As a conference attendee, you also get access to:

• Live, interactive Q&A with conference speakers
• Virtual roundtable discussions covering content marketing trends and best practices
• A fully stocked resource library filled with supplementary takeaway materials

If these companies take a look at their analytics and see that fewer than 10% of visitors to their site are visiting via a handheld device, Tim pointed out, then they really won’t see the need for creating a mobile version of it.

And who can blame them? Just because the technology is available and relatively easy to deploy, if it doesn’t match the behavior of the audience, it’s not worth the investment.

Of course, as that percentage inches towards 20%, more and more companies will start taking notice. If 1 out of 5 visitors to your site were met with a frustrating experience, that could begin to pose problems, right?

How to avoid those problems, and why now is a good time to experiment with mobile were some of the topics we covered in the most recent episode of our Marketing Smarts podcast. As Tim put it, “This will be the primary device that consumers will use to initially find you and interact with your and you better prepare for it today.”

If you don’t, he adds, “You’re going to be quite figuratively caught with your pants down.”

What does such preparation for the rapidly approaching mobile moment look like? It means putting in the effort to ensure that when customers are coming at you with a smartphone or a tablet or whatever, that you are providing them with a positive mobile experience, the elements of which Tim described as follows:

1. Make Sure They Can See It

Mobile screens are small, so your fonts need to be legible, your images need to be recognizable, and your content needs to accessible without unnecessary pinching and squeezing.

2. Get It to Them Fast

Aside from ensuring that your site or page loads quickly, Tim also recommends getting visitors to a decision point as quickly as possible. Do you want them to subscribe to something? Make it easy to do so. Do you want them to get in touch? Use a prominent “Click to Call” button. Do you want them to take a survey? Make it short and sweet. Never forget, it’s a mobile moment; make it easy for the mobile user to get what they want and move on.

3. Budget for All Platforms

While Tim recommends that you practice due diligence and prioritize the platform you want to start with—based on user behavior—the adoption landscape is continually shifting, and you need to be prepared to eventually have versions of your site, landing pages, and apps for iPhone, Android, and in the not-too-distant future Windows powered devices.

4. Be Useful

Finally, if you are moving beyond mobilizing your Web properties and venturing into app territory, you have to ask yourself, “Are people really going to use this in a crowded sea of app upon app?” If your app doesn’t solve a problem that your customers have, or solve it more efficiently than the options they already enjoy, then they just won’t use it and the money you invest in it will be wasted.

Those are just some of the lessons offered by Tim in this episode of Marketing Smarts. We also talk about QR codes, stupidity in the use of emerging technologies, and, believe it or not, Billy Ray Cyrus! If you’d like to hear the episode in its entirety, you may do so here:

So, what, if anything, is stopping you from maximizing the mobile moment?

It’s a detailed look at various aspects of content marketing. And unlike most reports out there, B2B Content Marketing: 2012 Benchmarks, Budgets & Trends” is an engaging, interesting read written for humans by humans. (In other words, no Frankenspeak here.)

You’ll learn about our major findings in the 5 key areas of:

1. usage and effectiveness
2. goals and measurement
3. budgets and production
4. challenges
5. practices of best in class

By reading through this report, you can learn what you need to adjust in terms of your approach to content planning, development, promotion, and measurement. (And who doesn’t need to grow and get a little better every year?)

Another co-worker of mine (also a Facebook friend) saw our mutual friend’s post and said, “I’ve got an idea.”

I work in marketing at PTC, a company that creates, among other things, 3-D design software.  So, what did my second co-worker do?  She wrote up a short, light-hearted blog post for our PTC-run customer community, PlanetPTC.

In the story, she even comments that she saw the Facebook post from our first friend, and it inspired her to write a blog post, appealing to the super-creative community members of our 3-D design software (“Creo”).  She appealed to them and essentially said, “What would Santa design if he used Creo for a day?”  She even created a photo album where users can submit their ideas/designs for others to see.

In the past when we’ve solicited our customers for some cool/fun feedback (like our “show us a scary jack o’lantern designed in Creo” contest), people sent us in all kinds of designs.  It was a lot of fun!  People got to show off their design chops while getting into the holiday spirit.

Note that the blog post is now live.  That is, within 12 hours of the Facebook post going up from one co-worker, another co-worker saw this as a light-hearted content marketing opportunity and drafted a post about it (with permission to do so!).

Is it working?  I think so.  In less than two hours of being posted, it’s been viewed more than 200 times.  Also, according to some link statistics we have, it’s getting broadly re-tweeted and shared—indicating that we have an interested (or at least click-y!) readership.  No designs have been submitted yet, but creating a nice, rendered 3-D image of a toy takes more than a few minutes with PTC’s Creo, so I expect to see some submissions later.

To me, this is an example of clever, relatively easy, light-hearted, real-time content marketing. Who doesn’t want to make a 5-year-old smile on Christmas Day?

What about you?  Do you have any examples of content ideas right under your nose?

“Content marketing” is an often-used phrase by marketers these days, but what is it exactly? Why should you care? How is it done? And what are examples of other companies doing it well?

We pulled all this information into one place.

The result of our efforts is the infographic below, designed by Shamgar Tracts.

Kate D’Amico and Katie Lewis are content creator trainees at Come Recommended.

To build up interest in your blog, create engaging content, and encourage steady readers, you need to put in some elbow grease.

Here’s a quick list of seven tips for developing your blog and engaging readers, inspired by the PRO seminar, Seven Keys to a Successful Blog.

(And to remind you of these tips, I’ve drawn up an infodoodle of the main steps to help you. You can download it for free here.)

1. Have a plan. Know what you want to do with your blog. Is it just a static place to post up info? Is it an online water cooler for your customers? Or is it a place to build community, and the sharing and receiving of ideas? Keep in mind your goals, your audience (who are you reaching out to?), how often the blog will be updated, who will be writing posts, and how to handle comments (i.e., will you moderate them? Publish negative ones?)
   
2. Provide valuable content. Thinking of posts to write is fine and good, but think beyond the standard article. Make sure you mix it up with: tips and tricks, events coverage, Q&As, behind-the-scenes peeks, photos, infographics, etc. Be timely in your content.
   
3. Be transparent. Be real when you engage with readers. Avoid ghostwriting or doing anything that might feel “sneaky” to your readers. In the new social media age, people expect you to be who you claim to be.
   
4. Use your best assets, employees, and fans. Good, solid (and fun!) content can come from the people closest to you. Employees can share the going-ons in your company or field. Your fans (via Facebook, Twitter, etc.) can chime in on conversations and even do guest blog posts. Don’t let all the fab data from your Facebook Wall or company Twitter stream go unloved. Use it by sharing it on your blog.
   
5. Work with your PR and marketing teams. A blog isn’t created in a vacuum. Talk to your PR and marketing teams; they think about the business as much as you do. Ask them what’s new, what everyone is talking about, what’s on their mind, etc. Brainstorm with them. Engage with them. Work together if possible to create fresh piping content for the blog—content that benefits everyone in the company.
6. Listen and respond. What are folks saying about your business? Are they confused by a policy? Not understanding a product? Are they bursting with happiness at the newest release? Listen in on the social media sites to hear what people are saying about your business. If you have a customer service center, answer a few phone calls or chat with folks who do. And then, don’t let all those gripes, questions, and kudos go unnoticed. Answer them via your blog in a Q&A post or a FAQs sheet.
   
7. Measure  your results. Find out what truly resonates with your readers by checking out the data. You can use Google Analytics, Site Meter, etc., to look at the numbers. See what posts are striking a chord with your readers—and which ones just ring offkey.
   

For an in-depth look at how to make your blog more successful, check out the PRO seminar, Seven Keys to a Successful Blog. If you want to dive into the different aspects of content marketing, then check out MarketingProfs University’s Content Marketing Crash Course running now through November 18, an 11-class course (and available for a year on demand for registered students).

So, what elements have made those stories last so long? And what can marketers learn from them? Here are five main reasons that the stories have stayed with us—and ideas for how we, too, can create long-lasting content.

1. Write with rich detail.
It’s not just a horseman. It’s the Headless Horseman. It’s not just a Snowman, it’s the Abominable Snowman. The details and the emotion-inspiring words, harrowing, spine-tingling, dripping, thumping, screeching, blood-red, raven-black, etc. make the story come to life for us.

What you can do: Writing content rich in details does not mean writing a tome. It means using words carefully—like a poet—with each word meaning something. Think of the writing greats like Ernest Hemingway who said much with little. Use your words well.

2. Use a character that inspires strong emotion.
Whether you find him intriguing or vain, Dr. Frankenstein doesn’t leave readers feeling indifferently towards him. Something draws us to him and his fiendish creation. So, whether readers are entranced by Count Dracula or cheering on vampire hunter Van Helsing, the important fact is that the reader is reacting.

What you can do: If you’re writing a case study, make sure the reader can identify with the company or the person you are writing about. Make the reader care. If you are sharing a customer success story, make sure the reader believes this is really a person, not a flimsy cardboard cut-out representation of a person.

3. Sentences do something.
The raven quoth, the telltale heart is thumping. Witches fly in the sky. Werewolves howl at the moon. Sentences in spooky stories are active. They don’t passively describe what is happening, but movement is described.

What you can do: Use active sentences in your content. Passive sentences have their place, of course, but active ones should rule the day.

4. Wordplay underlines the story.
One of the most famous scenes from “Macbeth” features the three witches over a cauldron, murmuring, “Double, double, toil and trouble. Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.” It’s the rhyme and rhythm that stays in our mind long after the play is done. The same with Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven.” It’s the repetitive word “nevermore” that begins to drive the reader a little nutty just as the raven is doing the same to the narrator.

What you can do: Know your literary terms, such as personification, alliteration, metaphors, and analogies. By becoming familiar with these terms, your writing can employ these when necessary. It’s not as complicated as it sounds. You don’t need to write a classic poem or story, but use these writing tools to add texture to your content.

5. The story takes you somewhere.
A good writer carries you along a journey. You follow down the corridors in search for the cask of Amontillado in one Poe short story. In another, you can hear the narrator fall into madness as he hears the tell-tale heart beating ever louder.  

What you can do: Take your reader on a journey. In Nancy Duarte’s Take 10, she discusses the highlights in carrying your audience, as the hero, through a journey from what was to what can be. Your destination isn’t the same as one in a spooky story, but the important part is to have a destination for your visitor.

BONUS: A lesson is learned.
In a film class I took, the instructor told us that lessons can be learned even in horror movies: Don’t separate yourself from a group when camping. Don’t go smooching when you need to be helping out. Don’t go into the basement when the light bulb isn’t working. Don’t leave your tent without a flashlight. And don’t ever, ever pick on someone because they’ll come back and get you.

What you can do: Whether a big lesson or small lesson, leave the reader with something new to ponder.

If you want to learn more about crafting content that captures the story, join us for MarketingProfs University Content Marketing Crash Course, with instructors Nancy Duarte, Jason Falls, Joe Pulizzi, Jay Baer, Joe Chernov, Marcus Sheridan, Mack Collier, Ardath Albee, Erika Napolitano, MarketingProfs’s own Ann Handley, and more. Seats are going fast; register here!

And on this Halloween day, we’re leaving you this treat to savor: James Earl Jones reading “The Raven.” The power of Edgar Allan Poe’s words and the timbre of Jones’s voice will send chills up your spine. Enjoy!

One approach that is attracting a lot of attention is “Agile marketing.” Borrowing some precepts and practices from the Agile Software Development movement, Agile marketing provides a methodology for planning and executing work that is adaptive, responsive, and driven by close collaboration and frequent communication between team members.

In this episode of Marketing Smarts, we talk with Frank Days, an enthusiastic practitioner of Agile marketing who is also the author of the Agile Marketing Blog and co-host, along with John Cass, of the Marketing Agility podcast. Days defines the Agile method, discusses why more and more marketers (particularly in the tech sector) are “going Agile,” and recounts his own experience putting the Agile method into practice.

Why does Frank find Agile marketing so appealing? First of all, he feels that it is the most appropriate approach to projects, such as content marketing, which are non-linear by nature and require the ability to respond quickly to the unpredictability inherent in social media.

Second of all, with its emphasis on daily meetings (“scrums”) and ongoing communication, the Agile method promotes alignment of team members and encourages them to focus on the things that matter right now.

Finally, and most importantly from a productivity standpoint, Frank says that, with an Agile approach, “In general, you get a lot more done.”

If you’d like to hear our entire conversation, you may do so here. Otherwise, feel free to grab this and other episodes from iTunes.

Oh, and if you’d like to download a transcript of this podcast, you may do so here: Marketing Smarts-Episode 2-Frank Days on Agile Marketing

I was a tad jealous as I listened to my brother recount to me the details of their meeting. Interestingly though, the thing that made the biggest impression on my brother was that Bono was the one who asked all the questions. To quote my brother, “He didn’t break eye contact and his demeanor showed that he was genuinely interested in learning about me.”

It often comes as a surprise when we hear stories of world-famous celebrities showing so much interest in “the common man.” Why? Because we often get the impression that they have more important things to do.

This thought made me wonder how that same dynamic applies to companies and those that buy their products and services. Are buyers surprised when a company shows genuine interest in their wants and needs? Which are you, as a seller, more concerned with: being interesting or being truly interested in your buyers’ needs? While the difference in the two may be subtle, the way they come across to your buyers will make an incredible difference in how they engage with (and ultimately buy from) you.

Continuing with the theme, here are four characteristics of companies that are more focused on being interested than interesting:

1.  They Engage With Their Buyers.
Organizations that are interested in their buyers focus on engagement. What does this mean? It’s not just the new wave of brand marketing. It’s a communication process whereby they connect with their buyers, seek to understand them, and ask questions. The questions lead to answers that provide understanding; understanding leads to a better overall buyer experience; a better experience leads to a long-term relationship. This rarely begins with: “Hello, when can you view a demo? Engagement takes time and will be accomplished by patient, ongoing dialogue.

2.  They Know Who Their Buyer Is Before They Engage
Ask anyone what they are looking for in a romantic relationship, and the answer often is a list of character traits or a description of the ideal mate. Companies that are interested do the same with their buyers. They create buyer personas or ideal profiles, which allow them to better focus and target their messaging and offers.

The development of these profiles is a continual process. The more information you obtain through engagement, the more the profile of your buyer will evolve. The more you know about them (being interested), the better you’ll be able to help them achieve their goals.

3.  They Don’t Treat Everyone the Same
One of the things I like to do when I get a consumer telemarketing call at home is to see how quickly I can get the caller off script. It’s so painful to hear them reading word for word from this script, especially knowing that I’m hearing the same spiel they’re giving everyone else they call.  You know you have them thrown when you ask a question. There’s usually five seconds of silence and then they begin reading again, perhaps hoping I’ll forget I asked a question. It’s great fun.

Ineffective B2B marketing and sales organizations are acting in much the same manner. Instead of a one-on-one dialogue with each buyer, they take a scripted approach that indicates they have no understanding of the buyer. Conversely, organizations that are interested tailor communication and overall experience to each unique buyer (or buyer category).

4.  They Measure Their Engagement
I recently served on a panel which was asked, “How do you know if your content is effective?”  Other members of the panel began answering, giving elaborate answers about key indicators, and percentages of opens and clicks (obviously email focused). When my turn came, I offered up one short line: “You will know it’s effective if your buyers respond to it.” It’s pretty simple, but it’s true. If there is no response or action, your content is not working.

The only way to know this is to measure your buyer engagement, response, and (ultimately) purchase behavior. If they don’t keep coming back for more, then there’s a problem.

Interesting or interested? One gets attention, the other develops and maintains long-term buying relationships. Which one do you want to be?

The survey itself should only take a mere 5 (or so) minutes. If you include your email address, we’ll share the survey results as soon as they’re ready so you can see how you measure up. (If you do, we won’t add your email address to a list or pass it on to anyone else. Promise.)

Need that link again?

Take the survey here.

And from me: A big, giant … THANK YOU.

And so, last Wednesday I found myself standing next to Ann before 60 content creators, who were all there to participate in: “Content Rules: How to Create Content People Really Care About.” I was very excited to speak to this group for one simple reason: They already know the value of content. Unlike traditional marketers who see content creation as a threat to their jobs or old school PR folks who see it as a threat to their cushy monthly retainers, the corporate storytellers in front of us represented the new guard of this digital communications era.

At the beginning of the session, Ann asked everyone to jot down three things that they each wanted to learn. We collected 117 questions from 48 participants.

The figure below represents the seven categories that we divided them into. Almost 60% of the questions fell into two categories: Finding and Telling Stories and Executive Education. The largest vote-getter wasn’t much of a surprise considering the name of the presentation and the audience. The second one, however, was. No matter how much we in the social media fishbowl pontificate about how far we’ve gotten with social media, we still have a long way to go. The fact that “managing up” is the second-largest concern for those tasked with creating corporate content proves that we haven’t yet made a dent in the problem.

For example, here are some of the Executive Education questions:

• How to get an organization to see content as an opportunity (exciting!) rather than a burden?
• How to get execs to respect content development as a skill (and non-execs too)?
• How to develop organizational discipline around writing (i.e., get everyone on board with starting with the story)?
• Focus execs so they/we can prioritize which story to tell

I love the last one. You know that things have changed when the creatives are trying to get the executives to focus!

And 30% of the questions revolved around Content Strategy and Best Practices—again, not surprising considering we were at a Content Strategy conference. However, the next two categories, which accounted for 25% of the questions, identified a need to connect stories to business and to find ways to balance voice and the corporate brand.

Some of those questions included:

• How do you use those stories to help make sales goals?
• How to tell a brand’s stories without being too salesy—but still achieve business objective.
• How do you balance the goal of making the voice of your content informal/accessible with the goal of making the “voice” professional quality?
• How do you keep your brand story consistent and powerful across multiple content creators? Over time?
• We want to do more video content but our brand manager wants it to look “perfect.” What’s your take on this? Does video need to look super-duper professional?
• Practical ways to convert brand messages into engaging, compelling content.

These are the questions that companies contemplating new media self-publishing must ask. They form the conversation-starters for serious discussions around water coolers, in break rooms, meeting rooms, cubicles, and on all rows mahogany.

Over the next couple of months, I’ll draw blog posts from some of these questions/categories. Are there any that you want me to prioritize?

A version of this post appeared first at RonAmok!

CH: Thanks for the time to get together today. I know you’re busy.

Marketing Automation: Glad I could do it. I always enjoy talking about the impact I am making in B2B companies.

CH: You are indeed making an impact! However, there still seems to be quite a bit of confusion regarding who you are, what you are, how you should be defined, and what companies can expect from you. In your own words, who is Marketing Automation?

Marketing Automation: I get that question a lot, and I am well aware of how many have misrepresented me. I appreciate the opportunity to set the record straight. I would define myself as follows: I am an enabling technology that will power both demand generation and lead management processes. I allow for consistent and repeatable communications to your buyers, tracking of their behavior, lead qualification, data segmentation, metrics, and other features.

CH: So, if I heard you correctly, you do NOT provide management process, correct? I ask this because many vendors and industry pundits have labeled you as Lead Management Automation.

Marketing Automation: You absolutely heard me correctly! I am not lead management. Yes, lead management and I are related, but we’re distinct. Lead management is a process that I can help enable. If a lead management process is established, then I automate it. But if a company does not have a lead management process, even though I am indeed robust, I can’t bring it about. I can only automate what is already there. Truth be told, in many instances I automate chaos because that’s what’s there.  The companies who implement me with no forethought on how to best utilize me? … Now, those are rather unfortunate cases.

CH: It must be hard to be put into a situation where you are expected to live up to a lot of hype, but because of someone else’s unpreparedness, you just can’t. Besides process, what else would you want to ensure is in place so you can perform to your fullest?

Marketing Automation: Besides being a well-defined process, I would also want to ensure that there are the right people who understand me for what I am—technology. There’s a lot of pressure when you’re brought into an organization where everyone has been told you’re the savior. People who understand best practices, customer engagement, and who get sales involved early usually get the most out of me.  When I have the right people to work with, the returns are staggering.

CH: Anything else?

Marketing Automation: Timely, relevant content. With content, it’s “a garbage in, garbage out” scenario. I can only send what’s put into me. If it’s bad content, then it won’t engage the buyer. Conversely, nothing is more satisfying then when I send relevant content that aligns to the buyer persona, their buying cycle, and results in 1-1 engagement. I wish more companies would invest in this area. If they did, I’d have a much greater impact.

CH: Let’s shift gears a little bit. There have been many vendors promoting you with messages of “ease of installation” and “easy to use.” Is this a characterization that you embrace?

Marketing Automation: Are you asking me if I’m “easy”?  Just kidding (laughs). You know, I don’t want to sound arrogant or anything, but there is a whole lot I can do. When companies reduce me to terms like “easy” or give me away like I am “plug and play,” it’s as if they don’t understand the power I can have. If you simply want me to fire off emails, well, I guess that’s OK. I can do that in my sleep. However, when it comes to database segmentation, database integrations, complex scoring, multi-stream nurture campaigns, and delivering dynamic content, just to name a few, I don’t think you can equate it to Geico …with all due respect to cavemen everywhere.

CH: So are you saying that you’re hard to work with?

Marketing Automation: No, not at all. What I’m saying is that getting the most from me often requires change. And change is rarely easy. Change needs to occur in the way they approach sales and marketing. They need to adopt a process-based approach, and they need to figure out the best ways to engage their buyer. These changes are not just static. They’re dynamic. The new processes need to be continually monitored, so I can, in turn, perform to the best of my abilities. Changes like these are not overnight fixes. They take hard work and effort to achieve. But when they are completed, they make the difference between a best-in-class company and one that struggles.

CH: One last question before I let you go. It’s forecasted that this could really be your breakout year—but they said the same about 2010. Is this indeed the year for you to hit the mainstream or do we need to wait longer?

Marketing Automation: Ahhh, if I only had a crystal ball. In all honesty, I think the next two years are crucial for me. I don’t think organizations will get away with swapping me in and out every 1-2 years just because they don’t like the results. I think if I am going to really hit my stride, it’s incumbent on the vendors to deliver a realistic message about what I can truly do as an enabler. Likewise, B2B marketers also need to be realistic and understand what it will take to be successful. If these things converge, and companies can truly change like I just mentioned, then I truly believe the sky’s the limit for me.

CH: Thanks so much for the time. This has been great!

Marketing Automation: I am more than happy to do it, and I appreciate the opportunity.

Sure, we occasionally read original content based on an original thought or study results that cast a new light on previous perceptions or a new technology in town. But, realistically, how much content can marketing writers and publishers contribute to social media and publishing without sounding redundant? Is there anything new under the sun anymore?

Now, before you jump down my throat and tell me I’m nuts, let’s do an experiment. Enter the following in your browser search bar:
“Does your website build trust?”

What do you get? In Google, I got about 12,200,000 results that include the following organic listings on the first page alone:

• 47 Simple Ways to Build Trust in Your Website or Blog
  Some major points: Make it personal; website design is first impression; use appropriate language (i.e. to your segments); use good grammar; never lie to make money …
  
• Build trust: the most important online value
  Some major points: Write in simple language; be personal; update content often; professional-looking graphics …
• 40 Ways to Build Trust in Your Brand on Social Media
  Some major points: Create meaningful and thought-provoking content; no hard selling
• 11 Reasons Customers Don’t Trust Your Web Site
  Some major points: Each typo a user finds puts another ding into your credibility; keep your website as fresh and up to date as possible; don’t use buzz words …
• 15 Ways To Build Trust In Your Website
  Some major points: An attractive website displays professionalism; adding personal flare; add new content whenever you have the chance,…

Are you bored yet?

I suppose if you’re new to a topic, then reading the same points in each article is comforting. At least, that way, you can assume the information is credible. But, what if you’re looking for something NEW—something refreshing on the same topic? Then, this can become a frustrating experience.

So, here are my questions for the content creators:

• How do you write fresh marketing content?
• Do you think fresh content matters?
• Where do you get fresh ideas that haven’t been rehashed a million times?

Oh, and one more thing … I did a search on Google: “Rehashing: The New Boring Marketing Concept,” and guess what? Nothing came up —yet.

Of course, the question didn’t pop into my head out of the blue. It was sparked by a comment Brian made regarding the Web. Specifically, he said that Internet-based businesses needed to “go big or go home” because the Internet is starting to look like a “winner take all” marketplace.

Conveniently, he could point to his new investors as two examples that proved his thesis: Salesforce dominates the CRM space, and Google is, well, Google. HubSpot would like to follow in their footsteps and become, as co-founder Darmesh Shah put it, “the single emergent platform provider” in the marketing automation space. When you are THE platform for a specific kind of service, essentially, you’ve won.

While understanding the ambition and appreciating its audacity, and even seeing how it might unfold in the case of HubSpot, I keep asking myself if the statement is really true that the Web, or at least the world of Software-as-a-Service, is really “winner take all.”

At first glance, I would say this is more or less true. Granted, the Web is a big place, and taking it “all” is a practical impossibility. However, within certain limits the Web definitely looks very “winner take most.” Are there other search engines? Yes. Do people use them? Yes, millions do. Are they Google? No.

The fact of the matter is that when you become the dominant service provider online (THe place for search, THE place for auctions, THE place for community, etc.), you will tend to stay dominant and even grow inexorably through sheer force of inertia. The more people use your service, the more valuable it becomes; the more valuable it becomes, the more people are attracted to it. It’s a virtuous circle.

But is such growth and dominance perpetual? We have in our memory once dominant (or, at least, very big) players who have shrunk or vanished. Netscape. AOL. MySpace. What is to prevent Facebook or Google from suffering their same fate?

A couple things, actually. On the one hand, Facebook, Google, eBay, LinkedIn, YouTube, Amazon, and Twitter have enjoyed a very different kind of success than that of those they vanquished. In other words, their fates have already diverged. On the other hand—or really the same hand—their sheer size and reach make it, with each passing day, more difficult for upstarts to dislodge them.

Still, Web consumption habits do change and fragment. Remember, the Web itself is continually growing as more nations and communities come online. Thus, even the success of the companies named above has to be relativized. Facebook may have 500 million active users (depending on how you define “active”), but with close to 2 billion people on the Web, that’s still leaves 75% of users off Facebook. To think about what that means consider this: There could be a “Facebook” out there with 1 billion users that you’ve never heard of. Seriously.

But here’s where I think Halligan has a point. Think back to the way Microsoft Office became the dominant “productivity” suite. It all started with the ubiquity of devices (PCs) running a certain operating system (Windows). Since “everyone” had these devices, everyone had Office. And if you wanted to work with or even communicate with a business, you had to have Office too, even if you were running Macs. The size of the user community drove more and more people  to join the community out of necessity. Even now, with numerous word-processing alternatives out there, the docs that people share with me are Word docs.

The Web is the new “ubiquitous device” and just like people only needed one word-processing program and one spreadsheet program, they only need one search engine, one social network, and one micro-blogging platform and, perhaps, one marketing automation suite. And the more people flock to one particular solution, the more that solution becomes the ONLY solution.

So, you can see the power and the allure of creating a platform, rather than a mere application. Indeed, it’s the same logic that drives Amazon, Apple, and others: Why be a shop when you can be the marketplace? Why limit yourself to making money off transactions that you alone conduct when you could get a cut from every transaction?

Yet, at the same time, the fact that others choose to build for your platform or sell via your marketplace points to the most significant way that the Web is not, after all, “winner take all.” Why not? Because every platform creates a new “all” with new opportunities for building apps, communities, ecosystems and even, if the word makes sense, “meta-platforms.” (Facebook, as a kind of alternative Web sitting on top of the traditional Web, is a perfect example of the latter.)

In other words, the Web may look like a zero-sum game from moment to moment—and there are undeniably winners and losers—but the Web’s very openness, and specifically the openness created by emergent platforms, means that the sum is perpetually growing and there is always more “all.”

What do you think?

People are spending more time watching more videos online than ever, and multimedia, like video, tends to hold their attention longer.

According to a Nielsen ratings report, “by June 2010, 136.2 million Americans had viewed 10.2 billion videos streams … The average U.S. Internet user spent 194.6 minutes watching online video during the month.” This constituted a 3% rise from the year before. Plus, research shows that multimedia can improve time-on-page, which means you hold a viewer’s attention for as much as 30 seconds longer.

To make the most out of your video content, explore these four simple ways to repurpose your online video:

1. Review your archives of company video.
Great content may be there that can be edited to provide a new look at your organization. Create a video newsroom within your website to make it easy for users and search engines to find the key content.

Ideally, each video should be on its own page and should be optimized for key messages.

Make sure you know what search terms your target audiences is mostly likely using, and then use the target phrases in the video title and summary to help increase visibility of the video in search results.

You can also invite the viewer to share the video into social streams, such as Facebook, by adding social-sharing buttons. If you have strong content, social sharing is a key channel to extend your reach.

2. Encourage viewers to participate.
According to Wikipedia’s description of consumer engagement, “increasing the engagement of target customers increases the rate of customer retention.”

This supports the philosophy that engaged viewers are more valuable prospects. To drive consumer engagement, incorporate interactive elements, such as commenting, rating and sharing your video clips, or participating in polls and quizzes regarding your content.

The more interaction you create with your viewers, the better the relationship building blocks, which can pay off in the form of an inquiry and eventually a sale.

3. Publish content where your target market is engaging.
When it comes to watching videos online, Google is king. It drives more traffic to video sites than Facebook, Yahoo, Bing, and Twitter combined, according to a report by Brightcove and TubeMogul.

Of the more than 300 video-sharing websites, YouTube is the leading outlet—but there are other great candidates near the top of the heap, including: Yahoo, Daily Motion, MySpace TV, and Metacafe. Make your videos even more appealing by tagging them with keywords and posting short descriptions. Alter the descriptions to fit each site and the audience served.

But remember, whichever outlet you choose, all site demographics are not created equal.  Research your target market first and understand which sites they frequent most often.

4. Embed video into your news release.
Copy and paste video into your press release, webpage, or blog post. When embedded video is clicked, it loads on a player within the page.

Not only does video dramatically enhance your content by giving a new look to your copy, it also increases your reach by appealing to those who may prefer to learn visually.

The use of multimedia and embedded repurposed video is a trend that is changing the face of online marketing.

Integrate your message into the places your potential customers frequent in a way they enjoy absorbing information, and you’ll tap into the social phenomenon of consumer engagement with great results.

Jiyan Wei is the director of Product Management for PRWeb and a frequent speaker at marketing, PR, and SEO events.

That’s what’s happening with the Digital Marketing Forum 2011.

The party took place Feb. 3 and Feb. 4 in Austin, Texas. And some of the biggest names in digital marketing held sessions that showed why they have that distinction. Information and stories were shared in real-life, accessible, and engaging language.  And the sessions themselves showed the current state of digital marketing: lively and personal.

Here are some reasons  the Digital Marketing Conference stood out:

• well-known anthropologist Michael Wesch’s brilliant take on our mediated culture (and the history of the words “whatever” and “meh”)
• a special book-signing section for authors (and forum speakers) Jay Baer and Amber Naslund of the “The Now Revolution,” and authors C.C. Chapman and Ann Handley of “Content Rules”
• rockin’, geeky graphic designs and a talk about passion for a product, courtesy of Threadless vice president of marketing, Cam Balzer
• a real-time example of the frustration of dealing with non-social-media-savvy companies using Facebook as Frank Eliason spontaneously shared the roadblocks he faces while working in a company with private, legal info
• awesome insights regarding the convergence of search and social from ExpertBail, a bail bond company that wowed everyone with its social-media savviness

In the true spirit of digital marketing, the sessions were like conversations between the speakers and the attendees, those listening in Austin and those watching from their computers. And the #mpforum hashtag served as a campfire, where we swapped info, memorable tweetable quotes, cell-phone pics, and even gave shout outs to the speakers.

And now though we’ve all headed back to our own stomping grounds, the campfire is still there. Here are some recent quotes from Twitter:

• @JJPool: Head still swimming with all the great ideas and inspiration picked up at #mpforum. Thanks for a great event!
• @Marcomm3: Revisiting @CKsays #mpforum  session on What’s Hot in Mobile Marketing. Just as awesome as the first time! Thanks again CK and @MProfsEvents
• @MitziThomas: I’m so impressed with @marketingprofs live video feed. Sorry to miss Austin, but this is next best thing. #mpforum

I could go through agenda and offer up more examples; each session had a steady stream of attendees sharing info via Twitter, Facebook, and their own blogs. But you’ll just have to check the forum out online. Yep, the fire is still burning bright for y’all.

So, if you didn’t get to experience the Digital Marketing Conference last week, just register to see it online until May 1. It features streaming video of 20 sessions plus both keynotes—all for just $199.

And after you’re done, don’t forget to join us at our other campfire site.

With more than 500 million active members and a captive user base, Facebook is a booming business with a user base can best be described as the goose that lays the golden eggs.  Facebook’s users provide the social networking giant a massive audience, which marketers and advertisers spend billions of dollars to cater to. So, why does Facebook continue to be its own worst enemy by surreptitiously allowing third-party applications to access users’ addresses and phone numbers? 

In short, the answer is money.  By giving third-party applications increasing access to private data, Facebook caters to marketers and advertisers—instead of users. Up to this point, Facebook has successfully walked the razor’s edge between consumer and marketer interests. But with one wrong move, Facebook could entirely lose credibility with its users.  To avoid a possible catastrophe, here are five ways Facebook can handle any privacy concerns.

1. Admit that Facebook is a business. While users happily enjoy the multitude of benefits that come with a Facebook account, few realize that an enormous amount of money is required to power a site with over half a billion users.  Facebook should make it clear that in order to keep its service free for users, it needs to generate a massive amount of revenue.  Advertisements are a great way to do that, but in advance of a major IPO, Facebook needs as many revenue streams as possible.

2. Act with transparency. Much of the shock in regard to Facebook’s shift in privacy settings is due to the surreptitious and sudden manner in which the changes were implemented.  Facebook’s public relations team needs to do a much better job of advertising and discussing major privacy changes before they happen, instead of trying to put out fires afterwards.

3. Educate your users. If Facebook truly believes that its new policy will not adversely affect its users, it needs to spell that out clearly in a message to all users.  There is massive outrage when Facebook changes the layout on profile pages, so when a privacy setting changes the uproar is only amplified.  Facebook has done a poor job of reaching out to its users with a clear message and description of its privacy measures.  Facebook’s credibility is built on trust, and if that trust falters with consumers, Facebook will falter as well.

4. Highlight the benefits. Do not let the story of privacy concerns become a black hole of negativity.  Facebook should be trumpeting that its new privacy settings are designed to draw in better developers to build applications on the Facebook platform.  Facebook should present to the media a number of useful new apps, like GPS check-ins, which could use the new information you would give the app access to.

5. Emphasize user control. People become anxious when they feel powerless to control their own life, digital or otherwise.  Make sure any announcements on privacy settings emphasizes the continued ability of users to absolutely control exactly what they want to share.  If you can assure users that ultimate control of their profile and their information remains in their hands, you will go a long way towards a sustained good faith relationship with users.  Prioritizing user control should always be the center of any changes Facebook makes.

The bottom line is that Facebook needs to act with much more delicacy when it comes to privacy issues.  While the social networking giant may feel it has the heft to make changes as it sees fit, an angry contingent of Facebook users could become a massive headache for a company preparing for possibly the largest IPO of all time.  For a company on the leading edge of social-networking innovation, there is no excuse for Facebook’s history of reacting to privacy complaints; Facebook should put forth an equally herculean effort to place itself on the leading edge of digital privacy as well.  To achieve this goal, Facebook must actively work to ensure that all privacy decisions are made with its users’ best interests in mind.

Remember, cutting the goose’s head off gets you nothing. Only a happy and well-fed goose lays golden eggs!

Simon Buckingham is CEO of Appitalism.com, a platform agnostic online storefront and community for all things app.

I think the real reason is that the misalignment between marketing and sales is not actually the real problem. It’s actually a symptom of deeper problems:

• Lack of process
• Aligning around the wrong things
• Mismanaged sales quota

Lack of Process

According to several recent studies, up to 80% of leads do not get the proper follow-up. So, not surprisingly, one of the biggest challenges facing marketers is delivering qualified leads.  But in most organizations, there are multiple definitions for “qualified leads,” depending on who you speak to. This inconsistency helps contribute to the misalignment.  This challenge faced by organizations is most often because marketing and sales do not share a set of common definitions for terms such as “lead,” “qualified,” “prospect,” etc.  Marketing and sales have not collaborated on defining a process framework that answers fundamental questions, such as “What is the definition of a ‘qualified lead’ for our company?”

Marketing and sales should work together to define a Lead Management Framework, including:

• data process
• lead planning process
• lead routing process
• lead qualification process
• lead nurturing process
• metrics process

Organizations that do so will benefit by having:

• A set of common definitions for managing leads
• SLAs and business rules for lead routing
• A lead scoring model that delivers quality leads to sales
• Lead nurturing communications for those not ready to buy
• A host of other benefits.

As one customer stated after developing their process,  “Marketing and sales used to pass in the halls and not even look at each other.  Now we pass and give high fives because we know we are a team.”

Aligning to the Wrong Thing

One of the obstacles that marketing and sales organizations face when looking to align is their own misunderstanding on what alignment should be based. They’re aligning around the wrong thing. For example, marketing may want sales to come their way and think about campaigns. Sales on the other hand, may ask marketing to start thinking about collateral support for helping to close deals. These examples are not alignment; they are just trying to get the other side to view the world their way. The truth is that the right thing around which marketing and sales teams should align are their buyers.

Today’s B2B buyer is looking to engage with their vendors and have a relevant 1-1 dialogue. They don’t care about the internal squabbles that may occur between marketing and sales teams. They want to feel attended to. So, marketing and sales need to collaborate on how to have the dialogue with the buyer.

There are three key areas on which this collaboration should focus. The first is identifying the ideal buyer profile.  Having this profile (or profiles—most companies will have multiple personas/profiles unique to each service or product offering) ensures that marketing and sales will be engaging with the same targeted buyer.

Secondly, it’s vital to create a map for each profile’s buying cycle. This is more than just time to sale. It’s a full understanding of the buying journey of each persona to whom your organization sells.  Understanding and defining the buyer’s journey will allow you to “walk in your customers’ shoes,” helping both marketing and sales to better understand what they need at each stage, and to engage them in meaningful dialogue.

The third area of focus, once you have identified the personas and mapped out the buyer journey, is to develop your offer and content maps. These maps are guides that will enable you to deliver the most relevant content to the buyer at every stage of the cycle. Communicating based on an offer/content map will improve the alignment with your buyer, enable 1-1 engagement and deliver a more qualified and educated prospect to sales.

Mismanaged Sales Quota

One of the biggest obstacles marketing and sales organizations face in trying to align is the issue of quota.

I remember a conversation I had with a sales VP at a company I used to work for where I ran one of the global marketing teams. It was about half-way through the quarter, and he was panicking because his team’s performance was not what he needed to attain quota. During the conversation he looked at me and said, “I know we agreed on a strategy at the beginning of the year, but right now I need revenue. I’m telling my team to ‘chase it and sign it’ or else I won’t be here to work the strategy for the second-half of the year.” What was I to say to that?  This guy and some members of his team were fighting for their jobs. At the very least, I appreciated his candor.

The quarterly quota pressure is felt in organizations every 90-days. But this pressure would be easy to alleviate if organizations would begin to align their sales compensation plans to the buying/sales cycle (see customer alignment above). In the scenario I mentioned above, we had statistics that showed that the average buying time was 180 days. Yet we were telling our sales folks they had to sell in 90 days.

This quota pressure was not only causing panic in my sales counterparts, but it kept us from alignment with them as well.  Sales had bypassed the agreed to strategy in exchange for demanding only hot leads.  With that pressure there was no talk of nurturing, dialogue, buyer journeys, etc. They wanted leads they could close today!

This issue is easy to resolve and it’s something most organizations should seek to address early in 2011. The simple fix is to align sales quota to the customer buying cycle. This could result in either lengthening or shortening the quota cycle: If you have a 30-day sales cycle, then adjust your quota accordingly; if it’s 180 days, do the same. By adjusting your sales compensation to reflect the buying patterns of your buyer, you will not only provide your sales people a less pressure-filled environment in which to sell, you will better align with marketing and more importantly your buyer and marketing will be able to develop a demand generation strategy based on the buying cycles.

As we begin a new year, let’s stop addressing the symptom of marketing and sales alignment and begin working on some of the fundamental problems that are causing the symptom. It would be great if at this time next year, we could write about success stories instead of repeating ourselves on how to solve the problem.

Of course, the article came with a slide show sharing insights as to why these six were the business mag’s picks, and it’s pretty good.

While thinking about the over-arching issues of 2010, I thought these picks made sense. It got me thinking about which six words would best sum up business in 2010.

Hmmmm. How about shifts, caution, thrift, social, content, and relationships?

• Shifts: Business has definitely made a lot of changes in response to the economy and slow sales figures, from putting off major expenditures to streamlining operations and supply chains. Consumers have shifted the way they make purchase decisions, opting for more value.
• Caution: As in proceeding slowly, cautiously and with more deliberation before making major decisions. The carefree attitude of the recent past gone.
• Thrift: Paying down debt and paying with cash on hand—not spending beyond the cash on hand.
• Social: As in evolving media; how to use it to connect business with target customers and people in general with each other. A renewed focus on what matters.
• Content: Forget selling products or services. The focus is on selling expertise, knowledge, and who we are first. The rest falls into place if the content strategy is well executed.
• Relationships: Connecting and reconnecting using multiple media platforms to stay in touch to share what’s meaningful.

Do you agree with my six or do you have your own six? I’d love to hear what they are.

I’m certainly not a doomsday kind of guy, but I think we have to take a look at some data beyond new customer acquisition so we can get a more accurate view of what’s happening in this space. Consider these statistics:

• Earlier this year, the Propelling Brands Blog stated, “Less than 25% of organizations that have implemented a [marketing automation platform] fully currently utilize its potential.”
• According to a recent study, 78% of marketers state that generating high-quality leads is still their biggest challenge.
• Various reports have between 70-90% of leads still being ignored and going to waste.

Wasn’t marketing automation supposed to fix these issues? Wasn’t it going to make generating quality leads easier? Wasn’t it going to be the savior for marketing departments, making marketing more effective and more efficient?

Let’s be honest. Historically, marketing has not had the level of status that other departments have had at B2B organizations. Only recently has marketing been seen as relevant to the B2B buyer. Traditionally, marketing has been seen as a cost center—and one of the first places to go for cutting expenses when budgets get trimmed. Today, with the help of marketing automation, marketers are convincing management that they are relevant, that they do drive sales, and that they do contribute to the bottom line. But if the stats are true and the effectiveness of marketing automation is not being realized, we (as marketers) are then back to being seen as a cost center. With this being the case, how much longer will CFOs continue to approve automation purchases? If the very marketers who are using these solutions are failing to demonstrate the value coupled with the increased financial scrutiny in companies today, this won’t continue much longer.

Don’t get me wrong. I am a huge proponent of marketing automation. But I believe that too many marketers have bought into the promise that the technology is the answer to their marketing and lead-generation problems. But that’s just not the case. Technology alone cannot solve the problems marketers face today. Today’s research is proving this out more and more.

To be successful and get the true value from a marketing automation investment it is imperative to make sure that solid process, people, and content are in place. Marketers must define and develop lead management and business processes—beyond just scoring and nurturing. They must have the right people who understand demand generation, lead management, and the role of technology. They must have relevant content that engages the buyer, allowing them to learn and move through the buying cycle. If these elements are not in place, marketing automation will eventually be a wasted investment, one that executives may stop approving for purchase, and an industry that could be slipping away.

If you’re a solopreneur, consultant, or service professional, having a marketing strategy and plan that you can leverage for lead generation and sales while keeping the personal time investment to a minimum is essential. The time that you put in now, at the end of the year, makes marketing for the entirety of next year an easy proposition.  If, on the other hand, you only market when you need to and sell when you have to … Well, you already know how that feels if you’ve been in that position—and you don’t want to go anywhere near that if you never have.

You’ll find a long list of resources at the end of this post.  On my bookshelf, I have a section that I call my go-to-market books because they are the resources that I re-read (or at least reference heavily) each year when I plan out my marketing. These are the same resources that we lean on for other professional service firms when looking for ideas or third-party data to back up our recommendations. You can’t go wrong with any one of these resources.

There are myriad tools, ideas and tactics that you could apply to your unique situation. That said, taking on a few marketing tasks and executing them well and consistently will help you to gain traction in the marketplace and sustain your marketing effort as your business grows. We’ll start with your website itself.

A Simple Blog-enabled Website
For a bit of effort and about $20/year (domain name +hosting fee), you can have a professional-looking website to house your articles and other related content. In addition to posting articles on the website, you’ll need to develop a value proposition and a summary of the services you offer as well as put a contact form on the site. In Inbound Marketing, by Halligan & Shaw, they discuss the value of a blog and how to make the most of a blog-driven website for business development. They are certainly not the first the explain this concept, but they put the blog-driven “hub website” in perspective that is uniquely suited to the professional service firm. (If you’re looking to really make your blog sing, I recommend Darren Rouse’s 31 Days to Better Blogging.)

Article Marketing
Articles have a whole host of benefits for consultants and professionals. Let me put it this way: If you’re not writing articles regularly for posting on industry blogs and websites or to submit to local papers, industry journals or association publications, then you’re shortchanging your marketing and sales efforts. You will have a tough time really reaching the pinnacle of your field. Articles beget more articles, media attention, authority, and credibility; invitations to speak at industry conferences; and a dozen other benefits that consultants and professionals derive from publishing.In the Thought Leadership Marketing diagnostic test, a key to becoming a thought leader in your industry is to have an effective publishing strategy that you execute on regularly. Finally, in order to drive traffic to the site, posting articles on your new websites monthly will help to drive traffic from parties interested in your work.

Journal Articles
Make connections with journals and association publications in your industry, download their editorial calendars, and start working with the editors to see how you could add value and plug in your article to their publication.

Conference Speeches
Create a calendar of all industry events for the next 18 months, and start developing speech materials to present at upcoming conferences.  Submit proposals, network with organizers, and position yourself as an expert that they need to have at their next conference. Better yet, co-present with a client.

Social Media
The goal here is to increase the size and potency of your network. There is leverage that we can apply through LinkedIn, as well as the possibility of using other channels. This does not mean that everyone needs to be on Facebook, Twitter, and all other social media channels. If your tribe hangs out there, then so be it. Go for it. If not, don’t waste your time.  There are other reasons (learning, engaging, connecting with peers) that you might want to participate in social media, but remember, as the CEO of “You” or your firm, especially if you’re a solopreneur, your mission is not become a successful business owner, not just become famous on Twitter.

Target 25, 50 and 75 Account List & Outreach Strategy
Creating a targeted list of accounts that have a high likelihood to need your services and then pursuing those accounts with a proactive and aggressive marketing campaign could yield some significant early business wins. Always know who should know about you, and regularly ask the question: Do all of the members of my tribe know that I exist and understand what I do?

Press Releases
Using traditional means like pitching trade publications can bring in traffic and results while adding on submissions to sites like PitchEngine.com can also help to increase overall awareness within your tribe. You many not be in a very media-worthy business, but if you can actually help a reporter with a useful story that will add value to the readers of their publication (amazing how many people forget that bit about adding value and being useful and interesting), then a series of quarterly press releases might be in the cards.

Create and Execute a Campaign
This is something that can yield significant benefits and can eat up one quarter’s worth of marketing time if you do it right. Not that you want to eat up time, but there’s nothing like a well-executed campaign to pull in leads an opportunities. In order pull off a successful campaign, it’s often best to use your top account list from above and put together a targeted program that includes things like a series of articles, direct mail to decision makers, regular blog posts of interest to the target, LinkedIn connections to all of the decision makers, follow-up or cold calls, and a speech, seminar or conference presentation.

Sales Strategy & Process
What? I’m a small firm? Why do I need a sales strategy? Because, you need to have a process for how you handle yourself when you get in front of people. Calling a meeting with a prospect is a mutual waste of time if you can’t offer them value in your visit. You MUST be thinking about “how you can be useful to them”, almost to the point of “your sales call being worth paying for” in order to be consistently successful in your in-person prospect meetings.  I recommend using things like your own set of intelligent open-ended questions and coming to the meeting armed with a resource such as an article, e-book, or whitepaper that you’ve written or even a deck from a recent industry conference that you spoke at.

12-Month Marketing Plan
Pursuing a host of marketing and sales tactics will certainly help to grow your business, but to see consistent, long-term results, you’ll need to start working from at least a six-month marketing plan (12 is better) to ensure that you’re spending your time and money wisely.  Get it on paper, even if just a couple of pages broken out by month, and you’ll be further ahead than everyone else.,

OK, so what if you don’t have a year? Well, here’s a 90-day plan that will get you through spring.

90-Day Jumpstart Plan
Consider completing these activities in the next 90 days as a way of jumpstarting your business development efforts:

• Put up a complete website with a blog. Now.
• Let everyone in your email database and all of your past contacts know that your new website is up, what you’re doing new in 2011, and that you’re available for projects.
• Work on getting booked as a speaker at an upcoming industry conference.
• Write an article to be published in an industry journal.
• Adapt an article for multiple publications.
• Attend a professional conference in your field in the next 12 months.
• Use one of your best articles from the past or your best new article as a direct mail item to send to your most likely prospective customers.
• Connect with potential decision-makers from your top account list on LinkedIn. (Make sure that your LinkedIn profile is up to 100%.)
• Use your learning’s from a recent client engagement as the basis for an article, series of articles or conference speaking proposal.

This, of course, is not meant to be an exhaustive list of things that you should be doing. Rather, it’s meant as a table stakes sort of article. You should be doing at least all of these.  Look daunting at first? It can, but that’s why we put it into a plan and work on it throughout the year.  All of these things are doable in the span of a year’s time.

For Your Reading Pleasure

As I mentioned earlier, there are a wide range of books that you can read on building your consulting or professional service business.  The other thing about these books is that each one of them has produced results by employing at least one idea from the text.  These are the go-to resources on my bookshelf as I head in to 2011:

Get Slightly Famous by Steven Van Yoder—This is one of my favorite books of all time. It forms the blueprint for any personal branding plans that we put together. It’s a must read and a resource that gets reused every single year.

Get Clients Now! by C.J. Hayden—I like C.J.’s book because it works in “checklist” form to make sure that we’re looking at as many options as possible. If you really need a step-by-step plan, following her 28 day marketing program is a good start.

Rain Making by Ford Harding—This is an indispensible resource, especially the part on sales process and how to handle sales meetings and lead follow-up. While these are not always sexy topics, the advice contained in Rain Making is solid and worth a thorough read.

Million Dollar Consulting by Alan Weiss—Alan’s book is almost a bible for developing business for consultants. I enjoy it as much for the ideas that he puts forth as for the “mindset shift” that Alan advocates for consultants to adopt in order to reach the next level in their practice.

Book Yourself Solid byMichael Port—Another great resource with some solid ideas and a workbook to go along with it. If you take even an idea or two from the book and execute, you’re further ahead than most.

Guerrilla Marketing for Consultants by Jay Conrad Levinson & Michael McLaughlin—This is another must-read resource that is full of great tips and ideas that you can apply immediately.

How to Drive Your Competition Crazy by Guy Kawasaki—This book was one that I’ve always been hesitant to recommend because it’s got some many great ideas that I was afraid someone might use them against me. Get it. Read it. Use it.

Become a Recognized Authority in Your Field by Bob Bly—I love everything Bob writes, and this book is not exemption. If thought leadership is in your planning, they you need this resource. Do whatever Bob tells you to do …

The Whitepaper Marketing Handbook by Bob Bly—Again, another resource from Bly. If whitepapers are in your plan, you need this resource to make them effective.

What else would you do?  How are you planning to market your firm in 2011? Are there any books that you’d recommend?

Share your thoughts in the comments. Happy Marketing in 2011!

Oops.

Lesson learned: You need substance to make something of substance. And when it comes to business, that means having content that matters.

But what defines “what matters”? If I write an entire blog dedicated to Cary Grant or sell ice sculptures of the TARDIS, will anyone care? Well, good content isn’t so much about the details of your passion, but all good content has specific traits.

According to Ann Handley (our chief content officer at MarketingProfs and co-author of Content Rules), the three qualities of good content are that it’s:

• Relevant: It helps your customers share or solve, and doesn’t shill.
• Engaging: It’s fun, enjoyable, or even occasionally surprises.
• Shareable: Has wings and roots. It’s rooted in your brand and voice, but has wings to be shared freely, all across the social web.

Finding, writing, and creating content that grabs your audience and changes them (whether in heart, mind, soul, viewpoint, or, heck, even their mood) isn’t easy. But learning about content is, thanks to today’s seminar, “MarketingProfs University: Content Rules! How to Create the Right Kind of Content.” This special, free seminar features our very own Ann Handley and Digital Dads’ C.C. Chapman, co-authors of the brand-new book, Content Rules. You’ll get answers to the questions that have you tossing and turning at night: What does it mean to create content that’s “compelling”? And how can you do it consistently? How can you be heard above the noise?

After checking out this seminar, you’ll always make a good chicken salad—and never the, ahem, alternative.

See you at the seminar!

Penned with my friend C.C. Chapman, Content Rules demystifies the notion of businesses as publishers and gives you actionable ideas of how you can make the most of the tremendous opportunity we all have: To speak directly in very human, engaging terms with a broad number of people you want to do business with, with the goal of furthering your relationships with them, and creating momentum for your business.

In the history of business, have you ever had an opportunity to do that? To engage directly? To converse with a unique and honest voice? To tell your story yourself, rather than waiting around for the press to notice your specialness? In a word, no. Which is why I call it an opportunity, and which is why you need to think really deeply about how your content can really rock. (And it can!)

I play a marketer on the Internet, but I’m also a long-time business editor and writer who has been developing content that audiences dig for all of my career. And the ideas in this book are really special to me.

Content Rules. It’s probably the only marketing book that I feel qualified to write, in fact, in part because content is one of the few topics I feel completely versed in. The rest of you probably can run circles around me—metaphorically speaking—in dreaming up and executing the specifics of campaigns and triggering response emails and developing branding strategies and the like. I know enough about those topics to know what’s smart thinking and what’s not, but I also know enough to know what I don’t know.

Content, on the other hand, is something that’s near and dear to my heart. Developing great content that engages audiences and build community is a kind of mission that excites me, and all of that passion and energy is what I’ve poured into this book.

No matter what size your business, I hope you’ll buy a copy of Content Rules. It’s in a few select stores today (my cousin found it in her local Barnes & Noble this past weekend!), and Amazon is now shipping it. You can also get it from Borders or a number of other online retailers. Of course, if you sign up for MarketingProfs University’s Content Crash Course, you’ll also get a copy—FREE! And if you are looking to get your arms around this whole idea of content, that’s your best bet.

Oh—and please come to the virtual book release party on Facebook! You could win a free copy along with other fun prizes!

Direct Link to File

Show length 22:11

00:44 Content Rules hits the shelves Nov. 30, 2010.

01:56 Written with Ann Handley of MarketingProfs

03:15 The importance of the publishing schedule

06:05 Stoking the campfire

07:34 “Feed the Beast,” the challenge of keeping it going

09:02 Treating your FAQ as a content farm, not a burden

11:08 What to write about when you have nothing to write about

12:50 Using a human voice

14:58 Bulk discounts through 1-800-CEO-READS

15:47 Marketing the book

17:50 On Digital Dads, Do You Know Clarence, and Managing the Gray

Check us out on LinkedIn: John and Chris. Digg Marketing Over Coffee

Our theme song is called Mellow G by Fonkmasters in the Music Alley from Mevio.

Be sure to check out the Virtual Content Rules Book Release party happening this Tuesday (that’s today!) at noon (Eastern time).

It’s not that I don’t like to cook—because I do—but the wet bread thing (as in French toast, bread pudding, and Thanksgiving stuffing) turns me off. In other words, it’s a little like asking the deaf guy to bring the music.

So, I consult a few of cookbooks, a few websites, the Epicurious iPhone app. But mostly I’m distracted by stuff I’d rather make: the mashed potatoes with olive oil and parsley? Yum. Butternut squash soup with apple and bacon? Now we’re talking …

But still: the stuffing. Sigh. Then I happen upon a useful tool on Fine Cooking that instantly seems the answer to my wet-bread dream: a “create-your-own” bread stuffing interactive recipe maker that allows you to mix and match your favorite ingredients to create your own customized bread stuffing.

Choose a bread base (cornbread, crusty artisan bread, pumpernickel, etc.), drag it into a big yellow mixing bowl, and then and add in 3-5 vegetables (leeks, celery, fennel, maybe?), along with other stuff (chestnuts, dried cherries), meat (bulk sausage, bacon), herbs and liquids (broth? Wine?) and… voila! The tool spits out a custom bread stuffing recipe, with balanced measurements of your chosen ingredients, and the correct ratio of liquid to bread.

“The trick to making a good stuffing is getting the moisture right,” Fine Cooking says. “You don’t want it to be soggy or dry.” Can I get an A-men?!

There’s so much I like about this tool—not just because I was desperate for a stuffing recipe I could get excited about, but also because it aligns so well with the concepts C.C. and I lay out in Content Rules. Here are two of them:

1. Create utility. Most businesses have embraced the notion that, in addition to being in the business selling whatever they sell (be it shovels or security systems), they also need to be producing content as a cornerstone of their marketing, both to engage and educate their would-be customers, and to get noticed by search engines.

But at the same time, producing any old content isn’t enough. Businesses have to produce the right kind of content: web content that is honestly empathetic and seeded with utility for your customers. They have to be “brand butlers” to their customers. Fine Cooking’s bread stuffing tool does just that: It creates a resource for its discerning subscribers who are challenged to create something other than the same ol’, same ol’… but who need a little help with the particulars.

To paraphrase Content Rule #6: Share or solve; don’t shill. Good content doesn’t try to sell. Rather, it creates value by positioning you as a reliable and valuable source of vendor-agnostic information. Your content shares a resource, solves a problem, helps your customers do their jobs better, improves their lives, or makes them smarter, wittier, better-looking, taller, better networked, cooler, more enlightened, and with better backhands, tighter asses, and cuter kids, and moister (but not wet) stuffing.

In other words, it’s high value to your customers, in whatever way resonates best with them.

2. Have a point of view. Fine Cooking doesn’t just lay out the fundamentals of Thanksgiving stuffing without editorializing because its readers want to know its take. The people who read the magazine consider themselves competent and inspired cooks, and they want to know the why and not just the how. So, I like how Fine Cooking’s writer (Jennifer Armentrout) has a point of view and perspective:

“In my opinion, stuffing baked outside the bird (also called dressing) is the way to go: your turkey cooks faster and more evenly, your stuffing gets nice crisp edges, and you don’t have to worry about undercooking.”

Plenty of people who read Jennifer’s reasoning might disagree, but at least you know where she stands on this issue. Jennifer might have just said, “Cook it inside the bird or outside; add more liquid if you cook it outside the bird.” But the actual name of an actual person with an actual point of view does more to humanize the Fine Cooking brand than bland commentary without editorializing ever could.

* * *

So what can you take away?

Like Adagio Tea’s Tea Timer, which helps tea aficionados brew a perfect cup, or Virgin Atlantic’s Taxi 2, which connects those who want to share a cab, the Create Your Own bread stuffing tool — one of several Create Your Own tools published by Fine Cooking — presents an incredibly useful and relevant piece of content, matched to both the needs of your customers and the business’s objectives. Oh, and it meets another official Content Rule: It’s FUN!

What else can organizations take away from Fine Cooking’s Recipe Makers? Here’s my take: A little inspiration.

Here’s the bottom line: Are you helping and supporting your customers in their goals, or just selling to them?

You bet.

Here are five business tips from the Mayflower pilgrims and the Wampanoag tribe.

1. Have a business plan. Before even landing at Plymouth, the Mayflower pilgrims decided to set down in writing the rules, regulations, and order of the settlement. Survival depended on this, so the 41 adult male passengers signed the Mayflower Compact. Likewise, smart business folks are those who have a set plan for where they are going and how to get there … and also a plan in case the original plan changes.

2. Stick with it. In other words, don’t give up when things are difficult or seem to be falling apart around you. The pilgrims were headed toward a place in Virginia, but bad weather forced them off course. They ended up at Plymouth instead. Did they quit? Nope. And even when sickness wiped out about half of the crew and passengers, they clung to their dreams and worked hard to keep it alive. Overcoming hardship never is easy (that’s why the word “hard” is in it), but often, good, fruitful times are just around the bend. You just have to stay the course as best you can and work intelligently.

3. Mingle and mix it up. Imagine Thanksgiving dinner, and you don’t just picture Governor William Bradford and Captain Miles Standish. You also picture Squanto and Massasoit. The pilgrims needed the Wampanoag tribe for their own survival, and everyone knew it. Without a mix of people with different roles and purposes, the story of Thanksgiving would be entirely different. Consider your own business’s survival. How are the different departments treating one another? Is everyone together in feast and famine?

4. Educate yourself. The new land was far different than what the pilgrims knew. Yes, they tried the best they could, but there was so much that they did not know. When help came in the form of Squanto and Massasoit, the pilgrims didn’t refuse it. And so, the Wampanoag shared their knowledge of local crops and navigation. The pilgrims weren’t too proud to learn. Likewise, if your business wants to move into a new direction or expand its offerings, be sure to know what you need to learn—and where you can learn it.

5. Use what you have. The pilgrims and Wampanoag tribes took advantage of everything that could be used around them. When the pilgrims harvested rye, they used the grains to grind into flour, then they kept the remaining straw to make roofs or stuff mattresses. Little was wasted. Look around your organization and see what talents and resources around you can be employed better and more wisely.

Work hard, but also know when to relax and be in the moment. The first Thanksgiving feast in 1621 lasted for almost a week. And no one felt guilty about it.

Happy Thanksgiving, Daily Fix readers.

I am a B2B marketer and, for some time, have felt compelled to write to all of you about the often discussed yet never solved marketing and sales alignment gap. In no way is the intent of my letter to cast aspersions upon you or point the finger for the gap that exists between us. This letter is meant to serve as an apology to all of you on behalf of all of us B2B marketers (and since I am writing on behalf of all B2B marketers, I will speak as the collective “we”).

We hope this letter is accepted with the sincerity in which it was written. We hope it can be the start of something transformational between marketing and sales. We truly believe that to adapt to the changing B2B buyer, we must work together in a collaborative fashion and that, in doing so, we will deliver incredible value to our customers and increase our companies’ revenue exponentially.

We know that we have a rocky past, but we are committed to a healthy future together. To get there, we vow that we will build our relationship in the future by doing the following:

We Will Listen

As marketers, we’re aware of our tendency to talk. We are full of good ideas, and we are aware of our ability to make things look pretty. We are also aware of our aptitude for pulling numbers and putting them in PowerPoint presentations to show how successful our marketing campaigns have been. However, we have also come to realize that we are really bad at listening. Sure, we know that every once in a while we send an email asking for sales input, but in reality, we haven’t given your responses  much consideration. Starting now, that will change. We will continually involve you in our work. We want to know what you need from marketing to be successful. We want to know what you mean when you use the word “lead” so that we can deliver quality ones to you. And not only will we listen, but we’ll translate that listening into action.

We Will Work With You to Deliver a Process-Based Lead-Management Approach

We know that in the past we have taken a very “top of the funnel” (i.e. lead generation) approach to our marketing. We know that when “leads” came into the funnel, all we did was dump them on you, so you could follow up and sell. We then went back to our PowerPoint presentations, so we could tell management about all the leads we generated.

But now, in listening to you, we have realized that what we generated were not really “leads.” They were more like “responses.” To correct this, we promise to develop, in collaboration with you, a lead-management approach so that you receive only the best quality leads. This process will ensure that all leads are managed through the buying process. By marketing this way, we hope to help you increase the conversion rates on the leads you will receive, which will ultimately increase your sales numbers.

In addition, as part of this process, we will work to ensure the integrity of our marketing and sales data. We will ask you to help us plan our quota (i.e. the amount of revenue for which marketing will be responsible, and the number of leads it will take to get there). We will ask you to help us build a lead-qualification framework. We will ask for your help in developing nurture strategies that help push deals through the pipeline in a more timely fashion. We need your help to build this lead-management framework effectively.

We Will Become Coin-Operated

We confess that when we are in our marketing meetings, we often talk about sales being “coin-operated” as if it’s some kind of disease.  We understand that coin-operated (i.e. having a revenue creation mindset) is a healthy way to look at our business. Please forgive us for the derision. Going forward, you can consider us coin-operated marketers. We will look at our marketing success in terms of the number of leads you accept from us and how many of those leads contribute to revenue. We will deliver reports that show the revenue we have helped create through our campaigns. We look forward to helping you create more revenue for our company. We will need your help in this area as we are not accustomed to working this way. As part of our commitment, we will make our marketers compensation tied to revenue, just like you. In doing so we will share the burden with you and be more aligned towards a common goal.

We Will Market by the Numbers

We will no longer market by activity-driven pressures. We will not attend events, send emails, buy online ads or run social campaigns simply because it is “what we have always done” or because “we have money in the budget to do so.” Instead, we will measure our campaigns based on their contribution to revenue. We will then continue to run those campaigns which contribute to revenue, and do away with those that do not. We will use business intelligence that we derive from both marketing and sales metrics to help us plan for the future. (We’ll need you to share your metrics with us.)

We Will Be Accountable and View You as Our Customer

We will no longer point the finger at sales, blaming you for “not getting it” or suggesting that more diligent follow up on leads by you will solve our problems. We will be open with you, sharing our failures. We will learn from them and seek to improve. We will also share our successes with you. Together, we’ll show management how we’ve created more revenue for our organizations. We won’t hide behind insignificant data such as “opens” and “clicks.” We’ll focus on numbers such as lead to sale conversions and marketing pipeline contribution.  Based on metrics from the past, we’ll commit to goals and objectives and do our best to meet them. You have a quota, and now, we’ll have one as well. We’ll ask you for continued feedback and input.

We hope you can see our earnestness in what we’ve written here, and that, together, we can begin anew. Our prospects and customers are tired of us bickering and pointing the finger at each other. They want us to deliver value, provide relevant content, and address their pressing needs. I’m confident we can do so together.

We look forward to a long lasting and fruitful relationship!

Sincerely,
B2B marketers everywhere

Most corporate blogs are ghost towns, in terms of both content and reader engagement. Abandoned blogs litter the web, making the businesses that own them look lazy, uncommitted and anything but current. The reality is that keeping a blog fresh involves more time and effort than most brands are willing to invest, which only makes the few that do succeed look even better. So what are they doing that most others are not?

Start slowly, perfect your pace.

It’s true; the best blogs are updated often. A 2009 study found that blogs with high Technorati Authority rankings post about 300 times more often than those with low Authority rankings, and keeping a blog fresh is the only way to grow readership, boost conversions and develop thought leadership. But getting there takes long-term planning and discipline. Don’t be the showoff that starts with a sprint and fails to finish. Instead, begin with a posts-per-week goal that you’re certain to hit before you dial it up. During this time, refine your related activities—content distribution, establishing baselines for measurement, trending and reporting—to get an idea of the impact a blog post can have on your existing marketing efforts. Get the process down cold first, and then gradually increase content volume until you’ve hit a manageable stride that’s still producing desired results.

Like any good publisher, you’ll need an editorial calendar. Plan several weeks in advance, but realize that you’ll also need the flexibility to blog about business-relevant hot topics as they come up. Use calendars that integrate with your existing project management tools whenever possible. Basecamp is an excellent option, allowing multi-user commenting, attachment uploads and task assignments. If you use WordPress, you can choose from a healthy array of plugins designed specifically for multi-author blog management, including scheduling, calendar and task reminder tools. Some of the most prolific bloggers I know simply use Excel spreadsheets or Google Docs. Don’t get lost in selecting between shiny objects; pick something and focus on the planning process.

Reject often; don’t pity-post.

Cultivating a vibrant blog with a diversity of perspectives doesn’t mean those perspectives can’t be polished up, or that all content should be considered equal. An editor’s job often entails just as much rejection as it does approval. Your blog is a highly visible, externally facing extension of your brand, and it requires a measure of selectivity. Establish official content guidelines and an approval process that your employees can reference during content creation, and use this to inform and explain your approval decisions. Everyone at your company must understand (and you should champion) the fact that your blogging efforts need to map to measurable business goals, and content that doesn’t fit won’t be published—no hard feelings. Don’t ever post something because you don’t want to offend its author. You’ll regret it!

Nothing is good enough without edits.

Dumb typos are the Achilles’ heel of otherwise killer corporate content. As political journalist Theodore White said, “There are two kinds of editors, those who correct your copy and those who say it’s wonderful.” Businesses with successful blogs employ the former.
Word or another word processer should be used until the post is ready to go up; not only do you then have backup copies, but Word’s editing features are more robust than those of WordPress and most other platforms. Keep track of versions by using “save as” rather than “save,” and appending your initials and the date to the latest version, then sharing via Dropbox or Google Docs. Once finalized, place the post in a folder separate from previous drafts (so you avoid confusing them).

Always know what you’re asking for.

“What action do I want my visitors to take after reading this post?” This question should be top of mind throughout every stage of the content-planning process. Whatever your primary goal, reading the post should entice visitors to click on a related call to action you’ve intentionally placed in their path. The call to action can be anything from links to related posts, to an ad for an upcoming webinar you’re hosting. If you can’t think of a logical next step you’d like readers to take, the post probably doesn’t belong in front of them.

Ian Greenleigh is social media manager at Bazaarvoice, the market and technology leader in hosted social commerce applications. He oversees and contributes to The Social Commerce Blog .

1. Go big screen. Switching to a bigger screen or adding a second one can dramatically improve your productivity, according to usability guru Jakob Nielsen. For example, you can review artwork on one screen and write feedback on the other. If your desktop computer only has one video connector, consider adding a discrete graphics card with multiple ports. Most notebook PCs will now extend their display over two screens. With Microsoft Windows 7, try using the Windows key and the left and right arrow keys to arrange windows side by side.
2. Polish your presentations. Marketing agencies spend a lot of time making pitches and presentations. Try to avoid long lists of bullets and reading text from the screen. (For more tips, see 10 simple rules for awesome presentations.) It also helps if you can get your PC hooked up to a projector without fumbling too much. Look for notebooks that have quick launch buttons to configure multiple displays and consider getting notebooks with extended battery life so you don’t run out of juice mid-speech. A neat way to make presentations more responsive is to use hidden action buttons in PowerPoint, so you can navigate from slide to slide and section to section by clicking on the screen.
3. Improve the quality of your copy. Use automated tools to assess the readability of your copy. For example, Microsoft Word gives readability statistics when you run a grammar check (but you need to enable it in the options). You can also use web-based tools.
4. Increase concentration. Creativity is the heart of marketing, and it starts when you shut out distractions and focus on the task in hand. Consider using an offline computer and working in a quiet, unplugged area.
5. Get free training. HP has a large library of free online courses and supports Knowledge City, a site where you can develop your business and IT skills.
6. Share files and collaborate. Once you start working with colleagues, clients and subcontractors, collaboration and project management become essential. Here are some things that can help: video conferencing on Skype with your notebook’s built-in webcam; sharing files online using Basecamp or Microsoft Online Services;  and online proofing tools like ProofHQ. See HP Business Answers for more tips on improving teamwork.
7. Rapid prototyping. Check out MakerBot. It’s an affordable 3D printer for building ABS plastic prototypes of anything you can design on a PC. (Even if you can’t use it in your business, it’ll make a perfect geek birthday present.) You can use technology to prototype other things, such as websites more efficiently.
8. Outsourcing. Sometimes, coming up with a really great product logo can be a burden. Why not outsource it?
9. Better, cheap stock photography. Good photography makes the difference between “Me, too’ and “Look at me!”  However, stock photos from traditional libraries can be fiercely expensive, especially if you can’t get a buy-out and need to pay renewable license fees. Don’t overlook the plentiful supply of public domain images and crowdsourced low-cost online libraries such as iStockPhoto.
10. Get free advice. If you have a question about how to get the most from your technology (but not, please, technical support questions) you can ask HP experts directly using the Business Answers IT Agony Aunt. It’s free, confidential and run by humans.

Matthew Stibbe is writer-in-chief at Articulate and a contributor to HP’s Business Answers website, blog and Twitter feed. Business Answers is an online resource and community for growing businesses.

• To engage directly with customers (or would-be customers)

• To communicate with personality, empathy and real emotion

• To create value

• And also: To have a little fun

It’s tempting to dismiss that last point, maybe. Who cares if your content is fun, right? Does fun make the cash register ring? And what if you’re a business-to-business company selling dead-serious stuff? Won’t it undermine your credibility, marginalize your message, and disrespect your products if you don’t approach your marketing with gravity?

In business, it’s tempting (and easier) to use the same boring words everyone else uses. But you’ll be far more approachable (and a whole lot more engaging) if you lighten up a little.

Approaching your content with a sense of fun and personality doesn’t mean you don’t sell something dead-serious, or even what some might consider boring. Consider marketing automation company Eloqua, for example.

Eloqua created The Conversation as an interactive sales tool for companies that want to make their online marketing more effective. This week, during a meeting with the team at Eloqua, I noticed the 2009 Groundswell award the company won for The Conversation’s funny, smart, engaging approach.

Similarly, this morning Hubspot released the first episode of its animated (cartoon) Web series, The Adventures of Captain Inbound, in which marketing superhero Captain Inbound defeats the Sultan of Spam. (And saves the day. Of course.) I particularly liked the cameo of David Meerman Scott’s “Great Oz”-inspired talking head. His counter-terrorism advice to combat the Sultan? “Create exceptional content that people will want to share, and point the world to your virtual doorstep.”

The takeaway for marketers is this: Creating content alone isn’t enough. The key is to create exceptional content that sets you apart from the crowd, drives viral sharing, and enhances your company’s profile and personality. Which, by the way, includes creating the unexpected, the unfamiliar, and occasionally the oddball and fun (or perhaps even the animated cartoon series!)

What’s your take? What compelling and surprising content have you seen? Share it below!