Musings

Reflections on life lived by a coast

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But Where’s the Conversation?

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The hype around social media as con­ver­sa­tion has become deaf­en­ing.

Much of the hyper­bole comes from agen­cies and con­sul­tants who have seized upon social media as the next wave; their moti­va­tion is self-serv­ing, of course. Pro­mot­ing their cre­den­tials as social media experts enables them [Read more…]

Social Media Goes Mainstream

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You know that fads have become main­stream when every­body is doing it. Or when it starts to be required as a part of peo­ple’s jobs. Or when every­body is talk­ing about it.

This week­end I encoun­tered two instances of the “main­stream­ing” of social media for B2B busi­ness pur­poses.

Thou Shalt Blog or Twitter

One of my friends told me over din­ner that she has to start blog­ging and/or tweet­ing. Her com­pany has begun to man­date that peo­ple in mar­ket­ing func­tions (like hers) demon­strate their pro­fi­ciency in dig­i­tal media and social media. We did­n’t get into the details of the spe­cific require­ments but it became clear that hands-on expe­ri­ence will be expected of her. [Read more…]

Marketing 2.0: How To

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Finally there’s a prac­ti­cal resource for peo­ple who want the best of both worlds: what’s worth keep­ing from tra­di­tional mar­ket­ing, com­bined with the ben­e­fits of the emerg­ing Mar­ket­ing 2.0 toolkit. Thanks to IBM’s Sandy Carter, there’s now a great resource for B2B mar­ket­ing strate­gists and prac­ti­tion­ers, The New Lan­guage of Mar­ket­ing 2.0. I def­i­nitely rec­om­mend it.

[Read more…]

Social Media Marketing, Enterprise Style

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After wrestling with taxes and Sched­ule C arcana, it’s a relief to blog. (I’m sure the IRS would pre­fer my cre­ative ener­gies go else­where…!)

While work­ing with a client on ini­tial strate­gies for social media mar­ket­ing, I keep being reminded of how much murkier the B2B social media land­scape is. Almost all the pun­dits you talk to have cut their teeth in the con­sumer mar­ket­place, and all their exam­ples focus on mega brands like the iPhone or Nike. Things just aren’t the same in the enter­prise soft­ware mar­ket­place.

In my client’s case the con­ver­sa­tional vol­ume is quite low: in a 30-day period there are just hun­dreds of men­tions of their prod­uct cat­e­gory across the blo­gos­phere, and even fewer of their cor­po­rate brand. And only dozens of men­tions of their cor­po­rate brand in con­junc­tion with the prod­uct cat­e­gory. Need­less to say, they need more buzz…

[Read more…]

Should the Medium Be the Message?

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Some of my B2B clients are start­ing to encour­age blog­ging by their employ­ees. Cor­po­rate guide­lines, such as do’s and don’ts, are amply pro­vided.

Iron­i­cally, cor­po­rate blog­ging guide­lines are often pro­vided via Word doc­u­ments, instead of an inter­nal blog that might be bet­ter at encour­ag­ing dis­cus­sion or address­ing employ­ees’ ques­tions. It seems to me that these guide­lines would be more cred­i­ble if deliv­ered as a series of blog posts. Espe­cially when the com­pany is revers­ing ear­lier “thou shalt not…” poli­cies.

It would also be a great way for more expe­ri­enced employ­ees to share their tips and tricks with co-work­ers.

Is B2B Marketing Obsolete?

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As com­pa­nies bleed rev­enues, prof­its and jobs, it’s ironic that peo­ple are debat­ing the death of B2B mar­ket­ing or its obso­les­cence. And yet I’ve been in sev­eral con­ver­sa­tions over the past week on this topic.

I think a bet­ter fram­ing for the con­ver­sa­tion, rather than death or obso­les­cence, is B2B marketing’s strate­gic rel­e­vance and value con­tri­bu­tion to the cor­po­ra­tion and the mar­ket­place.

I believe that B2B mar­keters need to rede­fine their roles and fig­ure out how to con­tribute more directly to rev­enue growth, mar­ket share gains, bet­ter mar­gins – while solv­ing mean­ing­ful cus­tomer prob­lems and nur­tur­ing 2‑way cus­tomer rela­tion­ships.

[Read more…]

Conflicts Looming? Personal Brands versus Corporate

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If you’ve read the Clue­train Man­i­festo, you know that blog­ging orig­i­nated from people’s burn­ing desire to let their authen­tic voice be heard. Early blog­gers were react­ing against the watered-down, polit­i­cally cor­rect mes­sages they were read­ing in the pub­lic media or writ­ing for their employ­ers.

I’m now start­ing to run into clients who want their employ­ees to be more proac­tively engaged in the blo­gos­phere – active par­tic­i­pants in the inter­ac­tions between the com­pany and its part­ners, or the com­pany and its cus­tomers. It’s a praise­wor­thy goal on the part of these com­pa­nies. It’s chal­leng­ing them to think quite dif­fer­ently about inbound and out­bound com­mu­ni­ca­tions, to revisit cor­po­rate poli­cies, etc., etc.

[Read more…]