The Engaged Consumer

Yesterday I read an article from Writing on the Web about the Content Marketing Information Funnel. It applies the traditional sales funnel methodology to the specific business of selling content, and outlines simply and powerfully how to create a sales funnel for content that converts content consumers from free to fee. While I’m not in the business of creating content that consumers are willing to part with their dollars and cents for, I am all about using content to get them to part with something almost as previous: the valid contact information they have to share in order to join a community. The concept of the content sales funnel as it applies to using professional content to drive community success was intriguing to me. What content best practices does it take to convert community visitors who aren’t natural contributors from “lurkers” to registered members of the community?

Content as the Hook for Community

• The content is created by a credible subject matter expert. For example, an online tutorial created by a well-known financial expert is of high value to anyone looking for trusted and credible information in a noisy content space. The key here is that the content must not be duplicative of other online information provided by the same expert.
• The content provides a depth of information not typically found in other online sources. An in-depth workshop on mastering Adobe Photoshop is registration-worthy, particularly if most other online Photoshop content is in the form of tips and tricks. When a user is ready to expand their knowledge base significantly, they will happily trade data for extended information experiences.
• The content isn’t generally available elsewhere on the Web. A personal training program based on the New England Patriots off-season workouts, a first look at a new product, and tools for managing weight loss in accordance with a specific diet are all examples of hard-to-find and high-value content that will drive registrations.

• Beef it up with additional in-depth information.
• Make it more useful and visually compelling with informational graphics or useful interactive components.
• Provide the core information in an alternate format like a podcast, video, or downloadable PDF.
• Have a subject matter expert add an introduction or special tips and tricks.

1. Show by doing that you really are developing a destination that is user-centric and user-focused. This helps build their confidence in your motives and helps them look less and less for the bait and switch.
2. Give them a taste of how great and useful your content really is, sort of a “try before you buy” approach where their valuable personal information is currency.

This past weekend I took a personal trip to San Francisco to attend the inaugural BlogHer Food conference. This is BlogHer's first topic-specific conference and all-in-all I would label it a huge success. I came home smarter, full of inspiration about how to make my blog better, and having made a host of new connections, three things I look for in any conference. However, there was one pretty significant blemish on the event that I truly believe was the result of a brand thinking only about themselves and not at all about the audience who also happen to be their potential customers and more importantly, advocates. Based on this brand debacle, I offer a cautionary tale of what can go very wrong when a brand fails to put its audience first in social media marketing activities.

• BlogHer works with sponsors to make their conferences accessible to as many people as possible. The folks at BlogHer are amazing advocates for bloggers, particularly women bloggers, and they put together great conferences. I am one of their biggest fans. They realize that blogging is a hobby for most bloggers and that conferences represent a big out-of-pocket expense, so they work to make the conferences as affordable as possible. The cost for this conference was only $99 (plus travel and lodging) because 67% of the total conference cost was subsidized by sponsors.
•  In the food world, the sad/harsh/unfortunate reality is that most of the big marketing dollars needed to sponsor an event like this one lives with the big brands that make packaged foods. To make this conference possible, BlogHer had to work with brands that might not necessarily be in complete synch with the food blogging audience. This meant BlogHer had to carefully balance the wants and needs of the audience with the reality of finding the funds needed to create the conference for them. However, a really savvy sponsor would have seen this event as opportunity to introduce themselves to this large group of food influencers in a way that would make these influencers advocates. Sadly, savvy sponsors were few and far between, limited largely to Scharffenberger Chocolate who did a great job of understanding the audience and tweaking their approach specifically for us.
• This was a first time event for BlogHer. While BlogHer has run many successful blogger conferences, this was their first attempt at a niche-focused conference, and to be honest, they didn't start with the easiest group of bloggers. As a group, food bloggers are opinionated, vocal, and hard to please. If I'm honest with myself, we can move beyond knowledgeable to be snobby about food, sometimes detrimentally. I think this conference was a learning experience for everyone, including BlogHer, and they now understand food bloggers better than they did and I'm fully confident that future events will overcome some of the challenges of this first one. If they announced BlogHer Food 2010 today I would be first in line to buy a ticket.

• @userealbutter: @manggy u certainly don't have to be jealous of our lunch (travesty and p*nishment at same time) #blogherfood09
• @cooklocal: So why am I so upset re: lunch? Hotel states that all food they make is local/sustainable. So I thought lunch would be good. #blogherfood09
• @runwithtweezers: This lunch is beyond words. Frozen food at a conference of "food bloggers"? Hayle no. #blogherfood09
• @KitchenParade: @marketingmommy Ha. Rubber chicken would have been improvement over actual #blogherfood lunch.
• @jonesabi: Bertolli Frozen Meal Lunch. This is NOT enough wine. Oh, just kidding! Or am I?#blogherfood http://twitpic.com/j8naj
• @CarrotsNCake: Salad was delish! Not so sure about the frozen pasta. #blogherfood09

• Ideally, Bertolli would have leveraged their relationship with Rocco to create an amazing foodie-worthy menu that highlighted the best ingredients available in San Francisco. We did see a bit of this in the chocolate panna cotta that Rocco made that received rave reviews. From what I can tell about the smaller event on Friday night at the winery, this is the approach they took, so I'm unclear why they were unable to carry it over to lunch on Saturday. If they had served us an amazing lunch, we would have tweeted about it, posted pictures on Facebook, and written blog posts all extolling the virtues of the brand that created such an amazing experience for us. They would have turned us into advocates for their brand as a whole and generated positive buzz among our readership.
• As an alternative, or preferably in combination with a largely fresh and special menu, they could have served us a dish that offers a unique twist on their frozen food offerings. This approach would have paid homage to us as bloggers interested in cooking techniques that go beyond heat-and-eat and further given us a creative jumping off point for our own variation recipes. Campbell's took this approach with the food at the cocktail party they sponsored and it was a big improvement over the food at lunch.
• They could have provided us with the recipes from the lunch, and possibly more, to use at will on our blogs, giving content to use on our blogs after the conference. If even just a few of us had posted the recipes, or our own versions of them, they would have achieved what I assume were their goals of building advocacy among bloggers and building awareness of their products among our readership.

Yesterday when I picked my daughter up from school – she's in fourth grade – she almost sheepishly showed me a necklace I knew I'd never seen before. When I asked where she got it she said "It was on my desk", but I knew that wasn't the whole story. After a little carefully poking and prodding, I ferreted out that it was from a boy whose identity she was pretty sure about even though he didn't actually reveal himself as the giver. I let things go there with her, not wanting to push too far or seem too panicked/interested/overbearing/crazy. Although I was able to keep it together with her on the outside, my mind was racing a million miles an hour asking approximately as many questions. I couldn't immediately reach out to one of my girlfriends to start soliciting advice because I was with my daughter for the evening and I didn't want to kill her buzz with my own internal machinations. Even so, I recognized that how I approached this situation would in many ways set the tone for future situations where there is much more at stake than just a necklace.

One of the few parenting promises I've made myself is to do whatever it takes to be a mom she can talk to about anything – a trusted advisor if you will. I know I won't be her only resource but I want to be sure I'm one of them, and to do that I have to put her needs first and figure out how to weave in my messages in a way that is helpful and useful to her, without preaching or thinking solely about what I want. (This approach is integral to success in content marketing and branded community initiatives, so at least I have some experience to draw on.) Knowing I had a real opportunity but still silently thrashing, I posted the following to Twitter:

"My daughter got her first piece of jewelry from a boy. I will not freak out, I will not freak out..."


Voicing my inner turmoil, even in less than 140 characters, brought me calm and focus. It also brought me something unexpected – the aid of my personal Twitter Village.

The Virtual Village


The first person to respond to me was IncSlinger, a fellow social marketing practitioner whom I've never met in person but have developed a relationship with on Twitter and respect very much as a peer. He commiserated with me and let me know it would be worse when she's older (great). Even with the threat of worse things to come in a few years, my first set of Twitter exchanges with IncSlinger brought me clarity: I wasn't the first parent to go through this, nor would I be the last. This is part of what I signed up for and I had no choice but to navigate it. My choice instead was how to navigate it. For the next few hours comments came in on both Twitter and Facebook that ranged from snarky (which helped me keep my perspective and laugh at myself) to empathetic to exceptionally useful. My favorite "don't take yourself too seriously" response was from a co-worker, Palpatim:

"Cover all your bases. Our house rule (2 girls) is: "Boys are trouble. Girls are worse." (Parenting by bumper sticker since '92.)"


While absolutely hysterical, it was also wise. And the piece of advice I need to tattoo on the inside of my brain for all things parenting was from a dear friend who I don't talk to as much as I should to whom I can always connect when needed on Facebook:

"Just remember that honesty is gold, and make no decisions based on fear."


I'm happy to report that I was able to use the (relatively) innocent necklace to start a dialog with my daughter that I think will be the first of many good ones. And although the navigation and words were all mine, I was supported along the way by a network of friends, colleagues, and peers who are parents just like me. I'm crystal clear now that my daughter will be raised by a virtual village and she'll be a better person for it.

A Lesson for Brands: Become a Contributing Member of the Village

I'm sure you're thinking "Gee, this is a nice story and all, but what does it have to do with engaging consumers and brands' efforts to connect with their customers?" More than you might think

Every second of everyday people are using Twitter to support their lifestyle. Whether they are soliciting input for a purchase they are making, looking for help with a new product they just bought, showing off creative projects, planning a vacation, enjoying a meal, or one of countless other activities, they are sharing their experiences online and using their ever-growing Twitter village as a resource. Brands have a significant opportunity to step up and be a useful, contributing member of the virtual village. This won't come from broadcasting marketing messages, press releases, or new product announcements. Instead, it will come from true interactions with consumers that provide useful, helpful information. If someone from a brand had pointed me at an article or other good resource to inform my thinking yesterday they would have established a relationship with me that no commercial or e-mail marketing campaign could ever create.

While the tools for sifting through the myriad lifestyle discussions on Twitter today are rudimentary at best, they will get better and brands should take advantage of them to listen closely to conversations and then contribute to those discussions with the same goal as my village did yesterday: to make someone's life a better place. Support your villagers with their best interests in mind and the rewards will come back to you in spades.

Need help getting started as a productive member of the virtual village? Kyle Flaherty of BreakingPoint put together a most useful guide that every business on Twitter should read and review. And more than anything trust your human nature to be your guide. If you join a conversation on behalf of your brand, question your motivations each step of the way and ask yourself "Am I being of service to the greater good of the village?" As long as you can always say "Yes," you'll also be in service to the greater good of your brand. When the village is smarter and happier, everyone, including the village businesses, benefits.

At yesterday's Social Media Breakfast in Austin, Tim Walker had us revisit the past to help us see the present and future more clearly (read or listen to his talk – you'll enjoy it). In what had to be the most entertaining history lesson I've had in many years, he reminded us that the changes social media has brought to the way we connect and communicate aren't the first of their kind. Almost 500 years ago Martin Luther utilized "new media" (aka words printed on the printing press) to fan the flames of his reformation. Thanks to this new-fangled print media, information was more readily-available and it changed the way people thought about, discussed, and impacted the world around them. This technology opened the doors for a much larger group of content creators to tell their story and publications were no longer under the control of a select few with the knowledge and funds to publish. Today's social media tools have very much paralleled the impact the printing press had on society – albeit much more quickly. We're in the midst of the same kind of information evolution that Luther so deftly leveraged to change the course of history.

In the midst of Tim's excellent trip to times past, I started to think about how the printing press changed its audience and, conversely, how the new audience for works spun from the printing press directly impacted what was written and printed. The audience and the content were inexorably tied. With more books to read, more people had a reason to learn how to read. With a much more diverse audience to serve, the subject matter of books changed greatly and many more publishers emerged to serve the new demand for information both fact and fiction. Before the printing press the audience for books was largely the clergy and the extremely wealthy and the books of those times were for those audiences. After the printing press, the audience grew to include all classes and multiple vocations. The diversification of a previously homogeneous audience completely drove what was written and printed – but without the printing press, that audience would never have existed.

Following this tangential mental activity, I realized that social media technology and its audience have the same relationship that the printing press and its audience did so many centuries ago. When the Web first emerged, publishing was limited to those who understood the technology required to put up a site and who could afford to host a site. The message was completely controlled by the publisher and the audience was fairly homogenous and small. With the emergence of simple, free, and socially-focused tools for publishing everything from the written word to images and pictures, a new group of publishers was born. Immediately thereafter, a new audience was born. When the total number of available web pages was smaller and the content heavily guided by the publishers, the audiences for those pages were smaller and less-diverse. The population in general simply didn't have a compelling reason to be online regularly for any extended period of time. As soon as that audience could read the works of those they cared about most – friends, family, and interesting content creators who might not otherwise have been published – they found their reason. And just as the printing press drove an increase in literacy, so did the social web drive an increase in technology literacy and connectivity (both physical and virtual). And just as the new literate audience drove the evolution of what was printed on the printing presses, the new social web audience is now actively driving what is created on the web. The circle has been joined and the web hasn't been the same since.

So what does the history of the printing press and its audience tells us about the possible future of the social web? A few things come to mind:

• Many publishers will emerge but not all will remain. While cheap publishing means more people can publish, in the end, the audience cares about quality content that is relevant to them and will be the drivers of which publishers are successful. While the number of Web publishers is significantly larger the number of people who have ever been published in print, over time web publishers will see attrition just as print publishers did. In the case of print publishers lack of revenue largely drove attrition, whereas on the web lack of readership (and possibly revenue) will be the culprit. And then there's the fact that publishing quality content on a regular basis does take a reasonable amount of energy and when your content isn't monetized there's the pesky issue of the day-job to consider. There are only so many hours in the day that people will devote to taking in content – and over time the best content will rise to the top. The publishers that will find success are the ones that can stay focused on their audience and what that audience cares about.


• While the audience may not drive the initial innovation of a technology, they will impact its evolution and its uses. Had you asked the pre-printing press world how they would feel about a printing press, many wouldn't have even known how to respond. But once they experienced the results of the innovation – inexpensive and easily available books -- they had a direct impact on the evolution of the printing press. The audience favored certain printed formats and disliked others, helping shape the world of print over time. The same is already true of social web technologies – from blogs to rich media sharing and micro blogging. While a pre-twitter world wouldn't have known how to feel about Twitter, now that micro-blogging is real, there are many opinions driving its growth and evolution. Once exposed to a technology or an application of it, audiences will start to impact its future direction, even if you don't necessarily want them to. Those who respond well and show agility will be successful.


• New forms of media will emerge. For many years print was the best game in town. Then internet came along and changed everything. Granted, it took a few hundred years between the two innovations, but chances are we won't have the luxury of that kind of time before new media types emerge that make the Web look old school. Will you be ready when the next printing press comes along?

My single biggest take away from today was to re-remember my favorite Cicero quote: "Not to know what happened before you were born is always to be a child". While we are all blazing new trails and innovating, we should never forget that there are good lessons from the past that can provide valuable guidance in our current endeavors.