Beyond

Marketers' Misconceptions Part 1 - "69% of Marketers Struggle to See Prospective Buyers as Individuals"

2010-03-11T16:09:13Z

This is the first in a short series of blogs based on research conducted by IDG Connect - and made available exclusively through Base One - into a fascinating area: the discrepancy between how marketers and prospective buyers view email communications. The findings, published this January, examine different perceptions of the drivers for engagement, intensity and open rates. Part one addresses the difficulties of B2B communication...

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The growing use of Facebook, Twitter and the iPhone is blurring the lines between corporate and consumer communications. Now it is more vital than ever to address real people... rather than job titles. However, one of the key findings of the IDG research is that, while prospective buyers place a lot of emphasis on information they need personally, marketers still struggle to see them as individuals.

The question was asked: "What motivates prospective buyers to agree to receive additional emails on products or service?" marketers and prospective buyers agreed on the first two primary motivators. These were: 'information which helps with my / their job' and anything which supplies 'fresh insight and ideas'.

But on the third motivator opinions became divided. Marketers believed this to be 'whether or not the prospect owns the product or service' (75%); while prospective buyers (62%) placed weight on: 'an area I want to learn about'. Emphasis on the personal 'I' is very revealing, especially when you consider barely a third (31%) of marketers believed this motivator to be of prime importance.

The inference is plain: prospective buyers are positioning themselves as individuals. Of course they are interested in information for the purposes of their job. But their perspective is still ultimately that of John or Sarah, Mike or Jane. They are responding as people - not job titles. They want information that will help them personally and (the evidence suggests) they want to be entertained along the way.

What do you think? We will be back next Thursday with Part 2 of Marketers' Misconceptions - when we will look at the biggest mistakes email marketers make while communicating with prospects.

Click that RSS button so you don't miss out...

Reference: the nice people at IDG asked me to point out that this research was compiled from interviews with 100+ marketers and 100+ prospective buyers who use product/service promotional and educational email as part of organisational purchase decisions.

Beyond the Job Role

2010-02-23T12:08:39Z

Recently I heard that BBC journalists have been told to use Social Media or "go and do something else" and hearing the criticism Peter Horrocks has received as a result, I began to ask how this approach might work if adopted at a B2B sales level.

We know that social media can be a vital tool in search marketing with forums, message boards and social networks providing a great platform for brand evangelists, link builders and advertisers to encourage customers to buy their service or product.

The BBC seems to be approaching online social interaction from two sides. One being to collate information about breaking news, the other is in the actual syndication process, leveraging journalists' personal followings as well as BBC followers to maximise the audience.

Taking this approach into a B2B environment could be a proposition fraught with resistance from employees not familiar with the various social mediums, along with those that will not buy-in to the benefits. I believe Peter Horrocks - BBC World Service director was of the same opinion, hence the "shape-up or ship-out"-esque statement.

As a member of the search marketing team at Base One Group, I am a part of what I consider a utopian marketing environment where everybody is pro-active in promoting the brand.

Imagine if you will, the experts within your company spending time building up a presence on the net, monitoring industry news and trends, then providing commentary and opinion utilising the various social networks on offer. Imagine producing a company whitepaper or blog post that can be shared, tweeted and syndicated to a captive audience through not only your company channels but also your staff's channels. Imagine each customer facing department regularly producing posts for a company blog, engaging in forums and message boards all carrying links back to your company website.

The end result, your company becomes known in the industry, you're the company that other companies and competitors want to be, but above all else, when your audience require your product or service who are they going to call? Your competitors? Why would they bother, your company and your staff are now people they know and trust.

The stumbling block is where employee resistance is met. Is it possible or ethical to push them out of their comfort zones and into the spotlight in order to further company achievement?

Have you encouraged your staff to "Chip in" with your marketing efforts? If so what was their response like?

B2B social media case study #2: blogging for non-bloggers

2010-02-10T10:44:27Z

Opinion seems to be divided on blogging. Some marketers see it as a fading influence, yesterday's technology that is being fast eclipsed in importance by newer social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter etc. After all, blogging has been around for years - there must be something better by now?

But others recognise that a blog is still a great marketing tool if used correctly. It gives a brand a voice that connects personally with customers. It is versatile and cheap to implement. It has great SEO impact and can be used to create brand preference as well as driving traffic by giving people another reason to come to your site.

But, as always, if you don't have the right content you are doomed. Blogging may be the right strategy, but you do you have the content? Do you have the people to produce it? Do you have time to produce it?

These were question facing CWJobs, the leading IT recruitment specialist, when we started talking to them about heir social media strategy 18 months ago. Together we found a solution that has more than met their objectives - read all about it here:

B2B_social_media_case_study_CWJobs.pdf.

B2B social media case study #1: building a presence

2010-01-28T08:57:29Z

It seems like we've been writing about it for ages, but real documented accounts of successful social media marketing campaigns are still fairly thin on the ground.

Is this because it is not working? Not at all. There is plenty of research that confirms that social media marketing is a viable, powerful and increasingly important part of the marketer's toolkit. It's also well known that companies are planning to invest far more in social media techniques in 2010 than in previous years. But it is taking a while for the case studies to filter through.

So we thought we would document some of our experiences to date, and have produced three case studies based on our work with three different clients, and will publish them here in a series of blogs over the next week or so. The case studies are quite different in scope and cover the following topics:

#1: Building a social media presence
#2: Creating and populating a community
#3: Blogging for people who don't blog

We don't want to suggest we have prepared a 10,000-word thesis on each one, or that they feature the world's biggest brands. But what we have written is an honest, practical account of what we - and some very forward-thinking marketers of course - tried to do and how we got on.

We hope our experiences may be of interest to others out there who are considering the same thing, so we thought we'd share it. That is the principle of social media after all, isn't it?

Download the pdf file by clicking here: B2B Social Media case study: Building a Presence.

Base One Beliefs #5: I would like to believe that forums will be recognised as effective instead of unfashionable

2010-01-26T15:40:43Z

Part Two: Finding your feet

This piece complements a post I wrote about a month ago, where I explained the reasons why forums are a frequently neglected but highly effective part of the social media toolkit for marketers.

Online communities as we have already established are a great way of building conversation and attaining engagement, however, it's important to adopt key tactics especially when joining a forum as a B2B Marketer. I was fortunate enough to be taught from a person who has been on the social media scene since it's pretty much started and is now heading up the social media division at Brands2Life.

Let's start shall we? Here are a few factors I take into consideration when approaching a forum:

It is important to have a set of brand guidelines that will tell us who the target audience are. That way you'll be able to sign up to forums that are relevant to the brand's category. This should also apply to other social media platforms such as Twitter.

I have found the most important factor to consider in all of this is the TONE. The tone that is adopted within the forum will not only be representing your brand but it will also allow other community members to relate to what is being talked about within a thread. The tone is easily identifiable via monitoring conversations within the forum before signing up; it is important to watch & learn.
*Note that if you are representing a brand it is important to sign up as the brand's name so that other community members can trust who they are speaking to.

Once comfortable with the tone that will be used, the first post made should always be an introductory post. It is important to create a presence and become recognised. Ensure to state that you have 'joined the forum as a means of.... and are representing the brand.'

Become conversational by talking to other community members who have topics that are relevant to your brand. Continue to build the community's trust for 2-4 weeks before you decide to start up your own thread and get conversing about the brand.

Forums are great means of driving traffic and one can do this by adding a signature that will link to the brand's website (again, only once you have become established) so that one doesn't necessarily need to keep talking about the brand as that could be deemed as spam.

Lastly, have fun. Going into a forum is a little bit like going to a party. You join a crowd of people by firstly engaging with on-going conversation. What you will not do is join a crowd of people and completely change the topic because that would be plain rude.

I hope that this blog post has helped answer why forums are just as effective and how they can be better used to our advantage. I would strongly recommend forums as a suitable social media platform and another way of maximising a brand's exposure/awareness.

Base One Beliefs #4: I would like to believe that the 'R' in ROI doesn't always have to be about money

2010-01-18T16:25:41Z

I was at a conference recently on Social Media Monitoring. During a panel session, someone asked a question about measuring the ROI for Social Media activities. The panel did their best to respond, but admitted that it was still difficult to establish a direct link between Social Media marketing and revenue generated. One by one (and there were five of them), they came out with different versions of the same story: 'we know that our activities generated revenue, but it wasn't really possible to track it. It was hugely successful, though.'

By the fifth response, I was getting really frustrated. Not because of this failure to measure revenue, but because they were immediately associating the ROI for Social Media marketing WITH Revenue.

Different marketing activities generate different types of result. Some results are easier to equate to revenue than others. Can we measure the exact revenue generated by an above the line, branding campaign for instance? Social Media Marketing is all about generating conversations. These conversations can be about different subjects, and can take place on different platforms, even cross between platforms. They can also influence people to find out more by using other tools such as search, or plant a brand name in their mind meaning that at some future point they click on a banner. There's no way therefore that we can (or should try to) measure the revenue generated by a Social Media campaign.

Instead of thinking of 'R' for Revenue (yes, I know it's 'R' for Return, but I want to make the point), we should be thinking of 'R' for Results, and with Social Media these come in many forms:

-    The number of conversations started
-    The number of people involved in those conversations
-    The mood of the conversations and reactions to them
-    The number of Retweets
-    The number of new followers recruited
-    The number of new links generated

and..... the number of clicks generated, where and if we can measure them.

All of the above represent Results, and all of the above are a measure of success - just a different measure from those that we have become used to with 'traditional' on-line marketing. With Social Media, we are very much concerned with influencing potential buyers higher up the funnel, a no less important activity, but one step removed from revenue generation. Let's therefore judge performance in a realistic way, so that success can be clearly proved and celebrated, rather than attempting to present it using irrelevant and inconsistent metrics.

B2B content marketing: the great leveller

2010-01-08T13:26:17Z

It's tough being a small business, especially in B2B. There is never enough time in the day to manage the day-to-day business, let alone think about promotion, so making a foray into social media marketing is the last thing on many small business owners' minds.

But when I read Diana Huff's discussion on LinkedIn that small businesses may not be able to compete with large companies because of the difficulty of creating content, I thought the opposite was true: social media is in fact a great leveller.

The reason is, as has been discussed on these pages before, that the impact of content does not depend on the money behind it. True, if you have a big budget and people to organise it, you can produce highly polished videos, and beautifully designed ebooks, compared to the hastily-compiled Wordpress blogs that the time-pressed entrepreneur may have to make do with.

But if the content itself is valuable - if it is useful, original, thought-provoking, expert - it will work as well as the big-budget productions of the blue chips.

The beauty of content marketing is that it does not carry a crippling media buying cost. Small businesses cannot compete in advertising terms with the big boys, because they cannot afford it. So, in the past, when brand presence depended on advertising in the business titles, the small players found it hard to compete. But in the brave new world of content marketing, media is not paid for, it is earned - by usefulness, by creativity, by expertise.

If the small business has an interesting, valuable, expert, useful angle, it will be spread by others and posted in lots of other places.

If they have the creativity, they don't need the spend.

Image courtesy of the great iPhone app, iHandylevel - available for download at all good AppStores.

Base One Beliefs #3: I would like to believe creativity is essential for B2B marketing success

2010-01-04T15:18:35Z

Business Week interview with Dan Hill, author of Emotionomics

'Loyalty is an emotion. Trust is an emotion. If you really want to make headway, you can't just do the rational part. That's really like fighting with one arm behind your back. You need the rational and the emotional, but of the two you really need the emotional more.'

So says Dan Hill, author of Emotionomics, to emphasise the value of using emotion strategically in the marketplace. And how do you achieve emotional impact in marketing and advertising? Not from lists of features and benefits - that's your left brain talking. To hit them where the wallets are, you've got to get creative. 'Less explaining, more entertaining', we might say.

Or as Dan Hill sums up: 'We make our decisions emotionally, we justify them rationally.' Features and benefits can appeal to a buyer's rational side, producing satisfaction of a kind, but that's after-the-fact impact.

In 2010, I'm hoping we can help more clients recognise the influence an emotional response (and therefore creative execution) has on buyer behaviour. Emotionomics gives us some food for thought to offer, such as the fact that an emotional response typically triggers five times more brain activity than a rational one. By the way, we also offer monitoring, analytics, and other tools like eye tracking to satisfy your rational side.

What would you like to believe for your business in 2010 and beyond? Let us know at www.iwouldliketobelieve.co.uk.

2009: the year we went beyond business as usual

2009-12-22T14:55:59Z

What will 2009 be remembered for in the world of B2B marketing?

From our point of view, it was the year that B2B went beyond business as usual. What do we mean? Maybe this is best illustrated by a brief track back through the Base One Beyond blog and flagging up the most read posts. After all, we can think what we like but the acid test is what attracts the most readers. If the people don't get it, it's not working.

One of 2009's most used words was 'social media' and it dawned on many B2B marketers in 2009 that this was something to take notice of. This then spawned the term 'Buyersphere', which we have been quoting ever since we first blogged about it in March.

The following month saw a great example of how social media makes people tell the truth. Or rather how it exposes people when they don't, with the story of Damian McBride and his smear emails.

But the realisation of how B2B marketers needed to change what they were doing - and change how they were thinking - came to the fore during the summer. Our take on these developments was summarised by an interesting chance encounter with a traditional magazine editor (one of a dying breed in 2009), and by the fascinating debate over who exactly should be talking for your brand out there in the Brave New World of social media.

Whose job is it anyway? Your PR dept? Your marketing guys? Your CEO? How about - just possibly - it might be everyone's job. One of the realisations of 200 was that, as marketers, our job is perhaps not so much to do it as to enable it.

But there was also a wonderful feeling of goodwill around in 2009 - which is odd considering the economic climate. The awareness that peer-to-peer information sharing was increasing - the fact that buyers were talking to buyers - convinced many a gnarly old marketer that we could no longer talk at our customers. It was all about sharing and, well, being nice. Etiquette was big news in 2009 as it became clear that brands needed to give something of value if they were to receive the valuable attention of their target audience. A popular metaphor was that we were all invited to the world's biggest cocktail party - and we had to behave accordingly.

But where was the proof that all of this was working? As proponents of the 'new way of working' we were keen to flag up a good success story when we saw it, and May showed us why it was more important than ever to listen to customers!

The following months, the discussions continued, with pieces on the problems with data capture, the true meaning of viral marketing and how to spot spammers. (I've also learned not to include the word 'spammer' in a blog post - search engines don't like it...)

As if to prove that going beyond business as usual was not limited to the business of social media, we then introduced a little culture into proceedings with B2Beat poetry - an anthology of inspiring verse from our very own poet laureate, Noel Ponthieux. This obviously struck a chord with marketers around the world as the modest print run that we produced quickly sold out.

We chose scandal for our next topic, with the outrageous story of how Pepsi endorsed casual sexism in its social media marketing. This was followed by Jamie-Lee Wallace's excellent lesson in selectivity, before we then segued effortlessly into a comparison of Star Trek and B2B marketing. Trust me, the link is highly logical.

So in summary, it has been a year to remember for B2B marketing, and one for which we were proud to provide a commentary here on the Base One Beyond blog.

As an aside, it was also the year when someone pointed out that the words 'gold' and 'blog' are mirror images of each other. This makes 'blog gold' at the same time a palindrome, an excuse for a logo (see below) and a great name for the award we give to our best blogs.

And for 2009, I can think of no one who has boldly gone further than Ms Ponthieux with her Star Trek piece.

Thank you all for reading - see you next year.

How to avoid social media crash landings

2009-12-17T11:46:48Z

If, in the early years of the 20th century, the Wright Brothers had set out to build a machine that would carry hundreds of passengers across the Atlantic, with toilets fore and aft, they would have failed.

Instead, they focused on the short-term goal, which in their case was to prove that it was possible for a self-powered, heaver-than-air machine to fly. The distance was unimportant, they wanted to see if it worked.

So when the Wright Flyer bumped back onto the Kittyhawk sands after its maiden flight - a distance of a mere 120 feet - they had achieved what they set out to do.

Whilst reluctant to drag the reader away from aviation pioneers and back into the 21st century world of social media marketing, the parallel is an important one: you cannot expect to go into social media marketing and achieve everything at once. You have to learn to walk before you can run. Or, to extend the earlier analogy, if you want your brand to really fly, you've got to do the basics first.

Here's why - and what you can do about it.

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Time, because social media marketing unavoidably takes up a lot of your time - or the time of key, expert people within your company. So if you leap into every available social media channel, you will end up doing them badly - because there are simply not enough hours in the day.

The second reason is that, while you have expertise in your field, you do not necessarily know the social media world quite so completely. You will therefore make mistakes, and it makes an awful lot of sense to make small mistakes early on, rather than big ones.

And it becomes impossible to manage. The infrastructure required for a well-managed and effective social media strategy takes time to build and to mature. And of course, who has time to manage the project - to take an bird's eye view of the whole social media operation - if your every waking hour is spent furiously blogging, tweeting and commenting.

Don't take unnecessary risks
There is an additional point in that, as marketers, we need to get buy-in from the purse holders and senior decision makers. And the best way to cajole budget from them is to show early successes. Reduce risks into risklets. Take on small projects and set small, achievable objectives. Prove the principle. 120 feet of sand doesn't sound much, but it's the only encouragement the Wright Brothers needed.

The reason for writing this blog is that I have recently been talking to a client about 'starting out' in social media marketing. He recognises the potential, but is understandably wary of something he hasn't done before. I realised that the best way was to talk through the gradual steps he might take, which were as follows.

Advertising. Yes, that's right advertising. This was a client that had always used traditional industry press to gain brand awareness, generate leads etc. In the technical, niche market in which the client operated, this had proved successful. Our conversation had begun with a request that we help him with his next campaign, at which point I realised he could gain a lot from social media marketing - just as long as we didn't try to run before we could walk. So we planned a campaign and presented creative concepts - but also introduced the second step towards social media marketing.
Content. Again, this is perhaps nothing new. But the role of content has changed dramatically We talked about the call to action in the ads and recommended replacing the "call 01234 56780 for more information" with "download our latest whitepaper" and offered an intriguing and focused piece of content that was relevant to the target audience.
Content development. The next point to broach was that this piece of content could not be a one-off. We wanted to show to the target audience that it was worth their while to begin engaging with the brand. As Jason Van Orden puts it in his excellent podcast Mastering New Media, it is about a value exchange. A customer will only give up their valuable time and attention if you offer something valuable in exchange. And if my client's brand became known as a source of valuable information, we start to get somewhere. Also, by planning the content in advance, you can tell people what is coming up, therefore giving them a reason to give you their email - much more likely to succeed than inserting a huge data capture obstacle in the way of every visitor.
Channel development. This is the point where it is easy to look at the sweet trolley and tell the waitress you'll have a bit of everything. Resist the temptation. My advice to my client was first to look at blogging as a channel. To introduce a regular, personal angle to the presentation of the content described above - rather than simply publishing the content to the corporate website - and to get used to contributing on a weekly basis. A bit like going for the profiteroles and only trying the treacle tart if you have room afterwards.
Twitter. If the appetite is there, Twitter is next. To open a Twitter account and to use it as a means not only to get feedback from content readers, but also to help get traffic coming through to the blog. It takes more time, but we would help train the client and help them to do it effectively.
Repurposing. The next step - if all has gone well thus far - would be to consider non-text content. For some people, this would be an earlier stage. For us, we felt it was best to start with written content and work our way up. This of course opens up the world of YouTube, Vimeo and further channels for content 'distribution'.
Syndication, extension, world domination. If the previous steps have been followed in order, with measurement of success versus [sensible] objectives, we should have a pretty good social media presence by now. This may be 6 months away or two years away. It doesn't matter. But at this stage there will be a host of options open to the client because there will be a thoough understanding of what social media is doing for them, of the time an resource it takes up, and of what they can expect to gain from it. This knowledge was not there at Day 1, and it is only a gradual planned process that helps a company to exploit it properly.

Of course, my client is only just starting out. But I look forward to sharing news as his journey pogresses. And although right now he is just preparing for take-off, he knows that each flight will prepare him to go further with the next one.

Base One Beliefs #2: I would like to believe that forums will be recognised as effective instead of unfashionable

2009-12-15T09:47:21Z

I'm going to start by taking you way back to the classic 'The Tortoise and the Hare'.

I am sure that a lot of you can remember that story - a fable that in many ways reminds me of the social media mix and how some platforms are similar to the Tortoise and others to the Hare. I very much feel that online community forums and discussion boards could be deemed as the Tortoise, compared to the whizzier, more flamboyant medium of Twitter etc. A slow moving result but a true winner! Let me explain why...

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This maturity means that forums contain many established relationships between regular users and therefore have a high level of trust that cannot be found in more recent channels. That means that people trust what they hear in there more than elsewhere - which makes it a good place for marketers to establish a brand presence. Also bear in mind that the usability is a lot higher as people who have been using them for years. Because its design and interface has become standardised, it attracts people who are put off by new and unfriendly looking technology - or simply put off by the idea of having to learn something new.

For these reasons, millions of people - including B2B buyers and marketers - use them to do the following:

•Seek feedback, advice or guidance on a product/service that they may want to purchase. It has been stated that 77% of UK consumers look to community forums and blogs for this purpose (E-Consultancy Report, 2009.) Additional proof comes from a survey done over ten thousand US consumers in 2007 which showed that 28% 'read online discussion forums or message boards,' - the second highest method of participating online (Forrester Online, 2007.)

•Discuss new business development ideas; assess potential opportunities

•Source niche information. The number of forums has increased drastically thus covering
virtually every area/category that interests you and your business

•Connect with a wider audience at no cost

•Drive results from a social media perspective - conversation, brand reach and awareness and, last but not least, engagement

•Promote websites - inserting links into posts and signatures to drive traffic to your site

But how can you best use forums to help build your brand or drive sales? There are key steps that should be adopted in order to make the most out of your forum-related social media experience. Keep reading our Beyond Blog as that will come in Part Two of this blog very soon.

Image credit: minds-eye (Creative Commons/Flickr)

The power of the remote

2009-12-08T10:00:00Z

When I go to the cinema I've usually eaten half my popcorn before the film starts. One of the reasons for this (apart from loving sweet popcorn) is the 15 minutes of trailers that you have to sit through before the film starts. For me they're as much an integral part of the cinema experience as the popcorn itself.

The same does not apply when I'm watching a DVD at home. Here I'm in control.

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1) That the trailers will be before the film. That's where they were when my parents got their first video player and we rented Pete's Dragon and that's where I expect to find them now. I really don't care enough to look through the DVD menu.

2) That I'll be able to skip any trailers I'm not interested in. Don't force me to sit through a trailer for a horror movie. I'll never watch or something I've already seen and know is rubbish.

I apply the same principle to websites: don't make your user search for your great additional product or wade through content they don't want. Show me what you've got but give me a clear way-out if I'm not interested. Flag up your latest offer on the homepage but don't put it as a flash intro the the user can't skip. Then put it somewhere logical on your site - like in the navigation under "offers" - so the user can find it again when they've finished browsing your site.

Users generally don't mind being marketed to if you give them the chance to say "no thanks" if they're not interested. Give up control and let them decide whether they like what you've got to offer. I know I respond better to an opportunity if I think it was my idea in the first place...

Base One Beliefs #1: I'd like to believe that...everyone will embrace the media trinity

2009-11-27T12:08:02Z

This is the first blog in our Belief series - a collection of short blogs by Base One people on the subject of what we would like to believe in the world of marketing. You can see more of our beliefs at our rather unusual microsite...

The idea of the media trinity is quickly gaining acceptance. Already agencies, clients and brands are rapidly expanding their view of media to include more than just display, or paid, media, and it's causing a real shift in how marketing budgets are spent. Still, the case has to be made more often than you might think.

Today when we develop a marketing campaign we consider three specific media areas:

•   paid - display on the internet, print etc.
•   earned - the share of voice gained from peer to peer communications
•   own - media identities and content provided by brands themselves

It's not hard to imagine how this trinity of media disciplines opens up a great opportunity for showcasing new products, new ideas, and compelling content to maximum effect. The stumbling block is that a number of brands and clients still prefer to aim only for the immediate burst provided by paid media.

But it's in the earned and own media areas that long-term gain is born, because this is where we have the opportunity to build trust, be transparent and engage with customers.

I do believe that the most successful media campaigns will be those that combine paid, earned and owned media. If you need more convincing, I'm happy to give you the more detailed story anytime - just contact me through my blogger profile.

6 steps to getting selective with social media

2009-11-23T17:06:26Z

This post has been contributed by Jamie Lee Wallace, a good friend of Base One, who is also one of the founders of Savvy B2B Marketing - a collaborative blog offering unique B2B marketing insights delivered with healthy doses of humility and good humor.

One of the number one complaints about social media is that it takes too much time.

Companies considering the leap into the land of blogs and tweets often run screaming into the night after they glimpse the reality of what it takes to launch and maintain a worthwhile social media presence.

I don't blame them. The onslaught of digital information is overwhelming, but there is hope. The key is in being selective.

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The same goes for social media engagement. Unless you have a dedicated staff ready to spend all day, every day monitoring every inch of the Web and churning out top-notch content, you need to be choosy about how and where you spend your time.

This isn't rocket science, you say? You're right. But it's amazing how many people - even professionals - fall into the trap of trying to be everywhere, all the time. In this highly competitive market, it's easy to start making judgments based on the fear of missing out on something.

The 24/7, real-time nature of social media sets businesses running faster and faster on the proverbial hamster wheel. You start by monitoring here and there, then you launch a company blog, set up a facebook fan page, start tweeting, create a professional group on LinkedIn, develop a collaborative community for crowd-sourcing industry-specific solutions, and so on and on and on. Before you know it, running your social media efforts takes nearly as much time as running your core business.

Instead of jumping on every shiny, new wagon recommended by the so-called gurus, take control of your social media journey. Here are six steps for making sure things don't get out of hand:

1. Get a strategy: If you don't have the expertise in-house, hire a professional to help you determine the best strategy for your company. Look for someone who wants to talk about your goals, what your customers are like, and what kind of resources you realistically have to dedicate to social media. You want to make sure the plan is custom-fit to your needs and capabilities as well as the needs of your target audience.

2. Have an exit plan: Even the best strategy sometimes goes awry. Your project is going to be a huge success, but - just in case - make sure you have a way to make a graceful exit.

3. Roll-out in phases: Baby steps often trump giant leaps. Get your toes wet before you attempt a backwards triple somersault with a half pike and a twist. Start small and grow your presence in as organic a manner as possible. Listen well, and your audience will tell you what your next step should be.

4. Deputize and delegate: In the best case scenario, social media becomes part of your company culture, not a specialty that's handled by a few select members of your marketing department. Deputize people across your business to monitor and engage, but be sure to keep an overall eye on the conversation, watching for consistency and balance.

5. Have a cage match: Stage periodic cage matches between different elements of your social media presence to ensure that you're focusing your efforts on the areas with the best return. Don't just keep randomly flinging resources at the wall in an effort to "keep up." Measure and rank your various projects.

6. Get selective: Finally, narrow your focus. Be brutal. Though it's highly unlikely that your company can stand out everywhere, if you concentrate on a few key areas, there's a better chance for greater impact. Even if you wind up with a smaller audience, you'll be able to have a deeper dialog, and it's the deeper dialog that leads to actual relationships, a perception of leadership, and business deals.

Are you already engaged in social media? How did you get started? What worked for you, and what was an utter failure? What advice would YOU give to a business getting ready to take the plunge?

Image credit: lusi (http://www.sxc.hu/photo/560182)

3 Things B2B Can Learn from Star Trek

2009-10-20T13:18:25Z

Everything old is new again - an early casting comparison for the new Star Trek

**Film spoilers alert**

B2B folk and Trekkers have a few things in common:

We both attend conferences.
We have serious debates about how our respective fields should progress.
And we both tend to resist change.

That last one is particularly sensitive for...um, both of us. And we've both recently had big, whopping changes handed to us, then been told: 'Deal with it, or you don't play here anymore.'

The B2B challenges that have commanded more attention over the last year - getting onboard with Twitter and social media, to blog or not to blog, diving into the Buyersphere, finally addressing your techie, scary, and hugely relevant Search marketing needs, the worth of it all - these and more have been thoroughly investigated by my fellow Beyond bloggers.

I just want to make you feel better.

So if you want some recent facts and advice, check out Which Half of Your Advertising is Working by my Beyond buddy John Stanton.

If you want to know how a JJ Abrams blockbuster can give you strength in these turbulent B2B times, read on.

]]> 1. Revisit, recycle, reinvent.

As a longtime casual Trekker (love the stories and themes, forget the deeper details), I was floored by how an old, old space/time machination was used to reinvent the sacred text of Trek: the wormhole. Evildoer goes through wormhole into the past, blows up Vulcan (Spock's homeworld), and thus changes...everything. Because when major details of the past are changed, an alternate strand of reality begins...and suddenly young Spock and Kirk hate each other [video].

Not incidentally, this opens up a big new opportunity for screenwriters to give all the old characters completely new storylines. As a fan, you get the compelling cosiness of familiar faces plus interesting new twists that keep you guessing. I was amazed no one had done it before.

Trek Tip: Gaining traction for your brand and your offering in a seemingly hostile space like the Buyersphere is both possible and simple when you have the right people onboard. And you'll probably be amazed you didn't do it before.

2. Sometimes you have to ignore your prime directive.

In Trek, the prime directive forbids Federation explorers from influencing the evolution of less technologically sophisticated societies - like, you can't just give them warp drive, no matter how useful an ally they might be.

In a similar violation in the new film, old Spock (wormhole again) tells young Scotty how he (S.) has in the future invented an even more amazing hyperdrive thingy - then actually gives him the code! That is clearly a no-no, and Spock surely knows better...but it saves the Enterprise from getting crisped later on. Naturally.

Trek Tip: Get out of character. Think of something you'd absolutely never try, and give it a go. Whether it's a favourite marketing rule or a safe mindset or a beloved brand guideline, kick it.

3. It takes all hands on deck to defeat the evildoers, save your planet, and discover new worlds.

I keep banging on about Spock, but without Sulu's futuristic swordplay, Chekov's teen navigational genius, Scotty's engineering wizardry, Bones' cynical insight, Uhura's keen ear for subspace subtleties, Kirk's daredevil energy, and the whole crew's success-or-bust loyalty...well. They'd all be dust before an hour was up.

Trek tip: There are no red shirts. When you prepare to enter the Buyersphere, you need everyone to participate, especially when it comes to social media.

If you need more convincing, please do check out John Bottom's Great Social Media in the Workplace Debate. And in the end, you'll not only save the ship, you'll boldy go [sorry! had to!] beyond business as usual.

PS: Cast comparison image is from Screenrant.