivates them.  No doubt, Ferrero looks at World Nutella Day, and likely sees little more than customers using its logo and likeness in an unauthorized manner.  The company feels it needs to step in and protect its brand, and to be fair it has every right to do so.

But in acting this way, Ferrero is also communicating that it does not understand its own fans, and why they are driving this effort.  A fan sees itself as the owner of a brand, in many ways the parent of that brand.  As such, they want to see the brand grow and succeed.  So they act in what they perceive to be the brand’s best interests.

Ferrero would likely counter that even so, the fan’s best interests for the brand might not be the same as what the brand wants for itself.  This is why Ferrero should be working with its fans.  Fans are special customers, they want a relationship with their favorite brand.  Fans want the brand to step in and give them more instruction on how they can better serve and help that brand.

One of the case studies from the music industry I talk about in Think Like a Rock Star is the fan-run site TheDonnasMedia.com, which was created by fans of The Donnas.  The site contains hundreds of thousands of hours of live concert footage from the band’s performances, and even custom made liner notes and photos so fans can literally create their own CDs of The Donnas’ concerts.  The band found out about this site years ago, and instead of shutting it down, they contacted the fans running the site, and began working with them to make the site better.  They understood that the point of the site from the fans’ perspective was to create new fans for The Donnas, so instead of sending a C&D letter to the site’s owners, the band instead began promoting the site to its fans!  And for their part, the fans self-police the site, and won’t allow any material to be uploaded to the site that’s been commercially released by the band (remember what I said about fans acting in what they perceive to be the brand or in this case band’s best interests?).

If Ferrero would reach out to its fans that have organized World Nutella Day, they would no doubt find that Ms Rosso and her team would bend over backwards to accommodate any request from the brand, and would be thrilled that Nutella was reaching out to them.  There is an obvious opportunity here for Nutella to work with Rosso and these fans, and create a huge platform for the brand’s fans that could create a significantly positive financial impact on the brand.

But instead, the brand is attempting to shut down the entire movement, and that has, shockingly, led to Nutella now receiving criticism from its own fans on its Facebook page:

“Today, i decided to remove Nutella and other Ferrero products from my grocery list because of the legal actions taken against the http://www.nutelladay.com/. Do whatever you want, but without my money.”

“Bad move Ferrero. Bad, bad move. I won’t be buying your delicious nut butter anymore. It’s a good thing there are plenty of alternatives!”

“We love Nutella, BUT after hearing how you treat your fans, we’ll be switching to an alternative brand.”

“I will never use your product again! You lost more than 1 fan today.”

Rosso has said she will be shutting down the site and all accounts associated with World Nutella Day on Friday.  Now there’s still a chance Nutella could step in and say that they want to work with the fans, but the time to do that was before they issued a C&D letter, which is why they are now dealing with backlash from their own fans.

We will be discussing how brands should handle fan-run efforts like this tomorrow during #rockstarchat on Twitter at 1pm Central.  But for now, here’s how a brand should respond when it discovers that a fan is running an effort that involves its brand.

1 – Contact the fan(s) first before pursuing legal action.  Even if what the fans are doing is clearly against what you feel are the brand’s best interests, it still helps to contact the fans and communicate that to them directly.  Normally, the fans will be thrilled to hear from you, and happy to incorporate any changes you request.

2 – Work with the fans to figure out how they can continue to have a relationship with your brand that benefits them, as well as you.  Let’s assume that your fans are running a site that, for whatever reason, your brand decides needs to be shut down.  Instead of simply sending lawyers out to the fans, contact the fans and carefully communicate to them why their effort is such a disconnect with what your brand is trying to accomplish, and communicate to them that you want to see if they can work with your brand in a different capacity.  For example, by attempting to shut down World Nutella Day, Nutella has now alienated an army of literally thousands of fans.  If the brand had reached out to these fans and figured out a way that they could keep working together, the fans would have loved it, and the effort would have become an even bigger platform to help the brand.  Instead, it’s now become a PR headache for Nutella.

3 – See if there is an opportunity to bring the fan’s initiative under the brand’s umbrella.  Instead of shutting down the effort, why not see if the fans would like to help you run it if your brand takes it over?  I honestly suspect this is what will happen with World Nutella Day.  There is enormous potential in this community, Nutella could easily morph this group into its own brand ambassador program, etc.

4 – Buy Think Like a Rock Star.  It shows you exactly how to create a better relationship with such fans, and helps you understand them and how they are trying to help you brand.

 

If all else fails, you may need to pursue legal action against the fans running such initiatives, but it’s usually a good idea to first contact your fans, and voice your concerns to them.  Typically, your fans will go out of their way to work with your brand because remember they are your fans.

If you are a fan of Nutella, what do you think about this story?  Should Nutella be shutting down World Nutella Day, or is it a movement that can only help the brand?  What do you think?

PS: Thanks to Lauri Rottmayer for the tip about this story.

 

Afterthought:  If Nutella wanted to start today building a new fan community that was 40K strong like the one Rosso has already built (for free), what would be the costs and how much time would it take?  I’m thinking about half a million, and remember Rosso has been doing this for 6 years.  Whatever the cost, that’s the minimum amount Nutella would be throwing away by not trying to embrace this effort and bring it under the brand’s umbrella.

 

UPDATE: Nutella just posted on its Facebook page the following “Positive direct contact between Ferrero and Sara Rosso, owner of the non-official Nutella fan page World Nutella Day, has brought an end to the case.  Ferrero would like to express to Sara Rosso its sincere gratitude for her passion for Nutella, gratitude which is extended to all fans of the World Nutella Day.  The case arose from a routine brand defense procedure that was activated as a result of some misuse of the Nutella brand on the fan page.  Ferrero is pleased to announce that today, after contacting Sara Rosso and finding together the appropriate solutions, it immediately stopped the previous action.  Ferrero considers itself fortunate to have such devoted and loyal fans of its Nutella spread, like Sara Rosso.”

 

Kudos to Nutella for doing the right thing!

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How to Be An Amazing Public Speaker, Especially If You Are An Introvert

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I didn’t realize how bright the lights would be.  I was sitting on stage, in a room of 500 or so people, but when I looked out at the crowd, all I saw were those blinding white lights.  It was 2008, and I was the moderator of a packed session in a ballroom at South By Southwest.  I was about to make my public speaking debut at a social media event.  Actually at the Super Bowl of social media events.

And I was 120 seconds away from almost having a panic attack.

I began the session by introducing the 3 panelists.  I got through the first introduction fine, but when I went to introduce the second panelist, I looked at the wrong set of notes, and lost my place.  And this is when time literally slowed down for me.  I scanned feverishly for the second panelist’s bio for what felt like 5 years.

I suddenly became incredibly aware of the fact that I wasn’t saying anything.  Then I realized that since I wasn’t saying anything that the audience had to know that something was very wrong.

I was 120 seconds into my public speaking debut at a social media event, and I am suddenly considering getting up and walking (who am I kidding, RUNNING) out of that ballroom.

Fast forward 5 years.  Earlier this month I spoke in Nashville, presenting Think Like a Rock Star to a crowd of about 150 people.  No panel this time, just me.  When I finished, a few dozen people came up and one gentleman told me ‘That was one of the best presentations I’ve ever seen’.  Then another attendee told me ‘I’ve been coming to these events for 8 years, that was easily one of the Top 5 presentations I’ve seen here.’

What changed in the course of 5 years?  You have to admit, going from almost running off the stage at SXSW to having multiple attendees telling you that your presentation is one of the best they have ever seen is a pretty big transformation.  Here’s a few of the things I have learned over the last five years and I think these tips will be especially helpful to you if you are also an introvert that wants to become a better public speaker:

Put the spotlight on your ideas, not yourself.

A couple of years ago I was talking to John Moore about speaking.  Like me, John is an introvert, but he’s also an incredibly good public speaker.  He told me that ‘some people speak to put the spotlight on themselves, others speak to put the spotlight on their ideas’.  This speaks to the heart of why I think many introverts hate public speaking, because we hate the idea of being in the spotlight.  But when we think of speaking as being a way to make our ideas the star and give them the spotlight, then I think speaking becomes more interesting.  Or at least less stressful!

By transferring the focus to your ideas, as an introvert we also transfer the spotlight.  We don’t talk about ourselves, we talk about our ideas, and in doing so, that means we can brag on our ideas in a way we would never feel comfortable doing if we were talking about ourselves!  The goal then becomes helping the audience realize and understand why they should embrace and value this idea in the same way that I do.

Your idea is a gift to the audience.

Think about how you use social media.  If you’re like me, you spend a good deal of time sharing links to articles you have read and enjoyed.  Why do we do this?  Because we love finding and sharing valuable content with others.  It makes us feel good to pass along an article or blog post that we know will help someone else.

Your presentations are the same way.  There’s a core idea that embodies your presentation that’s going to help your audience.  One of the thrills I get from presenting Think Like a Rock Star is that every time I do, there’s that moment.  The moment when I make eye contact with an audience member and their eyes suddenly get big, they smile and immediately start quickly making notes.  The ‘A-Ha!’ moment!  That moment when you can almost see a light bulb go off over their heads that they suddenly ‘get’ why your idea is so powerful and valuable to them.

I *love* that, because at that moment I know I just gave them a gift.  The gift of knowledge.  And they will then go take that gift and it will help them improve their business, organization, fund-raising, whatever.  I know at that moment that I helped them, and that’s an amazing feeling.

If your ideas are interesting, then YOU are interesting!

Four years ago I began giving the presentation that would later become Think Like a Rock Star, which would later become the book of the same name.  As soon as I began giving that presentation I noticed something:  I became a ‘better’ speaker.  Before then, audiences were generally pleased with my speaking, I got my fair share of compliments afterward from attendees, and had decent turnouts for my sessions.

In 2009 at Social South, I presented What Rock Stars Can Teach You About Kicking Ass With Social Media.  I honestly wasn’t sure how the audience would react to it as the topic was a bit different from anything else I had ever talked about.  As I started the presentation, the room was completely full, people were standing up and lining the outer wall, and there were a few dozen people sitting on the floor at the back of the room!  Afterwards, the attendees just gushed about the presentation, and said it was amazing.

The next year, I spoke at an event tailored to the apartment industry and presented Think Like a Rock Star for the first time.  It was a two-day event and I sat in session after session of topics finely tuned to the apartment industry, with case studies about that industry.  I was getting VERY worried because my topic was so different.  On the second day before my session I sat in on another social media speaker.  He was brilliant, and gave an incredible talk on email marketing.  And 20 people showed up.  I was officially getting worried, and afraid that no one would show up to my session, which was next.

Instead, my session was delayed getting started because we had to bring in dozens of extra chairs to accommodate everyone that wanted to attend.  I’ll never forget the image of the event organizer literally sprinting in and out of the ballroom with extra chairs!  And the audience loved the presentation, and afterward I again heard glowing reviews.

Later that afternoon I was walking down one of the halls and a woman literally stopped me and said ‘I saw your Think Like a Rock Star presentation this morning.  THAT should have been the keynote!’

‘Really?’

‘Absolutely.  I would have paid the entire conference fee just to see it!’

Now here’s the thing:  I *knew* that I hadn’t suddenly become an amazing speaker overnight.  The only thing that had changed was the content I was talking about.  But then I realized that the way I was presenting Think Like a Rock Star was different.  I realized that when I talked about Think Like a Rock Star, I put the spotlight on my ideas!  And those ideas resonated with the audience, so the presentation resonated with them as well.

Which means in their mind, I suddenly became an excellent speaker.

People love stories.   

Businesses love case studies, but people love stories.  I had always tried to incorporate case studies into my presentations before Think Like a Rock Star, because nothing makes your point better than showing the audience how a similar business implemented the ideas you are promoting, and saw success from their efforts.

But with Think Like a Rock Star, instead I told the stories of how rock stars connected with and embraced their fans.  I walked the audience through how and why rock stars sought a close relationship with their fans, and what led them to that point.  The case studies became stories, which made the presentation more interesting.  Note too that this is another way to take the focus (along with the stress of the spotlight) off you as the introverted speaker, and place the spotlight on your ideas.

 

So what happened at SXSW in 2008?

At the opening I mentioned how my public speaking career got off to such a rocky start five years ago.  Despite horribly botching the introductions , I didn’t run off the stage.  I somehow collected myself, found my place in my notes, and finished the introductions.  From that point the rest of the session went very smoothly. But I still felt horrible about screwing up the opening.

Afterward, I immediately apologized to the first panelist I saw.

“I’m so sorry for screwing up the introductions, I feel terrible about it!”

He looked at me as if I had just accused him of being the wrong gender. “What are you talking about?”

“You mean you didn’t notice my pregnant pause before I introduced you?”

“Nope.”

Lesson learned.  99% of your mistakes when speaking will go completely unnoticed by the audience.  Or your fellow panelists.  The audience doesn’t realize when you lose your train of thought or forget what comes next.  For an introvert, this might be the most reassuring speaking lesson of all!

So if you are an introvert, please don’t dismiss the idea of speaking publicly.  It truly is an amazing experience and if you focus on how you can put the spotlight on your ideas instead of yourself, I think you’l find that the process itself becomes much more enjoyable.  If you need more technical tips, I’ve also written The Introvert’s Guide to Speaking.  By following the advice in that post and this one, I’ve gone from being terrified of public speaking, to actually LOVING speaking to an audience.  It’s also led me to being one of the more in-demand speakers on social media and fan engagement.

And speaking of being in-demand, this is probably a good time to announce that I will be keynoting The Social Media Tourism Symposium in Huntsville on November 6th.  I’m really looking forward to this event and I will also be doing a book signing for Think Like a Rock Star and will be in town for the entire event.

If you would like to discuss having me speak at your event and do a book signing, please email me to check availability.  I’d love to help you make your event more successful!  If you know someone that needs a speaker for their event, please pass this along to them!

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How I Increased My Newsletter Signups By Over 400% With One Post

CoffeeCupPadCalls to Action are something that most bloggers don’t utilize very well.  The idea with a CTA is that you want the reader to take some action.  Maybe it’s leaving a comment, maybe it’s visiting your website, or maybe it’s signing up for your newsletter.

The problem is that most bloggers don’t use CTAs or if they do, they don’t use them effectively.  If you want your readers to answer your Call to Action, then there needs to be a clear benefit to the reader.

For example, on Wednesday I wrote The Ultimate Guide to Social Media Engagement.  It was a very in-depth and detailed post, and at over 2,000 words, is possibly the longest blog post I’ve ever written.  Then again if you are going to write a post and bill it as being the ‘Ultimate’ in anything, it had better bring the goods, and that post did.

Which is exactly why the clear Call to Action at the end of the post worked so well.  At the end of the post I closed with a clear Call to Action asking readers to sign up to my Think Like a Rock Star newsletter ‘if you want to learn more about how to not only build engagement around your social media and marketing efforts but to actually cultivate fans of your brand’.  In other words, that Call to Action gave a direct benefit to the reader.  If they enjoyed the content in that post, I gave them a way to continue to get more valuable content that helps them learn how to build engagement around their social media efforts, by subscribing to my TLAR newsletter.

The Call to Action worked because it was positioned so that the reader could clearly see the benefit to them from performing the requested action.  This is why most Calls to Action aren’t very effective, because the blogger positions it so there’s a clear benefit to the blogger, but not a clear benefit to the reader.  If you want your CTA to work and work well, focus on providing a direct benefit to the reader.

So what were the results from my clear CTA requesting that readers sign up for the TLAR newsletter?  The post ran on Wednesday, here’s the number of new signups I have gotten each day so far this week:

Sunday – 1

Monday – 6

Tuesday – 2

Wednesday – 16

Thursday – 17

Friday (as of 8:00 AM) – 3

So for the first three days I averaged 3 new signups a day, since then I have averaged 16 new signups a day.  Pretty good jump, right?  But the key was, the CTA was structured so that there was a clear benefit to the reader from answering that CTA.  The idea is that you want the CTA to provide a direct benefit to the reader, with the idea being that if they answer your CTA, it will indirectly benefit you.

If you have used Calls to Action in your posts, what have your results been?  Even if it’s simply asking readers to leave a comment, did they respond?

PS: As a sidenote, if you remember one of the goals from Wednesday’s post The Ultimate Guide to Social Media Engagement was to do well in search results for the exact term “social media engagement”.  I just checked and that post is now the #4 Google result for the term “social media engagement” out of over 8,000,000 results.  Not bad, eh?

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Why It’s So Important to Have a Strategy Guiding Your Social Media Engagement

OpenRoadI have a love-hate relationship with planning and strategy when it comes to social media.  I hate the planning aspect, but I also understand it is necessary to see the best results.  And I love it when I see those results!

If you’ve read this blog for any amount of time, you know that as often as I can, I like to show you examples of how I am putting the lessons that I am trying to share with you, into action.  Yesterday’s post on social media engagement was a great example of this.

In the post, I talked about the importance of planning out the type of engagement you want from your social media efforts.  Too often, we fail to plan our engagement efforts, then are disappointed with our results.  Yesterday’s post was created to drive two specific types of engagement:

1 – New signups of my Think Like a Rock Star newsletter

2 – Social sharing to help the post rank higher in search engine results for the term “social media engagement”.

Additionally, the content itself was carefully created and crafted to help facilitate those types of engagement.  For example, a very clear Call to Action was placed at the end asking readers to please sign up for my newsletter, and to share the post.

So 24 hours later, what have the results been?  Let’s look at three areas:

1 – Newsletter signups.  This was honestly the top goal for yesterday’s post.  Previously, I had been averaging 3-4 new signups each day for my newsletter.  Over the last 24 hours I have received 21 new signups.  A pretty good jump.

2 – Social sharing.  I wanted to see a lot of sharing of the post, especially on Twitter and Facebook.  As you can see from the numbers at the end of each post, yesterday’s post was the most shared in weeks, with currently 82 retweets on Twitter and 70 Likes on Facebook.  Additionally, yesterday was the 5th best day for traffic so far in 2013.

3 – Search engine results.  I wanted yesterday’s post to rank as high as possible for the exact term “social media engagement”.  When the post was first indexed by Google yesterday at around 10:00 am, it was on the 26th page of the results for the term “social media engagement”.  By 5:00 pm it had moved up to page 10, and at 8:00 pm it was on page 9.  At 6:30 am this morning it was all the way up to page 3, and a few minutes ago at 9:30 am it was on page 2 for “social media engagement”.  Pretty darned good, and if I keep writing more posts with that term (as I did in this post) it will probably help push that post up further.

Pretty good results, right?  My point in writing this post is to impress upon you the importance of planning out your social media efforts.  Look at these results and think how quickly your blog could grow if you wrote just one post a week that was this successful?  I am definitely thinking more along these lines!

So before you write that next post for your business blog, ask yourself these questions:

1 – What am I trying to accomplish with this post?

2 – What type of engagement am I trying to get?

3 – How can this post drive that type of engagement?

Start doing this before you write every post, and see if you don’t start seeing much better results from your blog.  Oh and if you still aren’t seeing the type of engagement you want from your social media efforts, email me and I’ll be happy to discuss how I can help you!

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The Ultimate Guide to Social Media Engagement

community building, online communityIf you ask any company or even most individuals what their top questions are about using social media, one of the first answers you will hear is ‘How do I build more engagement on my blog/Facebook page/Twitter/etc?’  In my experience there are three main reasons why most of us struggle to get the level of engagement we want from social media:

1 – We aren’t creating engaging content.

2 – We aren’t making it easy for people to engage with our content.

3 – We don’t have an engagement strategy.

All of these three problems are inter-related.  For example, if you have an engagement strategy, then you have a plan for creating the type of engagement that’s meaningful to you.  Most people/companies don’t have an engagement strategy, they often go for whatever type of engagement is the easiest to measure, such as comments on a blog or Likes on Facebook.

We also struggle to creating engaging content, this one is trickier, but I think the problems start when we focus too much on trying to get people to engage with the type of content we create, versus trying to adapt the type of content we create in order to make it more engaging.  More on this in a minute.

Finally, we aren’t making it easy for people to engage with our content.  The interesting thing about social media is that engagement breeds engagement.  So what we want to do is lower the barrier to engagement with our content.  If we make it easier for people to engage with our content, then more people will engage with our content.

How #Blogchat Became One of the Most Engaging Chats on Twitter 

#Blogchat started in March of 2009, so it’s been around for over 4 years now.  Even during a ‘slow’ week, the hashtag still generates a few thousand tweets from a few hundred participants.  So it’s a pretty ‘engaging’ chat.  Here’s how I addressed each of the above three problem areas when it comes to building engagement in #Blogchat:

What’s the engagement strategy?  For #Blogchat I wanted as much participation as possible.  You might think that every chat wants this, but when you say you want as much participation as possible, it means you have to pay careful consideration to the topics of the chat.  So for #Blogchat, I purposely gravitate toward 101-level topics, because that lowers the participation barrier for others, and makes them more comfortable engaging.  If I picked say 201-level topics, the participation level would fall off a cliff.  You could argue that the conversations might be ‘deeper’, but there would definitely be fewer people having them.

Also, since I want more people to be engaging, I try to reward engagement.  One way I do this is I personally reply to anyone that I see tweet that they are joining #blogchat for the first time.  Why?  Because what better way to encourage someone to stay engaged than to reply to their first tweet and to have that reply come from the chat moderator?  Plus, more people participating in the chat means more overall engagement.

How do you create engaging content?  One of the things I do with #blogchat is I pay close attention to what people are discussing in the chat.  Often, certain themes. ideas and questions will come up repeatedly.  These are good indicators of future topics for the chat.  Also, I will simply ask #Blogchat what topics they want to discuss.  This also helps give the community ownership of the chat, which also makes it more likely they will engage with topics they want to discuss.  And also, 101-level topics lower the engagement barrier so more people will engage.  Because what I want to have happen is I want more people engaging and building off each other’s points.   That’s where the really great discussions happen, but you have to get a LOT of people engaging to reach that point.

Making it easy for people to engage with #Blogchat.  See the first two points.  Everything done is designed to make it easier for people to engage and contribute.  Whether it’s 101-level topics, using the community’s topic suggestions, or welcoming newbies when they arrive, a ‘culture’ is created that facilitiates and rewards engagement.

 

So how do you create more engagement around YOUR social media efforts?

First, you need a plan.  Yes I know, no one wants to create an engagement strategy.  And most of you don’t and this is the biggest reason why you aren’t getting the type of engagement you want.  You need to think about what type of engagement you want from the content you are creating, then you need to think about how you can create content that’s valuable for your audience, and that encourages the type of engagement you want.

For example, I have a specific engagement and content marketing strategy for this post.  As I said at the start, creating more engagement around social media IS a big problem for many companies.  So this post was written to not only give companies a way to solve this problem, but it was also written so that it will do well in search results for the term ‘social media engagement’.  That’s why that specific term is in the title, and why it’s used repeatedly in the post itself.  Because it helps Google understand what this post is about.  I want this post to do well in search results for these terms, because a big part of the work I do is helping companies create more engagement around the content they create.

Another form of engagement I am targeting is signups of my Think Like a Rock Star newsletter (note the Call to Action at the end).  I want people to signup for the newsletter, because its content will help them solve their social media engagement, and it also gives me a way to connect with them, and hopefully we can do business later.

Note I haven’t mentioned ‘getting a lot of comments’ yet as a desired form of engagement.  While I love getting comments and hearing from y’all, for this particular post, getting more comments isn’t my top priority.  The type of engagement I want for this particular post is I want people to share the post via Twitter, Facebook, and email it to their friends, boss and co-workers.  And I want them to signup for my TLAR newsletter.  If I wanted the ‘easiest’ form of engagement, I would structure this post a bit differently in order to get more comments.  But for what I wanted to accomplish, more shares and signups are the types of engagement that help me more than more comments.  Again, always consider what you want to accomplish, and that will help you decide what type of engagement you want to encourage.

What About Creating Engaging Content?  If you have an engagement strategy in place, then you know what type of engagement you want to see happen from your content.  This feeds into creating engaging content because it makes creating engaging content easier because since you created a plan, you now know what type of engagement you want to see happen!  (See?  Creating a plan is paying off already!)  In general, before your content can be engaging, it has to be valuable to your audience.  If it’s valuable, then it will earn their attention, and then you have a chance to facilitate engagement.  So first, the content needs to create value for your audience.

For example, this post is designed to help solve a common problem that companies have using social media:  Creating more engagement around their efforts.  I mentioned above the type of engagement I want to see happen (social shares that help boost search engine rankings and signups of my TLAR newsletter).  Also note that the title professes this post to be the ULTIMATE guide to social media engagement!  So I knew if I was going to write such a post, it would have to be extremely detailed and thorough.  As a result, this post is probably the longest and most detailed post I’ve written in at least two years.  And hopefully that will lead to a lot of you reading this post and thinking that there’s too much good content NOT to share, and you will.  Which is the type of engagement I want.

Something else to keep in mind is that different tools are better at encouraging different types of engagement.  You have to not only consider the type of engagement you want from your content, but you have to also consider which tools will help you get that level of engagement.  There’s a reason why I am posting this here on my blog that’s easily accessed by Google, and not as a Note on Facebook.  It also wouldn’t do very well broken down into 140-char tweets!  But if I wanted to have a discussion with someone about the concepts in this post, Twitter would probably work better for that type of one-to-one engagement versus comments here.

Making it as easy as possible for people to engage with your content.  Now that you have a specific engagement plan for your content and know the exact type of engagement you want, you need to think about ways to make it easier to encourage that type of engagement.  Think carefully about the action you want others to take (leave a comment, signup for a newsletter, request a product demo), then make sure you are not only giving them the motivation to engage in this activity, but that you are also making it easy for them to do so.

For example, a dead simple way to get more comments is to simply end your post with these four magic words: What do you think?  That signals to your readers that you are opening the floor for a discussion, and that you are interested in their thoughts.  If you have followed your engagement plan and have created content that’s easy for them to engage with and then close your post by asking for their thoughts, the odds are that your readers will indeed share their thoughts.  Then when readers do comment, if you engage them back and interact with them, that encourages the chance that they will respond again.  Then as more readers see that others are leaving comments, that makes them more likely to leave a comment as well (comments breed comments).  So if you are working to create content that helps facilitate the type of engagement you want, then you work to make that type of engagement as easy as possible for your audience to….engage in, then you’ll win!

 

So there it is, 2,000 words later, your complete attack plan for getting more engagement around your social media efforts.  In closing, here’s your cheat-sheet for creating more engagement with social media:

1 – Create a plan.  Figure out the exact type of engagement you want from the content you are creating (Hint:  The answer is NOT ‘whatever’s easiest to measure’).

2 – Create engaging content.  After you have figured out the type of engagement you want, focus on creating content that’s valuable to your audience, and that moves them toward the type of engagement you want with them.

3 – Make it easier to get the type of engagement you want.  If you’ve done the first two, this step will be easy.  Think about how you can not only motivate your audience to engage in the way you want them to, but make it as easy as possible for them to do so.  Also, remember that every social media tool does better or worse at facilitating certain types of engagement, so consider the tools as well.

Hopefully this post has been and will be helpful to you.  If so, please consider sharing it with your friends and co-workers on Facebook, Twitter, email, etc via the sharing buttons below.  (Remember how I mentioned that ASKING for the type of engagement you want helps ensure that you get it?).

Also, if you want to learn more about how to not only build engagement around your social media and marketing efforts but to actually cultivate fans of your brand, then please consider subscribing to my Think Like a Rock Star newsletter.  It goes out every week with actionable ideas that will help you create fans and become a rock star brand!

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Think Like a Rock Star is Now Available in Europe and the UK!

Collier_cvr_altI just received word from my European Marketing Manager that Think Like a Rock Star is now on sale in Europe and the UK!  You can buy the book on Amazon in paperback and Kindle editions.  I’ve been really pleased with the sales so far, and totally forgot that the book had a staggered release!

If you haven’t purchased Think Like a Rock Star yet, please check the early reviews on Amazon, they have been absolutely stellar, I could not be more proud of the reaction the book is getting!

Also, I have created three other resources besides the book to help you better connect with your fans:

1 – The Think Like a Rock Star newsletter.  Each week we discuss tips and ideas for how you can better connect with your fans.  It’s completely free and you can sign up here.

2 – #RockstarChat on Twitter every Wednesday at 1pm Central.  This is for brand marketers and really anyone that wants to learn how to better connect with their fans and build engagement around their social media and marketing efforts.

3 – Think Like a Rock Star Community on Google Plus – This is also a place where we can bounce ideas off each other about how to connect with our fans and create more engaging content.  This community just launched this week and already we are having some great discussions!

 

And if you have already read Think Like a Rock Star could you please write a review for Amazon and GoodReads?  Thank you so much!

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4 Questions Every Blogger Should Ask About Their Social Strategy

J0309040Note: This is a guest post by Mairead Ridge, Marketing Manager at Offerpop.  This post is part of Offerpop’s sponsorship of #Blogchat in April.  Click here to learn more about Offerpop’s services, and also note they are offering a free 14-day trial of its social media marketing services with no credit card required!  You can read Offerpop’s Tumblr here.

Also, if you want to learn how you can sponsor #Blogchat in June, click here and email me for pricing.

 

You’re an avid blogger; a Twitter aficionado. But have you invested time into building an actual social strategy?

The most successful bloggers treat social as a key marketing channel, employing well-defined plans to drive blog traffic and repeat visitors. You don’t have to be a self-promotion machine. The goal is to get more out of the great content you’re already sharing.

Take a step back and ask yourself the following questions:

Am I on the right networks?

Some bloggers never stray far from Twitter. Others spread themselves too thin, making minimal impact across an array of networks.

When figuring out the right mix, consider the demographics of each network and the kind of content that resonates. If you blog about highly visual subjects like art, or fashion, Pinterest and Facebook could work for you. If you’re blogging about business, invest some time in LinkedIn groups.

Is it worth running a promotional campaign?

Plenty of merchants run sweepstakes and promotions on Facebook or Twitter, handing out discounts and prizes to earn more fans. But bloggers with small budgets and no “product” often think this tactic is not for them.

Big mistake. If you’re creating big pieces of content, like e-books or webinars, try “fan-gating” them, requiring people to become fans or followers of your feed or page before downloading. It’s a low-barrier way to build a relevant audience, and an approach we practice ourselves.

You can also use giveaways for prizes, like free passes to a conference where you’re speaking. Or partner with a brand that shares your core audience to reward fans with products they love.

Do I give my fans reasons to visit my blog?

If your blog is the main show, social is your carnival barker, intriguing people to come on in. Attract new readers by teasing morsels of content from your latest posts, like a funny quote or an unexpected tip. But if you only share these posts once, most of your audience will miss them. Schedule posts with links to “evergreen” content for weeks and months to come.

And don’t fall behind on sharing content from other bloggers and influencers. Curating content helps you build a reputation as an educator and get more clicks and shares for your own stuff.

Do I know what’s working?

Even if you’re a Google Analytics junkie, your metrics aren’t complete until you know how your content performs within a social channel. Keep track of what posts get the most likes, comments and shares, and continuously apply that knowledge to future content.

Social media is a barometer for what drives readers’ passions, providing insights that can benefit your blog. And, as you’re testing new networks and campaigns, keep an eye on those blog analytics. You’ll see what traffic sources grow (and don’t grow) over time. Use the knowledge to make decisions about which networks to focus on.

What other questions should truly social bloggers ask themselves? Tell us in the comments!

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Putting Out a Social Media Firestorm BEFORE it Starts!

Note: A version of this post appeared in this week’s Think Like a Rock Star newsletter.  If you would like to subscribe, click here.

Last week when I was in Nashville something interesting happened: I was primarily in town to talk about Think Like a Rock Star with the Nashville chapter of the AMA at their monthly luncheon.  But earlier that morning, I briefly spoke to a group of about a dozen CMOs.

It was interesting to hear the feedback from both groups.  After the lunchtime presentation, some people wanted to talk about how to find and connect with their fans, many people loved the case studies, some people wanted to talk about creating more engaging content.  In other words, there were plenty of themes that resonated with the audience, and areas that they felt they needed help with.

But the group of CMOs were focused on one key area:  They wanted help in dealing with customers that were using social media tools to say negative things about them or even attack their brands online.

I *love* this topic because I believe it’s so misunderstood by many companies.  The first thing to realize is that the vast majority of the time when a customer says something negative about your brand, it’s not because she wants to cause your brand harm, it’s because she wants your brand to respond to her!  That’s it.  She’s tried calling your customer support line and she was put on hold for 15 mins, then hung up on.  She emailed your support department yesterday, and has never heard back.  She’s tried the ‘normal’ channels to get your brand to help her, and she’s gotten no response.  So she does the only thing she knows to do next: She’s turned to social media to bitch about you, hoping that it will get your attention!

That’s typically how it goes.  Granted, sometimes people DO want to start trouble for your brand, and sometimes customers DO attack your brand just to see what you will give them to shut them up, but these instances are the exception.

So how can you plan TODAY to better deal with a customer ‘attack’ that might be coming tomorrow?

First, you need this:

GuardDogStart connecting with your fans.  You want your fans to be more engaged with you, you want them participating and interacting with you on your social media sites.  There are countless reasons why this benefits your brand, but for the purposes of this topic it’s this:  Your fans are the ‘guard dog’.  If I am a person that TRULY wants to come to your Facebook page and cause a stink, seeing that you have several fans that LOVE your brand commenting and engaging there, scares me off.  Why?  Because your fans will come to your defense if someone shows up trying to start trouble.  So if I am there to pick a fight with your brand, I don’t want to fight with your fans.  So if your fans are ‘guarding the yard’, I will move on.  Think of your fans as your ‘Social Media Home Security System’.

Second, you need to create a plan for dealing with customer complaints.  The starting point is to assess why the person is complaining.  This helps you determine if the person is truly a disgruntled customer that needs your help, or a troll that’s just there to kick sand all over the place.  The disgruntled customer will typically talk about their experience, what went wrong, how they tried previously to resolve the issue, and could not, etc.  The troll will typically talk about your brand in more general terms, accuse you of not supporting Belief A or Agenda X, of creating a product that destroys the environment in Area B of the world, etc.  BTW the disgruntled customer should not be confused with ‘I want a freebie’, as these are trolls in disguise that think if they complain about you that you will offer them a freebie to shut them up.

The idea is, you want to give the actual customers the service they need and deserve, and not waste time on the trolls.  And again, the odds are you will rarely, if ever encounter a troll.  Especially if you have engaged with your fans and they are actively ‘in your yard’.

So if you currently need help dealing with angry customers ‘in your social media yard’, then I have three options to help you:

1 – Subscribe to the Think Like a Rock Star newsletter for free.  It’s a weekly newsletter and one of the most common topics we tackle is dealing with negative comments from customers online.  Click here to subscribe.

2 – Read Chapter Six of Think Like a Rock Star (click here to order it on Amazon).  The entire chapter is devoted to properly handling negative comments with multiple case studies from brands that did a great job of handling customer complaints, and a few that did not.  It walks you through the exact steps you should take to respond to unsatisfied customers in order to convert them into passionate fans.   The book costs $15 currently on Amazon, and this chapter alone is well worth that price.

3 – Hire me to help you deal with upset customers online.  I can work with you to craft a plan and strategy for handling future negative feedback you encounter from customers, as well as help you tackle current issues you might be facing.  I can also be available ‘on call’ to help you handle future issues that pop up that require your attention quickly.  Email me to discuss your exact needs and the help I can provide you.

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A Few Simple Tips For Making Your Blog More Secure

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Go here to let Sucuri scan your blog for free to tell you if you’ve been hacked or have malware.

So over the last few months I had been chasing a nagging malware issue on this blog.  It looks like (knocking on keyboard) it’s finally cleaned out, so I wanted to share what I learned so hopefully you’ll be able to avoid some of the same problems.

First, here’s what I think happened:  It looks like somehow someone got access to the blog, either via stealing a password (doubtful) or exploiting a security hole in an outdated plugin (likely).  Then what they did was they added code to the template and plugins that let traffic be redirected from this blog, to their site.

Here’s what I did to clean it up:

First, I tried to download some security plugins to give me an idea of what had happened.  I added Wordfence, Better WP Security and Bulletproof Security.  What I liked about WordFence is that it scans your WordPress and plugin files and will tell you if any have been changed and will show you the exact changes that were made.  Better WP Security gives you a nice checklist of options you can take to make your blog more secure.  Plus, it gives you the ability to ban users that repeatedly try to login to your blog or access security holes in the setup.  Bulletproof Security has a few additional options and honestly I have it more as a ‘it can’t hurt’ option than anything else.

But the problem was, at best these plugins were alerting me to the fact that there were issues, but couldn’t fix them all.  So I ended up paying to get Sucuri’s service for my blog.  Sucuri costs $90 a year for one site/blog, but it was worth it.  They were able to go in and clean up my blog, and then give me tips and ideas on how to keep a re-infection from happening.  The problem was that the issue kept popping back up.  We’d clean the blog up, it would be fine for the next few days, then suddenly the following Friday or Sat, Google would blacklist the blog and we’d start the process all over again.

It turns out that what was happening was someone had access to the blog, and they were going in every Thursday and changing files to have traffic be re-directed to their sites.  This was somehow taking place the following day, and then triggering the Google blacklist.  After it happened about 3 weeks in a row, I finally figured out what was happening, and was able to alert Sucuri as soon as the files were changed on a Thursday, and they cleaned it up within a few hours and we never saw the blacklist from Google.

Also, I noticed that one of WordPress’ core files had been modified, Sucuri changed that back.  I went in and changed my WordPress password, and in two weekends since, there have been zero problems and no files have been changed.  So it seems that the problem, at least for now, is gone.

So if you want to avoid this headache, here’s some simple tips:

  • Create strong passwords for your blog, including numbers and letters.  It’s best to mix in upper and lower case letters, plus a few special characters as well.
  • Update WordPress and all your Plugins as SOON as the updates are available.  I learned this the hard way, but often plugins are updated simply to close an existing security hole.  Before I *hated* updating plugins and would often wait till I had several that needed updating before I would.  Never again.
  • If you have a user as ‘admin’ then delete it.  That’s the user account that hackers target the most.

BTW, if you install the above plugins you can see how often hackers try to access your blog and it happens CONSTANTLY.  One of the settings I have is I get an email if someone makes 10 bad attempts to sign into my blog.  They are banned and then I get an email saying they were banned.  I get 5-10 of these emails EVERY DAY.  Seriously, it’s scary stuff to see how often bad people will try to access your blog and look for any security hole they can find, so you have to be proactive about protecting yourself.

We’ll have more ideas for keeping your blog secure tonight at #Blogchat, so please check in and let’s learn from each other!  See you at 8pm Central!