Niklas Myhr - The Social Media Professor

Creative Digital Experiences from Cold, Curiosity and Courage

November 18, 2016 by Niklas Myhr Leave a Comment

Daniel Ilić, North Kingdom at Chapman University 1 — Daniel Ilić, North Kingdom

Always happy to see examples of a symbiosis between my old world of Sweden and my new world of California. Such was the case when I had the honor of hosting a representative of the fascinating digital creative agency success factory North Kingdom in my Internet/Social Media Marketing class at Chapman University. During an enlightening presentation, Daniel Ilić, who heads up the US operation and serves as the Executive Creative Director and Partner of North Kingdom, shone a light on what makes up their culture and explained how it helps them produce world-class digital content and experiences for top brands such as Disney, Google, Beats by Dre, Netflix, Lucasfilm, UFC, Toyota, Volvo, LG Electronics, McDonald's, and Lego. During Daniel's presentation, some themes of the North Kingdom culture emerged and they were very consistent with the picture painted by Daniel's predecessor in the US, Mr. Jakob Nylund, who helped prepare our Business in Scandinavia MBA travel group what a Scandinavian business culture is all about a couple of years ago.

A Frozen Land Breeds Remarkable Creativity

North Kingdom was founded in the city of Skellefteå in Västerbotten County up in northern Sweden. During the long, cold, and dark winters, not everyone could play for Skellefteå AIK, the team that has completely dominated Swedish elite hockey over the last decade. Nor could everyone achieve international pop success like legendary Skellefteå bands The Wannadies, This Perfect Day, or The Drowners (all contemporaries by the way of my brother David Myhr‘s band The Merrymakers). Left over were some childhood friends who bonded in the Skellefteå AIK youth soccer team before forming North Kingdom where they eventually found an outlet for their own form of creativity in helping international brands create unique digital experiences.

Just like my own hometown of Piteå in Norrbotten County an hour north, Skellefteå is part of what is now marketed as Swedish Lapland as creative entrepreneurs have turned ice cold winters from a liability to a treasure. You can achieve global awareness and attract international visitors with the icy offerings such as the ICEHOTEL, northern lights, dogsledding, igloo weekends, or with Japanese-style “Yukigassen” snowball fights. Even Facebook found that frozen is golden as they established its first major data center up in the city of Luleå partially thanks to the fact that the cold climate reduces the costs of cooling the data server halls. Now other international brands such as BMW Group has also found its way to “The Node Pole” at the Fortlax Data Center in Piteå founded by my friend Anders Berglund.

By still having the bulk of their operations based up in Skellefteå, North Kingdom, mainly serving international clients, always comes in as an outsider and thereby is in a better position to see things differently than people inside a bubble would. “A nomad's perspective is always different” as Daniel expressed it.

Daniel Ilić also stressed that the winter darkness gives you creative opportunities simply because the mere thought that a small company up in arctic Sweden could compete and do business with global brands is so absurd that it spurs people up there in the cold darkness to come up with some really crazy ideas and to experiment with studid things that sometimes turn out to be quite remarkable. And that, remarkability, is exactly what is in short supply in an age when being different is a requirement to catch the attention of people in an ocean of sameness. “Safe is risky,” and bad or even bizarre ideas are what you need to get your ideas to spread as Seth Godin emphasized in a TED Talk.

Cultural Traits of Curiosity and Courage

I specifically asked Daniel Ilić to share not only some digital communication insights and expertise but also to teach my students at least two words of Swedish. The two words he chose, “nyfikenhet” (curiosity) and “mod” (courage) turned out to perfectly capture the essence of the cultural traits that beyond the cold climate help explain why this small Swedish firm of North Kingdom has been able to acheive such astounding and award-winning success at the Cannes Lions Festival, etc.

Nobody gets hired by North Kingdom unless they can demonstrate an insatiable curiosity, i.e., they are motivated by their “nyfikenhet” constantly searching for new insights, inspiration, and knowledge and then people share what they have learned by teaching others. Teaching is highly valued and one of the founders, David Eriksson, is a former High School teacher.

Curiosity also helps North Kingdom learn from the customers with more intent by listening more carefully and trying to understand what their real issues are. Sometimes, this means speaking to the customers for hours on the phone mainly letting the client let off some steam about what is going on in their worlds.

When it comes to courage or “mod,” Daniel means that staff get emboldened by an extremely supportive team spirit that characterizes North Kingdom. People feel that they can stretch the envelope with out-of-the-box ideas as discussed above as they work collaboratively in teams getting instant feedback and where they constantly spur each other on. Gone are the days when creative agency work was done in siloed departments of single-area specialists and North Kingdom seems to have found the formula for team-based success.

Scandinavian Hours and Vacation

Finally, Daniel Ilić, explained how he worked hard to maintain a Swedish managerial style even as he heads up the US subsidiary. For example, if he finds someone working in the office at 6:30 pm, he kicks them out asking them what they are still doing there, that they should be going home and that he should join them on the way out! Similarly, the Swedish minimum vacations of five or six weeks are also “enforced” 🙂 In the end, healthy and happy employees are better and more creative employees. Which reminds me, I should go to bed now, so good night!

Social Content Marketing Talk and Master Class in Gothenburg

January 26, 2016 by Niklas Myhr Leave a Comment

Niklas Myhr, Social Content Marketing keynote, KNTNT — Niklas Myhr keynote on Social Content Marketing at KNTNT

Enjoyed quite the whirlwind day yesterday when I paid a visit to Gothenburg on Sweden’s “left coast” and had a busy program together with my good friends and hospitable local hosts Pia and Thomas of KNTNT. Under the heading Social Content Marketing, I spoke to a full house of 180 attendees for a breakfast talk and then taught a full-day Content Marketing Master Class to a high-caliber group of marketing communications managers, consultants, and executives.

Digital Success Principles with Frida Boisen

I was also very pleased that we were able to bring in two intriguing guest appearances. Leading Swedish social media expert Frida Boisen shared perspectives on how content can catch fire on social media and she particularly stressed the importance of bringing in the emotional element of communication for people to care. This and more can be found in her best-selling book Digital Succé, check it out 🙂

Content Marketing Success with Mark W Schaefer

Mark Schaefer, Content Marketing Master Class, KNTNT, Gothenburg, Niklas Myhr — Mark Schaefer guest in Content Marketing Master Class

In the afternoon Swedish time, international content marketing thought leader Mark W. Schaefer joined us for a virtual session from Knoxville, Tennessee, during which he shared the thesis he presents in his groundbreaking book The Content Code. He stressed the importance of nurturing your so-called Alpha Audience, the relatively few followers you have who are regularly sharing your content. In fact, Mark Schaefer suggests that may be doomed if you do not start worrying more about taking good care of these ambassadors as their trust and ambassadorship may be the most valuable asset you have as competition for attention will only get worse. He cited an estimate that by year 2020, the amount of content will go up another five times from today's already crowded web.

Social Media Marketing vs. Content Marketing

KNTNT Radio podcast, Thomas Barregren, Pia Tegborg, Niklas Myhr — KNTNT Radio podcast interview by Thomas Barregren and Pia Tegborg

It is not surprising that it is challenging to discuss the interrelationship between social media marketing and content marketing as both terms are relatively undefined and are also undergoing changes in terms of how they are understood over time. That being said, social media marketing encompasses communications across a wide variety of social networks and stresses the interactive nature of communications amongst a group of people whereas content marketing takes as its point of departure a piece of content that should fulfill a number of criteria such as adding value and driving profitable customer action, albeit indirectly. This is the definition of content marketing that I used in my presentation:

“Content marketing is the strategic marketing approach of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.”

– Joe Pulizzi, Content Marketing Institute

Content Marketers becoming Professors

One aspect of content marketing that many struggle with is the extent to which they can talk about their own products and solutions in their content. While I am not going so far as saying that you are not allowed to mention your own product in your content marketing, the most effective content marketers seem to stay away from it to the largest extent possible. As a marketing professor, I have noted how content marketers are communicating and behaving more and more as professors these days as they are adding value to prospective and existing customers by teaching them ways to solve their problems irrespective of specific product purchases. It is best illustrated by the quote by Jon Ferrara of Nimble when he said:

If you teach people to fish, they’ll figure out you sell fishing poles.

– Jon Ferrara

During the day, I covered four areas in which social media marketing and content marketing are interdependent and discussed how each can benefit from the other:

Social Content Marketing

Listening on Social Media for Content Marketing Ideas. What are the questions they ask on social media? On what platforms do they search for information? What are their frustrations?
Connecting to an audience suitable to your business using relevant content. By offering content that is particularly valuable to your target market, you can both attract the right type of audience to connect with you and identify themselves such as giving you their email address at the same time as you may even repel the wrong type of audience that sees little interest in the content that you offer.
With recent Chapman University grad Filip Westlander, his girlfriend Josefine Berglund, and my cousin Per Ericson

Engaging. How can you get your followers to not only consume but also share your content on their social media platforms?
Creating. How can you motivate your followers to contribute their content for you to use on your platforms?

So, have you wondered about the relationship between social media marketing and content marketing? I am curious to learn about your thoughts and experiences so please let me know in the comments below!

Frida Boisen guest in Content Marketing Master Class, KNTNT, Niklas Myhr — Frida Boisen's guest lecture during my Content Marketing Master Class

The Myhr Family, Piteå, Sweden, KNTNT, Niklas Myhr — The Myhr Family back in the Piteå days (me with blue pants)

With KNTNT team Thomas Barregren, Pia Tegborg, Fabian Sörqvist — Thanks to the KNTNT team of Thomas Barregren, Pia Tegborg, and Fabian Sörqvist

Video Content Marketing with Bryan Elliott

April 13, 2015 by Niklas Myhr 2 Comments

Had the pleasure of having Bryan Elliott of BehindtheBrandTV back as a guest speaker in my Internet/Social Media Marketing class at Chapman University. Bryan has previously shared his story with my classes of how he built up a community around actions sports with partners, advertisers, and marketers evolving into the LinkedOC network for which I am proud to serve as an Advisory Board Member. This time, Bryan Elliott focused on video marketing as a form of content marketing and he thought that everyone should have their own YouTube channel and he pointed out that some people are really killing it on YouTube.

Publishing videos on YouTube is a great way to demonstrate your expertise and when people start viewing and sharing your videos, that will serve as social proof going forward. But has the train already left the station? No, Bryan Elliott still sees great opportunities with video marketing and finds it surprising that not more people are on board yet in spite of YouTube having been around for a decade. He thinks people are held back because they don't think they have the equipment needed, know what to say, or they feel uncomfortable seeing or hearing themselves on a video.

“If you didn't already start publishing videos on YouTube, today is the best time to get started! In a sea of blogs, etc, if a video doesn't exist for a particular search, you can bubble straight to the top of that category as Google wants to promote YouTube videos for searches.” – Bryan Elliott

The fact that many people and brands are not yet producing videos, makes the opportunity even greater for those who make the most of it. YouTube videos could even be referred to as a guerilla tactic. In terms of being found, every word spoken on that video gets indexed and transcribed by the Google robots.

Bryan Elliott jumped on the video marketing train himself and decided to produce high-caliber interviews with successful entrepreneurs and have featured celebrities such as Seth Godin, Marc Cuban, Tim Ferriss, Lewis Howes, Chris Brogan, Gary Vaynerchuk on his show BehindtheBrand.tv. See below for one such interview with Seth Godin:

His content is something that he uses for content marketing purposes and syndicates it with major publications such as Huffington Post, Entrepreneur Magazine, Business Insider, etc, not asking for much more than exposure himself. This way, he is getting millions of views of his content each month but the true value for him is that by providing value to the many, he will also get fruits falling over the fence in his lap in the form of opportunities for his video production company. Every day, he is getting between 20 and 50 pitches for working with him. While most proposals are not very worthwhile to pursue, he also gets about five great opportunities for collaborative projects each day such as when Jessica Biel's PR people called him rather than the other way around.

The most valuable advice Bryan Elliott has received was from Seth Godin who told him that the thing that is lacking most is initiative. The thing with initiative is that noone is giving it to you. You have to take it yourself. People are waiting to be picked but Prince Charming is not coming. You can hold your breath and wait your whole life. Therefore, Bryan really pushed my students to really start developing their online platforms and include video in such initiatives to stand out as they will try getting a job.

Said and done, would be honored if you'd be amongst my first subscribers over at Myhr.tv 🙂

LIVE on #Periscope: At #ChapmanU talking video marketing https://t.co/npPnEeKEiw

— Bryan Elliott (@BryanElliott) April 13, 2015

Taco Bell Stretching the Digital Comfort Zone with Tressie Lieberman

March 30, 2015 by Niklas Myhr Leave a Comment

Intense curiosity and a willingness to take risks. Those are two requirements to be successful, at least for Tressie Lieberman, Director of Digital and Social Marketing at Taco Bell. She came to share her perspectives with my MBA class in Social Media Marketing at Chapman University and the students were treated to a full menu of examples of how Taco Bell under her direction embraces new platforms such as Snapchat and Instagram with real-time marketing while also balancing legal and organizational considerations.

“I actually get nervous if I haven’t been nervous for a while” – Tressie Lieberman

Experimentation is key and instead of buying research data, the best research they do is in the form of the real-time feedback they get from launching initiatives and adjusting as they move along. Internally, she emphasized how critical it has been for their success with digital efforts to educate and provide reverse mentoring programs internally to get executive buy-in. For example, she spent four hours with the CEO showing her everything starting out with her personal accounts to provide a full picture of how consumers can interact with the brand.

To make it possible to have real-time conversations, Tressie Lieberman talked about how she had managed to reduce the bureaucracy needed for various initiatives on social media at the same time as she wants to clearly identify what they cannot do as they don't want to get in trouble which could stop all initiatives online.

“Don't ever let the lack of a budget hold you back from doing something really cool” – Tressie Lieberman

Taco Bell launched a new app by doing a social media blackout so it looked as if they had zero presence on all networks that day. Also, mobile ordering they launched nationwide day one as opposed to doing a gradual rollout.

This all made for higher levels of social conversations about the brand and people started talking about the app. They broke through the clutter of 1,2 million apps and became a top app almost instantaneously.

In conclusion, Tressie Lieberman says it is the best time to be in marketing and working in digital is like working like a change agent and is very rewarding career choice. Also, it keeps her on her toes as “you are only as good as your last week.”

The Science of Haters with Jay Baer

March 28, 2015 by Niklas Myhr 4 Comments

In his closing keynote at the Social Media Marketing World 2015, Jay Baer stressed how important it is to embrace your critics and “Hug Your Haters” by responding to every complaint on every channel basically all the time. By doing so, companies can significantly increase sentiment metrics such as customer advocacy and conversely, if you fail to do so, customer advocacy will go down according to recent research on “The Science of Haters” that he has conducted in partnership with Tom Webster at Edison Research. He even went so far as saying that “answering complaints can have massive financial impact on your business.”

Niklas Myhr and Jay Baer at Social Media Marketing World 2015 — Giving Jay Baer a good luck hug before his keynote 🙂

Reasons why companies do not respond to all complaints range from an unwillingness to dignify complaints to an inability to manage a large number of complaints or even find them in the first place. Still, Jay Baer suggests that with top management commitment and sufficient resources allocated, a company can, and should, respond to all complaints. He used KLM as a case study and mentioned that when the ash cloud from the Icelandic volcano wreaked havoc on flights a few years back, their CEO committed to responding to every complaint. Now they have a full 150 full-time employees dedicated to responding to online mentions across all channels.

An interesting distinction made by Jay Baer was the one he made between so-called onstage versus offstage haters. Offstage haters are those who complain about an experience through a private channel first and herein lies the opportunity for companies to help them out before they go public with their displeasure. Offstage haters skew towards an older demographic and they don't complain as frequently as others and when they do so, they tend to do it from a computer, not from a mobile device.

Onstage haters, on the other hand, are younger, more mobile and tend to also complain more frequently. When they do so, they go to public channels first and expect not only the company to respond, but also that others will see and perhaps chime in on the conversation about the brand. For onstage haters, it is important to have an audience that is watching the duel between the complainant and the company and that is why many review sites are humorous, colorful, and bold.

“Hating is a spectator sport.”

– Jay Baer

White Castle 2 Star Review — This is a 2 star review! How would their 1 star reviews look like?

One benefit of taking complaints seriously is that these can serve as an early detection system by which you can learn about customer sentiments that may become a bigger issue for more people down the road unless you do something about it. Jay Baer also pointed out that most complaints have at least some kernel of truth in them and studied carefully, complaints can provide extraordinary insights.

On another note, Jay Baer brought up Warby Parker as an example of a company that not only responds to complaints but has as its goal to respond to every question posted online. That is, being responsive doesn't have to focus solely on the negative remarks.

In sum, Jay Baer pointed out that having haters is not the problem, ignoring them is. Instead, by choosing to embrace haters, companies have a great opportunity to build customer advocacy.

Jay Baer closing keynote audience — Enthusiastic audience about to enjoy Jay Baer's closing keynote

Consider getting the Virtual Pass to Social Media Marketing World 2015 which should provide a rich library of materials for the year to come, cannot recommend it enough!

Disclosure: Some of the links on this website are so-called “affiliate links” but please note that I only recommend products or services that I either use to satisfaction personally or am confident will add value to my readers based on endorsements by people I trust.

6 Steps to a Content Marketing Strategy with Joe Pulizzi

March 26, 2015 by Niklas Myhr Leave a Comment

Today at Social Media Marketing World 2015 where I am spending Spring Break with 25 of my Chapman University students as volunteers, Joe Pulizzi of the Content Marketing Institute launched his brand new keynote presentation on content marketing here are some highlights. First, he stressed that he was continually amazed over the fact that the majority of companies are still not having a content marketing strategy in place. Amazing to him as it is both effective and not that difficult to do. So, if you want to get started, he suggested the following six-step process:

Sweet Spot. How can you find the right balance between what you are good at and what the market needs. You can niche down really small like a guy who has a big following for his radio show on backyard poultry! What was encouraging to me as a social media professor is that he really emphasized the need for you to also have a passion for teaching. You need to demonstrate your expertise to your community.
Content Tilt. While finding your sweet spot in step 1 is necessary, it is not sufficient as you still need to provide a story with a twist to motivate people to follow you and not someone else's content on the same topic. For example, nobody would care if you release one of ten million SEO ebooks unless you provide some compelling reason for reading yours. One way of doing that is to connect your story to something that is new or current and in this regard, he finds that Google Trends is a very underutilized tool. In the end, you should define your content marketing strategy with the following three elements: (1) core target audience; (2) what will be delivered; and, (3) the outcome for the audience.
Niklas Myhr, Joe Pulizzi, Larry Benet, and Wes Schaeffer before Joe's talk

Building the Base. Once you have defined your content marketing strategy, you essentially should embark on the age-old process of publishing. Here, Joe Pulizzi really stressed the need to be focused at first. Specifically, he suggested that you start with only one content type on one main platform on which you consitently deliver high quality.
Harvesting the audience. The key here is to not only provide valuable content but also to harvest the audience by getting them to subscribe to your email list. You should focus on number of new subscribers as a key metric and he was critical of Starbuck's major investment in building communities on Facebook, etc, as these communities are outside of your direct control. To build your base, he also shared how Content Marketing Institute systematically built their following by identifying and leveraging relationships with influencers in their field and how they gradually got them to begin sharing the content of Content Marketing Institute.
Diversification. Again, Joe Pulizzi doesn't believe that you should start out on too many platforms and media types at once but once you have acheived some traction, he believes that you should consider complementary avenues to add value to your audience whether it would be through more online platforms, books, or in-person events, etc. Joe Pulizzi predicted that we will see a lot of mergers and acquisitions as some are good at building an audience while others are better at monetizing content. For example, HubSpot just bought Agency Post.
Monetization. Patience is needed and Joe Pulizzi has seen that some of the most successful content marketers don't even try to monetize in any way until they have built a really strong and loyal following which could take a couple of years to achieve. However, once you have a community developed, then you will likely find multiple ways in which you can serve your customer base with products and services you didn't even anticipate upfront but have discovered along the way as you got to know your community better.

In conclusion, Joe Pulizzi suggests you create a content marketing plan and focus everything on building a loyal audience. Also, you really have to find out where you have a special story to tell in order to break through the clutter of numerous offerings available from others. So, good luck with your content marketing strategies!

Please see below for the full slide set of Joe Pulizzi's presentation.

6 Steps to Creating a Content Marketing Strategy – #SMMW15 from Joe Pulizzi

Volvo's Customer Avenue

March 20, 2015 by Niklas Myhr Leave a Comment

The drama of this afternoon was when I was sitting in our Volvo XC70 outside our kids' middle school waiting to pick them up or at least bring home their heavy bags and my daughter's saxophone. Suddenly, I heard something crashing into our left rear mirror and saw that the cover of the mirror with a turn signal light had fallen off to the ground.

Then I noticed a distraught and very apologetic boy on his bicycle and soon thereafter, the director of campus safety appeared out of nowhere who brought us to the Principal and then the boy's mother arrived. Even if he wasn't supposed to ride his bike on that road, I hope this boy doesn't get into too much trouble and I am glad he didn't get hurt.

As a result, I once again get an opportunity to test the service capability of our local Volvo dealer where I am writing this text. I admit that I am biased, I basically grew up in a Volvo station wagon and even if Volvo Cars now is owned by the Chinese Geely Corporation, it is still a very Swedish brand. In fact, Natasha at the service desk just told me that they are supposed to work the Swedish heritage even more going forward so I taught her some phrases such as “hej !” (= hi!) and “tack!” (thanks!). And yes, they passed the service satisfaction test this time, too, good people to deal with!

I have also had the great pleasure of bringing multiple groups of Chapman University MBA students to Volvo Cars in Gothenburg, Sweden. The students got an opportunity to test drive the latest models and ironically enough, one of my Chinese students crashed a Volvo as she veered off the demo track but thanks to the safe car she was driving, neither she nor her passenger got hurt. Now Natasha came back and the rear mirror bill will be $302.56…

While waiting, I interviewed sales consultant Ghaleb Abdallah who has been selling Volvos for 21 years. The three keys to selling Volvos he says are: safety, comfort, and durability. Plus that you get a car like that for 15 thousand dollars less than a comparable BMW! He had not seen the Zlatan Made by Sweden ad, though, but enjoyed it when I showed it to him on my phone.