Have you heard of Michael Stelzner? Or did you, like me, only know him as “that white paper guy”? (Which is actually intended as a compliment, since there’s no one else I think of when I think of white papers.)
Well, things have changed for Mr. Stelzner in the last year, and he revealed the back story of his transformation a few days ago during a fantastic webinar: “The Magic of How Rich Content and Social Media Can Land You on ‘Page One’ of Google.”
(Side note: Michael’s on the Board of Advisors for the International Social Media Association, and delivered this webinar on their behalf – it was a freebie for Founding, Platinum, and Premium ISMA members, and available to Basic and non-members for a nominal fee.)
It was the inside story of the success of his 2009 Social Media Marketing Industry Survey, which led to more than 40,000 downloads of the related report, more than 3,500 new email subscribers, 500+ news and blog stories, and helped change his brand positioning from just being a white paper expert to being a social media expert as well.
You’ll have to check out the further details at the ISMA site, but I wanted to share three quick stories for small biz owners, marketing professionals, and anyone tasked with creating social media campaigns.
1. Even the best don’t always hit their goals. In the Survey itself and in tweets about it, Michael wrote that he needed 1,000 people to take the Survey. He also made it very easy for people to share links to the Survey form. In 10 days, he got about 880 to take the Survey.
Do you think he was beating himself up over not hitting the goal? Heck no! He got more than enough responses to create a decent report, and he ran with it, without hemming and hawing about it.
2. Be open to surprise benefits. In the final report, Michael included links to a couple articles as additional resources. One of them was The Dark Side of Twitter: What Businesses Need to Know, a “MarketingProfs Today” newsletter article. On the strength of the report’s reception, that article became the most popular article of 2009 on the MarketingProfs site.
As he shared in the webinar, that was an unintended side benefit of the campaign. And with more than 360,000 members, you can bet that created fantastic exposure for him.
3. “Anticipation is a marketing super-weapon.” To propel the report to stardom, Michael used an age-old tactic. He emailed the 880 Survey respondents days before the report was ready to tell them it was coming, and to be on the lookout for it, promising some very surprising results. He reached out to industry leaders and media centers of influence in advance, and offered to make the report available to them a day early to get a jump on the story.
For an automotive analogy, imagine stepping down on the gas and the brake at the same time, then suddenly releasing the brake – and pressing a “turbo” button at the same time. Result? Explosive launch!
There’s a 2010 Survey report being created as I write this, and if you want to get your hands on it, keep an eye on Michael’s excellent Social Media Examiner for details.
