Buzz Marketing for Technology - Podcasts

More Thoughts on Thought Leadership

Paul Dunay — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 16:21:00 GMT

Every firm I speak to wants to better position themselves as thought leaders in their specific area of Technology. And for good reason – better margins, better awareness, better leads, more qualified leads. Moreover, it changes the dynamic of the conversation from one of WHO are you to HOW can you help me with my problem.

But creating Thought Leadership is not so easy. Sure you can get someone in your organization to write a white paper for you that you can send to trade pubs, email out to existing clients, post to your website and buy keywords to point at it that drive you leads. But Quality writing and Quality writers are hard to find – You don’t see very many schools offering – Thought Leadership for Tech Firms 101. Nor do you hear kids saying they want to grow up to be a Thought Leadership writer someday.

That’s why this book Thoughts on Thought Leadership is one of the best compilations of ideas on how to create better thought leadership if have read EVER!

With that in mind I had to get Bob Buday from The Bloom Group on another podcast to keep drilling for more ideas on how to make my process and hopefully your process for creating thought leadership better. Give a listen.

About Bob

Bob Buday is a co-founder of The Bloom Group and has been a researcher, marketing strategist, and writer for consulting and IT companies for 15 years. Prior to launching The Bloom Group, Bob for 10 years was director of marketing communications at CSC Index. He played a leading role in making the consulting concept of “business reengineering” a household word, directing Index’s extensive publications, PR, and survey research activities.

From the development and marketing of reengineering, Index’s revenues grew from $30 million to $250 million in less than a decade. Bob was instrumental in the development and placement of two Harvard Business Review articles. He launched and directed the firm’s popular Insights Quarterly management publication, its annual study of information systems management issues, and its 1994 study of reengineering initiatives, which The Economist said was the most extensive study of reengineering to date. He also played a key role in promoting three best-selling books.

Transferring the lessons learned from marketing consulting concepts to the marketing of other complex products (particularly IT), Bob co-authored “Marketing Breakthrough Products,” published in the Harvard Business Review in 1999. His most recent Harvard Business Review piece, "A Consultant's Comeuppance," was published in the February 2003 issue.

Bob’s passion for research and writing about the business implications and applications of IT began in 1985, when he joined InformationWeek magazine as a senior editor. At InformationWeek, the No. 1 magazine on information technology for senior IT and business executives, he led coverage of the strategic use of IT and the software industry. Before joining InformationWeek, he was a business writer at The Orange County (Calif.) Register, where he wrote news and feature stories on companies in the real estate, consumer products, health care, IT, retailing and other industries. He has a B.A. in communications studies from Penn State University and did graduate work in an MBA program at California State University, Fullerton.

Accelerate your PR with BuzzGain – a podcast with Mukund Mohan

Paul Dunay — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 16:47:00 GMT

Discovering and connecting with the people who will help your business thrive in today’s social economy is vital especially when attention has become a precious commodity! As a PR and Marketing specialist it is becoming mandatory for businesses today to identify the communities that are actively defining and shaping the future of your business in places like blogs, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, as well as traditional media.

Much more than a Social Media monitoring solution, BuzzGain can help you reveal the influential voices and corresponding conversations that are happening about your product or service so that companies can listen, learn, and effectively engage in mutually beneficial relationships.

BuzzGain is an ideal DIY solution for PR check out their white paper the 5 Steps to DIY PR

Pricing for BuzzGain starts at $99 per month for companies under $100m in revenue, $100m - $1 billion is $500 per month, those with over $1b is sales is $1,000 per month.

And don’t miss out on the BuzzGain’s 15 day free trial offer - you can be accelerating your companies PR in matter of minutes!

About Mukund

Mukund Mohan founded BuzzGain, the leader in Do It Yourself PR. He has founded and successfully sold 3 startups before BuzzGain. Prior to founding BuzzGain, he served as the Vice President of Marketing for Inovis, a leading B2B Community Management software company. Before Inovis he was head of product marketing for Mercury (Hewlett Packard) responsible for the strategy and customer success of the company's Application Management solutions.

Mukund studied at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County pursuing a master's degree in computer science and holds a bachelor's degree in engineering and computer science from the University of Mysore in India.

Full Disclosure: BearingPoint is a Beta Client of BuzzGain

Sincere Marketing – a podcast with Romi Mahajan

Paul Dunay — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 14:25:00 GMT

We live in an age of skepticism about all forms of consumption. The diffusion of our skepticism is accelerated by the Internet and makes the sincerity even more pressing.

So it’s no surprise that the world of business -- specifically in the realms of advertising, branding, and marketing -- has to once again ennoble the concept of sincerity, which is to say, they have to simply be sincere and do work that is bounded by and radiates honesty.

Marketing too often over promises in the hope of attracting prospects but the product or service under delivers in the execution.

Warren Buffet once said - “Trust is like the air we breathe. When it’s present, nobody really notices. But when it’s absent everybody notices.”

To explore this topic further I interviewed Romi Mahajan who recently wrote a piece in Internet Evolution on this topic.

Listen to our podcast and advice on how to be more sincere in your marketing efforts ...

About Romi

Romi Mahajan, Chief Marketing Officer. Romi Mahajan is Chief Marketing Officer of Ascentium Corporation, a leading interactive marketing and technology consultancy.

Prior to joining Ascentium, Mahajan spent over seven years at Microsoft Corporation where he held the title of Director of Technical Audience & Platform Marketing. Earlier in his career, Mahajan started two boutique consulting companies specializing in technology and finance joint ventures between U.S. and Asian companies.

A well-known speaker on the technology and media circuit, Mahajan currently serves on the Executive Customer Advisory Board of Ziff-Davis Enterprise and has been a panelist at the Windows Connections, United Business Media Leadership, Microsoft Tech-Ed, Web 2.0, Interop and other conferences. His articles on technology have been published in Siliconeer, Silicon India, TechNet Magazine and in a number of proceedings and journals worldwide.

Mahajan graduated from the University of California Berkley at the age of 19 with a Bachelor’s degree in South Asian Studies. He also received a Masters degree in South Asian Studies from the University of Texas in Austin.

Secrets of Starting a Wiki – a podcast with Eugene Lee

Paul Dunay — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 01:18:00 GMT

A year and a half ago when I was researching how to start a wiki and looking for best practices in wikis – there was little information out there about it. So I decided to reach out to our internal consultant and found out there were already 6 wikis within the BearingPoint organization all built to do collaboration for various teams!

I once read that 90% of collaboration happens in email – which is a shame since that really isn’t collaboration – it’s almost the opposite of collaboration! The goal of collaboration is to include as many people to get the best thinking on any given issue.

If you are thinking of starting a wiki or working on launching on you need to hear what Eugene Lee the CEO of SocialText has to say about wikis, collaboration and enterprise 2.0.

About Eugene

Eugene Lee is the Chief Executive Officer and member of the Board of Directors at Socialtext. Lee assumes day-to-day management and operational control over all aspects of Socialtext's business, including driving product direction and development, strategic alliances, and scaling the sales, marketing and support organizations globally.

Lee comes to Socialtext from Adobe Systems, where he led Adobe’s enterprise marketing and vertical market segments. Previously, he held several executive leadership roles at Cisco Systems, ranging from Vice President (VP) Worldwide Small/Medium Business Marketing to VP Worldwide Enterprise Marketing. Lee also held key management positions at Banyan Systems, including General Manager for the messaging business unit. He was co-founder of Beyond Inc., developers of the award-winning BeyondMail product, and holds four patents in messaging, workflow and privacy technologies. Lee has a B.A. in Physics and B.S. in Engineering and Computer Science from Harvard College and an MBA from M.I.T. Sloan School of Management.

How to create your own Personal Brand?

Paul Dunay — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 17:09:00 GMT

As the economy twists and turns with more layoffs mounting – having a strong personal brand is becoming ever more important from a career perspective.

But what does that mean? Do you launch a blog? Do you start a Twitter account? Do you launch your own Vlog? Or maybe some combination of all of the above.

To get some more clarity on this I interviewed Dan Schwabel the author of the Personal Branding blog. He will also be releasing a new book called Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success (due out with Kaplan in April 09). In my opinion, Dan is also the hardest working guy in Social Media posting 10 times a week on his blog, publishing his own magazine and book as well as having a full time job as the social media expert for EMC!

About Dan

Dan Schawbel is the leading personal branding expert for Gen-Y. He is the author of “Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success (Kaplan, April 2009)."

Presently, Dan is a Social Media Specialist at EMC Corporation, which is one of the leading technology companies in the world. He has helped revolutionize the way EMC communicates and collaborates with all stakeholders. He has spearheaded the company’s Twitter, Facebook, social media press release/newsroom, social bookmarking and blogging strategy in the past year.

Dan has introduced a whole new generation to personal branding, as he opens up new opportunities and strives to elevate the practice. His Personal Branding Blog is consistently ranked in the top 70 marketing blogs in the world by AdAge, and has achieved syndication from Forbes, Reuters and Hoovers. Dan publishes Personal Branding Magazine, is the head judge for the Personal Brand Awards and directs Personal Branding TV.

He has written articles in major magazines and online resources such as BrandWeek Magazine, PRWeek, About.com, Web Worker Daily, T & D Magazine, Small Business Opportunities Magazine, MarketingProfs, Advertising Age, TheLadders.com and The American Marketing Association. He is a frequent media commentator, cited in such outlets as Fast Company, ABC News, Boston Globe, Monster.com, Young Money Magazine, BNET, ReadWriteWeb, Providence Business News, Marketing News, Brand Strategy Magazine (UK) and Yahoo! Finance.

How to develop Thought Leaders

Paul Dunay — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 00:14:00 GMT

These days many professional services and technology firms looking to differentiate themselves lean on an age old technique of creating thought leadership. But truly differentiated and provocative thought leadership is actually hard to come by. Most of the time, it is just interesting theory without any proof. Moreover, does the thought leadership actually drive the business and create sales or is it just content for content sake.

To get a better understanding of this space I decided to interview Bob Buday the co-founder of The Bloom Group whose firm specializes in the creation of cogent and well differentiated thought leadership. Bob is also the co-author of a new book Thoughts on Thought Leadership which is a great resource for anyone working to create thought leaders in their organizations.

About Bob

Bob Buday is a co-founder of The Bloom Group and has been a researcher, marketing strategist, and writer for consulting and IT companies for 15 years. Prior to launching The Bloom Group, Bob for 10 years was director of marketing communications at CSC Index. He played a leading role in making the consulting concept of “business reengineering” a household word, directing Index’s extensive publications, PR, and survey research activities.

From the development and marketing of reengineering, Index’s revenues grew from $30 million to $250 million in less than a decade. Bob was instrumental in the development and placement of two Harvard Business Review articles. He launched and directed the firm’s popular Insights Quarterly management publication, its annual study of information systems management issues, and its 1994 study of reengineering initiatives, which The Economist said was the most extensive study of reengineering to date. He also played a key role in promoting three best-selling books.

Transferring the lessons learned from marketing consulting concepts to the marketing of other complex products (particularly IT), Bob co-authored “Marketing Breakthrough Products,” published in the Harvard Business Review in 1999. His most recent Harvard Business Review piece, "A Consultant's Comeuppance," was published in the February 2003 issue.

Bob’s passion for research and writing about the business implications and applications of IT began in 1985, when he joined InformationWeek magazine as a senior editor. At InformationWeek, the No. 1 magazine on information technology for senior IT and business executives, he led coverage of the strategic use of IT and the software industry. Before joining InformationWeek, he was a business writer at The Orange County (Calif.) Register, where he wrote news and feature stories on companies in the real estate, consumer products, health care, IT, retailing and other industries. He has a B.A. in communications studies from Penn State University and did graduate work in an MBA program at California State University, Fullerton.

Proven Big M Marketing Techniques

Paul Dunay — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 01:48:00 GMT

Marketing is the interface a company builds to interact with the marketplace and the customer base. The marketing group, combined with the sales force, is the point in the company where the market understanding resides.

This should be the group that drives the company, that sells the marketing vision and message internally, and if that is not happening or doesn't seem appropriate, there is something seriously wrong.

Big M Marketing focuses on the broader more strategic use of marketing have having solid processes in place to take advantage of this. I sought the advice of Dave Guzeman president of Mindpik and author of a recent book called - Driving Marketing Success with Big M Marketing.

About Dave

Dave Guzeman Mindpik’s Mastermind, has combined sophisticated technical savvy with keen marketing instincts for over 30 years. A veteran Silicon Valley marketer, Guzeman founded the Mindpik consultancy in 1988 to develop sales and marketing programs for new product launches, startups and turnarounds. Guzeman directs all of Mindpik's efforts to build business plans for capital acquisition or sales of companies or products to targeted markets. Mindpik clients have included semiconductor powerhouses like Signetics (now Philips) to inventive start-ups like Music Semiconductor and u-Nav microprocessors.

Prior to starting Mindpik, Guzeman held executive marketing positions including VP of Marketing at Zilog and VP of Marketing & Sales at ZyMOS. At the latter, he was responsible for introducing the industry's first PC clone chipset, a release that triggered the PC clone avalanche.

Guzeman started the Advertising and PR department at Intel in the mid-seventies where he worked with the company's founding partners to launch the legendary 8080 microprocessor which set the architecture and instruction set Intel still uses today.

Guzeman came to Intel from Teledyne Semiconductor, his first stop in Silicon Valley, where he served as the Digital Product marketing Manager after graduation with a BS in Physics from Aurora University in Illinois.

Secrets of Web Analytics – a podcast with Avinash Kaushik

Paul Dunay — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 15:31:00 GMT

Stop everything you are doing and listen to this podcast!

Seriously, if you have never met or had the opportunity to listen to Avinash Kaushik you must hear this podcast – I guarantee you will learn something from this podcast.

Sometimes you meet someone so passionate about something that it’s contagious and if you listen closely you can hear me firing off emails to my team in the background about what I am hearing and learning on this podcast.

I had the opportunity to do a podcast with Avinash to discuss some areas where marketers are doing things right and wrong but all of them are simple but extremely powerful uses of web analytics to make their websites and businesses better on the web. We also took some live Twitter questions as we were doing the podcast. But stop reading this and start listening to Avinash – its 25 minutes long but positively electric!

About Avinash

Avinash Kaushik is the author of the recently published book Web Analytics: An Hour A Day. 100% of Avinash's proceeds from his book are donated to two charities: Doctors Without Borders, The Smile Train.

Avinash is also the Analytics Evangelist for Google and a co-founder of Market Motive.

As a thought leader Avinash puts a common sense framework around the often frenetic world of web research and analytics, and combines that with this philosophy that investing in talented Analysts is the key to long term success. He is also a staunch advocate of listening to the consumer, and is committed to helping organizations unlock the value of web data.

He is a frequent speaker at industry conferences in the US and Europe, such as eMetrics, Ad-Tech, iCitizen, and SES.

You'll find Avinash's web analytics blog, Occam's Razor

Here are two links to posts about the dashboard (the first one was the one I had promised):

http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2008/04/the-action-dashboard-an-alternative-to-crappy-dashboards.html
http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2007/03/five-rules-for-high-impact-web-analytics-dashboards.html

Secrets of Social Media Marketing – a podcast with Paul Gillin

Paul Dunay — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 15:42:00 GMT

There is no doubt the speed of change in the media space is blinding. New tools become available to marketers and individuals alike nearly every week.

If you have ever felt like it is hard to keep up (and I know I have) then this book is for you. Admittedly, Paul Gillin wrote this book for the 90% of marketers still trying to figure out social media, I can tell you it makes and excellent resource for even the most polished social media expert.

Paul covers topics like how to sell your social media program to by making a strong case, how to be a good listener using DIY tools across many types of media, how to find and court influencers, how to make social media worthy content and measuring results.

I was lucky enough to get an advanced copy of his book and really enjoyed reading because it gave me ideas I can put into play immediately. Check out my podcast with Paul as we discuss some of the Secrets of Social Media Marketing.

About Paul

Paul is a veteran journalist who's always been fascinated by the leading edge of technology innovation.

Paul is a veteran technology journalist with more than 24 years of editorial leadership. Paul was founding editor-in-chief of TechTarget, one of the most successful new media entities to emerge on the Internet. Previously, he was editor-in-chief and executive editor of Computerworld . Currently, he writes the social media column for BtoB magazine. His critically acclaimed new book,The New Influencers, is about the changes in markets being driven by the new breed of online publishers. Published by Quill Driver Books in spring, 2007, it is in its third printing. His second book, Secrets of Social Media Marketing, will be published in the fall of 2008.

Paul specializes in advising business-to-business marketers on strategies to optimize their use of online channels to reach buyers cost-effectively. He is particularly interested in social media and the application of personal publishing to brand awareness and business marketing.

Paul is an accomplished speaker and media spokesman. He has keynoted more than a dozen technology conferences, including annual user group meetings for IBM, Oracle, Cognos, Business Objects and J.D. Edwards. He has also spoken at scores of other events about technology trends and social media.

His ability to translate complex technology topics into plain English has made him a favorite source for journalists. He has been widely quoted in newspapers and on the airwaves, including appearances on CNN, PBS, Fox News and MSNBC.

Paul is a research fellow at the Society for New Communications Research and he chairs the social media cluster of the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council. He blogs at www.paulgillin.com.

Using Email to Improve Profit

Paul Dunay — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 13:51:00 GMT

Normally email and profit don’t go in the same sentence at least in the minds of most B2B marketers – but actually they should.

Everything has a cost associated with it and email is no exception – so this podcast focuses on how much lift in revenues and profits you can get out of your email program if you are in B2C or B2B marketing.

To accomplish this I decided to speak to Steve Webster, Chief Strategy Officer from iPost who has published several case studies on the topic of improving profits via email. Don’t miss he views on this topic.

About Steve

Stephen Webster leads iPost’s Sales team and co-founded iPost in 1996 to address the need for well-designed, professional email services and software. Prior to founding iPost, he worked on email systems for an IBM-funded consortium called ITC, and served as engineering director for the award-winning Z-Code, co-founded by iPost’s CTO, Bart Schaefer, PhD. Webster is a frequent keynote speaker on behavioral targeting, profitable and effective email marketing, and cross-channel marketing programs. He holds a BSEE from Carnegie Mellon University.

Putting in place a Virtual Events strategy

Paul Dunay — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 01:08:00 GMT

If you are an avid reader of this blog you will already know that I am fascinated with Virtual Worlds and Virtual Events – but I was never truly enamored with Second Life and was not in favor of it for business from the start (must have been that scary looking penguin that tried to strike up a conversation with me)

All that aside – I encounter a virtual world from the moment I step foot into my house with my two boys being avid RuneScape (www.runescape.com) players. So I can’t help but think there must be something redeeming here for businesses.

One thing I am investigating and heavily considering for 2009 is a Virtual Events Strategy. It’s like a virtual tradeshow but a space all your own for your own business events.

Because of this I decided to speak to Stuart Bowen who has put into place a virtual events strategy a few times now and is currently doing this for ON24. Don’t miss his insights into what you should be doing.

About Stuart

Stuart Bowen, Senior Director of Virtual Events, ON24

In his current position, Stuart overseas the Sales and Business Development of ON24 Virtual Show, working with Sales, Executive Management and Product Development. ON24 is a global provider of webcasting and virtual events solutions.

Stuart has spent his working life in the B2B media space. Stuart has held a number of positions including VP Sales in which he was responsible for creating the first ‘online-only’ sales team at UBM (formerly CMP Media) and then pioneering the original cross-product (print and online media) sales team. In his last position at UBM Stuart oversaw and evangelized the use of virtual worlds in a business environment to internal and external customers

ON24 Virtual Show. Learn more on http://on24.com/products_virtualshow.html

LiveBar – Add Community to your Site in Seconds!

Paul Dunay — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 19:50:00 GMT

A live interview with the CEO, Peter Friedman, from LiveWorld at Web 2.0 Expo about the launch of their new product called LiveBar.

If you ever dreamed of adding community to your website without having the hassle of a major integration effort involving your IT department then LiveWorld’s newest product called LiveBar is for you.

LiveBar adds contextually relevant community to your site by adding a single line of Java script to your header tag just to those pages which adds community to those pages in seconds.

If you’ve got a site with lots of content, it probably doesn’t make sense to have community features on every page. But, it does make sense to add real-time conversation to sections with high traffic volume—for example, content areas about a current program, or hot topics. Using LiveBar, you can add conversational elements like comments and “shouts” (which are similar to Tweets) to just those sections, and enhance the experience for those users.

A&E, QVC, Tulane University are already pilot clients for LiveBar and other existing customers include – Neutrogena, P&G, American Express, Kimberly-Clark HSBC, Kraft, Campbells and more …

Listen to Peter Friedman discuss how to do this and the best uses of this for your brand!

About Peter

Peter founded LiveWorld, Inc. in April 1996. With 20 years experience in the executive offices of Fortune 500 companies, he connects strategic and operating strategies, as well as financial metrics, to community strategy. Peter sets the LiveWorld vision and directs overall operations. He is an executive sponsor for several of LiveWorld’s major accounts, working with clients to define how our services will directly support the client’s business objectives, as well as developing creative concepts for the programs. He is one of the few Internet executives to have launched and managed multiple online services on a global scale. His background is an unusual mix of creative, business, entrepreneurial, and corporate, but has always focused on bringing people together in successful collaboration. Prior to founding LiveWorld, Inc., he was the vice president and general manager of Apple Computer’s Internet/Online Services business unit. He oversaw the creation, launch, and growth of Apple’s online services, including AppleLink, Apple’s global online loyalty marketing and customer support community service, and eWorld, a consumer service based on AOL technology and Internet services such as Salon. During his 12-year tenure at Apple, his responsibilities also included managing Business Systems Marketing and product line management in Apple’s Macintosh division.

Peter holds a Bachelors degree in American History from Brown University, and a Master’s in Business Administration from The Harvard Business School.

Yodle: Managing the Long Tail for the Long Tail!

Paul Dunay — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 12:22:00 GMT

Two years ago less than half of all consumers used search to find a local business but today that number is upward of 74%!

However, most small businesses today still don’t have a website in fact less than 10% of small business owners are online. For them the problem is not just that they don’t have a website but promoting their website as well.

Enter Yodle

Yodle helps small service based business get a web presence and then help them promote their business by buying lots of niche keywords and syndicating the results to local businesses. (ex Teeth Whitening Union Square NY)

Yodle growth has been outstanding (around 700% year over year) which should come as no surprise since their customers are long tail and so are the keywords they buy for them.

Check out my podcast with their CEO Court Cunningham …

About Court

Court Cunningham is the CEO of Yodle, Court oversees all aspects of operations and strategy, including technology, product development and sales and marketing. Prior to joining Yodle, he held the position of COO at Community Connect, a niche social networking company, where he lead consumer marketing, product management and development efforts. Before that, as SVP/GM of the Marketing Automation group at DoubleClick, he was instrumental in establishing DARTmail as the industry leading email marketing solution.

Court received a BA in English from Princeton University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Using FriendFeed for Aggregating Conversations – a podcast with Jesse Stay

Paul Dunay — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 14:16:00 GMT

Sometimes I have to admit it is hard to keep up with all the new advances in Social technologies. And when I hear the buzz about certain technologies getting louder and louder it often times prompts me to seek out the help of a trusted source.

Enter Jesse Stay – Facebook developer and guru, a recent author of FBML essentials, blogger of Stay-n-Alive and social media junkie like myself.

I sought Jesse’s help in further understanding how he was using FriendFeed for tracking and commenting on all the conversations that were happening at the recent F8, Facebook developer conference.

Here his thoughts and excuse my ignorance on any of these topics for those of you more social advanced.

About Jesse

Jesse is a Social Media technologies expert. He specializes in Facebook and other technologies that enable you as a business to better reach your customers in a viral manner, leading to more targeted ad and marketing positions, leading to faster adaptation of your brand through the social networks.

Through his company, Stay N' Alive Productions, he has firm experience developing and providing quality applications that have already had strong successes. He has both developed and consulted for successful social networking applications, some of those which currently have over a million users (the top 90 on Facebook!).

Social Networking: Expanding Beyond the Youth Market and into Business - a podcast with Dotster’s Catherine Brown

Paul Dunay — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 15:22:00 GMT

Starting up a social network to support any business can be a challenge. These days it seems that there are a variety of new social networks popping up all over. To that end I have heard a new acronym YASN (Yet Another Social Network)!

But to fill this demand many new social network software’s and asp’s are being created to fill the business need. Recently Dotster introduced a new product for not only their clients but of clients beyond their control.

The idea that Social Networking is moving beyond the youth market to business isn’t new but the idea is how and what are people doing to get them to join and what content are they providing to keep them engaged.

Listen to Catherine’s ideas on how to get your own community going as well as keep them coming back for more.

About Catherine

Catherine Brown, Director of Enterprise Social Networking, Dotster, Inc., has over 14 years experience in marketing and product promotions and has a successful track record at both large and small firms. At Calista, an IP Telephony start-up, she was part of an executive team that took the company to acquisition by Cisco. While at Cisco, she managed major product launches and million dollar promotional campaigns, worked on a company-wide website redesign and started a web analytics program. She has also been an entrepreneur. Catherine has a BA from Stanford, an MBA from UC Berkeley, and has lived in Europe and Latin America (she speaks both French and Spanish).

Psychology of Buzz Marketing – a podcast with Jim Calhoun, CEO of Popular Media

Paul Dunay — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 15:11:00 GMT

Why are some Buzz Marketing programs better than others?

What makes one program more Buzz worthy than another?

These questions and more are why I interviewed Jim Calhoun the CEO of Popular Media for his advice on how to really make your Buzz Marketing programs engaging.

So what’s Jim’s advice on how to make good decisions when it comes to Viral or Buzz Marketing?

Two tenets - Make it fun to share and Make it fun to get – this is a base minimum for any Buzz program. To hear more of his advice on how to make your campaigns go viral check out our podcast.

About Jim

Jim co-founded PopularMedia and has served as chief executive officer since its inception in 2003. He is responsible for guiding the company's strategy, growth, operations and customer satisfaction. A true Silicon Valley veteran, Jim has helped a broad range of businesses grow through technology and marketing -- from startups such as Glam Media, Inc. to global leaders such as HP and IBM. Prior to founding PopularMedia, Jim founded CustomerClick LLC, a privately held direct marketing services firm based in San Francisco. Previously, Jim served as Vice President of Products at NetObjects, Inc. Jim is a former reviews editor at CNET and holds a degree in Journalism from the University of Missouri.

Drop.io – a podcast with Chad Stoller

Paul Dunay — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 11:22:00 GMT

File Sharing is very binary – either you share a file online or you don’t.

Well not anymore! – enter Drop.io.

Drop.io allows consumers to create their own private online spaces where they can easily and privately share photos, videos, documents, and other types of media with others. By default, drops are "private" - consumers control how and with whom drops are shared. Drop.io never requires any type of account registration, and all drops can be password-protected and set to expire after a period of time. Drop.io provides multiple methods of sharing content - by uploading through the Web site, sending email or MMS messages to the drop email address, faxing assets in and out, or by calling the drop voicemail number to leave a voice notes.

Hear what Chad Stoller has to say about how marketers’ should be using Drop.io externally as well as internally.

About Chad

Prior to joining drop.io, Stoller was Executive Director of Emerging Platforms at Organic, a marketing and communications company, where he led Organic's strategy for new communication platforms, including social networking, mobile, gaming, meta-verse, geo-data applications and location-based services. In addition to developing strategies for Organic, Chad worked directly on emerging platform programs for leading brands like Chrysler Corporation, Bank of America, Fox Entertainment, NBC and Sprint.

Stoller began his career as a media planner and developer for fashion experience at Arnell Group, where he worked on such brands as Ray-Ban, Banana Republic, Donna Karen and Samsung. Subsequently, he co-founded Surge Interactive, the interactive division of Arnell Group, where he led interactive brand strategies for Universal Music Group, Tommy Hilfiger, Clear Channel, among others. Stoller returned to Arnell Group five years later in the newly created role of Director, Communications Solutions and was responsible for such brands as McDonalds, Siemens, Reebok, DaimlerChrysler and others.

Searching Communities and Forums – a podcast with Twing

Paul Dunay — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 19:19:00 GMT

Twing.com, a property of Accoona Corp., is a free service that aims to help users search for opinions, information, and conversations that match their particular interest—however obscure that particular interest may be. The site encourages users to get in on the conversation by enabling them to find communities relevant to their interests.

While blogs and social media have become increasingly common - discussions occurring on message boards and within forums aren't usually surfaced by traditional search engines. This kind of web content is multiplying rapidly and you are going to need something dedicated to getting to the content underneath.

So I interviewed Scott Germaise the director of product management for Twing to find out how we should be using this great new tool for your reputation monitoring efforts.

About Scott

Scott is currently the Director of Product Management at Twing.com, a vertical search engine for searching and discovering communities. I've been in the online biz since the early days at Prodigy, was a co-founder and VP, Information Architecture at About.com, worked for or on other community sites such as ClubMom.com.

What Sales Really Thinks About Marketing?

Paul Dunay — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 13:16:00 GMT

Does Sales really care about leads? Maybe not.

If you ask Bill Binch, VP of Sales from demand generation software provider Marketo, he prefers pipeline and bookings to leads. Ironically, as much as lead nurturing and lead scoring can help generate pipeline and revenue, by framing the discussion around leads too many marketers ignore the equally valid perspective of their sales counterparts. This can lead to diminished success for many marketing-led efforts around lead management.

This is just one of the many disconnects between sales and marketing that we’ve been exploring in the series Sales is from Mars, Marketing is from Venus. This is my 3rd such podcast with Marketo in this area. First we started with a CEO’s perspective then we did a VP of Marketing perspective and now we have the VP of Sales perspective. Getting the Sales viewpoint is critical for marketers since lead management initiatives always require buy-in and support from Sales to be successful.

Special thanks to my friends at Marketo for allowing me to interview their VP of sales for this podcast. They use what they sell to create opportunities for themselves, so there is no better place to look for ideas on how to optimize your own demand generation efforts than by talking with the guys who sell and deliver that for a living. I always learn something I can incorporate into my lead nurturing platform every time I talk with them! I hope you learn something too…

About Bill

Bill brings 16 years of best practice sales, leadership, and operations experience to his role leading all of Marketo's sales and customer success activities. Prior to joining Marketo, Binch was VP and General Manager, Distribution, at AVOLENT, where he managed the team focused on the distribution market, small & medium businesses, and install base customers. Prior to AVOLENT, Binch developed his sales and operational experience at Oracle, PeopleSoft, and BEA Systems, where he built and managed direct, inside, and channel organizations and ran business units ranging from mid-market business customers to strategic accounts. Bill graduated from Arizona State University with a BS in Marketing.

The Big Switch – a podcast with Nicholas Carr

Paul Dunay — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 23:57:35 GMT

Rather than storing data and software applications down the hall in your office or in a big data center – there is a shift towards storing them on the web. And that’s the shift that Nick Carr has built his book upon.

We (America) need to jump on this paradigm shift to reduce costs in this post Sarbanes Oxley and difficult economic environment if we want to gain competitive advantage for ourselves and for our country. No longer is running enterprise CRM or ERP a competitive advantage - its table stakes.

What does this mean for IT departments? What does this mean for your data security? And most importantly - what does the impact of distributed computing have on marketers? Check out what Nick has to say about all this ...

About Nick

A former executive editor of the Harvard Business Review, Nicholas Carr writes and speaks on technology, business, and culture. His 2004 book Does IT Matter?. published by Harvard Business School Press, set off a worldwide debate about the role of computers in business. His widely acclaimed new book, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google, examines the rise of "cloud computing" and its implications for business, media and society.

Carr writes regularly for the Financial Times, Strategy & Business and The Guardian. His articles have also appeared in the New York Times, Wired, Business 2.0, The Banker, and Advertising Age as well as on his blog Rough Type. He is a member of the Encyclopedia Britannica's editorial board of advisors.

In 2005, Optimize magazine named Carr one of the leading thinkers on information technology, and in 2007 eWeek named him one of the 100 most influential people in IT. Earlier in his career, he was a principal at Mercer Management Consulting.

Carr has been a speaker at MIT, Harvard, Wharton, the Kennedy School of Government, NASA, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas as well as at many industry, corporate, and professional events throughout the Americas, Europe, and Asia. He holds a B.A. from Dartmouth College and an M.A., in English literature, from Harvard University.

Unlock your PDF’s and set them free! – a podcast with Peter Nieforth

Paul Dunay — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 10:35:00 GMT

Classically marketers have always been protective of their content locking them up in PDFs and then putting a registration page in front of them. This behavior is known to have a 1 in 10 (10%) download rate which isn’t bad by marketing standards but on the flip side that means there is a 90% leakage rate!

Studies have shown that a NON protected PDF will get as high as a 20X greater download rate. But then how can you capture registration information?

Peter Nieforth's company, Vitrium Systems, has created a web-based tool called docmetrics. Their solution moves away from external registrations forms to forms that are embedded directly inside the PDF - this allows marketers to collect reader data while they are engaged in the content and share the content with their colleagues. In addition to the data on who is reading the content, docmetrics provides data on when the document was opened, how many pages were read, and how much time was spent on each page.

To hear more about this exciting new technology with my interview of Peter right on the show floor at the MarketingProfs B2B Forum! WARNING: this was recorded on the show floor so it is a little loud (sorry) because there was quite a crowd in his booth!

About Peter

Peter Nieforth is the Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder at Vitrium Systems Inc. Nieforth founded Vitrium Systems together with Narayan Sainaney, Blair Adamson and Alfred Dorey bringing together a core group to crystallize and commercialize the ideas and research of Sainaney. Nieforth specializes in financing, organizing and commercializing promising start-ups, most recently acting as Director of Investment for The Loreto Bay Company (LBC), where he worked on raising a total of 18 million US dollars for the world’s largest sustainable resort community, which is currently being built by LBC in the Mexican Baja. Nieforth has also served as an investment specialist for BMO Bank of Montreal, as Financial Advisor for Yorkton Securities Inc. and as Financial Consultant with Merrill Lynch Canada Inc.

Nieforth studied Political Science at Acadia University, and graduated from Mount Saint Agnes Academy in Hamilton, Bermuda.

Social Games: Useful for B2B Marketers?

Paul Dunay — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 13:50:00 GMT

It should come as no surprise that the online gaming market is exploding. In fact, last year online gaming attracted 28 percent of the total worldwide online population -- almost 217 million people!

For a long time gamers were thought of as young guys with glasses and zits playing for 14 hours a day but all that has changed. The market has been embraced much more by women and the age range has expanded from 7 to 107.

Opportunities for product placement as well as experiential branded games are close at hand for us as marketers. Now that games are becoming so prevalent, we’re beginning to see specialized ad networks focused on in-game advertising as an untapped channel. Microsoft and Google have already made acquisitions in the space and start-ups are chomping at the bit.

So to get a better understanding of the gaming space, I had the opportunity to interview Roman Nouzareth the President and CEO of Café.com. Roman is no stranger to online gaming, having successfully founded Boonty, Inc., a leading digital distributor of casual and hardcore games, and ushered in the try-before-you-buy downloadable business model. This time around, his business is focused on entirely new revenue streams – advertising and micro-transactions, or virtual items you buy and use in and around the games. He has a unique perspective on where the online gaming trend is heading.

About Roman

Roman is one of the founders of Boonty.com, the worldwide leader in the digital distribution of video games. Boonty offers Internet portals, ISPs, mobile phone operators, advertisers and PC manufacturers a complete solution that combines all areas of expertise needed for a generic video game digital distribution offering, the negotiation and selection of content from publishers, the design and management of a complete e-commerce and downloading platform, online marketing know-how, and a leading role in managing websites' Games component. Casual and hardcore gamers can thus access a catalogue of over 1500 PC and mobile games for an optimal gaming and purchasing experience.

After successfully being in charge of sales strategy, marketing, and publisher relations in Europe and Asia, Roman is now responsible for the North American market. From Manhattan, Roman also took the Product Management lead for the company in order to design and release the new social gaming site cafe.com. Roman was also a Jury member at the famous advertising Cannes Lion Festival in 2000 and a speaker in various events like CES in Las Vegas. He holds a Law Degree from the University of Paris II Assas and is an investor in several start-ups.

New Rules of Web Marketing - a podcast with Michael Mace

Paul Dunay — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 14:04:00 GMT

Many marketing teams are being asked by senior leaders in their organizations why they aren’t using the same cutting edge tactics as some of their competitors. When is it right to use cutting edge tactics? When is it right to use traditional tactics? When and how should you integrate the two?

To answer these questions, I interviewed Michael Mace of Rubicon Consulting. He runs a Web Marketing Boot Camp to help marketing teams come together, discuss these issues, and learn what Web marketing tactics link best to their corporate strategy.

Here is a taste of what Michael covers and what he thinks the future looks like for Web marketers.

About Michael

Michael is a principal at Rubicon Consulting, where they help tech companies solve tough strategy and marketing problems. Michael is a former Chief Competitive Officer and VP of Product Planning at Palm, VP of Strategic Marketing at PalmSource, and director of Mac Platform Marketing at Apple. He also has served in many other roles. For more info on him please visit his website.

Personality Not Included – a podcast with Rohit Bhargava

Paul Dunay — Tue, 27 May 2008 14:19:00 GMT

What if you placed a call to GM and the CEO answered the phone?

You would think perhaps this company is too small to suit my needs. This is why the bigger a company gets the more faceless they become because they layer on infrastructure to foster a certain perception.

But new media changes that paradigm and enables every brand to have a voice. From the smallest of firms to the largest and from the most obscure products to the most complex services. This is something every brand manager in every company should be working on right now – opening up your brand to be more conversational!

Which is exactly why Rohit Bhargava wrote his new book entitled Personality not Included. It’s not just another book about social media – it’s a book about how to regain a brand personality.

I had a chance to catch up with Rohit and discuss questions I had after reading the book. I hope you enjoy my interview with him as much as I did.

About Rohit

Rohit is a founding member of the pioneering 360 Digital Influence team at Ogilvy, a leading agency, in helping clients navigate the social media universe. He publishes the Influential Marketing blog, ranked among the top 50 marketing blogs in the world, and is often featured as an expert in media including The Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, and Fast Company.

Rohit is also the author of the newly released book, Personality Not Included, published internationally by McGraw-Hill. A guide for companies on how authenticity is the new standard that brands need live up to in the social media era, the book has received significant early praise and features a forward by bestselling author and entrepreneur, Guy Kawasaki.

Riding the Groundswell of Social Media - a podcast with Charlene Li

Paul Dunay — Mon, 19 May 2008 01:57:00 GMT

Right now, your customers are writing about your products on blogs and reediting your commercials on YouTube. They’re defining you on Wikipedia and ganging up on you on social networking sites like Facebook. These are all elements of a social phenomenon — the groundswell — that has created a permanent, long-lasting shift in the way the world works.

Most companies see the groundswell as a threat. But you can see it as an opportunity!

That’s the reason that Charlene Li and her Forrester Research colleague Josh Bernoff wrote their new, appropriately named book Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies.

In the book, they describe the strategies and stages every company needs to go through to listen to, talk to, energize and embrace the groundswell. I had a chance to catch up with Charlene to get some answers to questions that came to me as I read the book and compared my social strategy with their recommendations. So I hope you enjoy this podcast …

About Charlene

Charlene is one of the leading voices in the area of Social Computing and Web 2.0 through her work over the past nine years with the respected technology and market research company Forrester Research. She is one of Forrester’s most quoted analysts. An accomplished and frequently requested public speaker, she often appears at industry events and delivered the keynote speech at Forrester’s Consumer Forum in 2007.

Charlene analyzes how companies can use technologies — like blogs, social networks, RSS, tagging, and widgets — to meet business objectives. She started her own analyst blog in 2004 and is regularly cited as America’s most influential analyst blogger. She shares her blog with Josh Bernoff.

Previously, Charlene led the marketing and media research team at Forrester and ran its San Francisco office. She has also been publisher of interactive media for Community Newspaper Company, a group of newspapers in Massachusetts, and served on the board of directors for the Newspaper Association of America’s New Media Federation. Charlene has managed new-product development for the San Jose Mercury News and has also been a strategy consultant for Monitor Company. She holds an M.B.A from Harvard Business School.

Charlene lives in San Mateo, Calif., with her husband and two children, all of whom are happy, engaged members of the groundswell.

Oh Behave! – Hidden Forces that Shape Irrational Behavior

Paul Dunay — Mon, 05 May 2008 01:50:00 GMT

When marketers design a marketing campaign – we typically design them for “rational” buyers. But do buyers ever act rational?

And what about us?

When we make decisions we think we're in control and making rational choices. But are we?

Dan Ariely a faculty member at MIT’s Sloan School of Management and member of the Media Lab has launched a book called Predictably Irrational and the blog by the same name dedicated the study of behaviors. His work is fascinating and enlightening for all marketers.

PS - Dan is going to be one of the Keynote speakers at MarketingProfs B2B Forum on June 9-10 in Boston (along with David Meerman Scott) which sounds like a fantastic line up to me – I know I will be there as well conducting a panel on: Is Social Media Harder for B2B vs. B2C? so don’t forget to join us for that.

This is a direct link to the event use promo code ESPK08 to save $200 on the $1,295 registration fee (save $350 if you sign up before May 19th).

About Dan

Dan’s immersive introduction to irrationality took place many years ago while he was overcoming injuries sustained in an explosion (here is a description of his experiences in the hospital). The range of treatments in the burn department, and particularly the daily “bath” made him face a variety of irrational behaviors that were immensely painful and persistent. Upon leaving the hospital, he wanted to understand how to better deliver painful and unavoidable treatments to patients so he began conducting research in this area. After completing this initial research project, he became engrossed with the idea that we repeatedly and predictably make the wrong decisions in many aspects of our lives and that research could help change some of these patterns. A few years later, decision making and behavioral economics dramatically influenced his personal life when he found himself using all of the knowledge he’d accumulated in order to convince Sumi to marry him (a decision that was in his best interest but not necessarily in hers). After managing to convince her, he realized that if understanding decision-making could help him achieve this goal, it could help anyone in their daily life.

Predictably Irrational, is his attempt to take research findings in behavioral economics and describe them in non academic terms so that more people will learn about this type of research, discover the excitement of this field, and possibly use some of the insights to enrich their own lives. In terms of official positions, he is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Behavioral Economics at MIT’s Sloan School of Management and at the Media Laboratory, a founding member of the Center for Advanced Hindsight, and a visiting professor at Duke University.

Monitor, Track and Participate in Social Media – a podcast with Michael Spataro

Paul Dunay — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 00:25:00 GMT

Over the past few years marketers have been working on tracking conversations about their brands on the Web (you are tracking and listening, aren’t you?). But once you have that in place, then what?

Strategies for understanding and dealing with the flow of all these conversations are the natural next step. As more and more conversations are coming online, you need to respond quickly. So knowing things like “sentiment,” who in your organization is on point to respond, and whether they have been doing so are becoming more important. It’s like being at a party and having several conversations going on that you want to participate in.

I met Michael Spataro a few weeks back as I was researching tools to help me with this exact problem. I think what I found out was important for you to hear as well. I hope you agree.

About Mike

Mike is vice president with Visible Technologies, a leading provider of social media analytics and online reputation management services. An early pioneer of interactive marketing and PR, Mike has been devising and implementing digital communications and social media strategies for global brands for more than 10 years, including The Walt Disney Co., General Motors, Panasonic, Hewlett-Packard, MasterCard, Eastman Kodak, Verizon, Hanes, and the renowned "Got Milk?" campaign.

Prior to joining Visible, Mike led the interactive and new media divisions for Interpublic's two largest PR agencies, Weber Shandwick and GolinHarris. He was the strategic force that established both agencies as leaders in digital communications and consumer-generated media services. During his nearly 10 years at Interpublic, Mike created and executed a variety of award-winning campaigns that blended traditional and new media ideas that produced outstanding business results for his clients.

Sales is from Mars and Marketing is from Venus – Vol. II – Lead Scoring

Paul Dunay — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 01:57:00 GMT

A growing trend in B2B marketing today is in the realms of “lead nurturing” and “lead scoring.”

I have often found the best way to impress the sales team is to feed them a stream of high-quality leads. Events, webinars, account-based marketing, trade events and speaking engagements all offer opportunities to find and feed some leads (usually the hottest ones) to the sales team. But what happens to those that are not so hot? Typically they hit the cutting room floor or are left to die on the vine in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.

As part of my ongoing series discussing sales-marketing alignment with our friends at Marketo, a B2B marketing software provider, in this interview Jon Miller and I look at why B2B marketers should care about lead scoring and how they can get started qualifying and prioritizing leads. Check it out …

About Jon Miller
VP Marketing, Marketo

Jon has the unique challenge of leading Marketing for Marketo, a company whose mission is helping other B2B marketers drive revenue and improve accountability. Jon explores best practices in demand generation, lead management, and online marketing in his popular blog, Modern B2B Marketing, and is a frequent columnist and speaker at industry events. Before co-founding Marketo, Jon was a vice president at Epiphany, a CRM strategist at Exchange Partners, and a strategic consultant for Gemini Consulting. Jon graduated Magna Cum Laude in Physics from Harvard College and has an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

The Power of Social Media meets the Press Release

Paul Dunay — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 01:18:00 GMT

Is the press release dead?

Well not really. But there certainly is a new wave out there – the social media press release, or SMPR, spawned by Todd Defern and the folks at SHIFT communications.

What does this mean for you? Well, when newspapers, magazines and other media go online, they are trying to create a conversation around a given article or topic they have written about. Why shouldn’t that be the case for press releases?

So I decided to get a podcast together with Todd so he could shed some light on success stories using the SMPR. Enjoy ...

About Todd

Todd Defren leads client services and business development efforts for SHIFT Communications, a $10 million agency with offices in Boston and San Francisco.

Working in high-tech public relations for approximately 15 years, Defren currently specializes in social media strategies and is widely noted for creating the first template for social media news releases in 2006. He followed up with a template for social media-optimized online newsrooms in early 2007.

Prior to SHIFT, Defren was at Sterling Hager, joining in 1994 as an account manager and reaching the level of managing director of the San Francisco office in August 2000. His earlier experience included managing the strategic and tactical corporate communications at ENTEX Information Services, a $2 billion New York-based systems integrator, now part of Siemens AG.

Defren has served as a visiting professor at Emerson College in Boston, lecturing on marketing and public relations on the Internet. In 2006, Defren was named a Research Fellow and member of the Advisory Board of the Society for New Communications Research.

Full Disclosure: I have hired SHIFT Communications to help BearingPoint with our Social Media PR

Radically Transparent Reputation Management - a podcast with Andy Beal

Paul Dunay — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 03:06:00 GMT

Brand building and reputation management are two sides of a coin. What brand managers do to build their company’s reputation can come crashing down overnight with the keystroke of an angry blogger.

Managing a company’s reputation used to be a back-channel activity, known only to a few. Today, company reputation is available to everyone. It is radically transparent.

Fellow blogger Andy Beal of MarketingPilgrim just released a book with Dr. Judy Strauss titled Radically Transparent. It’s a how-to guide for anyone needing to manage a reputation, whether B2B, B2C or even C2C. To complement the book, Andy has launched a service called Trackur that can help you monitor and manage a reputation.

I managed to grab Andy on his way to SXSW to discuss what’s changing in reputation management. Enjoy ...

About Andy

Andy Beal is an internet marketing consultant specializing in search engine marketing, online reputation management, and business blogging. Considered one of the world’s most respected online marketing experts, Andy has worked with many top companies such as Motorola, GlaxoSmithKline, SAS, Lowes, Quicken Loans, and NBC.

Highly respected as a source of internet marketing advice, Andy Beal has had articles published around the world, including BusinessWeek Online, Search Engine Watch, Search Engine Guide, and Web Pro News. He is the co-author of an online reputation management book called Radically Transparent which can be found on Amazon.com.