Archive for August, 2009
Ephemeriphile
I used to try and read way too many blogs and RSS feeds. I have recovered. However, some of you still need help. For you, a name.
Ephemeriphile n. – A person who collects many, many, many blog feeds in their RSS reader. From the Greek ephemeris (a journal , diary) and philos (lover).
I’m Not Press Or An Agency
I am sitting here at the Bloggers’ Lounge at Affiliate Summit East in NYC. AKA where all the Social Media people hangout away from the affiliate people.
I am here as an “official blogger” in the TechSet bloggers’ lounge. So when I checked in, my nametag was labeled as “Press”. In addition, every nametag at Affiliate Summit falls into one of four groups: Agency, Affiliate, Network, and Merchant.
Agency seemed like the best fit for me at the time. I am a consultant and event planner, and I don’t work in affiliate marketing, so I get why there was not a firm fit for me here.
As a blogger, I am starting to be treated like press more and more. I don’t consider myself press but I get it. My audience and authority are growing. And with that growth comes an increased interest from others in leveraging that audience and for me an increased responsibility. The FTC is now taking a closer look at bloggers and social media. Moving to treat them more like press.
The more I blog the more I begin to act like press as well. I interview more. I break news more. I recruit other writers. I consider newsworthiness, audience interests, and considering larger impacts of my writing. My goal is to educate, not to become a media outlet, but the more I blog, I view the lines between these divisions as pretty blurry these days.
Blogging is now a major piece of media as a whole. Most bloggers need to begin paying attention to the journalism side of blogging. PR companies are targeting bloggers more than ever. And brands are also working directly with bloggers. Blogs are more than a publishing platform. They are more and more media platforms. Should this be the goal for every blogger? No, it is not for me. But whether it is sought out, the larger impact of blogging must be considered.
44 Ways To Help Your Customers Fly
Word of mouth is great. It is marketing’s pot of gold. But one step beyond good customers talking about your business, are customers that become crazy, enthusiastic fans of your business. The ones that tell everyone about you and your product, the ones that sing your praises.
Call them champions. Call them evangelists. With a little help from you, more of your best customers can rise to that next level. Shouting your good deeds from the rooftop (or Facebook even).
Having a quality product is of course step one (let’s hope you have that one covered). Being remarkable in some way can create plenty of word of mouth on it’s own. And many of the steps below can be summed up as “building real relationships with your customers”. Still, I am thinking 44 concrete examples might help a little.
Please feel free to reblog this if you want, just please link back 44 Ways To Help Your Customers Fly.
Make Customers Feel Special
- Create a reward program, allowing customers to accumulate points, earn discounts/prizes
- Allow customers to influence your products/services (see Dell’s IdeaStorm)
- Have contests that require very little action by the customer (”100th customer of the summer gets a free reward”)
- Have customers give away swag for you (see @MommyBrain at Blogher)
- Create official champions that believe in your company, that can help you hold events, educate other customers, and create content
Simple Steps
- Start internally, look to employees, relatives, and friends for your biggest evangelism opportunities (see IBM’s employee blog network)
- Teach Employees to spot potential evangelists
- Create tags/hashtags/keywords that allow your customers to signal when they are discussing your company online
- Take surveys of your customers, display the results (on and offline)
- Encourage customers to check in on Facebook, Twitter, etc. (see Jet Blue at SXSW)
Connect and Educate
- Hold classes, webinars, seminars to teach customers relevant skills (see Hubspot’s webinar series)
- Provide content that helps customers that are parents teach or entertain their children
- Find customers that are using your product or service in a unique way and feature them for others to learn from
- Create a meetup group around a topic relevant to your business (discussion group, monthly book club, health/fitness club)
- Build communities online around existing social networks (see Graco’s Flickr group)
Content Creation
- Interview happy customers on video (case studies, testimonials, reviews, unique use of products)
- Quote customers as often as possible. Other consumers will trust them before they trust you
- Customer submitted product photos (see Threadless, Carhartt)
- Customer submitted video contests (see Late Night Jimmy Fallon Dance Challenge)
- Feature customers on blog posts, give faces and personality to your community
Customer Service
- Use unique feedback channels (Facebook, Twitter, Online chat)
- After resolving customer complaints, ask them what else you can do to improve their experience
- Suggestion box, online or offline, reward customers who make suggestions (see My Starbucks Idea)
- Forums, allow customers to help one another, answer each others’ questions
- Monitor blog searches (Google Blog Search, BackType) for comments and posts that complain about or suggest improvements to your business (and respond to them)
Be Creative
- Photo opps, bold visuals for customers to share online (see Dominos)
- Interview current evangelists about what they love about your company
- Give your customers business cards to give out (discounts would help of course)
- Ask customers to help hold an open house, or anniversary event
- Give away swag (customers wearing t-shirts, hats, bags, etc. are strong reminders), especially to return customers (see free Gmail stickers)
Blogging
- Exchange discounts for part time bloggers
- Let customers decide between two coupons that you will offer each week or month
- Feature vendors/partners and how they help you offer a better product
- Make it easy for your readers to share your content (Sharethis, Addthis, Tweetmeme)
- Create a podcast where your customers are the stars
- Feature photos of your customers with your products and at your events (see Zappos photos on Facebook)
- Wish your customers happy birthday – simple and easy – we all like birthday wishes
- Help promote community events and events hosted by your customers
- Hold contests for your Facebook fans, give them riddles, ask them to write haikus, celebrate the winners, give them prizes (see Burger King’s Whopper Sacrifice)
- Become a fan of and participate on community related pages, for your city, your neighborhood, local philanthropies
- Link to your customers – again, feature them as the stars (see Trader Joes)
- Use Twitter Search to look for links to interesting stories relevant to your niche. Share them and give credit to the source (see Whole Foods)
- Ask questions of your followers and write a blog post that quotes the best responses
- Study and respond to your critics, or better yet, study and respond to the critics of your competitors
Be creative, have fun, invest in your customers – and they will invest in you.
Feel free to add your own ideas in the comments. The more the merrier.
Photo Credit: Anirudh Koul
6 Simple SEO Steps
I am no SEO expert. But I know the basics, and have achieved some small wins on the SEO front.
The keywords I have reached top result on Google for do not have amazing traffic, but for my personal and professional goals, they are very helpful.
What I Do
- Place keywords in site/page titles, page descriptions, and meta data
- Link to my blog from my all “outposts” (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc)
- Link to my blog using my target anchor text from as many relevant websites as possible
- Write guest blog posts for others
- Recruit others to write guest blog posts for me
- Occasionally write “how to” or list posts that are more likely to get linked to
The largest lesson here is to get as many links as possible (with your target anchor text when at all possible).
The more remarkable and unique your content, the more link you will get. The more lesson based, educational your content, the more link you will get. The longer you deliver quality content and build relationships with other bloggers, the more link you will get. If you ever wonder what content does this best, check sites like Digg or Tweetmeme and look for trends.
Try not to focus too much on SEO. Focus on quality content and the SEO will follow. But, it does not hurt to target some of these simple steps along the way.
What I Do Not Do
- Consciously think of keywords while writing
- Pay attention to keyword density
- Comment on blogs for SEO value
- Submit my blog to any directories, networks, blog sites
- Pay for links
Photo Credit: Katie@!
