Between reading trade magazines and websites for my various clients and the PR industry, running my own business and having two active children, sitting down to read a good book is an opportunity that I seldom get.  I almost never buy a book off the shelves (or Amazon) without a recommendation from a friend or colleague.  So, I hope to pass recommended reading on to you as I get the chance.

I recently read, “The New Rules of Marketing & PR” by David Meerman Scott.  For those that haven’t heard of him, Scott is a forward-thinking expert in the world of social media.  If you are a marketing professional or have had marketing put on your long-list of responsibilities and are new to social media, this is an excellent book to read to get your feet wet.

If you have a good book that you have read lately, please comment below.  The next books sitting on my nightstand are:  “10-10-10” by Suzy Welch, “The Game” by Sarano Kelley and “Book Yourself Solid” by Michael Port.  Any thoughts which one I should choose?

Social Media Landscape by Ivan Walsh via flickr

In the early days (e.g. 2003 through 2007), social media was Missouri — in a “show me state”.  As Director of Marketing or CMO, your biggest challenge was not how to leverage social media – but rather, how to justify it to the CFO and CEO.  Return On Investment (ROI) metrics had not yet been established, so you had to “make it up” on the go – and then convince stakeholders that the metrics were valid.  In fact, you probably had to first educate stakeholders on what social media was and how it could benefit your company.

Here we are in 2009 and the world has shifted.  Social media and social networking sites are as much a household name as the “Big 3″ television networks were back in the 1960’s.  Today’s networks include YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.  The C-suite has read numerous accounts of social media driving real business value (ROI) – and they’re seeing the competition active in social networks.  So now the tables have turned – the CEO is now in pursuit of the CMO to ask questions like, “what is our social media strategy” and “why aren’t we doing more of it”?

Social media is an ever-changing landscape – and that’s a good thing, as it reflects the fluid and dynamic nature of the associated technologies and communities.  As a marketer, though, it means that you need to stay on your toes to best judge how to adapt to the changing landscape.  How quickly do things change?  Well, let’s consider the developments of the past few months:

Twitter Lists

To quote the Twitter blog, “The idea is to allow people to curate lists of Twitter accounts. For example, you could create a list of the funniest Twitter accounts of all time, athletes, local businesses, friends, or any compilation that makes sense.”  For me, the launch of Lists will create a fundamental shift in the use of Twitter.  First, it creates more value for users – in the early days of Twitter, the challenge for the new user was finding the right people to follow.  Now, you simply need to find the right list(s) and away you go – no more need to seek out individual Twitter users to follow.

This changes the dynamic of “following”, as Lists become the new “destination” – I may follow a list religiously, but not follow individual users who are members of that list.  So we’ll probably start to track “lists with the most followers” rather than “users with the most followers”.  As a marketer, your goals remain the same: provide interesting and valuable content to your Twitter followers.  By doing so, you may be added to other users’ Twitter Lists (a good thing) – and, you may want to create a List or two yourself, since future users may follow your list instead of your individual account.

Social Search

Google and bing recently shared some details behind their social search initiatives.  The basic concept here is that search engines will now index social networking activity (e.g. Twitter tweets, Facebook postings, etc.) and make that content available in search results.  This immediately elevates the value and impact of your social networking initiatives – to date, the content you post within a social network largely remains inside the “walls” of that network.  Now, that content becomes accessible across the entire web.

Expect more traffic to you (your Twitter account, corporate web site, etc.) and higher page rankings – if you do things right.  If you’re effectively tweeting today, keep up the good work and expect wonders from social search.  Now consider a second aspect of social search – inclusion of friend and peer content within search results.  If I search for a restaurant and Bob (a Facebook friend) recently posted some restaurant reviews on Facebook, then I may see Bob’s comments in the social search results.  Since I always trust a friend’s recommendation (for restaurants, movies, etc.) over anything else, social search will further empower the user, taking some influence away from marketers and publishers.

Consider a b-to-b purchasing decision – with social search, I may be more interested in what my former colleagues purchased compared to the latest product comparison guide on a web site.  For publishers and marketers, this shift requires you to become even more active in social networks, so that your message and brand retains (and maintains) “relevance” in social search.

Inter-Connectedness

It’s great to see that social networks are not being formed as isolated islands – on the contrary, it seems like every network is connected to every other.  Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) like Facebook Connect, OpenSocial and OAuth help forge these connections.  I was struck by this inter-connectedness the other day when I went to comment on a blog posting – I used Disqus to post my comment and associated the comment with my Twitter ID.  I allowed the use of my Twitter profile via OAuth – and my image was automatically pulled from my Twitter profile.

The benefit here is similar to social search, as a “multiplier of goodness” to your social networking initiatives.  Social search multiplies your ROI by creating a much wider audience to your social content – and inter-connectedness has a similar benefit, since it, too widens the distribution of your content.  For end users of social networks, of course, there also tremendous benefits – namely convenience and security (in the example with Disqus, I never once transmitted my Twitter password).

How does this relate to virtual events?  Consider inter-connectedness when registering users for an event – rather than prompting potential attendees with a blank registration page (that they need to fill out from scratch), consider inter-connecting with their membership in social networks, where they’ve already provided profile information.  A convenience provided to users will result in more users.

Mobile

In the days of Web 1.0, “presence indication” was all about my status on AOL or Yahoo Instant Messenger (e.g. online, away from my desk, etc.).  Today, “status” is still important (e.g. am I available?), but “presence” is not about whether I’m online or not – it’s now about the GPS coordinates of my location!  Services like Google Latitude and Foursquare provide social services that include physical location awareness of your friends (i.e. where they are right now – or, where they’ve recently visited).  Imagine the possibilities of a physical/virtual hybrid event – one can leverage these location-aware social networks to bridge attendees of the physical event with those participating virtually.  A virtual event attendee may visit a booth and see a presence indicator of a user visiting the physical booth – they can connect with one another and chat – and perhaps the physical booth visitor streams a live video (from her smartphone) to show to the virtual attendee.

Additionally, be aware that mobile-only social networks are forming (e.g. MocoSpace), which eliminates the corresponding web site – users interact solely on their mobile phones.  This makes sense, as more and more computing is spreading outward, away from the PC/laptop and over to smartphones.  A significant portion of social network usage these days comes from mobile devices (e.g. iPhone, BlackBerry, Android phones, etc.).  As a marketer, you’ll want to stay on top of mobile technology and start planning for how you extend your marketing messages to it.

Conclusion

The world of social media is both dynamic and exciting – there will be lots in store for the balance of 2009 and into 2010.  You’ll need to stay current and continually adjust your strategies and tactics.  Check back here periodically for updates from us on the changing landscape.  Good luck and have fun!

Tweet this on Twitter

Changing Social Media Landscape: How to incorporate into your #marketing and events by @InXpo: http://bit.ly/35Qg1W #eventprofs

The overuse of the word “solutions” in BtoB marketing and publicity, and the reliance upon it in headlines and text, has had its fair share of attention. I did some surveying on this several years ago and blogged about it. But here’s a new way to look at it. You never see a company begin their opening descriptor (on their home page, or in an ad) with:  “We make products.”

Rather, the company simply tells you what they make.  In a similar way, why begin with a focus on the word “solutions?”  Just say what you do, and your prospects will know it’s a solution if they have a problem that you have shown you can solve.

"Hey Everybody - We Make Solutions!!"

As I’ve often said,  hanging your hat on the word “solutions” (in a tag line, ad headline, etc) is about as ingenious as a food product manufacturer deciding that they will win over hearts and heads by proclaiming their product “tastes good.”  It’s expected…it’s a given.

And if it’s reaction and on-line conversation you’re looking for, proclaiming only what the marketplace expects won’t get it rolling.

Taux d’ouverture, taux de clic, taux de désabonnement, ce sont des informations cruciales pour vérifier si la campagne d’e-mailling est bien réalisée. Voici les indicateurs clés de la performance de l’e-mail marketing au premier semestre 2009 secteur par secteur, mesuré par Experian CheetahMail.

Malgré la crise économique mondiale, les indicateurs de performance de l’e-mail marketing restent stable au permier semestre 2009 par rapport au premier semestre 2008. Experian CheetahMail explique ces performances marquée par un accroissement des segmentations et des ciblages efficaces de la part des annoceurs, qui influe à la hausse sur les taux d’ouverture et de clic. A travers cette comparasion des performances de l’e-mail marketing au permiers semestre 2009/2008 sur tous secteurs d’activité confondus, nous pouvons constater que les indicateurs de 2009 sont en progression. Par contre, le taux de désabonnement est 0,33% contre 0.07% en 2008, un e-mail qui contient trop de publicités peut-être inciter le mécontentement des récepteurs.

Le secteur B toB entregistre une baisse des performances de ces e-maillings sur un an. Le taux d’ouverture du secteur a diminué, de 19,89% au premier semestre 2008 à 18,67% sur les six premiers mois de 2009. Le taux de réactivité perd deux points. En revanche, le taux de clics progresse très légèrement. A noter que le secteur se distingue par la baisse importante de ses NPAI(adresses invalides), passe de 15% au S1 2008 à 7,87% au S1 2009.

Le secteur banque-assurance connaît une hausse de ses performances en un an. Le taux d’ouverture du secteur passe de 31,97% au premier semestre 2008 à 39,43% au premier semestre 2009. Des performances liées à l’envoi d’un grand nombre de campagnes personnalisées durant le premier semestre 2009. Au contraire, le taux de NPAI connaît une forte diminution, passe de 13% à 8,46%.

*Source: http://www.journaldunet.com/

Today I had the pleasure of sitting in on the American Marketing Association’s Webinar titled, “B2B Marketing Goes Digital: Trends & Insights on Interactive Marketing.” The Webinar was in panel format and had three contributors: Lisa Arthur (CMO, Aprimo, Inc.), Megan Heuer (research director, SiriusDecisions) and Vida Tamoshunas (senior marketing strategist, SIGMA Marketing Group). I found the Webinar to be extremely informative, and I share some of the highlights below.

According to Heuer, online is the primary inquiry source among consumers with 55 percent in 2009 using it to learn more about a company. She also said that this statistic is expected to grow to 71 percent by 2014.

Interactive spending trends are forecasted to reach $65 billion by 2014. Although, I found a recent Forrester report that predicts this year’s interactive spending to only be $55 billion. Either way, this is a big deal for marketers because total 2009 interactive spending is expected to be around $25 billion. This means the interactive market could very well double in five years.

Lastly, the commentators were asked to discuss cutting edge marketing approaches that are currently realizing results in the digital marketplace. Tamoshunas said that many business to business companies are getting good results from integrating traditional channels with new media. She cited digital’s ability to track performance on the backend as the reason for these positive results. Heuer believes virtual events, such as Webinars, are currently profitable. And Arthur explained that Aprimo has seen a dramatic increase in their organic search engine optimization (SEO) due to the company’s blog.

These are some intriguing statistics and trends. I know our agency would agree with Arthur’s comment about improving organic SEO results by creating a company blog.

What has worked well this year for your company?

A new survey confirms that B-to-B marketers are increasingly using home-grown content to build relationships with customers and prospects, while use of traditional media declines. Companies are writing their own stories (and their customer’s stories), and most importantly, the survey shows that the marketplace highly values the content and uses it as much as information from industry publications. 88% of the respondents to the Kiing Fish Media survey are involved with B-to-B marketing, 56% of them do B-to-B solely.

Colleague Sally Falkow summarized key findings of the survey nicely on her blog:

* 86% of respondents’ companies are currently creating or plan to create original content for their customers and prospects in the coming year.
* 81% believe that brands and companies can create content that is as engaging and informative as content created by media companies.
* 74% feel that original content and media are most effective for generating marketing ROI.
* 70% are spending more today to reach customers and prospects directly with branded content than they did three years ago.

Download the complete survey at King Fish Media.

BIA/Kelsey released a report containing the information provided in the picture below. Marketing Reports analyzed the results, including current business to business trends and predictions of social media adoption rates moving forward.

Is business to business Social Media adoption approaching a tipping point?

COLLOQUY published a report earlier this year titled, “The Consumer Inside.” The report, made available on the American Marketing Association’s Web site, focuses on the importance of building brand loyalty among customers in the business-to-business market segment.

The author, Rick Ferguson, introduces the report by explaining the origins of the now infamous Rolodex. “This information allowed salespeople to fashion themselves as walking versions of the ultimate B2B value proposition: I both understand your critical business needs and know something about you as a person.”

He continues by declaring “it’s that latter part of the equation that’s still missing from most B2B marketing efforts. Particularly in the small-business market, loyalty-marketing efforts that focus solely on the hard-benefit side of the equation still predominate. What’s missing is the human element.”

So how do we as marketers develop CRM programs that focus on the latter? How do we help our customers prove that they know something about their customers?

Ferguson suggests that we start “by building a loyalty platform on a strong foundation of customer data—and leveraging that platform to identify, understand and influence the consumer behind the account number.”

Identify. Understand. Influence.

Identify:

Ferguson brings up a point we commonly experience in client strategy meetings. The importance of identifying key decision-makers, and how there is not an approach that will work the same for every business-to-business customer we are attempting to contact.

Ferguson offers three different techniques for identifying these decision-makers:

1. Give them some face time.

2. Launch a B2B loyalty program.

3. Use Web 2.0

Understand:

While it may seem commonsensical, business-to-business marketers must truly understand their audience before they can create messaging that appeals to their customer’s unmet desires in a vendor. According to Ferguson, “It’s the database, stupid.”

My enterprise software sales experience taught me to appreciate the value of customer information. And that value goes far beyond knowing their mailing address and job title!

But, how do we create a database that has the “right” information for a particular business-to-business segment?

Below are three keys to creating a quality database:

1. Treat you database as an asset.

2. Thou shalt not live on transactional data alone.

3. Become a data conduit.

Influence:

Now that you have identified decision-makers and created/improved your customer database, it’s time to influence your audience. Ferguson suggests that “behavior change typically manifests itself in one of three ways: you encourage them to buy more often (frequency), buy more stuff (value) and stay longer (retention).

Ways to enhance your influence:

1. Implement the Gemini Effect.

2. Leverage the power of the network.

3. Seek strategically-aligned partners.

Ferguson and COLLOQUY put forth a tremendous effort creating this resource. It really rang true for me because we are constantly looking for ways to improve our clients’ relationships with their customers. My previous enterprise sales experience may have created a bias, but I believe most business-to-business companies will need to focus the majority of their efforts on identifying and understanding their audiences. Being influential in a prospect’s life should be a natural progression after a company masters the first two steps.

I highly recommend that you read the full version of the COLLOQUY report, and that you share this with your business-to-business colleagues.

VirtualEvents365 sponsored the BtoB Netmarketing Breakfast in San Francisco on October 15th, and virtual events was one of the most sought after topics of discussion.

Marketing on a shoestring budget–and getting more out of limited marketing dollars–seemed like the universal theme of this BtoB breakfast. With speakers from Intel, McAfee, Sage and Sybase on the panel, it seemed that on-line video, earned media and virtual events were some of the technologies that have become very much mainstream within the marketing toolkit of these high profile marketers. Intel is for the first time substituting its 2010 Sales and Marketing Conference with a virtual event for many thousands of its employees. Many of the Intel’s new product launches are rolled out to press and analysts with virtual events (executed by CGS VirtualEvents365). Sybase started to experiment with virtual events and has seen some good traction around audience participation. What has made the offering even more attractive to these organizations is the capability to host the content for an extended period of time, driving additional opportunities for engagement. Sybase even went so far as to quote that ‘physical events are on their way out and are being replaced more and more by virtual events.’

Other reactions from the room indicated that many of the marketers are experimenting with the virtual platform technology, including a good discussion on how to generate appropriate traffic and audience generation for virtual events. As we often advice our clients, the same amount of effort and planning that goes into a physical event should be applied to a virtual event. Long term planning, integration with other marketing efforts and aggressive promotion of the event–showcasing the value attendees should expect to receive–will set the stage for a successful virtual event.

Later this week I’ll be moderating Silicon Valley American Marketing Association’s event on Social Media for B2B Lead Generation. The keynote speaker and panel are as well-informed a group on this topic as you’re likely to find: David Meerman Scott,  author of New Rules of Marketing and PR, Brian Halligan, CEO of HubSpot and author of Inbound Marketing, Mike Linton, former CMO at eBay and before that at Best Buy, and Zack Urlocker from MySQL (now Sun Microsystems).

What would you ask this group about using Social Media to drive a sales pipeline?  Here are some of the questions I’ll have for them:

1. How do you move from conversation to lead generation within social networking environments, and without angering the people you’ve engaged?
2. How does a company select the social media hubs that are most important to their business and their audiences?
3. What constitutes a “qualified lead” in the social media context?
4. How do you estimate the resources required to create a presence in social mediums?
5. What can B2B companies learn from BtoC practices?
6. What’s your advice for the change agents who are advocating greater investment in social media by their companies?
7. How should resource-strapped start-ups allocate the time and resources for social media?
8. What are the top three do’s and dont’s for using social media to feed a sales pipeline?

Your turn!  What would you ask?  I’ll post some of the answers to your questions here after the event.

Like Twitter, Facebook can also be used as a way to reach and connect with key audiences anywhere in the world. In fact, Facebook can be used in 70 different languages. Unlike Twitter, however, Facebook allows you to build what are called fan pages or groups. There are slight differences between a Facebook fan page and a group, but they both allow you to share news, pictures, videos, and more. Below are a few idea generators on how to use Facebook for BtoB.

Ways to use Facebook:

• Create a group and encourage team members to join so that they can be informed of the latest news or company events.
• Create a fan page and recommend that customers and employees follow along.
• Post pictures from the latest events, such as trade shows, speaking engagements, trade organization meetings, etc.
• Upload a video featuring a new product.
• Link your corporate blog to your fan page so that new posts will show in your feed.
• Link to press releases and other timely corporate information.
• Send a message to all of your fans or members to announce a product or ask for feedback.
• Start a conversation on the discussion board to really connect with your audience.
• Manage crisis situations by responding to customers in a direct, timely manner.

As you can see, there are several ways to leverage Facebook for BtoB marketing communications. And remember, you can also connect Facebook and Twitter so that your tweets will show up on your fan page or group. Another element of social media is LinkedIn, which will be covered in my next post.

I was perusing B2B Marketing Online’s Web site today when I stumbled upon a gem of a video discussing online video’s role in boosting SEO for business-to-business marketers.

The presentation focuses on video’s ability to improve SEO via universal search. Universal search essentially takes search terms (ex. Recording artist Michael Franti) and delivers an extensive list of results representing many types of media (Online articles, videos, PDFs, photos etc.)

Below is an example of the search results I received for Michael Franti. You will notice that my search produced photo, video, Web site and news results.

To learn more about using videos to boost your company’s SEO, click here to be redirected to the video.

I thought one of my first posts should define public relations.  This may be entry-level for many of you, but I still get that baffled look when I tell people what I do. 

First, what is PR?  There are many definitions.  PRSA (the Public Relations Society of America) uses the following definition:  “public relations helps an organization and its publics adapt mutually to each other.”  I often use:  “PR is the means by which your company becomes known and stays known among your target audiences” (source unknown).  Essentially, PR is getting noticed by your key influencers!

How is PR different from advertising?  Let me count the ways:

1. Cost – the only money involved with PR is the time involved.  There is a significant financial investment for creating ads and paying media outlets to deliver your messages.  Did you know a full-page color ad in BusinessWeek is $112,000.  Wow! 
2. Control – with ads, the company can control the message.  With PR, the media controls the message and the method and timing of the delivery – you never know what you’re going to get.
3. Repetition – ads can be run multiple times.  News stories typically run once (unless syndicated).
4. Credibility – consumers are skeptical of ads, but tend to take what they hear in the news at face value.
5. Attractiveness – ads need to appeal to prospects.  Publicity must have an angle or hook that grabs the editor’s attention. 

Now, that I’ve set the stage, on to bigger things in future blog posts.

Twitter. Facebook. LinkedIn. They are all tools in the ever-growing world of social media, but how do these internet-based services play out in BtoB? I’d like to take some time over the next few posts to demystify what they really do and share some helpful tips on how they can impact your business.

Twitter

Call it silly, but with 140 characters or less, you can accomplish great things. Think of Twitter as the invitation to the party. It’s a way to entice your audience to greater things, such as your website, blog, a video, a news release, and the list goes on. I often get this question from our clients, “I understand the importance of Twitter, but what do we tweet about?” Well, the short answer is: a lot of stuff! Below are a few examples to help get the social media juices flowing:

Ways to use Twitter

• Give a teaser to a big product or service that will be released.
• Link to a new brochure, video, blog post, presentation, etc.
• Find articles online that would be interesting and relevant to your audience.
• Announce the new executive that has joined the team.
• Link to an online survey, game or other interactive tool.
• Announce any upcoming trade shows or events.
• Share an interesting fact about your company or the industry.
• Retweet major news or interesting articles posted by related organizations, trade publications or leaders in the industry.

Use these ideas in addition to standard press release topics. In reality, Twitter is a social media tool, but it should also be seen as a source to spread your message. Don’t forget to tune in for the next post, which will cover Facebook!

BtoB Media Business hat auch in 2009 wieder zehn gelunge Beispiele für Medien-Websites zusammen gestellt. An dieser Zusammenstellung sind die aktuellen Trends und Debatten gut abzulesen.  In 2007 differenzierten sich die Websites vor allem noch durch Funktionalität und User Experience. In 2008 haben viele Websites Social Media und Community Tools eingeführt. In diesem Jahr ist es das Thema Paid Content, das in den Fokus rückt. Zwei der nominierten Seiten sind FT.com und WSJ.com – beide erfolgreich im Paid Content.

Die Auswahl ist in zehn Kategorien untergliedert. Es wird jeweils eine Website für jede Kategorie ausgewählt.

Tech: www.pcworld.com
Trade: www.americanlawyer.com
General Business: www.wsj.com
Paid Subscription: www.ft.com
Launch: http://cacm.acm.org
Relaunch: www.convergemag.com
Portal: www.growingproduce.com
Video / Multimedia: www.policeone.com
Web 2.0 / Non-IT: www.businessweek.com
Web 2.0 / IT: www.notebookreview.com

Quelle: BtoB Media Business, September 2009, Seiten 7 bis 11

Welcome!

I’d like to officially welcome you to my “B2B PR Buzz” blog.  As a marketing communications professional, I find myself writing blog posts for my clients, sharing information on a wide array of topics.  However, I do not get the chance to talk about my true area of expertise and that is public relations in the business-to-business world.  That’s where this blog comes in.  This is where I hope to share my experiences, past and present, working with companies to get noticed by their target audiences. 

B2B public relations is much different than marketing communications in the business-to-consumer market.  I hope that this blog will provide a community for my fellow marketing colleagues that also specialize in B2B to share ideas, tools and post questions. 

Additionally, I have a passion for helping small businesses grow and young women succeed.  Active in the Greater Philadelphia Chapter of the National Association of Women Business Owners, I also hope to provide tools and advice for business owners. 

I look forward to this new adventure and hope that you will find the information in the coming blog posts valuable and worth reading.

Best regards,

Karen Higgins

Perspective Paper content doesn’t need to be lengthy to be effective (i.e. don’t need long videos, 20-page white papers) just because it’s B-to-B and may involve a complex problem, technology or value proposition.  It just needs to have well-articulated ideas that provoke dialogue.

Here’s some good examples of opportunity-oriented content made readily available on company websites, and via search. Two are from IT/business systems leaders.  The third is from the human resource / training services industry, a sector where you’ll find a large quantity of high-quality content.

Colloboration: The Next Revolution in Productivity and Innovation (6 pages)

• Cisco, building on their aggressive “momentum brand,” has been acknowledged many times during the last decade for thought leadership based on articulating over-the-horizon concepts.

Quantifying the Value of Your Information Center by Rewarding Your Customers

• Dialog (part of ProQuest) provides online-based information services to business, science, engineering, finance and the law industries…giving users the ability to precisely retrieve data from more than a billion and a half unique records.  Dialog’s Libby Trudell (VP Market Development) says that the company plans to increase their information flow from contributed articles.

Generations: Harnessing the Potential of the Multigenerational Workforce

• From training specialist Vision Point, one of many Perspective Papers offered on a variety of topics.

Franchises, hospitals, healthcare organizations, service or consumer companies, at some point you may have a crisis for the business to deal with. Some crises are harder to manage than others, and some organizations are better prepared to deal with a crisis as it arises. For all companies, knowing your plan of attack in advance is important.

When I started my career, my first job was managing media relations for a large hospital. My boss had an orange laminated poster that said “MEDIA HERE.” That was our crisis communications plan – hook, line and sinker.

My, my, my how things have changed.

A recent Wall Street Journal article, “Entrepreneurs ‘Tweet’ Their Way Through Crises”, highlights the benefits of online communications, specifically for a crisis. From beverage companies to laundry delivery services, the article highlights communication issues that were managed effectively because of the use of online media, which enabled quick and immediate communication with their key audiences. What could have been a debacle for small businesses, ended up generating the two most important ROI measurements – good will and continued sales.

The key to their success started long before the crises. It started because the companies were already involved in an online conversation.

To quote the article:

“Entrepreneurs should bear in mind that Twitter is unlikely to be of help in dealing with a problem if it isn’t used regularly otherwise, says Shel Israel, …’If you just go to Twitter when you have a crisis, you will have no followers and no credibility’, he says. ‘The key to using Twitter effectively is to build trust with people who are relevant to your business’.”

Regardless of the type of crisis you may need to handle, get online now so you can build your communities, which will be necessary when you need to communicate the good and the bad.

If your crisis communications plan does not include a social media component, it needs to. Here are some things to consider while tweaking your plan:

1. Do your online communication networks already exist? If not, what is the plan to get them in place?
2. Do you know how to find your key audience segments? For example, if you are a community based-hospital, you don’t need to broadcast your information to everyone in the community, just to the appropriate new aggregates in your community.
3. Do your employees know how to find you online? Do you have online portals dedicated to communicating with your employees?
4. Do your customers know how to find you online, somewhere besides your Web site or e-commerce platform?
5. Do you have your online spokesperson identified? Who is in charge of disseminating online communication?

What type of online vehicles are you using to help manage crisis communications programs? Tell us about them!

Josh Catone from Mashable recently wrote a blog post titled, “Top 5 Business Blogging Mistakes and How to Avoid Them.” Weise has a number of clients currently considering entering the blogosphere, so we thought we would repost Catone’s how-to guide and provide some of our own advice and experiences.

Business Blogging Blunders:

#1 Treating Your Blog Like a Press Center

Long story short of this section, don’t use your company blog to toot your own horn. This doesn’t mean you can’t mention a recent newsworthy event, usually reserved for the traditional press release, just make sure you add a personal touch to the post. Express how excited you are for a new company program or a new partnership.

One of the “ground rules” Weise established prior to launching The Side Note, was to avoid promoting the agency. We prefer to be contacted directly by readers who find our content interesting, rather than constantly using a push-messaging strategy about how great an advertising agency we are. If readers like your content, they’ll find you. (Having a link to your Web site on your blog doesn’t hurt, though.)

#2 Not Blogging Regularly

Now that you have started blogging, don’t lose steam! There is no benefit to gaining loyal readers and then not posting for a week, two weeks, etc. Catone’s point in this section is to commit to posting on a regular schedule.

“If you plan to put out new posts every Tuesday and Friday, for example, try not to start writing Tuesday’s post on Tuesday morning.” I agree completely with this suggestion.

#3 Not Enabling Conversation

This is one of the easiest mistakes to avoid! Enable commenting on your blog, reply to comments in a timely manner, and comment on industry blogs. Do these things to retain your readers and attract new readers to your business blog.

#4 Making New Content Hard to Discover

Josh offers four suggestions to make it easier for readers to discover new content on your blog.

1. Include your blog’s link in you email signature, business cards and collateral.
2. Make your “subscribe to RSS” feed easy to find.
3. Use Twitter and Facebook to inform your followers/fans of new content. (Both allow you to automate this process!)
4. Integrate into your blog posts and titles relevant key words that your audience would search for.

#5 Expecting Too Much, Too Soon

Cantone says it best, “Blogging isn’t a sprint, it’s a marathon. Your blog won’t be an overnight success, and for the first few months it might feel like you’re writing for no one. It can take time to build up your readership and have a regular community of people who participate on your blog. Don’t expect immediate returns from your blog and do expect to put in a lot of hard work.”

Good luck bloggers!

Welcome. This blog is a forum for ideas that will accelerate social media conversations within your B-to-B marketplace.

Your current customers are most likely talking about your products or services, and some may be sharing their views on-line.  But what about your prospects, or others that you don’t know?  One of the better ways to get your marketplace talking about your company via social media is to address industry concerns and articulate opportunities related to your product/service benefits.  Educate the audience and give them something provocative to talk about, by disseminating valuable content through on-line channels.

“Provocative” does not mean ad copy or “adspeak” pretending to be a news release.  It means candid dialogue about industry issues and opportunities, including previews of new or upcoming technology. It’s done through blogs, YouTube videos (with visualized ideas, and key influencers speaking on-camera), wiki sponsorship, perspective papers, and E-books that are offered on-line.

Greater awareness through a thought leadership role is the objective.  Once you start the ball rolling, user conversations provide additional content that gives prospects more places on-line to see your company’s name and the ideas that you interact with.

Take the IT industry, for instance.  A recent TechTarget 2009 Media Consumption Report  (titled “Mind of the IT Professional During the Recession”) was based on over 1400 responses, and it substantiated the value of in-depth content. When IT professionals were asked to name the on-line content types that they have utilized to evaluate new technology information in the past three months, the most frequent answer was White Papers (66%).  Second was trial software.

Brian Carroll, author of the B2B Lead Generation Blog, says: “The best kind of demand generation content is anything that sets you up as a thought leader or industry expert.  At its core, thought leadership is about sharing content that’s relevant and valuable to potential customers even if they never buy from you. Give them what they need to make decisions about you and their future, and you’ll reap the benefits in the future.”

This blog will explore full case studies, anecdotal information (with and without metrics),  as well as trends within various industries, all related to the role of objective content in building a brand.

I welcome your contributions, input and feedback.

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