Buzz Marketing for Technology: June 2007

Creating a Private Community, a podcast with Diane Hessan of Communispace

“Listening is a really underrated marketing strategy” said Diane Hessan of Communispace during our podcast.

As you have told me by your responses to my content – communities are very important to you. Or perhaps you are thinking about implementing one or doing your own investigation of communities.

Well then you need to check out Communispace, a full service solution.. They build and run private online customer communities, one of the fastest growing marketing strategies for engaging with customers.

Click here to listen to the MP3 Version

About Diane

Diane Hessan is President and CEO of Communispace, "one of the fastest growing marketing and technology companies in the country, with a Blue Chip client list that would make a Madison Avenue giant jealous," according to Advertising Age. A pioneer in creating online communities to help marketers deeply engage customers, Diane helped found Communispace in 1999 and hasn’t looked back.

Labels: Communities, User Generated Content, Web 2.0

Using RSS and Wikis for Enterprise Collaboration

Eastern Mountain Sports is using Web 2.0 tools to encourage collaboration internally by rooting it within their business intelligence (BI) analytics dashboards. They use the RSS feeds to report on exceptions and alert users when certain operational metrics are out of tolerance range.

By integrating Web 2.0 tools with their BI tools, decision makers can quickly access a unified, high-level view of key performance indicators (KPIs) such as sales, inventory, and margin levels, and drill down to granular detail that analyzes specific transactions.

The company also plans to create a wiki that will let the internal user community test and refine hypotheses. In particular, they want their associates to share tips and best practices and initiate dialogues. If certain items sell better than others, the associates should be able to analyze the transaction characteristics and selling behaviors that produce the results, and then use the collaborative tools to extend that insight throughout the organization.

So where is the Buzz? Web 2.0 tools are popping up in a variety of places, and this an excellent example of how they're being used within the enterprise to speed the right information to the right parties. As marketers we are looking to build communities using tools just like this, so let's not forget our own internal communities (like the sales team, hello). As you know, the quickest path to new revenue is very often through your existing customers.

Labels: Enterprise 2.0, RSS, Web 2.0, Wiki

New Study on Social Media, a podcast with George Krautzel from ITtoolbox

The most informed buyer is one who can access the experienced-based knowledge of his or her peers. That’s the message of my podcast with George Krautzel, co-founder and president of ITtoolbox. George and his team have just released a new survey on the adoption of social media in cooperation with PJA Advertising and Marketing.

Some of the results might surprise you:

- IT decision makers spend on average 3.5 hours per week consuming or participating in social media.
- IT decision makers reference vendor websites more than user-generated content for making purchasing decisions, but trust user-generated content more than either vendor websites or editorial publications.

This is fantastic news. To hear more just listen to our podcast…

Click here for a MP3 version of the podcast

About George

As co-founder and president of ITtoolbox, George Krautzel guides the company's execution, overseeing daily operations, directing companywide implementations, and ensuring long-term business growth. Under his leadership, ITtoolbox has continually advanced its network services to meet the needs of both its expanding user base and its impressive list of advertising and staffing partners.

George directed the implementation of proprietary utilities such as a contextual matching engine and keyword ad targeting to help advertising partners realize the benefits of the significant volume of community-generated IT content at ITtoolbox. Prior to his experience with ITtoolbox, he held various roles at Accenture and co-founded an IT consulting company. He received a Bachelor of Science in Finance from Villanova University.

Copy of the Survey

Whitepaper on the benefits of advertising in social media

Labels: social media

A Couple of Hot Links from Business Week

Labels: Online Advertising, social media

My Top 10 posts, as voted by you!

Well, open the champagne, this is my 100th post! It has been my pleasure to bring you some really great content over the past year, so I thought I would share what your fellow readers think has been the very best.

What better way to do that but with a David Letterman Top 10 list? So here goes …

#10 – Marketing in a Wikinomics World, a podcast with Don Tapscott

#9 – What's Working in Lead Generation?

#8 – Calculating ROI on Web 2.0 tools

#7 – 150-Person Work Teams Are Dead

#6 – How to Start a B2B Community

# 5 – Want more sales? Give sales something to talk about. A podcast with Lois Kelly of Foghound

#4 – A Podcast with Robert Scoble on Communities, Social Media, Twitter and More

#3 – Exclusive Interview: Malcolm Gladwell discusses Web 2.0

#2 – Harnessing User-Generated Content for B2B Marketing

and the #1 all time favorite posting over the last year as voted by you is …

# 1 – 5 Rules of Social Media Optimization (SMO)

Because this was your favorite, I conducted a podcast interview with Rohit Bhargava. He is the first person I know to have written about this space. Stay tuned!

Labels: Communities, Lead Generation, social media, User Generated Content, Web 2.0, Wiki

Clayton Christensen said the iPhone will not succeed

This was one of the most shocking and provocative statements I heard at last weeks World Innovation Forum by HSM.

I think I might have even gasped when I heard him say that, but he wasn’t saying it just to be provocative. What he meant was that it could be successful as a product but the problem is there were plenty of existing competitors at the high end of the market that will not be welcoming to the innovation.

Why? It threatens their competitive space. Nokia, Samsung, LG and SonyEricsson have a lot to lose. You better believe that each of them have a skunk group dedicated to preparing a response to the iPhone. And since the iPhone is a high-end, high-cost product it leaves rivals an opportunity to create a more affordable version that’s almost as good.

So where’s the buzz? His theory is something that makes an incredible amount of sense but is often impossible for market leaders to do because they can’t fathom the idea of investing in a product that would be disruptive to their current product line.

Don't miss my podcast with Clayton Christensen

Also check out Drew Neisser’s Marketing for Good’s blog who covered Renee Mauborgne, author of Blue Ocean Strategy presentation and his coverage of Whirlpool’s presentation on Innovation aptly called Whirlpool the Innovator?

Labels: Innovation

Exclusive Interview with Clayton Christensen on Innovation

The opening speaker last week at the World Innovation Forum was Clayton Christensen, a Harvard Business School professor in Strategy and Innovation. In his speech Clayton discussed the principles of his two books: The Innovator's Dilemma and The Innovator's Solution.

When you listen to Clayton speak about the dynamics of a strategic market such as steel, and how the mini-mills disrupted the big steel mills, it’s a lesson that is one part history and one part common sense. Of course the mini-mills entered and disrupted the low end of the market, and of course the big mills were happy to get out of the low end because it was not as profitable a business. From there the mini-mills march up market until they totally disrupt the big mills at the high end!

Well folks, you see the same thing happening in technology. The mini-mills this time are the offshore firms that are pushing onshore with strategy work. So I couldn’t help but ask Clayton how this is playing out. What you will hear makes perfect sense, but listen closely. There are lessons in there for all of us.

Click hear to listen to the MP3 version

About Clayton

Clayton M. Christensen is the Robert and Jane Cizik Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, with a joint appointment in the Technology & Operations Management and General Management faculty groups. His research and teaching interests center on the management issues related to the development and commercialization of technological and business model innovation. Specific areas of focus include developing organizational capabilities and finding new markets for new technologies.

Labels: Innovation

Malcolm Gladwell on Innovation

Last week (after I recorded a podcast with Malcolm) I got to hear him address an audience of ~500 people at the World Innovation Forum. This speech was not his usual The Tipping Point or Blink related speech. This was new material!

The essence of this speech was on Innovation (of course) but specifically innovators when they peaked.

Seems as if he mapped innovators like Picasso and Cezanne. And the results were remarkable. Picasso hit his peak in his 20s and never peaked again. Cezanne hit his peak much later in life - taking his time with his craft and finely honing it over years and years.

He also drew parallels to musicians such as The Grateful Dead and Fleetwood Mac. Fleetwood Mac actually had 16 albums before they had a smash hit with Rumors which was 10 years into their existence as well as several band members flowing in and out of the band before they found the right mix -- they we're Cezanne-ian when it comes to innovation!

The sad fact is that the music industry no longer gives bands this kind of time to mature. These days if you don't have a hit record the first time out - you are cut from the label.

This can also be broadly applied to our society when it comes to the business world. Case in point, if you don't have a business plan with a solid ROI these days (Picasso) you won't get funded. Gone are the days of getting funding (internally) for a business plan that might create the next big thing somewhere down the road. Which means sadly we may see less Cezannes, Fleetwood Macs and Grateful Deads in our future!

Labels: Innovation

Exclusive Interview: Malcolm Gladwell discusses Web 2.0

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending the World Innovation Forum by the HSM Group. Participants at the World Innovation Forum came away with new understanding of how businesses can pivot and become more innovative as well as plenty of insights about what the future holds.

As a blogger, and member of the virtual media, I was delighted to hear that I was welcome to interview 2 of the guest (my top 2 picks) Malcolm Gladwell and Clayton Christensen.

What follows is a very raw and unpolished podcast, because that’s the way it happened. You are getting the full experience I had at sitting down with the man himself. I hope you come away inspired by Malcolm’s view of Web 2.0 and his heartfelt feeling on how the blogosphere can act as a self regulating body.

Link to the MP3 version of the podcast

About Malcolm

Malcolm is a writer for the New Yorker magazine, and the author of two books, "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Make a Big Difference" and "Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking." He was born in England, and raised in southwestern Ontario in Canada. Now he lives in New York City.

Malcolm’s great claim to fame is that I'm from the town where they invented the BlackBerry. His family also believes (with some justification) that we are distantly related to Colin Powell. He invites you to look closely at his photograph and draw your own conclusions.

Dont miss my podcast with Clayton Christensen later this week!

Labels: Blogging, social media, Web 2.0

Want more sales? Give sales something to talk about. A podcast with Lois Kelly of Foghound

Go to Portland, Oregon, and you'll find everyone there talking about Voodoo Doughnut. They talk about the caffeinated doughnut. The chocolate-glazed chocolate doughnut rolled in Cocoa Puffs cereal. Or the voodoo-doll-shaped doughnut that bleeds raspberry filling when impaled with a pretzel pin.

Then there's Innocent. The UK company launched a campaign called "Supergran," in which English grannies knit little woolly hats for its seasonal winter smoothies (so the bottles don't catch a cold).

I'm not talking a couple of grannies, either. Because of the demand for the hats (and the smoothies), Innocent lined up enough grannies to knit 230,000 of them in 2006. Even better, it donated a portion of sales revenues, 50 pence per hat-wearing smoothie, £115,000 ($225,000) total, to Age Concern, a charity dedicated to keeping older people warm in the winter.

And you never thought a bottle of juice could be a conversation piece.

The point is that people talk about the exceptions or the unexpected. In B2B technology, either services or products, it's a little hard to wrap your technologists in woolly hats or roll them in Cocoa Puffs. So we asked the expert, Lois Kelly, for her opinion on how to give your sales team more tools to create conversations. So for some tips, check out our podcast …

About Lois

Lois Kelly is the founder of Foghound, a communications consulting firm that helps companies more easily talk about their business or products in interesting ways. Clients have included Sun Microsystems, FedEx, and others. Previously, Lois was senior vice president of The Weber Group, one of the largest PR firms in the world. Her articles have appeared in USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, Brand Week, Advertising Age and other publications. Don't miss Lois's new book: Beyond Buzz: The Next Generation of Word of Mouth Marketing

Labels: Conversational Marketing, Online Advertising, Web 2.0

Harnessing User-Generated Content for B2B Marketing

I am seeing the use of user-generated content pop up more and more in B2B.

One interesting example is events that are completely user driven. No PowerPoint, just networking and collaboration at its finest.

Good stuff, but still just an offline conversation. How do you keep the conversation going online?

To find that out, here are a few questions you should be asking yourself. Where are my customers going when they hit the Web? What are they doing? What are they reading?

It's a much different approach from the "let's start a blog and they will all flock to us" mentality.

Adopting this new mindset is undoubtedly the hardest part. Companies are quite accustomed to being one-way publishers of information, particularly online. As David Lidsky of Fast Company calls it "Imposing distribution onto consumers."

To make the best use of user-generated content, B2B marketers have to start thinking more like publishers and less like marketers. Thinking like a publisher means paying close attention to what the audience needs, what kinds of content best meets that need and how frequently to deliver it.

So where is the Buzz? Smart buzz marketers remember that the Internet is a communications medium first and a distribution channel second. Like with any good marketing plan, you have to first figure out what the need is, and then go and market it. That's why they call it market-ing. Everything else is just advertising!

Don't miss the User-Generated Content track at the Henry Stewart conference this week in New York featuring Richard Kosinski of Yahoo! and Jim Nail of Cymfony.

Labels: social media, User Generated Content, Web 2.0