Insights

Your Product Will Catch Me, Your Service Will Keep Me

I?m a marketer by trade. It doesn?t matter if it?s traditional marketing, or digital/online marketing ? at the end of the day, the tools may differ but the trade stays the same.

Yet in a previous life, I also headed up the main call centre for the U.K.?s largest communications company, and that was based around the service side of things.

And you know what?

Service beats marketing hands down any day if you want a successful company.

You can have the greatest product; the most amazing sales pitch; the must-buy item of all time. And yes, they?ll bring in the dollars.

But that?s where they stop.

Sure, you can regurgitate a sales or marketing message into a different campaign, and call it something different. But at the end of the day, it?s still a limited experience.

Service, on the other hand? That?s the gold in the jester?s hat.

A Tale of Two Service Superstars

The other thing about?great service is it not only builds loyalty to a company, but encourages organic marketing via the advocate(s) that service has created.

You listen to a customer, and show you care about their support of your product, and they’ll be the first to share your details to friends, colleagues, family, etc., when it comes to them looking for the types of product or service your company creates.

Point in case – MeanThemes and Postmatic.

Nothing Mean About MeanThemes’ Service

Anyone that’s been around this blog for a while will know I tend to change its design more than Madonna changes “dance partners”….

It’s become a running joke, and I’ll admit to tinkering with the look and feel much more than any blogger should. But, for me, it’s all part of the ongoing evolution to present the best experience possible, for both reader and myself.

The theme?you’re looking at now (at least, if you’re on-site – if you’re reading through email and haven’t seen it, pop on over, I won’t bite!) is Myth, from MeanThemes.

I’m a huge fan of the Medium approach to content presentation – large featured image, clean typography, no distraction content area. So, for me, Myth was perfect.

Setting the theme up was pretty easy, but then I ran into some roadblocks with some settings (mainly, plug-in conflicts and some drop quote styling).

Any time I wrote to Chris, one of the co-founders of MeanThemes, through their ticketing system, he was on the ball and responded within 24 hours, often much less.

Not only that, but I’m currently looking at the Lasso plug-in for front-end editing to tell stories more effectively on here, and that has some weird CSS tricks it needs you to implement.

Chris spent a week looking at the plug-in, how it integrates with themes, what CSS improvements it needs, etc, and is submitting all that info to the Lasso creators.

Now, remember, this isn’t part of the MeanThemes toolset. Nor is it really any of Chris’s concern.

The fact he took all this on board, though, and advised me to wait until his suggestions reach the Lasso team, validates my decision to go with MeanThemes and make them my de-facto go-to if/when I decide to change up my theme again.

Postmatic and the Art of the Customer Journey

I’m a huge fan of Postmatic, as anyone who’s read my blog posts over the last 6 months can attest to.

For me, they make blog commenting fun and more social again, and they make it so easy that anyone can take part and enjoy.

They’re also great at implementing updates that make sense, both from a blogger and from a reader/subscriber perspective.

Yet, more than that, they have one of the most awesome user support teams in place.

For example, I mentioned earlier I’d had a conflict between Myth and a couple of plug-ins. Postmatic was one of them, where the little check box to subscribe to posts wasn’t showing.

While Chris from MeanThemes helped me resolve that issue (with some CSS, then a full theme update to fix the way the theme hides labels on the comment form), Jason from Postmatic set up a test server to go through the Myth theme and see how Postmatic could help.

I also had some issues with how Postmatic’s comment plug-in Epoch (currently in beta) displayed comments when activated.

Instead of blaming a theme, or citing incompatibility, the Postmatic team worked to add new features to Epoch that meant the native styling of a blog’s theme could be adapted by the Epoch plug-in.

And to put the icing on the cake, when I borked my theme because I dropped in some rogue code, Dylan – the Postmatic lead dev – jumped in to fix it for me. On the friggin’ weekend!

To say I was impressed would be putting it mildly…

The Relationship Behind the Sale

I speak a lot about the relationship behind the sale.

I see it as a key part to any business. As I mention at the start of this post, yes, marketing and sales and advertising and all the other cool and sexy stuff is great. They?ll get you the keys to the front door.

But the real business success stories come from service.

Service is the solution to any problems or aftershocks created by sales, or marketing, or advertising. Service is the host that?s waiting to look after you once you use the keys that sales and marketing have given you.

[clickToTweet tweet=”Service is the solution to aftershocks created by sales, marketing, or advertising. ” quote=”Service is the solution to any problems or aftershocks created by sales, or marketing, or advertising. “]

Simply put, by all means, have the best sales, marketing and advertising team around. But make sure you have a superstar service team or mindset, because that?s where your customers old and new will really be.

Just like I?ll be there for Chris and the MeanThemes team, and Jason and the Postmatic team, because?they?ve made me an advocate for their brand, personal and business.

Even if I personally stop using them, I?ll still be happy to recommend their businesses.

And that?s all you can ask for your company when building service success stories. Agree?

Note: If you want a top-notch WordPress or Ghost theme with awesome support, please do check out MeanThemes. And if you want to make blog comments and engagement fun and social again, sign up for Postmatic.?

If You Want to Build Engagement, Build Your Learning First and Never Stop Learning

When people think of growing an engaged audience, it’s usually in reference to blog readers; or an email list; or visitors to a sales page on your website; or listeners to your podcast; a social network community, or similar.

But what are we really building an audience for?

Is it simply to participate (click through on an offer or download a product)? Or is it to interact, via comments on a blog, tweets, Google+ conversations and more?

If it’s the former, then do we even care about engagement?

After all, no-one says anything on a sales page except the seller, so where would the need for engagement be?

If it’s the latter, though, and you’re looking to build a truly engaged audience or following, then understanding your blog audience is key to building your goals for what that engagement will look like, and what your end goal really is.

It Doesn’t Need To Be About the Sale

When I first started this blog, there was no agenda for it to be a lead generation platform. While a lot of business blogs will act as a cover for a sales message (and there’s nothing wrong with that), my goal was a bit different.

Instead of having a ton of ads and affiliate links, and subconscious messages to drive traffic to the website of the agency I ran at the time, I simply wanted a place where I could put ideas out and have others respond to them, no matter whether the response was positive or negative.

There were so many blogs out there that simply state a point of view and don’t encourage further conversation – I found little to get excited about on these blogs. So I made a decision.

While I couldn’t guarantee that I’d get a lot of readers, I would guarantee that those who did find me would arrive at a place where their view was just as important as mine, if not more so.

I’d also keep my viewpoints honest, even if it meant pissing off the “leaders” in the space that I was blogging about (and that’s happened a few times!).

Again, this meant that readers would know that they could come to my blog and learn exactly how I felt about something, and they’d have the platform to share their frustrations too, whether they agreed with me or not.

By doing this, I’ve been incredibly fortunate to have had some great discussions on here, and these have continued across the web on platforms like Google+ and Facebook walls.

There may not have been a huge amount of conversation in the beginning, but I stuck to my goal of having an open mic where all opinions are respected equally. For me, this has led to the growth of the blog since these early days more than anything else.

Learning As You Go

Of course, like anyone, I’ve made mistakes along the way, and I know I’ll make more – that’s just how we are.?For example, a few of my early posts were the kind I call “traffic jams” – lots of traffic, but not going anywhere.

The lists posts;
The “Top 10 Ways to…” posts;
Simple posts about Twitter, Facebook, etc.

Basically, the types of post that were easy to write but had little real substance.

That’s not to say they were written that way deliberately – every post I’ve written has been with good intent.

But from a satisfaction viewpoint, there was little to be had from some of these earlier posts. I could have easily stayed on that path, and would have probably had a lot more subscribers than I do today.

But the likes of Mashable already has these types of posts covered.

Instead, I wanted somewhere that would be a real source of engagement. So I learned from the early posts, and made a more conscious effort to write more questioning posts, and try to offer up ideas that weren’t available elsewhere.

[clickToTweet tweet=”Write more questioning posts, and offer up ideas that aren’t available elsewhere #blogtips” quote=”Make a conscious effort to write more questioning posts, and offer up ideas that aren’t available elsewhere”]

And it worked.

My subscriber list grew, as did the engagement with my readers – and not just on my own blog. There have been some great examples of continued discussion as readers took the original viewpoint into a brand new direction and really made me think about the original post.

For someone that thrives on that kind of exchange, you can’t ask for much more than that.

Accepting Change Needs to Happen

It’s not just the interaction where the benefits have come. By building an area of trust where people would feel welcome in a safe and open community, it resulted in that same community showing their own value.

For example, when a non-profit consultant attacked me personally regarding a social media-led charity project I had founded, the community rallied in numbers to counter the claims, resulting in her removing the piece from her blog.

They also rallied round me when I was seriously ill in 2010, and for that I will be eternally grateful. So, yes, opening up your blog offers some huge benefits.

That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t have done anything differently – heck, if we’re always satisfied, then we aren’t growing! If I had my time again, I would have implemented some things differently.

1. I would have posted less frequently

I started off writing a blog post a day (and sometimes I posted more than once on the same day). Sometimes this made me publish stuff that, in hindsight, could have (should have) been better.

In the middle of 2011, I made a conscious decision to post less frequently and really ask questions of the stuff I wrote about. I’d like to think it made me a better blogger and resulted in deeper conversations and points of view being exchanged.

2. I would have been more honest

Let me rephrase that – I would not have been afraid to speak more honestly. There were times early on when I wouldn’t have offered a negative opinion about certain people, since I (incorrectly) thought they were right. Turns out we all get blinded by vacuous respect.

When I realized this, and began writing openly about questionable practices or calling out BS, it opened up a new level of understanding between blogger and reader, since others were clearly thinking the same thing.

3. I wouldn’t be so closed off

One of the things many bloggers complain about is that social sites like Twitter and Google+ have seen comment numbers decrease, as conversations about a post shift to the network as opposed to taking place on the blog itself. But that’s missing the point.

Engagement comes in all shapes and sizes and, while your blog may be the most desired place for discussion, true engagement allows the discussion to expand wherever people feel most comfortable talking. ?If I was to do anything differently here, it would have been to get active on a Facebook Page sooner (and now Google+).

[clickToTweet tweet=”Engagement comes in all shapes and sizes – don’t limit conversations to just your blog. #blogcomments” quote=”Engagement comes in all shapes and sizes – don’t limit conversations to just your blog”]

Because, ironically, I’ve tended to find that the more willing I am to converse away from my blog, the more likely people are to click through and read more of my stuff. And that’s a win-win in anyone’s book.

Why we can never stop learning

Of course, this is just personal experience and thoughts on my own blogging journey. Will the above work for you in helping to meet your own goals? Maybe, maybe not.

A lot will obviously depend on your own data. For example, going by my analytics, the demographic of my readers is absolutely right for the content I’m producing. And tools like Postmatic, and the conversation that springs from there, can help?me optimize even further for new audiences.

I know that when I’ve used the framework of what’s worked for me when helping others set up a new blog, they do tend to find a good level of engagement from the off. So, the fundamentals mentioned above may be useful – but don’t quote me on that!

One thing that is guaranteed, though, is this: if you want to build engagement, then build your learning first and never stop learning.

Learn who your audience is;
Learn what they want to read;
Learn where they prefer to converse;
Learn how to be open;
Learn that you’re never 100% correct.

If you can see where you’re going right, and learn to notice where you’re going wrong, it’s a lot easier to take the steps needed to meet your own success metrics, whatever they may look like.

And if you can do that? Well, you’ve just laid the foundations in building your engagement model. Now you just need to keep building.

And with the right data behind you to support these foundations, the next steps won’t be as difficult as the early ones.

Why the Real Driver of Traffic is Content That Matters to YOU

Run a Google search for ?how to grow my blog? or ?how to get more traffic to my blog? and you?ll find millions of results with all kinds of tips and tactics to grow your blog traffic.

Heck, I?ve been guilty of this myself in the past, with advice on using Stumbleupon to increase your traffic and how to use the web to find content for your blog (and grow it in the process).

And you know, some of these methods will work, and bring you extra traffic, and boost your Alexa ranking, or whatever metric you?re using to gauge your blog?s growth. But does it really matter?

By focusing on the traffic, you run the risk of losing focus on what really matters ? the content.

By focusing on the traffic, you begin to write for Google and that direction is rarely a good one.

By focusing on the traffic, you write for what you think should be said instead of saying what should be written.

Simply put, by focusing on the traffic, you?re forcing yourself to adapt to different viewpoints that you don?t believe in, to capture the search of the day or the soundbite that might, just might, make your content go viral.

The problem is, while you might get the traffic, your limitations will be on show.

Targeted Content and the Failure to Deliver

By focusing on traffic, you?ve just become another cog in a highly greased content wheel, with a million other wheels trying to spin and gain traction at the same time.

You slip into the lazy creation of posts that proclaim, ?The Top 10 Lessons to Learn From??,?Be Awesome, Be You, Be Great??, ?Why Brands Should Do This, But Not That?? and other attention-grabbing headlines that promise much but deliver little.

You don?t really care about the content ? you care about the new eyeballs, and the boost in traffic, and all the wonderful social shares that you?ll get.

The problem is, by putting traffic first as your goal, your content?s slipping, until the traffic you crave so much notices that you?re not really adding anything new and doesn?t bother coming back.

[clickToTweet tweet=”By putting traffic first as your goal, your #content suffers” quote=”By putting traffic first as your goal, your content?s slipping away from you.”]

So now you think of new ways to target content, and you focus on that, all the while forgetting the real driver of traffic that matters ? content that matters to you.

The Reality of Delivering

I get it. You want traffic, you want subscribers, you want social shares. You want your blog to be hugely popular. So you automate, you curate, you build tribes, all in the hope of getting the needle pointing upward on your traffic charts.

But what?s the end result?

Do the tribes bring traffic or just add shares and nothing else? Does the traffic stay or does it bounce and never come back? Do the subscribers click open your emails or have they forgotten you exist?

Because while you?re focusing on the traffic, the reality of delivering content that deserves traffic seems to be the number one thing missing in blogs that try too hard. This goes for both personal and professional/corporate blogs.

People are smart. They know when you believe in what you?re saying and when you?re saying things you don?t believe (but can turn the wheels on the traffic bus). They know if you?re in it for the quality of thought versus the quantity of shares and high bounce rates.

And then there?s you.

Are you really satisfied with the higher traffic spikes that give you a quick buzz, until you need to start the process all over again to get new buzz and new headlines?

Are you creating for your legacy or creating the fallacy of one?

Are you numbing your own brain as well as the eyes of your readers by the focus being where it is (traffic), versus where it should be (content)?

Chasing web traffic over quality content to drive the traffic is kinda like the first time you see a porno ? exciting for a moment, but a false representation of the deeper picture behind the moans and slappy noises.

The Content Choice is Yours

By writing this post, I realize the irony of falling into the same category as all the other blog posts that ask what?s really important, traffic or content, and why can?t you have both?

The truth of the matter is, you can ? if you?re willing to give up empty metrics for real ones.

How the finished article makes you feel;
The feedback you get from it;
The real goals that are met by its premise;
The ratio of repeat visits versus new ones;
The continued growth of your thinking versus the dearth of your creativeness.

It?s easy to ignore all of the above, and believe that traffic is the route of all success, internally as well as externally. And you know what ? maybe it is. If so, I wish you well on your path.

Personally, I?m going to support the bloggers and brands that prefer the quality route instead. Perhaps I?ll see you there?

Please Don?t Encourage Superficial Humblebragging

So, another day, another superficial list about influencers and how those folks on the list should be the 21/50/100 people everyone should follow, or die!*

This time around, it’s the turn of Inc. with their “21 Social Media Marketing Experts to Follow on Twitter”. It’s the usual parade of names you see on every other list, especially the equally pointless one that Forbes seems to run every six months or so.

Of course, because it’s on Forbes, or Inc., many of those that are on the list are quick to share the post – even though the author of the latest Inc. list states there’s no actual science or methodology behind the list, it’s simply people he finds useful to read and follow.

So starts the circle of superficial humblebragging and linkbait posts clogging up the web – but we can do so much better.

Do Personal Opinions Belong on Mass Media Publications?

One of the interesting, and humorous, results of these lists is how those included start to refer to themselves as “Top Forbes Influencer” or “Top Inc. Influencer”. Which would be nice, if it were the actual publications making the list.

But it’s not – instead, it’s usually a contributor (more often than not an unpaid one) that’s simply posting their take on who you should follow on the various social networks.

So enamoured are many of the recipients, they start to become the Social Face Slappers – regaling you multiple times of how they’re so humbled to be on these lists with their peers, blah blah blah.

Except if they were really humbled, they’d simply thank the person who created the list, and leave it at that, as opposed to sending out multiple updates about how humbling it is to be humbled like this.

It does raise the question, though, as to whether the likes of Forbes, Inc., Huffington Post, etc., should even publish these types of list.

Sure, they may be traffic drivers, and we all know how much the ad guys at these publications like traffic. But at what cost?

Does the continuous inclusion of these non-lists eventually harm the publication, as more and more people see through the facade of what is nothing more than empty content in lieu of whoring for traffic?

After all, you only need to look at BuzzFeed to see this already happening. In a recent roundtable about the future of content, David Kutcher made an excellent point about BuzzFeed’s paltry clickthrough rate.

Buzzfeed might attract 18 billion impressions per month, but is only getting 420 million clicks back to their website.?A paltry 2.3% click through rate.

Now, sure, 420 million clicks is nothing to sneeze at. But given the size of the impressions, and the ad costs involved with that, it would seem apparent that the BuzzFeed economy – high impact headlines, low impact content – is starting to take its toll on the audience.

Non-lists like the ones published by contributors, but not official lists from the publication, could see the likes of Inc. and Forbes start to go down the same route.

Actually, now I come to think of it, that may not be too bad a thing after all…

Make Lists Mean Something

In all seriousness, if people and publications like the ones mentioned here want to continue creating the empty list posts, more power to them. They’ll get the readers they deserve.

The sad thing is, they could be so much more.

Instead of the vacuous recommendation of someone else to add to the Twitter noise already in your stream, reputable publications could truly be shining the light on lists that mean something.

10 Amazing and Influential Women (for International Women’s Day), and?Helping Others Have a Better Life,?are just two examples – there are countless others (and I’m sure you have your own examples).

The point is, it’s 2015. The top social media lists thing was all the rage in 2010. Maybe 2011, too. And possibly edging in by a nose in 2012.

But we’ve moved on – or, at least, we should have. All they offer today is a nice clickable article title, some humblebragging opportunities, and (for the unscrupulous) a way to charge higher consultancy fees (“I’m an Inc. influencer, don’t you know? That adds an extra zero to my fee”).

I recently wrote about us deserving what we click. And it’s true. Let’s not be suckered into placing import on these Forbes and Inc. lists.

Instead, start placing import on the lists you’d truly like to be remembered for, and the ones that we can all support.

After all, let’s face it – a list where the achievements could impact 7 billion people is a little grander in vision than one that limits itself to just 21 on a niche little social network, no?

* You probably won’t?actually die if you don’t follow these people.

Making the Full Switch to Postmatic ? What You Need to Know

Regular readers and subscribers to this blog will know of the praise I’ve been putting the way of email commenting solution Postmatic in recent months.

Not only does the solution work seamlessly, it does exactly what it says on the tin – encourage blog commenting, comment interaction, and increased engagement. And it does it all in a snazzy email template that looks great on both desktop and mobile.

So enamoured have I been with the difference Postmatic has made not just to this blog, but to my overall blogging enjoyment too, I’ve decided to make the full switch over to a Postmatic-powered blog (at least as far as email and commenting is concerned).

Given I currently run a weekly newsletter with MailPoet, this is going to mean some changes. Here’s what they are, and what they mean for you.

If You’re a Current Newsletter Subscriber

If you’re an active subscriber to my weekly newsletter, you don’t need to do anything – you’ve already been moved over. However, this is only if you’re an active subscriber – so, you opened or clicked one of my newsletter emails.

If you didn’t do any of that, an email invite went out yesterday to advise of the change, and how to subscribe to the new format.

* Note – due to a glitch between MailPoet and Postmatic, several of you may have received multiple invites. My sincere apologies, and the Postmatic team is looking into what happened.

If you wish to continue receiving my posts, but now as soon as they’re published as opposed to a weekly digest, you’ll just need to reply with “agree” in your email and Postmatic will do the rest. If you don’t wish to change over, simply ignore the email and job done, subscription over. 🙂

The last newsletter will go out this coming Sunday, June 21, with an update on the new set-up.

If You’re a Current RSS Subscriber

Lucky you – you don’t have to do squat! 😉

Because Postmatic is an email-based delivery and commenting solution, my move won’t affect your RSS subscription. You can continue to get the posts you like via your chosen feed reader, or Feedly, since these are handled by my RSS provider, Feedio.

Of course, if you did want to get email delivery instead of RSS curation, then the next section is for you.

If You’re Not Yet Subscribed via Email

Because I’m moving from MailPoet to Postmatic, this means my email list details need to change. So, from this post on, anyone that uses the email subscription box at the end of each post will be added to my Postmatic email service.

This means any new posts I publish will be emailed straight to your Inbox, and then that’s when the fun really begins.

Because Postmatic not only delivers my posts to you by email, but also allows commenting by email, you never need to leave your Inbox again (at least for this blog).

Here’s what’ll happen:

I create a post and hit Publish
Postmatic delivers to your email
You read the post, and if you want to comment, you hit Reply
You write a comment as you would an email, and hit Send
The comment appears on my post in the comments section
Any replies to your comment, or new comments by others, will come back to your Inbox
You choose whether to reply (by repeating the third and fourth bullet points)
You continue to take part in the comments as long as you want.

The real beauty of Postmatic is that you, the reader/subscriber/commenter, are fully in control of what comes into your Inbox.

If you simply want to read a post, you get that post by email, read it, then delete it. You won’t see any comment emails unless you leave a comment yourself.

If the comments are getting too busy, Postmatic will pause notifications (when there are more than 6 comments on a single post within an hour). You choose if you wish to continue receiving notifications.

If you simply want to stop comment notifications, you just send an email with the word “Unsubscribe”, and you drop out of that conversation.

Don’t worry, Postmatic reiterates these points with an introduction email when you sign up to my blog via email.?It’s a very elegant way of ensuring your Inbox doesn’t get clogged with multiple emails from the same blog post.

So there you have it. As of this post, all future posts will be delivered by Postmatic. There are also some cool features coming down the line to make your experience an even better one, so stay tuned.

Thank you for being with me this far, and I look forward to seeing you in the comments in posts to come!