B2B Marketing, Digital Media and Marketing Strategy
Inbound marketing may be the hot topic for B2B marketers today, but today’s big B2B inbound marketers are all active outbound marketers as well.
So how do you pair your outbound marketing activity with your inbound marketing?
Here are six ways outbound marketing can support and scale your inbound marketing efforts and some of the channels that are appropriate for each one. [Read more…]
As a B2B marketer, it is easy to find people to follow on Twitter, right? Big names in B2B marketing, content marketing and social media seem to be everywhere.
But what about those hidden gems, the people that don’t post frequently, will still have a conversation and don’t seem to always share the same thing or spout the same idea? They will add the variety and perspective your Twitter stream just may be missing.
Here are 15 hidden gems B2B marketers should be following. They cross a range of topics, but all focus on B2B directly or add perspectives I’ve consistently found valuable for B2B. Nearly all of them will engage in a discussion on Twitter and not just broadcast the same links you already see from everyone else. [Read more…]
“Overall, a 30% increase in positive Tweets is four times more effective in driving sales than a 30% increase in existing above-the-line advertising.”
That is an impressive statistic, quoted directly from a Twitter infographic and attributed to a study by Deloitte. With the inclusion of a big name audit and consulting firm doing a study of 100 different game releases, it has all of the marks of credibility.
Unfortunately, it isn’t true. [Read more…]
It’s true. When people share too much, we tune them out. We only half-listen, or we just walk away.
In social media, we do the same thing. We skim over the update from the chatterboxes, not giving them the same attention as updates from others we see less frequently in our stream.
Here is the problem: As an individual building your own personal brand or as a marketer, you have taken the advice to share other people’s content to heart. In a bad way. [Read more…]
If you are in B2B advertising, you cannot ignore LinkedIn. With great reach (#22 US site in January 2013 according to ComScore), extensive profile data actively maintained by the audience and granular targeting options, LinkedIn is a powerhouse in the world of B2B advertising.
So when LinkedIn introduces a new advertising option, as a B2B advertiser, you need to pay attention. Here are two new offerings LinkedIn introduced in the last quarter that seem to have slipped under the radar of most B2B marketers. [Read more…]
It is a common question, and starting point for (normally) friendly debate, in B2B marketing. Does X really work for Y?
People that say “no” tend to say it doesn’t work anymore because behavior is changing (newspaper), it doesn’t work because their audience doesn’t use it (social media) or it doesn’t work because it doesn’t reach their audience (content marketing).
Those that say it does work point to case studies or audience research showing usage of the channel is high. [Read more…]
Some days it seems Twitter has moved from a social platform to a headline and link platform. I don’t know about you, but I miss the old days of Twitter where people shared insightful thoughts or strangers met through a conversation.
Communicating something useful or interesting in 140 characters was an art, and some practiced it well. This art is already being lost.
Today, 140 characters is just a promotion for 500 more words. [Read more…]
We have all seen the lackluster corporate blog. Some days, I wonder what went wrong. Others, I wonder why they thought they could get it right.
Corporate blogs are increasingly standard in B2B organizations. Some companies even have an entire suite of blogs.
However, for every great corporate blog, there are a dozen corporate blogs that just shouldn’t be. Too often, it is clear they made one (or more) of these mistakes. [Read more…]
Last week WSJ ran an article entitled “There’s No Avoiding Google+” on the front page. In short, it highlighted the drive by Google to make Google+ pervasive across other Google services.
In one of the most telling quotes in the story, Bradley Horowitz, a VP at Google, says “The entry points to Google+ are many, and the integrations are more every day.”
However, despite reaching 105.1 million global unique visits in October (via Comscore), Google+ is struggling to drive real usage, with users only spending 12 minutes a month on the site (via Google in June). (Stats from this Mashable article) [Read more…]
I’m sure it has happened to you too. You look someone up on LinkedIn only to find they are a third degree connection (or not even!) and you get a profile page with basically no information.
LinkedIn profile access is even more restricted, today you now need a premium account to view third degree connections.
Of course, you can solve this with a premium membership, but here is how to view the full public profile without a premium account.
Here is an example using Eric Cantor, a Congressman from Virginia that I don’t share any groups with and isn’t a connection. Searching in LinkedIn, this is all I was able to see of his profile: [Read more…]