A group of us here in the office have been having some discussions lately about our digital and social media capabilities in the B2B social media space.  If you work in an agency, you know how it goes – the big, splashy, sexy B2C stuff tends to get all the attention. After all, they have Ashton Kutcher. We have engineers, analysts and ROI models. We had a diverse group of pros in the room – a former technology analyst, several people from our financial services practice group, one from our tech practice group (me) and the head of our digital and social media team here – and so it’s not surprising that we started talking about what we even meant by B2B social media.

I came upon a realization that I think was shared by others there, that the concept is so broad as to be all but

meaningless. Maybe that’s self-evident but there are some consequences borne out of that realization.

What might come to mind when I say, “B2B social media”? Customer service? Social CRM? (social BPM, Social BI, etc. yikes!) Online lead generation? Online crisis management? Customer community development? Thought leadership? Brand building?  Influencer relations?  Corporate social responsibility?

You see where I’m going. If all of these areas indeed fall under the rubrick of B2B social media, then it doesn’t mean a whole lot. It also means it’s going to be difficult to avoid Tower of Babel misunderstandings, turf wars, ineffectiveness, and of course expert consultants with expertise in entirely the wrong areas for many B2B social media “initiatives.” After all, any B2B social media expert is unlikely to have deep expertise in more than 40% of those areas given their diversity.

Eventually, we will stop talking about social media and just go back to talking about media channels and communication programs that use a varying mix of them according to the business objectives to be achieved. In the meantime, two recommendations come immediately to mind as you sort out your B2B social media strategies.

Prioritize: We recommend as a best practice the formation of a social media council formed with a balance of people from across the organization with a stake in your company’s social media success. The first question that group should be asking itself is, “What really brought us together?” And you need to go deeper than, “We have to get our social media house in order.”  Agree on what you mean by that – what threat-oriented and growth oriented issues brought you here. Don’t “boil the ocean.”

Don’t Hire B2B Social Media Experts: You may then decide you need outside help, in the form of hires or relationships with consultants or agencies. You are not looking for a B2B social media expert. You are looking for something more specific: someone with expertise in one or more critical areas such as online crisis management, community building, blogger relations, search engine optimization and lead generation, community relations, etc.

You can all tell me if I’m off base. I’m interested in what you all think here.

There’s No Such Thing as B2B Social Media is a post from: B2B Voices

Last week the exchange co-sponsored the Ragan Communications Social Media for Financial Communicators event with our business partner NASDAQ OMX. You can review the entire event on the Facebook page created by Ragan. I was encouraged by the content of this event since it was so narrowly defined for financial communications – and I think a vertical industry focus is certainly the next big phase in social media. And even though the financial services industry is heavily regulated, there were many great examples of companies using various platforms.

If you attended this event you came away thinking, “There really are few reasons to not be doing social media.” Kudos to Mark Ragan and his great staff for putting this event together. I wasn’t able to attend every session but here are my reactions from the panels I did watch.

Be the brand: I have always said that social media at the exchange was never a silver bullet. I think companies that take the approach that social media can “save” their brand are misguided. It must fit within your existing brand and support various initiatives.  Steve O’Halloran from ING Direct discussed this during his presentation. He used many real world examples of what ING Direct has done with social media to reemphasize all of the qualities that make the bank unique, fun and a leader in its category (NOTE: I am not currently an ING Direct customer). In particular, Steve showed how they are really helping customers online to learn more about saving money and promote financial advocacy. And even though ING Direct does not have bank branches they do have some of the best cafes to visit. What are you doing to reinforce your brand in social media?

Social media for investor relations is coming…are you ready?: I was pleased to hear from Phil Pearlman at StockTwits that they are soon launching an investor relations tool on their site. We’ve talked about StockTwits before on B2B Voices as an investor relations tool and this is positive news. While this isn’t live yet I’m sure given the focus of the team at StockTwits that this will be a great application and take their offering to another level. If you have yet to visit StockTwits you should check it out — especially if you work for a publicly traded company. What I like most about the potential of this tool is the ability for public relations and investor relations to collaborate more online using social media. Ironically, NIRI’s annual conference took place a few weeks ago and from people I know who attended the discussion around social media was a footnote. This could be a great opportunity for you to work with your finance team and play a key role in educating your C-suite about social media.

And now  word from the journalists. A panel of financial journalists — Felix Salmon, Reuters; Stacey-Marie Ismael, FT Alphaville; Connell McShane, FOX Business — answered questions about their use of social media. I was lucky enough to sit on the panel representing the interests of communicators. Felix blogged about the conference and his thoughts on why companies should be using Twitter. One of the key takeaways for me about the panel is that they are all connected to and use Twitter daily — not so much as a broadcast medium but for a way to monitor trends/issues and meet new people (potential sources). I commented, and I think the panel agreed, that Twitter really is not the platform to pitch reporters, but because of its simplicity and real-time information sharing it’s the place to build trust and relationships with reporters.

Enthusiasm. While I didn’t hear any breaking news from Demetrios Skalkotos of NASDAQ OMX about using social media what I did takeaway is that enthusiasm matters. That’s not to take any credibility away from him or NASDAQ OMX — he and the company know what they’re doing in social media. But it was the enthusiasm from Demetrios that really stood out to me and if you’ve ever seen him speak you know what I’m talking about. It’s this kind of passion for our work that makes a difference — whether it’s social media, advertising, writing, design or video production. His presentation was the perfect way to end the two-day event since he left all of us feeling as if we could go back to our job and make things happen. That’s just the type of leadership you need, especially when you are pursing something so new and rapidly changing as social media.

I was also fortunate to present about CME group with my colleague Michael Shore and a copy of our presentation can be found over on SlideShare. If you happened to attend the event what was your takeaway? Share your thoughts about the conference here or if you didn’t attend let us know your reaction to some of my thoughts above.

Social Media for Financial Communicators is a post from: B2B Voices

For those of you who don’t know already I am a long time supporter/player of soccer (football).  I actually attended the first week of the 2006 World Cup in Germany and watching it so far has me wishing I was in South Africa. This year I am paying attention via the Internet and TV. The World Cup is by far the world’s most watched sporting event (about seven times larger than the Super Bowl) so there’s a lot at stake (this is a great report on the Economics of the World Cup). With the World Cup now fully upon us there already are some great lessons to be learned for communicators. Here are my thoughts.

• Competition — In some cases rivalries in the World Cup can be extremely competitive based not only by the demands of the tournament but also for other reasons — think England v. Argentina; USA v. Mexico; Germany v. Netherlands; N. Korea v. S. Korea. How do you approach your competition? Do you study them with the passion of a world class manager? Do you understand and exploit their weaknesses? Sometimes the preparation for these matches is more important than the match itself.
• Media — Yes, the press can be relentless. Ask Robert Green of England. But guess what? I bet it doesn’t phase Green or the England team at all. Why? Because they are used to that type of scrutiny day in and day out playing in Europe. Are you ready for that type of scrutiny by the media? How would your team react to a negative story? Do you bounce back because you know you have a winning strategy and coach your management team to look beyond the headline? Does it rally your employees? Or does it rattle you so much your team can’t perform?
• Social media — Nike launched it’s World Cup commercial not via TV, but via social media. It now has more than 15 million views on YouTube alone. We’re also seeing Twitter struggle to keep up with all of the World Cup tweets (hopefully they will realize they need to build a world-class network). And there are numerous players now using Twitter to discuss what is happening in South Africa. How are you using social media to talk about your company? Are you just using tools to talk or are you looking at the right tools to listen and converse with your audiences?

Click here to view the embedded video.

• Fans — If you are following the action on Twitter or watching it on TV (or lucky enough to be in South Africa), you already know that people are passionate about not just their team, but their country. Look at the Netherland supporters in their orange. The Brazilian supporters dancing and cheering. Watch closely at the other countries and how their fans sing, cheer and support their team for 90 minutes each match. There is a tremendous amount of pride that comes with supporting your team/country. How are you instilling this into your fan base/followers? Are you making them truly your fans or just treating them like customers?
• Fatigue – Players in the major European leagues may not say it, but they have to be tired. Between league matches, cup matches and recent friendly/exhibition matches it will be interesting to see how players last. Fatigue will play a factor for communicators as well in our now 24/7 connected world. My suggestion — take a break from the marketing madness to recharge (my choice of relaxation is my kids). You’ll be a better person for it and a better communicator.
• Technology – Adidas invests lot of resources to build the perfect ball for the World Cup. And this year there is a lot of criticism over how it was designed and how it reacts. It could be factor in games (or at least an excuse). How are you taking advantage of the technology your company has at its disposal? In addition, don’t forget to include your InfoSec team as we discussed here earlier.

Hopefully this makes you look at the World Cup in a slightly different view as you watch the games for the first time or if you’re an experienced World Cup fan. How else do you see this global competition changing the way you look at your job? Let us know.

What B2B communicators can learn from the 2010 World Cup is a post from: B2B Voices

By Leyla Arsan, Lotus Marketing Services

As a small business owner who utilizes Social Media for her own marketing efforts, I often think of how I can better assist my B2B clients more effectively manage their social media efforts.  I start by clarifying what social media means to me; social media is not just Facebook & Twitter, those are just two components. Social Media is an all-encompassing effort that stretches into blogging, photo sharing, slide sharing, video, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn – anything that helps you connect with your customers in a less traditional, or more social, way.  This particular post will detail a few ways in which B2B marketers can utilize visual imagery and rich media to assist in social media marketing efforts.

Flickr
While building my business as an event marketer, I started to use Flickr to host photos of client events. I would share these photos with clients post-event and reference the photos when pitching new clients or discussing my capabilities.  Flickr is an affordable service, easy to use, and well known, so it made great sense to use it for business.

After a short time, I noticed that the photos I posted, when properly tagged and titled, were being searched and found by Google & Yahoo (and sometimes other search engines like Bing and Ask.com).  I stumbled upon this inadvertently as I perused my Flickr analytics.

I produce B2B events – post tradeshow events, customer events, customer appreciation, etc. Eventually, I started to take photos at every event where a number of photos were specifically taken for the benefit of potential new clients. I post these photos to my Flickr stream in properly marked folders or sets.  I then use the Google keyword tool – http://www.google.com/sktool to find relevant keywords to tag my pictures. I search the keywords as a customer would when searching the web to find an agency that provides the services that I provide.  I can even search keywords used by my competitors.

The photos potentially show up in search results and individuals click and navigate to my Flickr stream. I say “potentially” because I don’t want to mislead, it is not a magic bullet, you don’t tag a photo and POOF your photo shows up at the top of the Google search.  In addition to tagging, I make certain that each photo has my company URL in the “description” of the photo.  Some people watermark their photos, I don’t and if you read on you will see why.

When possible, I allow my photos to be used by others in a non-commercial manner (check Flickr’s Creative Commons). This further exposes my photos when they’re added to other blogs and websites. According to the Creative Commons rules, when an individual uses my photo, they must link back to my Flickr stream or my website, this helps drive more traffic to my stream.

YouTube
I could make this portion about “video” as opposed to YouTube because there are other services out there like Vimeo.  I use both services, but for search purposes, YouTube is currently the best bet.

I personally do not use video much as I would like, so I reached out to colleagues for their personal best practices regarding marketing with video.  A former client who is a corporate communications manager of a leading flexible packaging company gave me some great insight on how he employs video for social media marketing.

The company has produced a couple of short videos that were rolled out on YouTube. The videos were produced in-house on a shoestring budget and each video was no more than five minutes long. The content was product driven – showcasing new products and providing added information on existing products. The videos were then shared the on Twitter, YouTube and the company website. The goal was to inform their Twitter followers (mainly customers, potential customers and journalists) about current products and any new products in development.

Though there was an initial jump traffic to the company website, this spike was temporary. Unfortunately, their marketing department is not equipped with the manpower to take on the task of defining and executing a strong social media marketing campaign.  They believe if they were able to dedicate the appropriate resources, the response would be more favorable.

The greatest obstacle the packaging company faced in regards to video was determining what content best suited their business objectives. With so many different product lines, determining what would generate the best results proved to be difficult.

In the first video, they promoted a new product in a way that unintentionally ghosted the deficiencies of another product line.  They ended up pulling the video. But with all marketing, not excluding social media marketing, testing is imperative.  The great advantage of social media is the simplicity of pulling a promotion.

The company found that the greatest benefit of the video campaign was that marketing did not have to rely on the sales team to visit a customer or to introduce new items.  Social media can be used as an extension of the sales team, particularly when one may be dealing with an older sales team that is slower at introducing new concepts and products to customers.  If your customer is following you on Twitter, they know what you are doing all the time.  It can significantly increase your speed to market with a product or service and can cut costs of doing mass mailings.

When asked if he felt social media were right for the packaging industry, the answer was simple. “If the staff and support were in place to plan a good social media campaign, it would add great benefit.” Many trade publications, journalists, editors of industry publications and packaging designers are on Twitter.  The individuals who work in the communications field of the packaging industry help the manufacturers get the word.

Guest Post: How B2B Companies Can Use Video/Photos in Social Media is a post from: B2B Voices

I’m a little slow on the uptake with this one but I wanted to flag Forrester’s report, “Social Technographics: Business Technology Buyers,” which came out about a month ago (April 28) and looks at the social media habits of business technology decision-makers. Good quantitative research into B2B social media usage is fairly thin. If you have access to the full report, it’s worth a review.  Also a summary from B2B Online here.

It shows, not surprisingly, that penetration of social media continues to increase. For instance, 46 percent of business technology decision-makers have joined a social networking site for business purposes, compared with 29 percent in last year’s study. Of those, a third are “Creators,” which means they engage in activities such as publishing a blog, uploading videos or writing and posting articles. Forty-five percent are “Critics,” posting reviews of products or services, commenting on others’ blogs, or contributing to forums or wikis. (Obviously, individuals could select more than one category.)

On the other hand, the report suggests that the sexy public social media services like Twitter or blogs may not be helping B2B tech companies much, compared to information sources like forums and wikis. Moreover, traditional sources of information – your website (note, I am using the new AP standard, people), sales person, tradeshows, etc. – rank higher in importance.

This is a pretty good study, as the group surveyed numbers more than 1,000 across four countries, although the weighting has shifted from a bit more than half the respondents representing IT vs. line of business to more than 70 percent coming from IT. On the other hand, as with all studies like this, you don’t want to over-read the conclusions.

For one thing, people are notoriously bad at evaluating their own behavior.  Evidence: The Economist recently reported on a UK study of television and video viewing habits and found the public badly understated the amount of time they watched live television and badly overstated their use of online video.

The other concern is that the wording of the question (“Which of the following sources of information impact your purchase decision-making process?”) will understate the impact of the earlier stages of the purchase process.

Flickr from LawsonComm

I mentioned in my last post the concept of an “Awareness-to-Advocate Process Path” – the journey people take from being aware of a need to ultimately becoming a customer and advocate for your product or service and the different information sources they use along the way.  It generally starts with awareness of need, advances to understanding of product category that meets that need, then to a consideration set (i.e. a short list), ultimately to a selection, and if the customer has a positive experience, he or she ultimately becomes a brand advocate.

So where does Twitter have the most impact? Where do blogs have the most impact?  Given that they are good at making you aware of new issues, help you identify new experts, and perhaps make you aware of new brands, I’d say they are heavily weighted towards the front half of the Path. As a result, their influence may be less obvious.

It’s also worth noting that word of mouth was the most influential information source, which is consistently what every report I ever see shows. Let’s keep in mind that word of mouth is social media community-building gone inline – it can happen via email, Twitter or around a campfire. Prepare for them all. (hmm, camping trip as trade show…) Moreover, the best way for you to arm those word of mouth advocates will likely come from an inline blend of in-person events like conferences and digital connections like social media, even if they themselves influence future customers via traditional channels like phone calls, face-to-face meetings and email.

Finally, it goes without saying that IT people are different creates from line-of-business decision-makers and habits also vary by industry. It’s best to do your own research on your own target audience.

Research Firm Updates Business Technology Buyers Report: Social Media On the Rise is a post from: B2B Voices

A few days ago, I blogged about the B2B roundtable we had here at Weber Shandwick Minneapolis, “Social Media and ROI: Dare We Talk About It?” And we did!

In that post, I summarized the first half of our message to attendees, which was that it was not a big deal to ignore ROI in our trial social media efforts of the past year because a small Investment required only a small Return. Now that we want to get serious and scale this, you better believe we need to talk about measuring real business outcomes.

But how do we do this?  A survey of our attendees showed most simply didn’t know where to start. Interestingly, Jim Estell blogs here that you can’t measure ROI for marketing at all, much less for social media, because it’s too complex. I’ll be the first to admit the proof of impact isn’t always definitive but if you’ve done the research to know your audience well, then this is certainly a do-able task in B2B because there is typically a defined purchase process where our efforts can have a clearer impact.

We have a measurement model for communications in general and it works for social media too.  (In other words, if you can measure business outcomes impact for any sort of marketing communications effort, you can certainly do it for social media. ) It’s called ARROW (see our little graphic).

ARROW Model for Communications Measurement

A = Activities. These are the things we generate. In social media land, that includes blog posts, tweets, YouTube videos or simply the number of web properties we are maintaining.  They get at a measurement of effort. On their own, however, they are meaningless.

R1 = Reach. Essentially number of eyeballs of our target audience we are reaching. We may measure this by Twitter followers or Facebook “friends” or blog page views. Important, but are we changing how our target audiences thinks or behaves?

R2 = Relevance. We sometimes use the word Resonance too. We want to measure that a message got through to our audience and that it connected with them. Relevance measurements can include key messages in third-party blog posts or tweets, number of retweets, blog comments, increases in site traffic or click throughs on a corporate blog to resources on your web site. Still not a business outcome.

O = Outcomes. Ideally, this is when our audience enters the sales pipeline in some way by requesting information or registering on your web site (i.e. becomes a lead) or when you sell more stuff, or when the quality of your leads improve or when your sales cycle shortens.

W = Any of the measures above divided by cost.

Ultimately, the goal is to find a corrolation between reach/relevance measurements and business outcome measurements. We are looking at evidence that the reach and relevance measures are in fact creating a better environment in which to sell. Don’t stop at measuring ARR!

If, despite a significant investment in marketing communications or social media efforts, no corrolation can be found, then you are right to question whether your dollars are being put to good use. What we’re looking for in choosing our reach and relevance measurements is whether or not they are precursors to ROI. How do you know?  Well, you can take the trial and error route to see if there are any corrolations, or better, you can conduct some good audience research before launching a major social media campaign to define what I’m calling the Awareness-to-Advocate Process Path, the average compositive path a prospect takes from awareness of the product category or your brand to being an advocate for your brand. That research significantly helps mitigate your risk of making a big investment in a program that delivers no return.  You still must measure the result to determine the strength of the impact.  More on that in another post!

Measuring Outcomes in B2B Social Media – Part II: A Model is a post from: B2B Voices

About quarterly, we host a group of about 15 marketing and communications professionals at our Weber Shandwick Minneapolis office to discuss issues related to B2B digital and social media issues. We held our most recent one a couple weeks ago, “Social Media and ROI: Dare We Talk About It.” Yes, I’m just getting around to blogging about it now, but it’s worth highlighting.

Prior to the roundtable discussion, we asked them all to fill out a short, rather unscientific online survey just to give a sense of where they were at collectively regarding measurement – especially the ROI kind – and social media. Most of them participated.

For the record, the group represented a variety of industries – high-tech, executive education, advertising, healthcare, manufacturing, etc. Most of them are now employing social media of one kind or another – often with blogs or LinkedIn, with Twitter emerging. And the number one challenge they’re having with measurement? Where to start.

Nobody should feel bad about this. For most B2B companies – especially those who don’t use the Web as their primary sales channel (i.e. e-commerce) – the last year or so has been a period of experimentation and cultural adaptation to social media mores. It’s been very much about reassuring senior executives, corporate counsel, IT executives and many others that this transparent, two-way, personal and highly responsive way of communicating with stakeholders need not put brand equity at risk, threaten the company with lawsuits, destroy productivity or endanger intellectual property. Whew, with all that to worry about, it’s tough to focus on what social media CAN do!

So our message to our attendees, and to you, is this:  When you are in test and trial mode, you are generally investing few resources – whether people or hard costs. If there’s insignificant Investment, we don’t need to work very hard to justify Return. But that party is over. The saying goes that you should “measure what you treasure,” and realizing significant results from adding sophisticated digital and social media programs to the communications mix will cost money. It’s not fair to expect the company to just hand it over.

And I wouldn’t be satisfied with the “You don’t ask for ROI on the phone system, do you?” argument. That might fly in boom years, but it’s an invitation to get your budget slashed in a tough one. How many of you were installing sophisticated new phone systems in the last recession? Not many. And we know how damaging it can be to stop a social media program once we start one.

Up Next From Me:  “Getting Started.”  (hint: social media measurement isn’t fundamentally different than measuring outcomes for any other communications program)

The slides from our discussion are posted here.

Measuring Outcomes in B2B Social Media – It’s Time to Start is a post from: B2B Voices

Last week I read through a recent study by The Kaiser Family Foundation on media habits of 8 to 18-year olds. You can read a great summary of the study over at Wall St. Cheat Sheet.  The study is clearly aimed at parents (me) and how kids are interacting with various media (my kids — all under the age of 8 — clearly prefer the iPhone, Leapster and Internet over TV).  However, there are some very salient points here from a marketing perspective to examine, which I did make and sent to our web, research and product marketing directors.

So let me give you some thoughts on this study and why this matters to B2B communicators. Here are my three key takeaways:

1. Total consumption of TV is growing, but it’s all growing online — iPod (soon the iPad), Internet and mobile devices. As communicators we need to be able to consider developing the strategy and tactics to reach this audience in the near future. Will you outsource video? Do you bring it in-house and hire a team? How will you share video content or better yet, how will you let others take and share your content?
2. Nearly 60% of their time on the Internet is spent on social networking sites (25%), playing games (19%) or using instant messenger (13%). This next generation of customers already is well adapted to interacting, sharing and having very active conversations online. They will expect this from you as well so is your business ready to make the shift to having B2B conversations? Is your web site ready for the future?
3. Reading is on the decline. In fact, the drop in newspaper readership among this age group is enormous — from 42% saying they read a newspaper in 1999 to 24% in 2009. Magazine readership is maybe “less worse” dropping from 55% to 35%. This is yet another indication that we will need to reach future generations by less traditional methods, not through print ad campaigns or media relations.

You can also watch the video “Profiles of Generation M2″ here:

Click here to view the embedded video.

That’s my perspective, but I’d like to hear from you. What is your organization doing to prepare for your next generation of customers? Was this helpful or is it still too focused on B2C communication?

Meet Your Future B2B Customers is a post from: B2B Voices

I recently found myself in a conversation with a woman who was in charge of redoing the website for her company, an electrical distributor. At one point she explained how they were not offering email contact information on the new site, no change from their current site. The company’s decision was based on their desire to suggest (force?) people to pick up the phone and call them.

As I had just met her and we are in casual conversation, I refrained from commenting, but I couldn’t help thinking about how darn limiting this mindset was.

The truth is though, it’s a pretty common justification and not only concerning just providing email, but also not using any form of social media outreach whatsoever.

To some extent, I can see the line of thought behind this decision.  When you’re in more traditional industries – ones that rely primarily on contact via phone and have not yet shifted to other forms of communication – there’s a tendency to fear change in terms of how relationships can be developed and managed (we won’t even get into the general stigmas around using email and social networks in this context, as that’s certainly a big barrier for many).

Additionally, if you’re part of a long supply chain, there’s a reliance on long-term relationships, and there’s an understanding that they’re built with the blood, sweat and tears from in-person and phone contact. Connecting digitally or using social media platforms is usually considered to be impersonal and definitely can’t foster long-term strong relationships.  Right?

Wrong. This mindset needs to change and it needs to change quickly.  Here’s why.

It doesn’t consider the long-term process of building relationships.
Just as people value the above mentioned long-term relationships, they’re forgetting that they’re just that, long-term.  Each of those usually involved several points of contact, a mix of different methods of outreach (is a fax more personal than an email?), and an ongoing strengthening of the relationship.  They didn’t occur just because someone called.  They occurred because an opportunity presented itself and it was nurtured over time.  So to have someone’s first point of contact be a phone call or an email is rather inconsequential, wouldn’t you say?  It’s the effort you put into the whole process that will make or break the relationship.

It’s a missed opportunity to offer an easy way for customers to reach you, and an easier way for you to address smaller issues.
Essentially, you’re shutting off entire channels of communication for both current and potential customer to reach you.  Did you hear that?  ENTIRE CHANNELS.  That translates into straight numbers.  You’re losing potential leads.  Period. Some people just plain want to email at first.  Would you rather they request a quote from four other competitors that allow them to do so quickly on their website and not request one from you because you made it difficult?

Additionally, some current customers, the ones you already have a relationship with, and the ones whose lives you want to make as easy as possible, might find it so much easier to just contact you via email, or bop you a message on Twitter or something.  Why would you want to force anyone to call you every time they need something?

This choice ignores strategic thinking.
To take these points a little further, by dismissing the opportunity without considering how you might handle a digital point of contact is really taking the easy way out.  But easy isn’t always best.  Using the above example, let’s say you were deciding whether to start using Twitter as a way to get quote requests.  This doesn’t end up being a a one-step process.  It isn’t as easy as “but that means they won’t call.”  What are your plans after you get a request?  You could just as easily nurture direct phone contact by having your salesforce follow-up with a phone call (step-by-step option: direct message the person, thanking them for the quote and requesting a phone number to reach them at… then pick up the phone and call).  There’s absolutely truth in the power of human voice in customer relationships, but thinking that it’s one or the other just isn’t logical.  Since the whole process is several steps, you can still have your cake and eat it too.

It’s doing nothing to enhance your website.
Your SEO or your inbound traffic will not benefit from people just having to pick up the phone.  You want people to interact with your site, use your forms, get there from your Facebook page.  You want inbound links out there, directing people to your website.  If you’re in the “phone only” mentality, it likely also means you’ve limitations on your site as a whole, discouraging people from using it as a tool.

It’s backwards thinking.
Sorry to be blunt, but you just wouldn’t be thinking progressively at all.  And competitors that choose to introduce digital tools into their communication and sales mix will get ahead.  They’ll be accessing people you’re not.  They’ll be getting their message in places you’re not.  Most importantly to this discussion, they’ll be nurturing points of contact and developing relationships that you’re not. Why would you allow them to do this?

So, whether it’s offering your email as a point of contact, getting on Twitter, or allowing people to interact with your company through some other new fangled digital way, don’t fight it…..

Why Digital Media Outreach Shouldn’t Be Ignored is a post from: B2B Voices

Ever since I was introduced to CIO magazine several years ago I was immediately drawn to the similarities faced by both CIOs and chief communicators. Perhaps it’s just me, but I read CIO magazine not necessarily for the IT information (which I also enjoy), but with every article I substitute CIO with CCO or CMO. Go ahead and try it. Here’s one that recently caught my eye:  From the CEO: 5 Questions CIOs Need to Answer.

I’ve taken those five items and listed them here, but with viewpoint of someone in communications:

1. Do we understand what we broke, and what is our plan to fix it?

If you have the perfect communications team than you can skip this point. If not, keep reading. Most discussions with CEOs revolve around helping the business and with communications that’s no different. CEOs always challenge us to improve, to be better than the competition and to find solutions to win customers. This also can apply to your company’s reputation. How do your customers view you positively and where can you improve? These are issues CEOs look to us to fix.

2. How do we get full potential from discretionary spending?

How often do you review your budget and make changes? Are you maximizing that discretionary spending? And where can you improve your budget in order to help the organization achieve its business goals. In today’s economy in particular, CEOs want to ensure every department across the enterprise is getting the best return on investment. Are you?

3. How will we drive unnecessary complexity out of IT?

This point obviously speaks to complexities of software and hardware, but this still applies to communicators. Where is complexity in your department? Are  you sharing metrics? Are you maximizing events? Is social media a cross-department effort? We all have complexities that we can tear out of our marketing and communication systems, but finding them and fixing them takes time and effort.

4. How will we take better advantage of “good enough” solutions?

Yes, your news release is good enough — you saw the stories. Your web site too since people are visiting. And I’m sure your advertising is good enough as well. But you’re competitive, right? What will you do to take the risks to really make your brand stand out? We all have a lot of “standard” communication tools available to us, and no where is this more evident than with social media. We all have these “free” tools but where are you excelling?

5. How do we make outsourcing more strategic?

That new agency you hired — are you tapping into their best resources? Do you go with size and depth of the big agency or lean and nimble from the small agency? These are key decisions we all need to make as the playing field becomes more competitive for us. If your agency isn’t constantly challenging you to do the right/best thing, actively reviewing your activities and asking you tough questions than maybe it’s time you need a more strategic partner.

I am a huge supporter of working as close as possible with your IT team (my earlier post on working with InfoSec) and I encourage you to work more closely with them as well. I think you will be surprised at the number of similarities.  There’s an entire list of email newsletters available at CIO and I would encourage you to sign up and read CIO Leader and CIO Insider, but read them from a communicators perspective. I think you’ll find yourself thinking differently and developing some new ideas for implementing your strategy.

Let us know your thoughts. And if you happen to pass your CIO in the hall offer to take him/her to lunch. They can probably learn a lot from you as well.

Channeling Your Inner CIO is a post from: B2B Voices