I am beyond thrilled that I get to spend the weekend in Atlanta at #SMIATL! The event will be very important for me because, besides seeing all my friends again, there will be a LIVE #Blogchat on Friday afternoon! This will be the FIFTH Live #Blogchat so far this year, and is SOLD OUT! I cannot wait to see everyone!
But I am even more excited about what happens on Saturday. That’s when I get to give my favorite session of all, Think Like a Rockstar. This session will answer two of the most important questions that online marketers have today:
1 – How do we build engagement around our Social Media efforts?
2 – How can we better connect with our customers and WHY should we?
One of the highlights for me in getting to attend South By Southwest Interactive in 2008 was getting to meet Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba. The two literally wrote the book on Customer Evangelism, and are co-authors of the popular Church of the Customer blog. When I met them, I told them both that what THEY were talking about, why companies should embrace and empower their most passionate customers, was the future of successful marketing. NOT Social Media. I believe that even more today than I did then. Social Media are simply tools, but there is true business value in embracing and empowering your most passionate customers, and I’m going to make that case on Saturday morning at the Think Like a Rockstar session.
So all this week, I’ll be outlining some examples of how rockstars are connecting with their fans, and giving you ways to think about how you can apply these same methods to your company’s marketing efforts. I’ll deep-dive into all of these areas on Saturday at #SMIATL, so if you’d like to attend, I have a special discount code you can use to get 20% off admission! Just use code SMISPEAK when you register and you’ll get to attend #SMIATL for the insanely low price of $128 for the 2-day event.
BTW if you want to get a sense of what will be in this session, here’s last year’s deck, which currently has over 14,000 views on SlideShare. I will add though that the deck I will be presenting at #SMIATL will be completely revamped and restructured with new case studies and format. About 33% of the slides you see in this deck will make it to the one at #SMIATL, and even those will be used in a different context.
Mack, I really liked your presenation. I thought you used the Rock Star angle to make some really great points (without forcing it). Great job!
@TomTreanor Thanks Tom! I’ve found that the Rockstar analogy makes it MUCH easier for people and especially companies to wrap their heads around the importance of embracing their brand advocates. A lot of companies don’t really ‘get’ why brand advocates and brand evangelists are important, but when you say ‘You know how a Rockstar has fans? Your brand advocates are YOUR fans. Don’t you want more fans?’ THEN they get it.
Thanks again Tom, I’ll be posting the updated version of this deck here next week!
Cool. Thanks Mack and I’ll check back for the update!
@LisaPetrilli #SMIATL Thank you Lisa, wish you could be there!
@8Amber8 Thank you Amber, will you be at #SMIATL?
@MackCollier sadly no, but i’m intrigued by ur session! 🙂
@MackCollier i wanna b a rockstar, 🙂
@8Amber8 Most of us do 😉