Rebecca Black

How did I hear of Black?  Twitter. I couldn’t help but ask myself, “Who on earth is Rebecca Black, and what could she have possibly done to be a trending topic day after day after day?” Then came her “Good Morning America” interview on March 14, where she admitted to crying after hearing harsh feedback about her song. One scathing tweet about the teen read, “We don’t hate you because you’re famous. You’re famous because we hate you.” Still, the mass exposure she earned via social media wasn’t all bad. Former tough-as-nails American Idol judge, Simon Cowell, told Entertainment Weekly the buzz surrounding Black’s song was “brilliant.”

“Love it!” he said. “I’ve never seen anything cause so much controversy. I think it’s genius. The fact that everyone’s getting upset about it is hysterical. But the fact that it’s making people so angry is brilliant.”

Marketing takeaway: You aren’t in control of the message—that’s up to your audience (or fans). Sometimes, social media propels you in unexpected ways.

Justin Bieber

Black isn’t alone when it comes to getting exposure via social media—her ultimate celebrity crush got there the same way. As a 12-year-old singing on YouTube, Justin Bieber sparked the attention of So So Def former marketing executive Scooter Braun. And now, Bieber Fever has taken off full blast, as the teen sensation is pulling a loyal fan base of 8.4 million followers on Twitter. How’s that for a target audience?

Marketing takeaway: Your goal on social media might be to gain fans, “likes,” and “followers.” But having a presence on the social Web can catch the eye of key players in your industry and help your brand or company network with the big folks.

Dane Cook

Even more rare, in the ever-so-exclusive world of film, actor/comedian Dane Cook was able to finagle his way into the limelight with the help of MySpace. One of the earlier social networking gurus, Cook began using MySpace about five years ago to rack up a following of millions of friends, a feat he reportedly touted to industry execs before landing major movie roles.

Marketing takeaway: Conversion rates and stellar results are what many marketers are ultimately after. But brand credibility (in the form of social media support) can be a key selling point when trying to close your next big deal—or earn some respect.

Social media might be a tough sell for some higher-level execs who aren’t too interested in having a Facebook page, Twitter account, or YouTube channel. But with the right social customer relationship manager, they might end up beating a path to your door. And when opportunity comes knocking, you should answer it.

So, how do you know if your company’s social media strategist has become the social media help desk? According to a recent virtual seminar about social media strategists, the key signs that your social media strategist has ended up at the help desk are:

• The person is consistently at the mercy of the different business units’ demands.
• Business units deploy their own social media programs if the strategist doesn’t comply.
• The social media strategist caves into the demand and ends up taking orders and troubleshooting.

To avoid using your social-media expert as a first-aid kit to mend everyone’s wounds and clean up their messes, make sure that:

• Your social strategist develops a proactive business program. (In other words, your strategist should put forth programs and efforts that support the company’s overall business goals … not just one sector’s whims.)
• Your business creates a requirements checklist when it wants to launch a social media program or initiative (According to Owyang, “If you list the requirements in advance before the stakeholders are requesting a statement of work, then you get ahead of the help desk.”)
• Your business is set up in the hub and spoke model. (Owyang delves deeper into this in his seminar.)
• You know you can’t do it all. (“You cannot deploy all of the programs for the business units,” says Owyang. “Once you form into the hub and spoke model, you need to switch to the enablement strategy, where you’re teaching the business units on how they deploy … You can never hire enough community managers to respond to customers, so you also have to figure out how do you get the crowd to do the work for you.”)

Is the line between corporate social media strategist and social media help desk blurred at your business? Have any tips to add? I look forward to reading your comments.

Do you want a longer explanation? With data even? And cool, friendly charts? Check out analyst Jeremiah Owyang’s latest MarketingProfs seminar, where he presents his latest research—done in connection with MarketingProfs—that uncovers six major obstacles social strategists face today, including resistance from internal culture on the value of social efforts, measuring (and proving) ROI to the C-suite, and lack of longer-term planning. PRO members can view the on-demand 90-minute seminar for free; Basic members pay just $129.

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.

I was pleasantly surprised.

Lisa’s talk might ostensibly about webinars, but in reality, she connected webinars to content marketing, lead nurturing, and social media. For Lisa, director of Campaigns for Citrix, webinars don’t live in a box. They are intimately related to sales opportunities, and they should live or die based on the revenue they bring in. (Full disclosure: Citrix is an Eloqua client.)

Here are the 4 key elements I took away from her presentation.

1. Webinars are a part of your storytelling.
Lisa spoke at length about creating personas to tell stories in your marketing campaigns. For instance, Citrix created its own persona for a campaign called “The Entrepreneur.” The concept behind the campaign was to educate companies on how to think like an entrepreneur regardless of their age or size.

For the webinar, Citrix recruited Lane Becker, co-founder of Adaptive Path and a well-known entrepreneur. It was a hit. Attendees asked hundreds of questions of Lane. But rather than shut down the conversation with Lane afterward, Lisa and her team did a video with Lane responding to many of those unanswered questions, then posted it to YouTube, effectively extending the campaign’s shelf-life.

The webinar was tied directly into the larger entrepreneurial persona Citrix developed, not housed on its own. As Lisa put it: “The value of your storytelling will drive the rate of conversions in your funnel or tunnel.”

2. When you think webinars, think SEO.
“If you are not thinking about SEO while you are building your content strategy, you are missing a key element,” said Lisa. To get optimal value out of your webinars (and to drive attendance), you need to use every form of promotion at your disposal. Lisa provided this simple equation that anyone who finished grade school can follow: YouTube + SlideShare + Twitter + Facebook + email + website + blog = SEO. In other words, if you want to maximize not only promotion of your webinar, but your general SEO strategy as well, then you need to be hitting all social and marketing forums.

Lisa also suggested hosting as much content as possible, including your webinar, on your website. This will guide traffic, as well as inbound links, to your most valuable piece of online real estate.

3. Webinars are part of a happy marriage with buyers.
Lisa spent a considerable amount of time emphasizing the value of webinars to lead nurturing, and measuring the impact of them on them on revenue performance. The metaphor she used was that of a happy marriage. You not only want to win the heart of your prospect, you want to ensure a happy marriage, too. Providing a steady stream of educational content, such as webinars, shows that you care about the continued success of your clients. “Content is about giving your customers a leg up.” Loyalty is just as important, if not more important, than passion.

Another argument she made was keeping regular measurement of the impact of your campaigns, not just on the quality of your storytelling but on the quality of business you are drumming up. “A lot of marketers believe they are in the lead-generation business, when in reality, they are in revenue generation business,” Lisa said. That means keeping track of how your webinars’ drive conversions.

But don’t be overly simplistic. “Your cheap demand may never convert,” Lisa said. You can drive down the cost of demand, but if that demand doesn’t lead to closed business, what’s its value? Instead, don’t be afraid to invest more in demand if it leads to actionable opportunities, because at the end of the day, this could drive down the cost of your overall pipeline.

4. Use data to liven up your webinars.
As Lisa says: Find a way to “get Lawrence Welk swinging.” You can use the questions being asked during your webinar to adjust the tone and strategy of the event in real time. Adapting your performance as you move through it will spark excitement among your attendees—who will then spread that excitement to their communities.

Additionally, don’t limit yourself to just the basic info like the number of registrants and attendees. Do you track how many of your attendees jumped off the call after 5 minutes? How about after 10 minutes? That data is gold because you can use it to see where you lost attendees attention and adjust your strategy the next time around.

A few questions from the session:

How long should a webinar be?

A good average is 30 minutes for sales and 45 minutes for marketing. If people are thrilled by the conversation, extend the Q&A. But increasingly people are pressed for time. Experiment with creating more snackable content.

Have you found a sweet spot in terms of a frequency standpoint?

You can easily saturate your audience with too many webinars. Citrix’s motto, according to Lisa, is to do fewer, but grander, events. “If we get 45% attendance and then do another and get 35% attendance rate, there’s no reason to do  another one so soon.”

In terms of promoting your webinar, how many times should you touch your audience?

Probably no less than five times. It’s good idea to start promoting it at least one to two weeks ahead of time. Day-of promotion can be really effective as well. People might have added it to their Outlook calendar but forgotten about it. A reminder on the day of the event can help remind them.

When I, as a chief technology officer, put together an organization’s strategic technology plan and get down to the web-presence section, I typically inquire about their current efforts. Usually, I hear that they have a Facebook page. But when I visit the page, I see: a page that hasn’t been touched by anyone other than spammers or a complete running history of their promotions for the past 6 months, with employees the only ones “Liking” it.

That’s a missed opportunity. But when I ask about why they don’t invest more time and effort, I usually get one of the following five excuses:

1.    “Our target audience is not on Facebook and Twitter.”
I usually hear this when their target audience is 50+. I used to buy it—and then Farmville came along. I cannot tell you how many Farmville requests I get daily from farmers of all ages.

2.    “I would like my staff to concentrate on more important things than playing on Facebook all day.”
Said another way: “How do I know they are working on things related to the organization and not personal stuff?” Fair enough. But business owners and managers need to realize, we are in 2011. The time for micro-managers in a small-business environment is over! If you are that concerned over the effectiveness of your hires, you may want to take a look at your hiring process.

3.    “We tried it; it didn’t work.”
The problem of course, is that the approach is all wrong. You didn’t try interacting with your audience on Facebook or Twitter, you tried advertising to them. But at that point, I usually just hand them a copy of Power Friending by Amber Mac (@ambermac), Unmarketing by Scott Stratton (@unmarketing), or Content Rules by C.C. Chapman and MarketingProfs’ own Ann Handley.

4.    “We are just too busy.”
I would like to steal a line from one of those books for this excuse. Imagine we replaced the term social media with talking. “We are just too busy to talk to people about what we do.”  (Insert a blank stare.)

5.    Lastly, my favorite: “Could you do it for us?”
I often hear this from the old-school business people who are used to delegating every bit of work out and not doing a thing themselves. It’s great to hire outside content creators, but I’m not necessarily the guy for the job. If it were to be a product or service I don’t know anything about—for instance a doctor’s office—I could imagine my response to a Facebook wall post:  “My son is sick. What should I do?” My answer: “Ummm, did you try rebooting him?”

*****

So how about you? Are your clients using social media? What excuses do you hear, and how do you respond?

Chester Frazier is the CEO of Definition Systems. Follow him on Twitter.

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.

1. What is your favorite part of your job?
My favorite part of my job is explaining social media to people, whether they are internal partners at my agency, clients, or potential clients. Most of these people are marketing professionals who understand the principles of marketing and just need help putting the pieces together of how social media fits into their marketing plans.

I recently had the opportunity to conduct a four-hour social media workshop for the marketing team of a new client. I reviewed some of their social media initiatives, discussed social media best practices, and laid the groundwork for creating a social media strategy. I am frequently given one hour to speak on similar topics at conferences. Four hours felt like the right amount of time with a very engaged audience.

2. What are some of the most common social media marketing sins marketers commit?
The biggest sin marketers commit with social media is thinking that it is just another channel to broadcast the brand messages. While that may be part of a social media approach, companies that open these channels for true two-way communication are more successful at building relationships with their customers and prospects.

Another sin companies make is thinking social media marketing is easy and can be done without a full company commitment. It is one thing to create a successful social media campaign, but for real, long-term success, companies must commit across the board. Authenticity and transparency are not just buzzwords on inspirational posters that get hung on the wall in the break room. Companies need to change at their core to reflect these values.

3. What would say is the most important metric for marketers to measure in 2011?
Marketers need to connect social media to the funnel and measure conversions in 2011. On SocialMediaB2B, we have even called 2011 the year of conversions. As companies have become more familiar with social media marketing techniques as a means to build awareness, drive traffic, and build relationships, it is time to take those elements to the next step of the buying cycle.

Tracking visits to a landing page, subscription form or other lead generation element need to be followed through to conversions to determine how each social media message drives sign-ups. Everything is in place for this to happen in 2011.

4. Do you blog? Why? What does it do for your business?
I blog on SocialMediaB2B.com to provide ideas, resources and examples for B2B marketers learning how to incorporate social media into their B2B marketing and other company functions. We have written about using social media for public relations, sales, customer support, human resources, and even product development.

We began the site nearly two years ago with the intent to develop thought leadership around the new topic of social media  for B2B companies. As a result of blogging on the site, I have had the chance to speak at events across the country (including the upcoming Digital Marketing Forum). Standing in front of people talking about social media and the promotion of those speaking engagements bring new clients to my agency and demonstrate our knowledge of social media to existing clients.

5. If you weren’t a marketer, what job would you do?
I would be a documentary filmmaker or a Hollywood stuntman. With the advent of pocket digital video cameras and the ease of web distribution, I can now create compelling stories online, but no amount of technology can help me jump off the roof as I used to when I was a kid.

* Bonus question! Do you like your chili mild or spicy?
I like my chili spicy because there is nothing worse than bland food. A well-seasoned dish should be balanced, but with explosions of flavors that remind you that food is about more than mere sustenance. If eating, and marketing, isn’t fun and exciting, what’s the point?

Want to learn more on how to ignite your digital strategy in the new year? Stay tuned for more interviews with our speakers, and then join us February 2-4 in Austin, Texas for Digital Marketing Forum 2011. It’s going to be spicy!

Fresh off the digital presses, the report was published this morning. A total of 755 Internet users were asked about 15 different kinds of online material that could be purchased or accessed after a payment. The biggest news: “Sixty-five percent of Internet users have paid to access or download some kind of digital content.” At 33%, digital music and software are the most popular categories for purchases. And 21% have paid for apps for their cell phones or tablet computers. The least amount of purchases were for adult content (2%) and online dating services and sites (5%).

Other interesting facts about Internet users who purchase online content:

• About the same percentages of men and women pay for online content (except software, which online men are more likely to purchase than online women).
• Online purchasing is color-blind. Whites and non-whites are equally likely to purchase most forms of online content.
• The more educated the Internet user is, the more likely that person is to purchase online content.
• The older the online person, however, the less likely he or she is to purchase content. Internet users ages 18 to 29 and 30 to 40 are more likely to buy online than folks 50 to 64 or older than 65.
• Internet users who live in high-income bracket households are more likely to pay for various kinds of content than those who live in lower-income brackets.

So what do all these percentages mean for you? According to the Pew Internet Project, “The issue of people’s willingness to pay for online material has enormous implications for media companies, artistic creators, and others who are hoping to sustain themselves—or grow new businesses—by raising revenue through online purchases.”

In other words, all signs point to a better days for businesses who know how to capitalize on the growing trend for online purchases. Do you?

For more details, check out the complete report.

While most marketing professionals are familiar with the term “conversion rate optimization,” few have actually put it in to practice. Fortunately, a recent proliferation of online tools and services will greatly simplify the process for most companies, making 2011 the year of conversion optimization and testing.

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the process of incrementally increasing online conversions (e.g. orders, leads, sign-ups) by optimizing and testing website design, content, and user experience. CRO can significantly reduce customer acquisition costs and increase per visitor value. It also provides measurable results (a must-have in today’s business climate) and can help you avoid costly website redesigns, saving you time, money, and headaches.

CRO is a 3-step process and should be an indispensable part of your 2011 marketing plans. Here is a quick step-by-step guide to help get you started.

1. Set Up Web Analytics

For most companies, implementing a web-analytics system (like Google Analytics) is a no-brainer. However, it is increasingly important to make sure your analytics are up to date and accurate. Keeping track of key performance indicators, like which pages are causing your visitors to leave, is critical to understanding how to improve your website. By sorting your analytics data by bounce rate, you can easily identify which pages on your website need the most attention.

2. Improve Key Pages

After identifying the pages on your website in need of immediate attention, start brainstorming ways to make them better. Often, this can be as simple as changing a headline, increasing the size of your call to action, or removing unnecessary distractions. Sometimes, you need an outside perspective to identify barriers to conversion. Online tools like Concept Feedback (expert website evaluations), UserTesting (crowd-sourced usability testing) and ClickTale (customer experience analytics) provide fast, affordable ways to generate actionable improvement ideas.

3. Test and Repeat

Before you scrap the old page and run with the new one, make sure to use a split testing tool like Visual Website Optimizer or Google Website Optimizer to verify the results. Split testing tools allow you to serve up multiple pages at once and track which one generates more conversions. As soon as you have enough visitors to reach a statistically significant conclusion, you’ll be able to implement the best performing page with confidence.

CRO doesn’t stop there. It’s a continual process of identification, improvement and testing. With this simple 3-step framework, you should be able to quickly and efficiently increase online business and drive revenue on a limited budget.

If you have questions, suggestions or website improvement stories of your own, please let us know in the comments!

Andrew Follett is the founder of ConceptFeedback, offering fast, actionable website evaluations from a hand-selected panel of experts in design, usability, copy and strategy.

So, how do you do that?

At a MarketingProfs Content Marketing Crash Course class, the instructor said the most important question to ask yourself is: “What do you stand for?” If you can answer that question, your content will have its focus.

“It’s not what you sell; it’s what you stand for,” Joe Pulizzi said. The content that you share should not be about you or your products or services. It  “attracts and/or retains customers by creating/curating valuable and compelling content to maintain and change a behavior.”

This means you need to figure out what makes you unique, what you can give clients or readers that is beyond the regular ol’ stuff that your competitors are peddling.

What Do You Stand For?

Let’s say you join the hot small-biz trend by opening up a cupcake shop. You also have a shiny new company website,  blog, Facebook Page, and Twitter account. Now, your cupcake blog is one of the kajillion cupcake shops online—but you start getting more popular than everyone. For example, the comment thread on your blog becomes the equivalent of a cozy shop packed with chatting, happy customers. How did that happen?

You focused on what makes you unique. Your content stands out with its unique advice and expertise shared without shilling. Your shop is the only one that tells guests specifically how to take cupcakes to parties without wrecking the frosting or how to turn your love of Psych into pineapple-flavored cupcakes. You don’t tell them to buy your cupcakes—but because they frequent your site, when they get the need for something sweet (and who doesn’t?), they will turn to you.

Being interesting means giving your guests something to take home. Consider these ideas for making your content unique and having readers leave your online space with something to chew on:

• Explain how to do something.
• Make them laugh.
• Tell a good story.
• Provide niche info in a unique webcast or podcast.
• Get the scoop on the latest news.
• Share your thoughts on the latest news or trend.
• Share something you’ve seen. (It can even be something you observed offline!)

Is there something else you’d like to add to the list?

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!

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?

Now, just imagine the truth-mangling on Twitter. Frightening, isn’t it?

You don’t have to be scared, though.  Just make sure you do the following before tweeting a hot topic:

• Go to the source.
  Don’t make wine from a poor grapevine. Find the root of the rumor first. Maybe the blog post said the product was harmful only if it came from one manufacturing plant. Or a press release had a vital word that a tweet missed. Get the actual info first. You don’t want to hear what someone said that someone else said.
• Reach the subject.
  Heard news about a person or company? Don’t forget to check their blog, website, Twitter account, etc. Poor Bill Cosby often has to tweet that he’s alive, so people don’t believe a recurring rumor of his demise. My favorite rebuttal comes from Jeff Goldblum on The Colbert Show.
• Vary your research.
  Once upon a time (pre-2006), people didn’t rely solely on Twitter for news leads. Folks used different sources: television, newspapers, phones, the local watering hole, magazines, and going to the hot spot. Remember that Twitter is a tool—not the entire toolbox.
• Wait.
  It’s better to pause, get the details then tweet. You don’t want to tweet wrong information then end up having to send a slew of apologies. Not only do you ruin your reputation, you also make your organization look bad. And in some cases, you can be suspended from work or even fired. You don’t want to add to the online din. You want to make every tweet sing.

So, how do you handle trending topics on Twitter?

It turns out that West Coast cities are far ahead of east coast when it comes to social media usage among businesspeople. San Jose, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Denver and Seattle all cracked the Top 10 list, while New York City and Boston were the only two East Coast cities that made the Top 10 list. My town (Phoenix) ranked No. 28.  Phoenix comes in at No. 5 nationwide for the top Twitter cities, New York is No. 1.

Interesting tidbits:

• The tobacco industry has the  lowest numbers of Twitter users.
• Funeral homes don’t tweet.
• Industries related to medical care did not make the Top 50 list at all.
• Ranking among the least social media savvy on the list were employees in finance positions.
• While communications/PR employees finished third overall on the list, they ranked No. 1 in the Twitter category, outpacing CMOs/advertising directors.

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 .

I’d like to thank some of our loyal attendees for sharing their invaluable insights on B2B social media, including: @MargieClayman @mikulaja @CelsiusMI @missusP @BrennerMichael @Briansrice @pushingsocial @2moroDocs @kammerait @mollienothnagel @BrianGroth @robpetersen and @Michael_Evanko.

It’s been a blast, so we’ve decided to branch out beyond B2B social media and are launching the inaugural #ProfsChat tomorrow from 12-1 p.m. (Eastern time). Each week, we’ll chat with a different expert about marketing topics like landing page optimization, email marketing, market segmentation, paid search and, yes, social media, too.

Our first guest is Jason Alba, a LinkedIn expert, the author of I’m on LinkedIn—Now What? and I’m on Facebook—Now What? and CEO of the career management tool JibberJobber.com. He’s also presented ten Take10 webcasts on LinkedIn for MarketingProfs. We’ll be chatting with him about using LinkedIn for business, including:

1. How to Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile
2. How to Find High-Quality Leads
3. How to Market Products and Services

So, brown bag your lunch and hop onto Twitter tomorrow at noon ET for one full hour of networking and chatter with @MarketingProfs, @MProfsEvents, and @JasonAlba. (Need ideas for lunch? Check our these tasty lunch box recipes from Epicurious. The Peanut Butter, Banana and Date Sandwich looks exceptionally delicious.)

1. B2B social media is like sex in high school: Everyone claims they are doing it, but few actually are.

(And most of those who are doing it … aren’t doing it particularly well.)

B2B marketers are embracing social tools as a way to connect with customers and grow their businesses. Most attendees have some kind of social presence or say they imminently plan to. Most have attempted a blog or Facebook page or have peeked at Twitter. When Guy Kawasaki asked at his closing keynote, How many people think Twitter is stupid?, only two brave souls raised their hands high.

Nonetheless, most B2B marketers have yet to truly embrace the full social tool set for their business, and sometimes for themselves. Only a handful of attendees checked into the event on Foursquare, for example, which I thought was surprising for an event in the heart of Silicon Valley. One attendee I met summed it up nicely. “We have a blog, but it sucks,” she said. “We’re here to learn how to change that.”

Guy Kawasaki at SocialTech 2010

In other words: B2B marketers + social = lots of room for improvement. But just like post high school, there’s every reason to anticipate a more satisfying relationship down the road.

2. Content isn’t enough.

Most B2B marketers have embraced the notion that they are also “publishers.” In other words, they understand that in addition to being in the business selling whatever they sell—be it cappuccino machines or consulting services—they also need to be producing content as a cornerstone of their marketing, both to engage and educate their would-be customers.

But at the same time, producing any old content isn’t enough. B2B companies have to produce the right kind of content: web content that is honestly empathetic, seeded with utility for your customers, and that reflects your businesses core values and is inspired by your unique perspective and authentic “voice.” As Robert Scoble pointed out in his luncheon keynote, “When you are trying to sell something, a human voice does it better.”

3. Social objects can set you apart.

Those B2B companies succeeding with social media innately understand that customer engagement doesn’t necessarily take place on their own web pages. Jeremiah Owyang articulated this perfectly in his morning keynote: Your future web strategy isn’t based around your website and technology, but around people and connections.

How can B2B capitalize on that trend right now? One way is to create “social objects” that allow your prospects or customers to spread your message for you across the social web. What’s a “social object”? It might be a cool digital tool or other kind of content (an interesting infographic, a compelling SlideShare presentation, a video, etc.) that your customers take and can share on their own blogs, Facebook pages, or other social platforms.

But a social object might also be as something as simple as a real-life stuffed animal: Marti Konstant of OK Labs told a story of how various incarnations of her company’s stuffed mascot, Iggy Wanna, have partied at bars in Barcelona and gone to trade shows in Shanghai, as documented by people who have gotten their hands on one and uploaded their photos with the iguana to Iggy’s Flickr page, among other things.

What’s the value of getting people to take pictures of themselves with your stuffed icon? It raises awareness and interest in your company and builds a sense of community around your business in a humorous, offbeat, very human way.

4. Social media is like baseball.

As I left San Jose, Game 1 of the World Series was set to commence nearby. So it seems apt to include this final point, made brilliantly by Brian Watkins, Social Media Manager of Adobe.

How is social media like baseball? True baseball nuts love to pour over the stats of their favorite franchises and pet players. They love to compare stats like stolen bases, strikeouts, ERAs, RBIs, sacrificed hits, and so on; meanwhile, all the League really counts is two things: Wins and Losses.

Similarly, social media fans love to pour over their own endlessly fascinating (but ultimately meaningless) stats: number of fans or friends or followers, number of retweets, number of views on YouTube, comparative social clout, and on and on; meanwhile, all the C-suite really counts is Sales.

The important thing is to recognize that while it might be interesting and satisfying for aficionados to indulge in their own stats, what really matters is the biggest picture. For business and social media, that means: Are you connecting socially with your customers in a meaningful way, that actually makes them do business with you? Are you keeping your eye on the ball?

By the way, you can access all of SocialTech 2010 sessions On Demand, whether you were there and had to make the hard choice between two compelling tracks, or whether you missed it entirely. Access it here.

Organizations launch blogs for various reasons—and building them is simple from a technology perspective.

What’s hard is managing a blog program lasts beyond a few weeks or months. To avoid the fizzle and ignite a sizzle, set up and manage your blog program like a newspaper.

Newspaper Sections = Blog Categories

Whether in printed form or online, a newspaper’s true form is that it has sections. And your blog has categories. Think of them as one and the same. For example:

• The Front Page:  This is the place to explain company news in English. No one reads traditional press releases because they are filled with gobbledygook. (Trust me, I was a reporter for 10 years.)
• The Business Section: Focus on talking about success stories, upcoming products and services, support-related issues, etc.
• The Entertainment Section: Promote events and trade shows (both before, during and after), local meet-ups … and fun things, too like the company picnic—whatever you want!  It’s a great place to show your company’s culture.

Start small. You can add categories later. Keep the names of the categories interesting yet easy to understand.

4 Quick Tips for Blogger Management

A newspaper has reporters. A blog program has bloggers. The tough part here is that reporters get paid for what they do—bloggers are volunteers and must set aside time from their already busy schedules.

It’s the job of the blog program manager (the managing editor) to recruit, coach and continually coddle (and occasionally kick) bloggers to keep them on track. But also make it as easy as possible for them to contribute.

Please note:  This post doesn’t address recruiting and training bloggers… or who should be blogging; that’s a topic for another day. Today, I’m talking about the mindset and tools blog program managers need to succeed. This is based on what I’ve learned, through much pain, at what does and what doesn’t work.

Here are the management basics in a nutshell:

• Create and maintain an editorial calendar. Ensure it aligns with each section and every blogger.
• Have a blogger boot camp. Train your recruits on the basics of blogging and include an introduction to social media. It’s a starting point.
• Set up regular editorial meetings. This is where you’ll assign stories (many of the bloggers will have topics of their own in mind already). It’s also where you review metrics and examine what’s working and what’s not working. (There’s more to the meetings but that’s the gist).
• Devote plenty of one-on-one time. Some people are natural bloggers from the gate. Others need coaching—some more than others.

Also, be prepared for the following!

5 Common Mistakes

1. Ghostwritten blogs. These are usually for the CEO or executives. They come across as fake (because they are).  Instead, grab 10 minutes with executives who want to blog and interview them. Record the conversation, write it up (or use video), and there’s your post.
2. Using fictitious characters as blog authors. I know one company that invented a persona for a cooking blog. It was popular and she got invited to many events and television programs – embarrassing!
3. Heavy-handed editing. Bloggers aren’t journalists. Don’t change their copy too much – correct typos if you must. Do coach them weekly, however, on how to write tight copy. (See my last post on that).
4. Comment pre-approval. Make it easy for readers to comment. Use tools like CAPTCHA to prevent spam, and moderate the comments that violate the community guidelines—but let folks vent, too.
5. Regurgitating existing company collateral verbatim. How fun is that to read? You can, however, get some great post ideas from existing collateral. For example, interview the product team that developed that cool new doohickey that was just released.

I look forward to reading your comments!

One of Computerworld’s first online reporters, Tom Diederich made the jump to social media in 2000, building and managing internal online communities for SGI, Palm and Intuit.  Since then, he has built and managed B2C and B2B customer-facing online communities for Symantec, Cadence Design Systems and Ninety Five 5 as a community manager/social media strategist.

Bloggers don’t have to be journalists—but following basics from the reporter’s notebook can help new bloggers write successful posts.
If you have to read halfway down the page to get to the main point, chances are you’ve already lost most people. But for many rookie bloggers, the instinct is to pen posts that start with a story and conclude with the main idea. (And, yes, these do work sometimes, too!)

For most blog posts, spill the beans straight away. Tell the most important information at the beginning and then add the details along the way in order of importance.

And here’s how: Back in Journalism 101, my instructor and later my mentor told us on the first day of class to memorize (and keep as a mantra) something known in the newspaper world as “the 5Ws and an H” and the “inverted pyramid.”

The five “Ws” are: who, what, when, where, why and the “H” is how.

For example:

• Who? Who was involved?
• What? What happened? What’s the story?
• Where? Where did it take place?
• When? When did it take place?
• Why? Why did it happen?
• How? How did it happen?

In newspaper journalism, reporters are told to get the 5Ws and H into the “lead” (pronounced “leed”), which is comprised of the first sentence or two of a news article. The lead contains the most important information.

While it’s not essential (or even appropriate) to include each and every “W” (or even the “H”) in most blog posts, I use the 5Ws and H to teach new bloggers the importance of getting to the point—fast.

Another tool for clear and concise blog writing is the inverted pyramid. It was invented because newspaper editors, working on tight deadlines, must often chop news stories to make room for advertisements, photos and other news from edition to edition. And they always start chopping from the bottom.

Using the inverted pyramid helps you focus on writing a concise blog post. I like to keep mine under 500 words.

Sure, blogging is very different from traditional news writing, but the “gist” of the 5Ws and H, along with the inverted pyramid, are both ideal for bloggers in an age when attention spans … oh, look, a bunny!
(See what I mean?)

One of Computerworld’s first online reporters, Tom Diederich made the jump to social media in 2000, building and managing internal online communities for SGI, Palm and Intuit.  Since then, he has built and managed B2C and B2B customer-facing online communities for Symantec, Cadence Design Systems and Ninety Five 5 as a community manager/social media strategist.

Consider this post a refresher for folks who have been emailing since the days of shiny AOL disks—or feel free to share this post with friends and family who still view email as an online version of passing notes in class.

Write an eye-catching subject line.

The recipients of your email are as busy as you are. Chances are they will skim their in-boxes for the hottest, most urgent emails first and then make time for the secondary fires later. You want to get their attention quickly and prompt them to open your email.

If the information is vital and timely, make sure the subject line says so. A true-life example: “My neighbor is giving away his piano” is a better subject line than “Yo. Whazzup?” The former would have let me known that I could have gotten a free piano. Instead, I waited until evening to answer my relative’s e-mail and completely missed out on the free piano. (If you want to boost your subject-line writing skills, check out the bite-size  Take 10: How to Write the Perfect Email Marketing Subject Line webcast.)

Keep your facts straight and clear.

Ask yourself, “Why am I writing this email? What does this person need to know? Is there a date, place and time to keep in mind?” Imagine that you’ve only got a minute or two to get your point across. You need to be friendly, direct and clear in your communication. Don’t provide a rambling back story to the email.

Also, if you are mentioning numbers, dates, and times, be sure that you don’t make the email sound like a word problem on a math test. This week, I received an email that my middle son’s game was scheduled for 9 a.m. but  we could get to the field 30 minutes early for a 20-minute drill for a 20-minute game at 9:30 a.m. after the practice if we wanted to but it was mandatory yet not and the field was reserved for 50 minutes.

Choose your audience carefully.

You’ve clicked on all the right names from your address book. Haven’t you? Make sure to look through the list one more time. Does everyone on the list need to know your question or read the email?

If you’re answering an email, don’t automatically hit “reply all” to mega-lists. Consider whether you really want all those people reading your reply. You might end up sharing the comment or question with entirely too many people. Plus, hitting “reply all” is like the equivalent of stepping forward from the crowd and speaking for everyone.

This week, a snarky parent answered a rambling email from a coach by hitting “reply all” —and we all got to read a condescending, poorly written email. It was the equivalent of watching a kid throw a temper tantrum in the middle of the store where you are shopping. You want to avert your eyes, not react, but you can’t avoid what’s in front of you.

Of course, “reply all” works well when you’re part of a team or a collaborative effort. But don’t hit “reply all” automatically. Think first.

Check your spelling.

It doesn’t take very long to hit spell check and see what went awry in the crafting of your email. Newbies sometimes feel that the typos and hasty scribbles make the email sound “real.” It only lets your readers know that you didn’t take time to write the email—so why should they take time to read it?

Use the right “from” address.

Most people have more than one email address. Take the time to log in under the appropriate name for the email. If you send 492 emails from work about non-related work issues, don’t get upset if we use that address to answer your email. What do we know about your different accounts? Most people reply to the email that was sent.

Give readers closure.

You don’t hang up the phone abruptly without signaling that you’re ending the conversation. You don’t just walk away after you’ve made your point (unless you’re mad). Be sure to signal the end of your email. You can include a reminder for the next meeting, recap in a quick sentence what you will do, or write a run-of-the-mill-but-oh-so-purposeful “feel free to contact me  with comments or questions.” It’s good manners.

Feel free to add your own tips in the comments section.

Allons-y,

Veronica

In advance of SocialTech 2010, we’re offering a FREE virtual pass (a $99 value) to the online version of the conference to the #TechChat attendee who shared the most valuable insight during last week’s chat.

After many restless nights of deciding who the pass should go to, I gave up. All the insights were fantastic … so I’ll put the burden on you, our trusty readers. In the poll box below, please decide the winner of the FREE SocialTech virtual pass. The poll closes tomorrow night at 9 p.m. (Eastern Standard Time), so we’ll announce the winner at the end of tomorrow’s #TechChat.

Ready, set, good luck!

“Focus on your subject matter experts, then teach them social tools. You can be the evangelist your biz needs.” (@carissao)

“Blogging is like learning to ride a bike—use training wheels, get balance, then go for it! Same applies to Social Media.” (@susanbeebe)

“Don’t forget to have a blog promotion plan along with posting/publishing plan.” (@pushingsocial)

“Your blog can’t just be a sales pitch, that is going to get old VERY quickly. Related to the industry you’re in w/o being ’salesy.’” (@mikulaja)

“Content about your customers draws more customers than content about your product.” (@robpetersen)

“I think blogging is the polar opposite of advertising if it’s done well. Don’t post press releases.” (@RLMadMan)

“Anyone who thinks a blog isn’t work, time, and investment is selling something. Or clueless.” (@AmberCadabra)

“Blogging goals should always stem from overall strategic goals and brand voice.” (@joey_strawn)

“B2B blogging allows you to educate prospective and current customers in your field.” (@DavidSpinks)

“I believe that every business blog takes on a life of its own, no two should be alike.” (@Michael_Evanko

A lot of the content that marketers can find and reference these days aims to inspire, motivate, and educate.  This article is a bit different. This article is for marketers who most sincerely want to fail. It’s for marketers who find success very run of the mill. It’s for people who want to fall on their marketing swords. To that end, then, here are 10 ways to achieve complete and total failure as a marketer. (And if you don’t want to fail, consider it your to-don’t list.)

1. Start a Facebook account, LinkedIn account, Twitter account, and a blog. Set everything up, so it looks like activity is imminent. Then let the accounts sit there, abandoned. Do not revisit them. Forget your passwords.
2. Start the same way as above, but this time, start the accounts armed with information you want to share. The key point here is that you want to start all of the accounts without researching whether your competitors and customers are there. Do not under any circumstances give careful thought to your avatars, your design, your usernames, or any other such details. Feel confident that your content is important enough that people will gravitate to it.
3. Measure your success based on leads, not sales.
4. Assume that marketing has nothing to do with public relations, sales, customer service, or anything else. You are autonomous. Marketing is as marketing does. Silos are popular. Just look at the Midwest.
5. Once you silo yourself, make sure that your marketing tactics are similarly separate from each other. Do not give any thought to how advertising could support a social media campaign. Do not ponder how exhibiting at a trade show could have anything to do with lead nurturing. Every tactic is an island.
6. Interpret levels of success in social media based on the numbers of fans or followers you have. Once you reach a pre-established milestone on both sites, it’s a good idea to add the word “expert” or “guru” to your profile.
7. Do not under any circumstances consider search engine optimization in anything you do. You don’t need to optimize your website or anything else. You’re on Facebook and Twitter!
8. Assume that nobody understands anything you are talking about because you reside in the new and in the details.
9. Do not share tips, tricks, or information. You worked hard for that data. If someone wants it, they’ll have to work with you. And pay you. A lot.
10. Act like a marketer. Everywhere you go, pitch something that someone can purchase. Send automatic direct messages enticing people to buy your services or your products. And remember: Promote yourself as much as possible.

I can guarantee that following even following just a few of these steps, in no particular order, will deliver the marketing misery for which you are striving. Trust me. I’m a guru.

Marjorie Clayman is director of Client Development at Clayman Advertising, a full-service marketing communications firm located in Akron, Ohio.

After receiving her bachelor’s degree from the College of Wooster (Ohio), Marjorie went on to earn a Master of Library Science as well as a master’s degree in history from Kent State University. Five years ago, she became the third generation to join the family firm, which her grandfather founded in 1954. Recently, Margie has spearheaded the company’s efforts in promoting social media to the agency’s business-to-business and medical clients as a viable part of their overall integrated marketing campaigns.

Fact checking is a staple of traditional journalism. Good and ethical media hold back from printing or posting news that hasn’t been thoroughly verified. But, in this instant Web 2.0 world, we are all publishers and citizen journalists. Nothing holds any of us back from publishing content online, whether truthful, questionable, or outright misleading.

We have reached a slippery slope where none of us can truly determine what is real from what is fabricated or twisted. And just because we can post a link to another site for reference, who’s to say that what’s posted there has any merit?

The news, which used to be comprised of important topics affecting our world community, now include reports on Lindsay Lohan’s jail time, the latest viral YouTube videos, and countless reports on a sports figure’s trade to another team. Has America dumbed down this much?

I’m waiting for the pendulum to complete its swing and return to its central position on the fulcrum. I’m waiting for people to realize that real journalism doesn’t come from bloggers like Andrew Breitbart (who posted Sherrod’s speech). It isn’t coming from CNN’s ireporters, or from biased opinion pieces or op-ed shows. It comes from investigative journalists who work on news ethically and impartially using the 5 Ws  (who, what, where, when and why).

What do you think? Is journalism dead or are we in some type of transition? What do you think of citizen journalism?

Add another layer of change when you consider the ability to share information in real time, and modern marketing can get complex quickly. In this ever-changing environment, sometimes it feels difficult to stay ahead of the game—but it’s vital. To accomplish this, it’s pertinent you stay adaptable.

Follow these three ways to acclimate to the real-time web and the way it’s changing B2B marketing.

1. Provide Relatable Information

Your customers are no longer waiting for information to fall into their lap. Instead, they’ve taken to the real-time web to search your company name, products and services. They’re gathering information and forming their own opinions based upon what’s at their disposal.

Many B2B marketing websites are relatively static. You may add new product updates from time to time or updated copy every so often, but for the most part, new content isn’t added on a regular basis.

B2B blogs and social networking sites allow marketers to add new content weekly or even several times a week. By consistently posting interesting, informative information, organizations will encourage prospects to regularly visit the blog in search of fresh content. Plus, frequently updated, optimized content can help improve a website’s visibility in the search engines.

2. Engage In Seed Nurturing

Lead nurturing campaigns used to take place after prospects landed on your site and entered your database. However, qualified prospects are now visiting your site or social media sites anonymously before you ever have their names or information. Seed nurturing allows you to build relationships with prospects before they you have any information.  Thanks to the real-time web, you’re able to relay valuable resources to these prospects, helping shape their decision-making process.

Use social media to share educational and resourceful white papers, links and articles. Your ability to provide facts, research, updates quickly and rapidly will help facilitate your placement as a thought leader of your industry.

3. Practice Online Reputation Management

The Internet now provides a rich arena for brand monitoring; the marketing analytics possible to report on are robust.  But there is equal potential for the real-time web to either praise or “flame” a brand digitally. Forums, comments, tweets and statuses can turn open-ended text boxes into a weapon or praise. To help ensure you’re receiving the latter, there are a lot of ways to correct and respond to any negative brand mentions. The real-time web gives us the opportunity to leverage brand ambassadors and B2B marketing tools to track our brand and increase awareness, while controlling any negative mentions.

Now that you know a few ways to adapt, it’s time to put these ideas into implementation. If you haven’t already, develop a social media plan and find out what’s being said about your company and products.

Want to learn more about social media marketing for the high-tech industry? Join us Oct. 26, 2010 in San Jose for SocialTech 2010—the only conference that’s all about social media for B2B high-tech professionals.

One way to greatly improve your ability to measure the effectiveness of your company’s blogging efforts is by tracking the right metrics.  When you are creating the strategy for your company blog, one of the things you need to focus on is making sure that the metrics you track match the goal you have for the blog.  For example, if your company wants to use its blog as a tool to build awareness among current and potential customers, then one of the metrics you might track would be number of email subscribers.  You might also want to look at number of comments per post and also the number of email inquiries or Contact Form submissions.

But you need to make sure that you are tracking metrics that feed back into the goal you have for your blog.  Once you have settled in on the right metrics, then you can customize your blog and your blogging efforts so that these metrics are optimized.

For example, one of the metrics I measure at MackCollier.com is number of email subscribers.  Up until May 15, 2010, I was averaging a new email subscriber every three days.  In the 65 days since then, I have added an additional 87 email subs.  What changed to cause this spike?  I moved the email subscription form to the TOP of the blog, “above the fold.”  That simple change has netted me an 311% increase in email subscribers.  Not too shabby.

So when you look at your own blog, ask yourself two questions:

1. Are we tracking the right metrics? If you are looking to build engagement on your blog, then traffic might not be as important as number of comments.  Likewise, if you are looking to increase sales, then you would probably place more importance on referral traffic from the blog to the website, rather than number of new blog feed subscribers.

Think about what it is you want to accomplish with your blogging efforts, then track the metrics that feed into that goal.

2. Are we making it easy for visitors to perform the desired actions?  If you want visitors to subscribe via email to your blog, then is it best to place the subscription form at the TOP of the blog, or buried at the bottom of the second sidebar?

Think about what actions you want visitors to take on your blog, then find ways to encourage this action.  It could be something as simple as putting your calls to action in the proper place, as with the above example about email subscriptions.  Or maybe you need to figure out a strategy for increasing comments, if that’s a key metric you are tracking.

Track the right metrics for your blogging goals, then look for ways to increase the desired actions from your readers.

Every four years since 1930 (with the exception of 1942 and 1946), soccer teams have fought, kicked, run, defended, and left everything on the field in fierce matches in the world’s spotlight. This year, 32 teams battle in South Africa.

And for the first time ever, the World Cup is playing in the digital age. During the last World Cup, social media was barely kicking: Twitter hit the field on July 2006; Facebook wasn’t public until September 2006.

In 2010,  it’s a whole new World Cup.

The World Is Watching

From June 11 to July 11, hundreds of millions of soccer  fans around the world will be glued to their TV and computer screens to watch the FIFA World Cup. And unlike the last World Cup,  fans who couldn’t afford to jet to the hosting country are no longer limited to screaming, jeering, and cheering just in sports bars or their living rooms. Thanks to Twitter (@FIFAcom) and Facebook, fans can have their shouts and whistles heard around the world.

How important is social media to World Cup 2010? FIFA president Joseph S. Blatter (@seppblatter) says, “…  social media websites will play an important role in connecting everyone who cares about the game of football. I’m very excited to be sharing my own personal experience of the 2010 FIFA World Cup with football fans from all over the world.” And Twitter employee Robin Sloan says, “… The World Cup will eclipse everything we have seen so far on Twitter, including the U.S. election, the Oscars, or the Super Bowl simply because it is so international.”

He’s not exaggerating. Fans everywhere are putting on their country’s jerseys and cheering on their teams in the world’s  most anticipated sporting event at:

• Facebook’s official group for worldwide fans of World Cup 2010
• @fifacom on Twitter (official news from FIFA)
• their country’s soccer team Twitter feed
• tweetbeat

Get in the Game

With such a tremendous audience, consider taking advantage of the soccer love and fandom by putting a touch of soccer (or “football” if you speak English anywhere outside the United States)  on your business, tweets or blog posts. Ask yourself:

• Are there ways that your business can join in this worldwide event?
• Do  you have a product or idea to share with soccer enthusiasts around the world?
• Can you share about your country’s team on the corporate blog or Twitter account?
• Is there someone at your company who is a soccer enthusiast and can tweet, blog or share about World Cup 2010?

Today begins a month-long experience of breathing, eating, drinking, sleeping, and dreaming soccer for World Cup 2010 fans. Don’t be late to the game.

And feel free to leave a comment or just share who you’re rooting for. I’d love to hear from you!

If you work for a company, should you focus on personal branding or keep the corporate brand at the forefront?

LESSONS LEARNED THE HARD WAY

I worked for a small company where I was given the task of carrying out social media and other online marketing initiatives. I had already built something of a personal brand, thanks in part to my books and long-term engagement in both the blog and social media spheres.

While I maintained the brand’s Twitter and Facebook accounts, as well as blogged on the company website, in an attempt to leverage the social capital I had built, I made references to the company from my personal Twitter account and blog.

I also made repeated efforts to get other members of the company more engaged in social media, the rationale being that if several of us were tweeting, blogging, posting on Facebook, etc., over time it would help to strengthen the corporate brand within those circles.

However, I was never able to successfully get the company to make that transition. That’s not to fault the company mind you. It testified to the fact everyone already had a job to do—and tweeting wasn’t part of the job description. The end result was that my personal brand continued to rise, but at the expense of the company itself.

STRIKE A DELICATE BALANCE

Dan Schawbel, who one could argue knows more about personal branding that just about anybody, had this to say in a recent Bloomberg Businessweek post:

“If you’re an employee, start considering what brand you need to build and why. By focusing entirely on your personal brand, you become unemployable. No company wants a selfish worker who isn’t concerned with the business’s results. On the other hand, if you concentrate solely on your company’s brand, you make yourself vulnerable: If the company dies, you die with it.”

My motive was not to be selfish in nature, but the end result was that it made more sense for me to step away from the company and continue leveraging my personal brand rather than stay in the fold. And that’s what I did.

What Schawbel is suggesting is that a balance be struck, a balance that can often be delicate and tenuous. It takes diligent effort on both the part of the employee and company to make it work in a way that benefits both.

GUIDELINES FOR EMPLOYERS

I think the onus for ensuring that employees maintain a healthy balance lies with the company. Here are some guidelines companies should adhere to:

1. Have an employee social media engagement policy in place.  This is not merely to prevent employees from giving away proprietary information or saying something that would embarrass or misrepresent the brand. It’s also for the purpose of ensuring the personal brand does not override the corporate.

2. Don’t make social media engagement the job of one person. I’ve come to believe that social media is more a function and less a role. That means the burden gets shouldered by more than one person who carries a special designation as social media director.

That’s not to suggest you shouldn’t have someone serving that role. It is to recognize their job is more internal than external. Scott Monty, Ford Motor Company’s head of social media, will tell you his job is as much about serving as a catalyst for creating a more transparent, socially responsive organization as it is tweeting or blogging on Ford’s behalf.

To cite his blog, “[Scott] is a strategic advisor on all social media activities across the company, from blogger relations to marketing support, customer service to internal communications and more, as social media is being integrated into many facets of Ford business.”

3. Encourage employee participation within social media. For example,take  Microsoft, who has thousands of employees who blog, tweet, and engage in other forms of social networking on behalf of the company, often informally, but always with the company’s blessing.

4. Provide media channels that foster employee engagement.  Zappos has its own Twitter aggregation channel. Microsoft has sites that aggregate employee posts. Any number of companies have blogs where multiple employees post on a regular basis.

5. Tie the person together with the brand. Inside social media circles, people relate to other people better than to brands. In that case, follow Dell’s example and tie the person to the brand.

Most Daily Fix readers follow (or at least know of) Richard Binhammer, famously known as richardatdell on Twitter. To me, that’s a perfect way to keep the personal and corporate brand in check.

(I know I’m citing some of the most well-known examples, but don’t allow their popularity diminish the value of the principles being taught.)

GUIDELINES FOR EMPLOYEES

1. Respect the brand. Don’t use company time to promote your personal brand. Remember that you are receiving a paycheck. Work for it. If there are social media engagement guidelines in place, respect those as well.

2. Make every effort to promote the company. Whenever possible, make references to the company, it’s products and services, and do so in a manner that will reflect well on you and your company. I’m not suggesting you become a company shill. Be genuinely enthusiastic. If you love your work and the company you work for, that shouldn’t be difficult.

Remember the adage: If you don’t have anything good to say, then say nothing at all. It really comes down to a matter of plain common sense.

3. Encourage other employees to do the same. If you find yourself in the unenviable position of being the sole voice of the company within social media, start a campaign to get others involved.

4. Recognize when you get “too big for your britches.” Invariably, there will be those whose personal brand takes precedence over the corporate. In those cases, it may be best for that person to do what I did and move on. Perhaps a healthier tack is to recognize the person’s achievement, celebrate it, and use the person as a spokesperson or evangelist, not dissimilar to what Microsoft did with Robert Scoble.

There is a way to make this a win-win situation for both the employee and the company, but it takes patient effort, a genuine desire to evolve the cooperate culture to one characterized by transparency, and a willingness to experiment with different approaches in order to find one that works.

What do you think? Should corporations be open to employee’s building a personal brand? What advice would you give to a company, or to an employee? Can you cite some examples of companies you feel have done a good job in this respect? Feel free to weigh in with a comment.

I know we all whisper it, but it’s true.  B2B buyers are liars. They are.  There, I said it.

If you’re in B2B marketing and sales, you probably aren’t surprised by that statement, and you probably suspect it yourself.  But where’s the proof?  How and why do B2B buyers lie? And what are the implications for your demand generation programs?

The “lying” by B2B buyers is a nuanced reality.  It’s not something that buyers do out of spite; it’s something they do both intentionally and unintentionally to better manage the dynamics of their interactions with vendors—to gain control in the buyer/seller relationship.  But if we are going to anticipate and respond to this situation, we must better understand these nuances.

So here’s my take on the nature of the “lies” and how we can respond as marketers.

How and why do B2B buyers lie?

Here are some of the key points to understand about our interactions with B2B buyers:

Buyers are only willing to share a limited amount of information at the initial point of contact with your organization. In the beginning of cultivating the buyer/seller relationship, you don’t know the buyer, and (s)he doesn’t know you.  Yet we as marketers too often ask the buyer to tell his/her complete life story to download a white paper—even though that is the first point of contact you’ve ever had with that buyer.  There is something wrong with this approach.

The results of a recent study indicate that, at initial stages of contact, buyers only provide accurate and complete information on the most basic of information they’re asked to supply for things like white paper downloads.  Only name, email address, industry, company name and job title have high rates (i.e., greater than 50% of the time) of being “always” completed correctly.

What about those questions we use to further qualify potential leads?  According to the same study, technology buyers say they “always” provide accurate answers to custom questions only 29% of the time.  That means 71% of the time there’s some degree of lying going on.

Craig Rosenberg (a.k.a. the ‘Funnelholic) commented on this in a past post on his blog.  He explains it’s just too early in the process of getting to know a buyer to go so deep with qualifying questions:

It’s noble to try, but don’t use reg forms to do the job of your lead qualification or sales team.  You are scaring great prospects off, and are hurting conversion to little benefit.  Use your reg forms to confirm interest, target your market, and get their info.  Gather more data on your second date or your third when you’ve both invested some time.

This point of view is supported by other marketers that have tested the impact on quality and quantity of registration requirements for their own demand generation programs.  “[A] lot of people—more than 75%—DON’T sign up for papers requiring registration, which means the vendor is missing the opportunity to share and disseminate their knowledge,” comments Jay Hallberg, VP of Marketing for Spiceworks in a recent Q&A with the Savvy B2B Marketing blog folks.

So-called “BANT” information for buyers and their organizations increasingly must be discovered on an implicit basis, not asked for on an explicit basis: What does this mean?  BANT stands for budget, authority, needs and timing, and it is a basic set of criteria that nearly all B2B marketing and sales organizations use to assess potential buyers and their organizations.  Implicit data is behavioral data (i.e., the things buyers tell us through their actions).  Explicit data is self-reported data (i.e., the things buyers tell us directly, such as by filling out a form online).  And the issue I’m calling out?  It is simple:  Not only do buyers not want to share this information at first contact, but more than ever buyers often don’t really have accurate, explicit answers to BANT questions, so we have to figure out when/where they’re moving forward on an implicit basis.

Recent research by DemandGen Report found that the B2B buying process is less formalized than ever before.  “More than 8 in 10 respondents said the buying process did not follow a traditional path where a budget was established, criteria outlined and then an RFP distributed to a pre-set list of solution providers,” according to a post by Andrew Gaffney summarizing the report.

B2B buyer organizations are becoming more agile and making more decisions on a non-planned basis.  But this is bad news for our BANT criteria.  A lack of formal process means we can’t really get the information we need when we ask about that process.  So the best indicator of a buyer’s real intentions is his/her behavior (i.e., actually doing the things that indicate they are considering a purchase).  This means that BANT increasingly is something that must be gathered on an implicit basis, and it speaks to the importance of B2B marketers using behavioral factors to better score and route interactions with prospective buyers via marketing automation.

Your prospective, individual buyer is not the sole decision-maker at his/her organization. Even if answered truthfully and accurately, the responses of an individual buyer to questions posed via online forms only constitutes a portion of the buying picture.  Perhaps we can call this “unintentional” lying, but it is the skew that results from one contact inside an organization having his/her perspective on the situation—which may not be consistent with the perspective of the larger group that will approve the final purchase.

The fact is that B2B purchase decisions are not made by a single buyer most of the time.  Increasingly, a complex, savvy buying unit makes B2B purchase decisions inside organizations.  For purchases in the $25K to $99K range, nearly 2/3 of the time there are four or more buyers engaged in the decision, according to data in recent marketing report. For purchases in the $100K to $999K range, 92% of the time there are four or more buyers engaged in the decision.  And it goes up from there.

Buyers aren’t ready to talk to us when they are downloading a white paper, anyway. Any content marketing strategy requires understanding the B2B buying process and rationalizing content and engagement around this process.  Earlier on in the process — when a buyer is first becoming acclimated to, and wrapping his/her head around a problem, it’s more important to help educate and shape the direction of a buyer’s thinking  in a hands-off fashion than it is to capture his/her information yet.  Initial lead capture must be staged a step or two below the point of initial research and consideration.  Lead capture is the launching point for dialogue with a prospective buyer, but it requires having established a growing relationship and having credentialed your organization upstream.

Not only is this good practice, but this is increasingly how buyers expect to act.  The nature of the B2B buyer has changed in a Web 2.0 world, and buyers expect to be able to do more research on their own time and unhindered by proactive vendor interactions.  B2B buyers spend 79% of their time in what Robert Jolles calls the “Acknowledgment” phase in his classic text, Customer Centered Selling.  Acknowledgment phase is the phase where buyers are on the fence, thinking about a problem but not yet ready to act or to pursue a formal buying process.

Buyers need to go through a process of self-education before they move beyond the Acknowledgment phase and before they are ready to become a lead.  So attempts to glean information from them through forms, early on in this process will only lead to buyers providing incorrect information because they want you to leave them alone … until they’re ready to talk to your organization.

How can B2B marketers tune their demand generation programs to anticipate (and overcome) these buyer lies?

The good news is that there are several techniques that have emerged in recent times to help B2B marketers cope with this situation and to gain leverage in their interactions with potential buyers.

Three ideas you can embrace today:

> Require less up front; progressively profile and append data instead: Make your content targeted at the earliest stages of the buying process free.  Don’t require registration.  And when you have that first white paper that requires registration—because it represents the next step in the buying process—just get their email address.  You can continue to send nurture emails and invite prospects to Webinars and events where you can iteratively ask more information from the buyer as they continue their process.  This approach is known as progressive profiling.  You can also append information such as industry data after the fact, using resources from folks like Dunn & Bradstreet.  Such an approach is more appropriate to the rhythm of interaction with buyers in a Web 2.0 world, and it is more appropriate to the give and take that is part of real relationship building.

> Score based on a combination of demographic and behavioral data: Don’t explicitly ask buyers everything you want to know; instead, observe and infer.  If you have found that 49 out of 50 prospects that take X action, such as visiting a specific page on your website, have a high probability of wanting to buy from you, then use that information to increase the buyer’s lead score and have a sales person contact him/her.  A lot smoother than having a check box on your first reg page that says, “Would you like someone to contact you?”

> Combine marketing automation with human contact: Craig Roseberg called this out in his quote.  Don’t expect to learn everything about a prospective buyer through online or automated interactions.  Marketing automation should exist to help power your lead management and content marketing strategies and give you greater operating efficiency, but you still need a combination of smart processes, people and technology to be successful.   A piece of these strategies should include live contact via Webinars, field events, inside sales and field sales interactions.  Use these live points of contact as key steps in your progressive profiling—building this into what you know about your prospective buyer and informing the next steps in your interaction.  Again, technology can weave all of this online and offline insight together, but the buyer facing piece must be a combination of online content and offline interactions.

What do you think?

What are your experiences with buyers “lying,” and how has your company responded in its demand-generation programs?

Is this the best projection of market growth — i.e., is this ‘the number’ for 2010?  Beats me — I’m not a full-time industry analyst — but given this data, plus some other recent insights I’ve read, it seems as though 2010 is going to be a big year for marketing automation.

Then it occurred to me:  What do all of these B2B marketers (and some B2C marketers) actually mean by marketing automation?  Is their definition the same as mine?  What is it they think they are investing in — in droves — in 2010?

And I have had similar thoughts while reading recent blog posts by Jep Castelein (a.k.a., “The Lead Sloth”) and David Raab on where marketing automation is headed in 2010.  So I did some thinking about how we define marketing automation.

Strategic Marketing Automation

The problem with definitions is context.  I think many who look at marketing automation lean towards a definition rooted in how marketing automation improves the operational efficiency of a B2B marketing organization.  There is no question that this is a benefit — a significant one — and it often is the initial catalyst that gets a given marketing organization thinking about marketing automation.  In fact, it probably was the catalyst for the initial development of the entire marketing automation segment.  But as with any technology advance — for instance, CRM — having a holistic platform to tackle the operational obstacles changes things.  It opens up totally new capabilities that were perhaps not fully envisioned at the outset.  This is what is occurring with marketing automation … and at a key moment.

Operational efficiency is important, but it is not the greatest challenge B2B marketers are facing today. 

B2B marketers’ greatest challenge lies in responding to a rapidly-changing B2B buyer.  A Web 2.0 world has fundamentally changed the dynamics of buyer-vendor interaction.  B2B buyers not only have greater access to information than ever before, but increasingly, that information comes from industry peers and third parties, versus coming from their vendors or from traditional media outlets.  Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff wrote about this loss of control in their book, Groundswell, and they noted “[t]he groundswell has changed the balance of power.”  Buyers now move forward on their own terms, conducting much of their education on their own (and online) and connecting with a live sales team member later and later in the process.

So given this power shift, B2B marketers must more than ever work to wrap their marketing programs around the B2B buyer — managing dynamic, anticipatory, buyer-driven campaigns and programs and being in the right channel with the right information in the right voice at the right stage of the buying cycle.  It’s a posture that imitates how a live sales person might have engaged with a prospect in a consultative interaction in the past.  But now it’s being driven — out of necessity — by a B2B marketer.  I think of it as ‘mass one-to-one’ marketing or ‘bottoms-up’ marketing, and more than just enabling operational efficiencies, marketing automation is critical to executing against this type of marketing.  In fact, I believe you really can’t do mass one-to-one without some sort of underlying marketing automation platform.

“[C]ompanies have to engage differently with prospects,” commented Lumension SVP of Worldwide Marketing C. Edward Brice in a recent interview on the Savvy B2B Marketing blog.  “They have to stop focusing on the sales cycle and instead focus on the buying cycle. This ultimately means that companies need to understand prospects and customers to a greater extent, including how that individual wants to buy and what information they need at particular points in the buying cycle.”  Marketing automation thus also is critical to observing and understanding the buyer — keeping track of information consumed and using this to better understand and tune outreach — and to closing the loop.  This means having insight into buyers’ ‘implicit’ information-seeking behaviors and being able to link these behaviors to purchasing behavior.

This view of marketing automation — as the key infrastructure for driving buyer-centric, mass one-to-one marketing — is a different definition of B2B marketing automation.  This is what I view as the strategic definition versus the operational definition.  It recasts how we think about automation and its role in modern B2B marketing, and this is important because I believe it is this new role that is driving the rapid growth of the segment — the 70-75% (or whatever number) net growth I cited above.

An Expanded Agenda

Here’s the other impact of the strategic definition:  Once you are thinking about marketing automation in this strategic context, it then becomes clear why recent and upcoming developments in the marketing automation segment make sense.  And why it is natural that marketing automation will increasingly have an expanded agenda.

These developments are all about extending the platform’s ability to deliver buyer-centric, mass one-to-one marketing.  “It’s all about the buyer now,” explains Castelein I his 2010 round-up, above.  And so the natural evolution are features and capabilities that reach further upstream into a buyer’s decision-making process, strengthen our engagement in the middle of this process and reach further downstream into when that process naturally intersects with our sales organization.

This — in my mind — better helps to rationalize the current vector of marketing automation vendors better than any operational definition.

Feedback

How do you define marketing automation?  What are your thoughts on this strategic versus operational view?  And how do you believe B2B marketers will leverage marketing automation platforms and related technology to be more successful in engaging buyers (and in the process, getting their arms around the ‘brave new world’ of B2B marketing) in 2010? 

I’d love to get your feedback.

Using Web 2.0 for causes is smart marketing – excellent for awareness or building a specific brand. Heck, I saw this first on a CNN news report. Now, imagine if just 5% of the over 3.3 million YouTube viewers made a $10 donation to the hospital’s foundation after watching this Pink Glove dance? That’s almost $1.7 million! Not a bad ROI on the video production, wouldn’t you say?
Nonprofits, in general, are still exploring the possibilities that new online tools present. However, without ample resources, it’s a tough thing to do. So, next time you make a donation to your favorite cause, remember that it takes an investment in its infrastructure for them to do the job well. With stronger tools and resources, organizations can deliver on their missions more.

Do you agree? How much of YOUR gift should go to programs and services, and how much should be invested in the organization itself? Let’s hear.
Kudos to Providence St. Vincent? Medical Center and the video producers for creating this fun piece.