Savvy B2B Marketing - Latest Blog Entries

Savvy Week in Review - March 19th

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 07:31:00 -0500

Tomorrow is the first day of spring, and - boy! - are we ever ready.

Like the crocuses bursting up through the ground, our fellow marketers are a-bloom with great ideas, commentary, and conversations. This week's wrap-up includes finding the right people on twitter, raising customer intimacy (racy!), and improving your business blogging skills by partying (no, really!).

TGIF & enjoy the great reads.

See you next week!

Social Media and Thought Leadership: The Virtuous Circle for B2B Marketing - by @robleavitt
Rob points out that B2B marketers are taking a dangerously limited view of the intersection of thought leadership and social media.

Marketing Content Must Reach Beyond Two-Way Dialogue - by @ardath421 via @sysconmedia
Ardath Albee explains why B2B content needs to work overtime to address the needs of all involved in today's complex buying process.

Social Media Raises the Bar for Customer Intimacy - by @ckochster
Chris Koch suggests that the marriage of content and social media can take interactions with B2B prospects and customers to a new level.

The Surprising Old-School Secret to Blogging Success - by @soniasimone on @copyblogger
This tongue-in-cheek post counsels bloggers to dabble in some unplugged communication tactics like conversation (the real, 1.0 kind!) and parties. That's advice I like to hear!

A 3-minute Lesson in Traditional Versus Social Brand Marketing - by @markwschaefer
We love Mark W. Schaefer's blog {grow} for it's insightful commentary and scintillating reader conversations (I love an excuse to use the word "scintillating"), but this post is partly just for fun. It features a great little agency promo that trys to cleverly illustrate the differences between the "good, ol' days" and the Web 2.0/3.0 that we're living in now.

A Glimpse Inside the Mind of the New B2B Buyer - by @ConnectMarketer
The number of B2B buyers using social media to help them make a purchase decision is on the rise. Great report & data.

The Brand Dashboard - a Window to Relevance - by @briansolis
Brian Solis highlights some free social media listening tools and how you can use them to business advantage.

SXSW - Austin: The Heart of the Content Revolution - by @magnify via @huffingtonpost
Of course we've been reading a lot about SXSW this week. I especially liked this post from Steve Rosenbaum about the importance of content strategy.

How to Find the Right People on Twitter - by @mattmcgee via @sengineland
Are you looking for new people to connect with on Twitter? This post from Search Engine Land provides lots of great tools and sites.

Save Time & Stress – Blog Editorial Calendar Template

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 07:58:00 -0500

Blogging is hard work. You must consistently create and publish great content. Today's post is about saving yourself time and stress by implementing a simple editorial calendar. Sure, it's going to require a little work up front, but - trust me - you'll thank me once you're up and running.

The Editorial Calendar - what is it?
In case you're not sure, an editorial calendar is a content plan that is laid over a publishing schedule. Magazines, for instance, have monthly editorial calendars that start out as a broad list of key topics and eventually evolve into highly detailed outlines of each issue's content.

How do I create one?
I'm an Excel junkie, so I tend to go old school when setting up an editorial calendar. For collaborative projects, however, I find google docs to be very helpful. The "living" nature of a google doc means you never have to worry about version control. Sweet.

My typical calendar has at least three worksheet tabs:

Calendar - Laid out to reflect all my publication dates, this tab gives me a place to schedule each post.
Pending - This is where I capture all (and I do mean all) the ideas I have for posts.
Published - This is an archive of everything I've published. (Yes, I know this is automatically generated in most blogging platforms, but I do have a reason for duplicating the effort.)

Optional tabs:

Guests - If the blog plan includes ingoing and/or outgoing guest posts, I like to track those works-in-progress separately from my core content.
Open Items - Although it can certainly be a separate document, I like to roll my "punch list" of blog upgrade and maintenance items into my editorial calendar.

Here is an Blog Editorial Calendar Template (Excel) that you can use to get started.

Once you've got the framework set up, you're ready to put it to work:

Capture Ideas
Have you ever had a genius idea for a post while standing in the shower, and then - five minutes later as you're toweling off - completely forgotten what it was? Painful. Tragic. Unnecessary. One of the primary rules of blogging: write ALL your post ideas down. Pen and notepad (or smartphone) should accompany you everywhere (or, in the case of a shower situation, at least be close by). Step two - transfer your great ideas to the "Pending" worksheet in your editorial calendar for future inspiration.

Create Your Publishing Plan
Does your content lend itself to monthly themes? Do you have a seasonal sales cycle that will influence the types of topics you cover at various times of the year? Do you need to create specific content for people at different stages in the buying process? The criteria that are important to your business are the criteria you should consider when developing your broad brushstroke publishing plan. You should identify how frequently you'll post, on which days of the week, whether you'll have recurring "columns" or more freeform content. Nothing is written in stone, but it's good to start with some kind of plan.

Schedule Content
Now it's time to get down to the nitty-gritty business of filling in those publishing "slots" with specific topics. You can schedule posts out for a week at a time, or six months - whatever makes you comfortable. It's kind of like a puzzle - your ideas are the pieces and your publishing plan is the picture you're trying to create.

So, what's the payoff for all your hard work?

Reduce Writer's Block
It's 9:40AM and your post is supposed to go live at 10. You have no idea what to write. Panic sets in. With the editorial calendar, you may never face this terrifying situation again. Whether you go with the topic that's scheduled, or switch it up and pull something from the pending list, you will always have a list of ready-made topics to choose from.

Identify Opportunities
Laying your blog's content plan out in an organized way helps you to see and create useful patterns. For instance, you might decide to run a series of posts that correspond to some of the questions most frequently asked by prospects and then package them up in an aggregate post that you can include in your most popular posts list. By planning ahead, you can also identify (and have time to execute) opportunities for relevant guest posts, event-based content, and other collaborative efforts.

Track Engagement
There are literally dozens of ways to track different Web and blog stats, but I like to aggregate some key stats into my editorial calendar on the Published tab. If you do it on a regular basis, it only takes a few minutes and will make later analysis much more impactful. For instance, you might track the following for each post: pub date, title, topic, #/comments, #/tweets, #/facebook shares, #/trackbacks.

Optimize Your Strategy
Once you have a baseline strategy and plan, and you've dutifully collected stats on your post performance, you have everything you need to do a bang-up analysis of what's been working and what's been falling short. Look at the trends and the patterns behind those trends. Is engagement driven by topic, day of the week, tone, type of content? These simple stats can provide valuable insights that will inform a stronger, more successful content plan and editorial calendar.

With all that said, it's important to remember that real life may cause you to change things up at the last minute. Whether your plans are changed because you've become uninspired by a particular topic, or because you've become wildly inspired to write about another, always give yourself the flexibility to go with your gut. Having a plan can help you be more strategic and reduce the stress you feel when it comes time to churn out brilliant content, but sometimes winging it has merit too.

What works (and what doesn't) for you when it comes to wrangling your blog content?

About the Author: Jamie is a freelance consultant and copywriter who partners with small businesses, start-ups, and creative professionals to define and market their brands. Her specialties include brand development, social media strategy, and content marketing. Enjoy more of her posts, or drop her an email.

How to Set-up and Run a Keyword Blog

Rumors of Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

7 Ideas to Help You Differentiate Yourself on Your B2B Website

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 09:01:00 -0500

One of the things I mention time and time again is that you needs to be able to articulate how your company is unique - why would someone want to do business with you? While this is something that is challenging in any industry, it's a particularly daunting task when you are selling your services instead of a product where there are not tangible things to compare. It's easy to fall into the trap of saying things like, "I'm experienced" and "I'll get the job done." Yawn.

I recently had the pleasure of working with Dianna Huff, a B2B Website Marketing Consultant, to update some of the content on her website, including her "How I'm Different" page. If you know Dianna, you know that she has extensive experience and a boatload of happy clients; just one conversation with her, and you can see why her services are in such high demand.

But, even then, under the best of circumstances, pulling together the "How I'm Different" page is not a straightforward task. If you have ever struggled to differentiate yourself or your client, here are some tips.

Listen -- really listen -- to all feedback from customers and prospects
Really listen to what your prospective and current clients are telling you. Are there things that they praise you for? Or do they seem surprised when you share some information with them? These are the things you want to highlight. Dianna was great about sending me anecdotes about conversations she had with prospective clients or customers about why they were working with her, which gave me a lot of ideas for the page.

For instance, Dianna edited the bestseller, Inbound Marketing - a job she got from a recommendation from David Meerman Scott. She mentioned that a few people she talked to had brought this up and were really impressed (I know I was), so I knew this unique experience was something I had to incorporate on the page.

Look beyond the website
As part of the writing process, I read Dianna's website thoroughly. I also checked out things like her LinkedIn profile, her newsletter and her blog to get ideas. I constantly found myself referencing this information to make her message stronger.

Consider the competition
I always ask clients for their primary competitors. I don't want to copy what they are doing, but I like to see how others are positioning themselves to get a sense of what prospects see when they are searching for information about your type of service.

Think about what matters to your audience
There may be a lot of things that you do well, but you need to couch them in the perspective of your audience. For instance, I analyzed all of Dianna's recommendations on LinkedIn to see which qualities mattered and impressed her audience most. In the case of Dianna's website, I wanted her "How I'm Different" page to establish her credibility and show how easy she is to work with.

Be as specific as possible
The last thing you want to do to differentiate yourself is to use gobbledygook such as "Industry-leading" and "innovative". Rather, you need to be very explicit as to how you are different. Looking at Dianna's page, she could have simply stated that she is experienced. But, rather, she highlights specific things such as the fact that she has been in business since 1998, she has served over 90 clients and has produced award-winning work. Those types of details are far more powerful.

Make sure this page is consistent with your messaging
Think about the message your website is trying to communicate about your business. An effective "How We're Different" page will tie all of these pieces together. Dianna was re-branding herself as a B2B Website Marketing Consultant, so this was a key point I highlighted on the page.

Get an outside perspective
Oftentimes, it's difficult to know what makes you unique or to say it in a way that makes you stand out. Getting an outside perspective can really help give you a new perspective. This is true for anyone selling a product or a service, but it's an observation that may not be obvious to those of us who do marketing and writing for a living - we think we should be able to figure it out on our own.

Dianna remarked to me multiple times that this wasn't an approach she would have taken - but she loves it. As I have also personally experienced, I have a much easier time giving clients advice than being objective about my own business.

What other tips do you have to help articulate a company's unique place in the market?

Related posts:

About the author: Michele Linn is a B2B content strategist who helps companies create content and think through how their B2B prospects will consume it (from registration to promotion). You can follow her on Twitter or read more of her posts on Savvy B2B.

The Next Transition in Communication

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 15:45:00 -0500

We're pleased to present a guest post by Steven Woods, CTO of Eloqua and author of Digital Body Language, who shares his thoughts on where communication is headed -- and how marketers can prepare.

Over time, the way in which communication happens has gone through some very interesting transitions. Each of them resulted in profound changes in information flow, and with that, significant changes in the discipline of marketing. We’re about to see the evolution of a fifth form of communication, and it will have an equally interesting effect on our lives.

One-to-one

The oldest form of communication is the one-to-one model. Face-to-face interactions and conversations were the main way in which messages were communicated. While very interactive, this was not a very scalable model at all. However, because it was the only way of conveying messages, it found an audience that was not overwhelmed with communication, and was likely much more receptive to new information.

Broadcast

The modern marketing industry was born with the advent of mass broadcast communications. Radio, print, and television enabled messages to be mass communicated to broad audiences. This was highly scalable, but entirely non-interactive, as it was a one-way communication and allowed no way for the listener to engage with the communicator. Also, as broadcast grew, it reduced the attention span of audiences by overwhelming them with too many communications.

Email

The next interesting evolution in communication was with the advent of email. I’m not talking about email marketing, however, as that is much more similar to a broadcast model. Interpersonal email, however, added a very interesting element with the “Reply All” function. Now, the audience members in a communication group could easily respond to a discussion, and do so in a way that created ad hoc, topical group discussions. However, these discussions were closed to outsiders. A person who was not in the discussion would not see the discussion happening and could not join the discussion without explicitly being included by an insider.

Social Media

Solving this discovery problem, of course, was social media. Now, with the discussions happening in an open format, anyone can detect, read, or join existing discussions. The speed with which these communications happen has been well documented, and discussions on a particular topic can quickly grow to involve and influence hundreds of thousands of people. However, social media creates huge volumes of communications, most of which are not of interest. Filtering through this noise is a daunting challenge, and whereas most social media can be filtered by keywords or brand names, this still tends to result in an overwhelming volume of content.

Conversation Discovery

As the major search engines apply their computing and analysis horsepower to understanding who is talking to whom about what, we may be on the verge of a fifth major shift in how information is communicated. Passive conversation discovery, guided by the algorithms of Google and Bing and their analysis of vast amounts of social media data, may be the way we discover what conversations are happening that may be of interest. Much like Amazon’s book recommendation systems which looks at “people like us” and sees what they are interested in, Google and Bing may soon be able to accurately detect and show specific conversations that are most likely to be of interest to each person. This finally allows the interactivity and openness of social media without the overwhelming volume of unfiltered social content.

Each of these evolutions in communication has changed how we interact with each other, how we learn, and how we market. This coming fifth transition promises to be as disruptive as any before it. Here are five things you can do to get ready:

1) Get Familiar with Buzz: Watch what the major search engines are doing to aggregate and understand social media activity. Google Buzz is one of the first, but Bing is likely not far behind. Closely watch the “recommended” buzz function to see how accurately it is capturing what you are interested in.

2) Understand the Influencers in your Market: Not just the major press and analyst influencers, but the bloggers and smaller influencers in the space who will most likely cause your message to be “discovered” if they join the conversation. Engage and encourage your entire team in building strong relationships with influencers.

3) Create an “Information Concierge” Role: Ensure that the high-quality information you have finds its way into the conversations in the first place. You can do so by identifying related conversations, and presenting your information, via an information concierge, in the context of those conversations.

4) Be Findable: Understand, and continually improve, how “discoverable” your content is with natural search queries. Not only will this ensure a discipline of search-friendly practices, but it will guide your company culture towards one that thrives on the continuous creation of great content.

5) Watch the Search Majors: As Google deepens its investment in display advertising, and Bing makes similar moves, their ability to target “discovered” conversations will continually increase. Being aware of, and on top of, these investments will ensure you are well positioned to take advantage of them.

About the author: Steven Woods is CTO of Eloqua, the leading marketing automation software platform. Steven also wrote the book Digital Body Language, which explores how to understand customer intentions based on their online behaviour.

Content Marketing: From Strategy to Execution

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 08:50:00 -0500

Buying cycles are longer than ever. A greater number of stakeholders are involved in the purchase decision. And prospects often bypass interaction with your company until late in the buying process. As a B2B marketer, how do you help your organization succeed in this new environment?

You may be incorporating marketing automation solutions and the concept of inbound marketing into the marketing mix. But the effectiveness of this approach is limited unless you make content marketing a critical element of your strategy.

In their book Get Content. Get Customers., Joe Pulizzi and Newt Barrett define content marketing as "a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience - with the objective of driving profitable customer action.”

And those marketers who can deliver on this promise stand much to gain. According to recent research by IDG Network, B2B buyers only find relevant content 42% of the time. On the other, 66% of respondents in a recent study by DemandGen Report and Genius.com indicated the “consistent and relevant communication provided by both the sales and marketing organizations was a key influence in choosing that company as their solution provider".

While that may be true, it can be daunting to figure out the steps needed to create and deliver the content your prospects want. On March 24th, I will be presenting practical strategies to help you make the concept of content marketing a reality at the B2B Content Marketing Summit in Newton, MA.

The half-day event will also feature presentations from Derek Edmond of KoMarketing Associates and Patrick Cahill of Rally Point Webinars, in coordination with Dave Crouch of Ten24. Please join us to learn how to:

Create content that engages prospects and customers throughout the buying cycle
Market content through SEO and social media
Reach new prospects through content-rich online events

We look forward to sharing insights and best practices you can put to immediate use. For more information and to register for the event, please check out the Learn24 Web site.

Hope to see you there!

About the author: Stephanie Tilton is a content-marketing consultant who helps B2B companies craft content that nurtures leads and advances the buying cycle. You can follow her on Twitter or read more of her posts on Savvy B2B.

Savvy Week in Review - March 12

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 09:09:00 -0600

From where we're sitting, time seems to be flying by. If you're looking for a reason to take a breather, we've gathered eight good ones right here. Sit back, take a deep breath, and lose yourself for just a bit.

~ The Savvy Sisters

We've Hit a New Low - The Shittiest Social Media Marketing Plan Ever - by @markwschaefer

Irreverent? You betcha, but Mark W. Schaefer's incensed and the commentary from his audience is worth the price of admission.

5 Ways to Make Your Business Easier to Recommend - by @rohitbhargava

Five great tips on how to maximize referrals and recommendations.

5 Steps for Achieving a Zero Inbox - by @diannahuff

Ok - not a strictly B2B topic, but everyone wants to get to zero emails in the inbox. Dianna's got some solid tips here. Now all I have to do is follow them!

Content Mapping 101: Determining Questions for Buying Stages - by @ConnectdMarkter

Barbara Gago offers a useful chart and a solid explanation for how to map content to the buying cycle.

11 Free Tools for Social Media Optimization - by @leeodden via @toprank

Here's a very handy list of social media and SEO tools that can be used for research, marketing and promotion or analytics.

A Marketer's Guide to Social Media - 8 Keys to Success - by @juntajoe

Joe Pulizzi shares eight spot-on observations from a social media roundtable he participated in. He also links to a fantastic chart from CMO.com that looks at which social media channels are best for customer communication, brand exposure, traffic to your website and SEO.

Message Delivery vs. Message Discovery by @stevewoods

The author of "Digital Body Language" explains why journalistic writing is critical to B2B marketers catching the eye of key influencers in their space.

Avoiding the Social Media Silo by @Ckochster of @ITSMA_B2B

Chris Kochster reminds us why B2B marketing strategies need to focus on content and relationships.

Shock and Awe - guidelines for use in writing and presentations - tread gently while going for blood

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 08:20:00 -0600

Years ago, in a Graduate Public Speaking course being the somewhat rebel I was, I started off my assigned presentation quoting a popular tag line from a then current television anti-diarrhea commercial. Now that I have your attention, I continued to the confused faces, I’d really like to tell you about, and I went on to present my speech.

The professor was not amused and I’m afraid that it showed quite clearly in my grade.

People don’t tend to like being shocked. We associate being shocked with something that is bad and why wouldn’t we? We’ve seen it used in shock therapy to jolt brains into resetting themselves, in shock collars to stop dogs’ behavior, in the continued disastrous earth movement shock waves after an earthquake, and even in jokes rings that forever make us suspicious of shaking hands with that person again.

People don’t like being shocked but, and here’s the important thing, people like to talk about something that is shocking.

Did you see the Super bowl advertisement where sweet, demure Betty White got tackled into the mud? Shocking.

Have you been following the Tiger Woods escapades? I’m shocked beyond words on that one.

Shock in itself is a powerful tool that absolutely demands attention. We wake up. We look. We talk about it.

And while we may believe that there is no such thing as bad publicity, bad shock can do some hefty damage to a reputation. Just try being photographed in public without wearing underwear and see how your reputation can suffer in a flash. Shock in bad taste can be equally as damaging. (Red paint on a fur coat anyone?)

Shock delivered with humor is one of the best attention grabbing techniques out there. Delivering a well timed punch line “same as in town Father” does the purpose of waking us up and making us think in a different direction. It’s a gentle prodding shock. It tickles us into awareness instead of jolting us. An unexpected humorous twist sensibly shocks us.

Ah but here’s the rub with that one. Some people are funny, some aren’t. Some writers are funny, most aren’t. If you’re not good at humor, for the love of Pete, leave it out of your writing.

So how do you know if you’ve hit the razor thin line between shock and effectiveness? Some guidelines for using shock techniques:

Shock does not equal abuse – the purpose is not to outrage your audience, instead you want to wake them up, take note of where they are, and do something. Offensive wording or action (seen a SAW movie lately?) is not shock, it’s simply offensive.
Shock can’t mislead – some of the angriest comments on the news websites are when shocking headlines mislead the reader. Sure the headline got the reader to read the article but it left him feeling cheated and feeling as if his time was wasted.
Test the shock – what may sound edgy to you, might sound appalling to others. I tend to think that Dead Baby jokes are hilarious – my mother does not. I have enough sense to not use them in my writing.
Use shock sparingly – like any technique, if overused, it then becomes the standard. Listen to an hour’s worth of any of these shock-jocks on the radio and you have the routine down. They become repetitive and boring making you switch to another station. They lose their audience.
You don’t need to lead with shock – although they sound like odd bedmates, some of the best shock is subtle and buried only to rise when least expected
On the other hand, sometimes a good initial shock can grab someone’s attention –when you are competing in a pack, sometimes you need to get noticed first, the graphic description of a crime scene (a technique used in all of those crime shows) - you've got my attention.

Shock as effective as it can be can also be disastrous. It’s definitely an advanced writing skill that you either have a sense for or don’t. It’s much like a comedienne with the timing of his humor. Although everyone likes to think they are a comedienne, in reality, there are only a few really gifted ones. Someone who can handle shock in writing is a skilled writer indeed.

Shock and awe, it’s not just a military tactic, when used in writing and presentations, it’s also a tremendously effective way to get one’s attention. In the right hands, one can use shock to grab the audience, revitalize them goading them into action. In the wrong hands, as exemplified in my younger days, if done poorly it simply becomes an embarrassment that may be dulled throughout the years but never really seems to go away.

So how do you handle using shock? Something you effectively use or something you wouldn’t touch with that proverbial ten foot pole?

About the author: Wendy Thomas is a journalist, columnist and writer. She has taught undergraduate and graduate classes in Technical Writing and Instructional Design.

A 7-Step Plan for Getting Started with Content Marketing

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 10:54:00 -0600

A few years ago, my husband and I were preparing for our daughter's arrival. Like many parents-to-be, we wanted to have everything ready before we brought our daughter home. Not only were we prepping the nursery, but we also started thinking about everything from childproofing the house to saving for her college education. It was positively overwhelming!

It's easy to feel the same way when planning your content marketing strategy. You want to do everything right and have this brilliant, organized strategy, but as you start to lay out a plan, it's not as straightforward as you think it will be. Where do you start?

Here's my suggestion: have a roadmap of what you want to accomplish, but plan to take small steps. It's just like planning for a baby: have the basics ready (diapers, clothes and a place to sleep), and know that you can figure out your way as you go along. You never know how your baby or ideal prospects will react, so it's good to be flexible.

The key: just get started! Here are the seven steps I suggest to help you dive in.

Start with the end in mind
I often think about this question that Joe Pulizzi poses: "A year from today, what will be different in our business as a result of the content marketing program?" Have a general vision in mind, and always ask if what you are doing is getting you closer to that goal.

Listen
Every company can benefit from listening to what their customers and prospects are saying about them - and about their competition. You'll find out what matters to them, which is essential for creating content they want to read and pass along. Of course, social media provides so many ways to listen. Here's a great Slideshare from Stefan Betzold on social media monitoring tools (thanks to Mark Schafer for bringing this to my attention on his blog, {grow}).

Build personas
If you want to reach your audience, you need to know who your audience is and what they care about. I'm a big fan of creating buyer personas that you can regularly update as you learn more about your audience from listening and other methods. Stephanie recently had a great post on building buyer personas if you are looking for ideas on how to get started.

Develop your core messaging
Decide what message you want to get across with all of your content. While you will likely have different spins for each audience, remember that all of your prospects are connected. As Ardath Albee discusses in a recent post, buyers/influencers are linked throughout the buying process, and they often pass information along. Make sure you story is consistent across all buyers.

Build your website
I'm a firm believer that your website is the best place to start when developing content. Even if you have stellar content such eBooks, webcasts, white papers, all roads ultimately lead back to your website. If your website is not resonating with prospects and clients, you are ultimately losing business.

Create an editorial calendar for additional content
To help you deliver consistent content, it's a great idea to develop an editorial calendar. I love the 1-7-30-4-2-1 framework from Russell Sparkman that provides a lot of ideas on how to consistently reach your audience with content. It is ambitious for someone getting started, but you can scale it back and start gradually adding in more content and distribution channels.

Listen to feedback and be prepared to change
Like any parent can attest, you never know how your child will respond to something you are trying. Sometimes you think you are doing the right things, but then your child doesn't respond. Or, on those great days, you accidentally stumble on something that works wonders.

The same is true with content marketing: you never know what is going to work until you try it. You may think that a blog or an eBook will be the best thing ever, but, once you put your heart and soul into it, you find out that your audience seems to gravitate towards videos and newsletters. Be prepared to learn and change to adapt to audience needs.

What other barriers do you have when getting started with content marketing or what suggestions can you share? I'd love to get your thoughts.

Related posts:

Savvy Marketers Refer!

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 10:06:00 -0600

The Savvy Sisters want to throw our wholehearted support behind Make a Referral Week.Billed as "a small business referral stimulus program" by the founders we also think it is just plan savvy on all levels. We all know personal recommendations are one of the most powerful influencers in marketing.

The Savvy Sisters believe being natural connectors and a pay it forward disciples has made this blog and our individual business efforts more successful.

So get out there and refer and not just this week. Keep it going year round with Make a Referral Monday!

Feel free to use our comments section to expound on the virtues of a great business you work with.

A Platform for Syndicating B2B Content to Partners

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 23:49:00 -0600

I've written before about white-paper syndication options for B2B marketers. Here Patrick van Boom – Director of Worldwide Sales and Marketing with TIE KINETIX – and I discuss a syndication option that enables B2B marketers to easily distribute content to their partners.

1. What prompted you to develop a syndication platform geared for the B2B supply chain?

Ten years ago, TIE KINETIX was a general marketing firm working with manufacturers and distributors including Siemens and Ingram Micro in the Netherlands. We saw that these companies had all the right product information on their sites, but their channel partners didn't. Prospects couldn't simply call Siemens HQ for more information – Siemens would point people to their partners. So there was a big disconnect between information on the vendor's site and on the site of the partners who were actually selling the products. In response, we developed the first version of our solution, which enabled companies to distribute their content to partner sites in real time and embed into emails for direct marketing.

2. What is the impetus for companies to build content syndication technology into their global partner strategies?

The main reasons are to ensure:

Your partners are using your content as intended and at the right time.
All of your partners present consistent content, to avoid confusing your prospects and customers.
Your information hits the marketplace in real time.

3. What challenges do companies face when managing campaigns and content delivery through the channel?

Consider a typical marketing campaign. For a new product launch, marketing managers will set a launch date and create lots of materials such as videos, product descriptions, and promotional copy. Next they have to contact each partner individually and get them to buy into the process, for example, logging into a portal to download all the information and materials. In many cases, resellers are not willing – or don't have the time – to download all the information and post it to their sites. Think of it from the reseller's point of view – if you sell for 50 companies, you have to log into 50 portals to download information.

4. How does your content syndication platform work?

Once a company signs up to use our on-demand (i.e., SaaS) solution, we start collecting their content. We do so by integrating with their in-house systems to automatically transfer information, even as new content becomes available. We also have a global partnership with CNET, which hosts content – such as reviews and white papers – for and about many companies so we pull relevant content from the CNET network. Our customers can also input content manually. Or we can do it for them.

We then combine all the information – including PDFs, video, banner ads, news, and downloads – and normalize it in our system based on what content elements the customer wants to share. For instance, we can slice it up by publication date, title, or topic, to name a few. This step gives us the utmost flexibility for syndication. As an example, we can syndicate content that maps to different partner categories, such as silver, gold, and bronze.

Next we make the information available to the vendor's partners. While the vendor handles the outreach, for example by sending an email to its partners, the rest of the process is hands-off for them. When partners click on the link in the email, they're taken to a subscription page that let's them to set up their dynamic content profiles and choose their syndication preferences, assuming the vendor allows it. One option is to have syndicated content show up via a "light box" on your site; in other words, a box that pops open above the page. Another option is to integrate the content directly into your site pages.

Partners then hit a button to generate code that they paste into the relevant pages on their site; for most partners, that's a single page dedicated to the vendor. However, if a partner is representing multiple vendors who use our platform, our platform can generate code that provides consolidated content so the partner doesn’t have to manage multiple feeds.

Once partners add the initial code to their sites, all content is displayed dynamically. And it's tailored to the visitor's behavior on the site. For example, if visitors choose a notebook that allows them to buy an OEM version of software, they'll be shown the OEM versions of the software and can add this directly to their shopping cart along with the notebook.

If a partner starts selling additional products for the vendor, it simply updates its profile and the appropriate content is automatically directed to its site – without the need to add new code or revisit the portal. This is an important point – unless the facilitation process is automated, not all resellers will update their site with the latest content. And that, of course, reduces the effectiveness of the program for both the vendor and the channel.

5. How is your syndication platform different from – and similar to – other content syndication used by B2B marketers?

Today, many B2B marketers are familiar with RSS, white paper syndication, and maybe even application syndication. These technologies and services are only similar to the TIE Kinetix Content Syndication Platform in that they’re all forms of syndication. However, our system is more sophisticated in that it can syndicate all content types over various channels, such as Web sites, online stores, narrowcasting, email, and mobile phones, to name a few. Content pushed to Web sites can also be a combination of dynamically co-branded white papers, videos, customer reviews, and banner ads, to name a few. If it’s digital, we can most likely syndicate it.

6. How is your solution used to support outbound marketing to prospects?

We provide ready-to-use e-mailings created for the vendor. Once partners install the software we provide to support this, they can use these e-mailings without handing their prospect list over to the vendor. When a campaign is ready to go, our system sends it – along with all relevant supporting material – to each partner in the local language. The partner pushes the send button in the software we provide and the tailored mailing goes out to prospects. When prospects click on the link in the mailing, they're taken directly to the partner's site. Because our system syndicates all information related to the campaign, the prospect will be shown the right promotional content – and partners don't have to do anything beyond pasting the initial code into their sites when they first registered to be part of the syndication program.

7. What type of analytics can your customers access?

We partnered with WebTrends to provide Web stats. We also provide statistics related to overall email campaigns and specific email click behavior. Vendors want to know how many resellers they've reached, and how many subscribe to the syndication program and integrate content into their sites; we can tell them all that. We can also give them the names and numbers of partners that subscribed to the program and generated the integration code, but didn't yet integrate so they can follow up with them.

Moreover, we can track a campaign from end to end. For example, say a vendor delivers a mailing that the reseller sends out with a URL to the reseller's site, and the recipient clicks the link in the mailing and ends up purchasing a product on the reseller's Web site – we can track that process from beginning to end. We can also tell vendors how many times an up-sell banner is displayed and clicked on a partner's site, how many times people hit the buy button, and how many checked out within the reseller's online store. We can also do simpler things such as track which white papers are downloaded.

8. On your site, you offer an AMR Research case study on Siemens. Can you share another success story?

Consider Microsoft's initiative to launch Windows 7.0. Microsoft in the UK works with 300 partners and wanted all of them to use approved materials for the launch. It sent out a mailing with the link, and the next day, 250 partners had content integrated into their site. As far as Microsoft was concerned, this was an overnight success. In fact, it was the first time in Microsoft history that all launch-related content was available across their partner sites the morning of a launch. That just wouldn't have been possible without content syndication.

Before working with us, Microsoft in the UK had to assign partner managers who were responsible for trying to get partners to use the available content and post it on their Web sites. Beyond that though, it couldn't see what its partners were doing to promote and sell its products. Now the content automatically populates partners' sites, which saves Microsoft and its partners lots of time. In addition, Microsoft has more insight into partner sales. For example, if the partner agrees to tie the syndication system into its shopping cart, Microsoft sees every time a product is added to a shopping cart and purchased. This enables Microsoft to proactively engage with its partners. If Microsoft sees that a reseller's revenues are on the decline, it can get in touch with the reseller to devise a plan.

9. Why haven’t B2B Marketers heard of TIE KINETIX?

B2B marketers may have not heard of TIE because we launched our Content Syndication Platform to the US market only a few years ago. However, we've been a technology company in the US for over 20 years, and our content syndication solution has been in use for many years in Europe. You can learn more on our site.

“Pardon Me, Your Brand is Leaking” – 3 Ways to Fix It

Sun, 07 Mar 2010 19:23:00 -0600

This week we welcome John White who writes for the blog, How to Hire a Marketing Writer. His post is a great reminder to all of us about why--and how--we need to brand consistently.

The good news is that the Web gives you dozens of B2B points of contact with prospects and customers. The bad news is that you need to synch and maintain all of these properties. It doesn’t take long for your brand to spring a leak.

“I’m putting together a newsletter,” I wrote to a dozen people whose opinion I value, “and before I launch it, I’d like your take on it.”

Have you ever sent a message like this? Were you prepared for what your customers, testers and influencers found? How much of their input did you incorporate?

Bob was VP of business development at a software company when he and I worked there in the 1990s. I showed him the newsletter. Right off the bat I knew I was in for it.

“I must say that I’m not a big fan of your graphic banner,” he wrote. “I’m not sure where to start, other than to say it falls way flat.”

Drat. I put a fair amount of work into that when I developed my Web site about 18 months ago, and I thought it had visual appeal. Oh, well, let’s see what he thinks of the rest of it.

A day later, he sent me a critical analysis for which I probably would have had to pay at least $1000.

Marketing Identity Crisis

“In short, I sense that you are suffering from a marketing identity crisis. If you want to align your writing with marketing in your prospect’s mind, your brand has to be cohesive. Your skills cover many bases, but it would make you look more effective if all of these fell under a consistent-looking brand.

“I think it’s vital to you – to anybody – to present yourself as a singular, cohesive brand (whether that’s venTAJA Marketing or johnwhitepaper is up to you to decide). Why isn’t your web presence under that single identity, with the brochure site, writing blog, Twitter profile and newsletter all under that single brand?”

Why, indeed?

Of course, he also sent me plenty of to-the-point feedback on the newsletter itself, both positive and negative. But it all added up to the same identity crisis.

Cover the Web, and Fast

Whether you’re a globe-straddling enterprise, a one-person show, or something in between, the opportunities for B2B Web presence and points of contact with your audiences crop up all the time because of how fast the Web moves:

Web site
Blog
Newsletters
LinkedIn profile (personal and company)
Facebook (profile and page)
Twitter profile
YouTube channel
[Other stuff that hasn’t been invented yet]

It’s hard enough to keep content fresh and looking up to date on just your Website, let alone propagate changes across all of these points of contact. The whole thing is supposed to run like a train, with your brand as the locomotive. But it often runs more like a herd of cats, as you try to cover the Web as quickly as possible and gain first-mover advantage on new portals and venues.

One of the cardinal sins of online marketing is spreading yourself too thin. Not only can you commit this sin by trying to post, comment and stay noticed in six different channels, but you can also inadvertently commit it by letting the Web pull you too far from where you started. The result is a leaky brand.

(And when I write “you,” I mean “all of us.”)

Plugging the Leaks in Your Brand

How do you fix this?

Keep an eye on consistency in your look. Some properties like LinkedIn and blog templates don’t always make this easy, but it’s important for your brand to look the same everywhere, or for you to link to places that look the same everywhere. In particular, you need a main banner graphic that will follow you everywhere. Link to it over the Web so that you need change it in only one place, and the changes will propagate across your Web presence.
Enlist outside reviewers. Get feedback from somebody who will tell you if the emperor is wearing no clothes. It’s not as much fun as being slapped on the e-back by people breathing the same exhaust as you, but it’s more productive.
Do what they tell you. Or at least do some of what they tell you. Otherwise, what’s the point?

Or, if this is too much work, just ask your mom to review your newsletter. She thinks everything you do online is perfect.

About the author: John White is a marketing communications writer for technology companies. At How to Hire a Marketing Writer, he posts about technology writing from the perspective of the marketing manager. It’s dirty work, but somebody has to do it

Photo credit:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sufferingsocrates/ / CC BY 2.0

Savvy Week in Review - March 5

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 04:40:00 -0600

The Savvy Wrap Up is a compilation of all of our favorite posts. Posting this week took longer than expected because I stopped to read so many gems. Hope you are inspired as much as we are by these great posts.

~ The Savvy Sisters

Content Strategy: Secret to Writing for Buyers Consideration Phase - by @conversationage
Valeria Maltoni explains why your online presence needs to integrate three important components: editorial impact, community building, and calls to action.

Planning a Content Development Strategy - by @marketing_jive
Jody of Marketing Jive walks us through the seven stages of developing content for the Web.

Deep Searches and Content Proliferation - by @stevewoods
Steve Woods, author of Digital Body Language and CTO of Eloqua, explains how prospective buyers are using longer search terms -- and the implications for marketers.

Books for Content Strategists, Writers, and People Passionate About Content - by @Shelbow
I love reading, so I was happy to see this great list of content marketing books by Shelly Bowen. Do you have any to add?

Do Websites Even Matter Anymore - by @markwschaefer
There is a great discussion going on at Mark Schaefer's blog about the importance of a blog vs a website.

A Glimpse Inside The Mind of the New B2B Buyer - by @genius_com
This post provides some fantastic insights and stats about the B2B buyer.

Keyword Research: Beyond the Ordinary - by @lisabarone
Intrepid live event reporter Lisa Barone takes copious notes from the Keyword Research session at Search Marketing Expo West. Read the post for tips and tricks from 5 keyword research pros.

The Strategy Trap: Why focusing too much on strategy could be killing your ability to execute - by @thebrandbuilder
Olivier Blanchard reports from the LikeMinds conference in the UK and delivers some intriguingly simple insights about how to leverage social media from the bottom-up, focusing on the customer experience rather than dozens of strategic PowerPoint decks.

The Mr. Rogers Guide to Blogging From the Heart - by @workhappynow via @copyblogger
Ok, maybe I'm just a little nostalgic (and showing my age), but I loved this Copyblogger guest post from Karl Staib. That Mr. Rogers would have been a killer marketer if he wasn't always so busy inspiring little kids to be good neighbors.

5 Stories That Make Complex Issues Compelling - by @Upbeatnow on Lateral Action
Five great examples of how video and storytelling can be used together to break complex ideas down into easy to understand presentations.

The Cliche and the Copywriter - by Lucy Longhurst on @VelocityTweets
Oh, snap! The team at Velocity refers readers to a great site that documents "b2b's most notorious creative faux pas." The site is a list of 101 business cliches including the lightbulb, roadmap, puzzle piece, handshake, and crystal ball.

The Positively True Story of How Facebook saved a Sprint Customer

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 11:02:00 -0600

Periodically the blogs and internet light up with stories of how various corporations, media outlets, etc have instituted major restrictions on their employees and their ability to use social media in the work place and as part of their jobs. Chris Brogan did a piece last year about the ESPN policy that got everyone a flutter. I am going to tell you a true story of something that happened to me recently that challenges what these big corporate policies often prevent.

I don’t actually use Facebook for anything other than keeping in touch with friends and family who live afar. I have found it to be a great way to update people on the happenings of my children efficiently. So when I made an offhand sarcastic comment on my friend Jen’s status one day about my dissatisfaction with my Sprint Blackberry I expected it to mostly go unnoticed. Boy was I WRONG!

So here is how it all started. Jen’s husband gave her a fancy new phone for Valentine’s Day. So fancy that after a couple of days of using it she opted to return it. She posted asking for suggestions of devices she could trade for that are smart but not complicated. I posted saying my Blackberry 8830 World Edition was a great device so long as you didn’t try to leave the US with it. I paid $450 for a World Edition phone and all three times I had traveled out of the US with it - no service. I mentioned my contract was up in early March and I was planning to switch to the iPhone if she wanted my Blackberry as a hand-me-down to try.

I should probably mention I live in Kansas City where the Sprint Nextel World Headquarters are located so the fact that a Sprint employee read my posting doesn’t surprise me. They are the largest private employer in our metro area. I know dozens of Sprint employees and none of them has ever been able to help me with my non-functioning World Edition phone!

A few hours after expressing my dissatisfaction with my Sprint phone on Facebook I got an email saying Steve had commented on Jen’s post. Steve was not someone I knew but he is a Sprint employee and wanted more details asked if he could email me. On February 18^th , I detailed my saga of going to various Sprint stores and calling various customer service numbers all in preparation for trips overseas. Every time the store employees would assure me when I got to Bermuda, London, Dublin, etc that all I had to do was turn on my phone and POOF just like at home. Except POOF turned into the phone being a brick and only providing time zone translation services!

Steve readily admitted he had no ability to fix or test my phone but as a good corporate steward he was determined to get some resolution for me and keep me as a Sprint customer.

So on February 19^th I got a message from LaTaushia in a department called Sprint Nextel Executive & Regulatory Services. She explained her sole responsibility was to identify root causes to customer issues and fix the problem. She had received my detailed account of past interactions with Sprint stores and customer service lines and had already done her homework on my account prior to reaching out to me. I won’t bore you with the technical details of what was wrong with my phone but after three phone conversations with LaTaushia it was all better!

On February 26^th I got an email from Lance, Director of LaTaushia’s department, apologizing for my previous run around and verifying that my issue had been resolved. Since I am not scheduled to travel to Europe again until April I won’t know 100% for sure that my phone works until I get there but I promised to stay in touch.

What can marketers learn from this experience?

Everyone is your organization is responsible for customer service and social media listening
Employee’s need to know where to direct a customer when they hear of dissatisfaction
Social Media and your ability to respond to feedback is powerful and perception changing

Steve, LaTaushia and Lance had no idea I write for this blog or that I do marketing at all but I am furthering the power of social media simply by relaying this story to all of you. Delighted customers whether they be bloggers or mom’s chatting on a playground are the new frontier of customer engagement. How are you harnessing that power?

About the Author: Heather has spent the past 15 years advocating for the customer perspective in her approach to software development and product marketing. Her penchant for collaboration is what drew her to the Savvy B2B team. Read more of Heather's posts here or contact her directly at heather@idea2paper.com.

Ways to Market your Non-Fiction Book Without Breaking the Bank

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 11:30:00 -0600

The publishing industry is in bad shape right now. Although some books are getting out there it’s very difficult to get yours noticed, especially if you don’t have the fire power of being recognized as a best selling author.

And believe it or not, just because you write a book, it doesn’t mean that you will become instantly rich. The average advance for a non-fiction book is 5,000 dollars. That may sound like a fair amount but most publishers then expect you to invest that money into marketing so that your book will sell. Once the advance is gone, your income is dependent on a portion of the sales.

I know one author with an essay in an anthology who gets 11 cents per book sold. Let’s just say that she is not ready to buy that vacation home yet.

Whether your book is published by a commercial publishing house or whether you self-published it, you can still get bang for your marketing buck by being a little creative and taking full advantage of various forms of media.

Social Media is HUGE in book promotion

Create a Twitter account that tweets specific information from the book
Any news about the book, any reviews, any progress or updates go on your Facebook page
While we’re on the subject of Facebook – create a fan page for your book and use it to send our messages to those who have signed up. I recently won a signed paperback by a NYT bestseller by replying to his Facebook fan page (along with thousands of others who were interested).

Send your book to a review site

Some review sites charge a fee, others don’t. Know that a single review from one person can then be posted on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Google books, as well as in blogs and websites. Push to get the biggest bang for your buck.

Know the difference between a reviewer and a critic. I am a book reviewer. I have read some horrible books that should never have seen the publishing light. Although my job is to be honest, my job as a reviewer is to also point out what the author did well. Reviewers try their hardest to encourage.

Book critics are more brutal. I was once hired to critique a fiction book. It was terrible and had some of the worst editing mistakes I had ever seen. The dialogue was terrible and the characters unbelievable. I broke the spine on the book throwing it against the wall so many times. I couldn’t give it a good recommendation. The author chose to not use my review and (understandably) I have never gotten any work from him again.

That is the life of the book critic; we chew them up and spit them out. Unless you are very secure in your writing use a reviewer.

And speaking of editing mistakes, if you are going to have someone review your book, listen to the comments. Reviewers want to encourage authors but we also want to see excellence. With a good reviewer, you could be getting valuable information that will only make your next book more effective.

Have your book prominently displayed on your website and easily orderable

Your book should be featured on your home page. Consider it your baby and show it off as much as you can. You can’t order a book if you can’t figure out how to order it.
Consider giving a discount with multiple orders. Ultimately it’s the amount of books published and sold that will make the biggest impression and give you the most credibility.
Create give-a-ways for comments feedback, or stories. Collect questions. Offer a copy of your book to the person who submits a story of how your ideas apply to what they do. They get a free book; you get ideas for future articles, posts, and books.
Include testimonials on your website. Any positive review comments gathered prior to publication should go in the book. We all took those Meyer Briggs tests, we all know that there is a sub-population that is swayed by “celebrity endorsements” use your testimonials and reviews to go after them.

Create add-ons to your book available through your website

While some book related products can be free (they will entice people to further check out your material) others can have a price. It’s important for authors to think of add-ons as another revenue stream. Have items like:

Tip sheets
Work books
Files

You can even have products created that enhance your book’s theme or ideas, for example, a timer for a time management book or post-its and a whiteboard for an organizational book.

Offer to be a speaker (making sure that you have plenty of your books on hand to sell)

Offer to provide signed copies of the book to your local bookstore.
Give a free workshop at local libraries.
Do a class at the local senior center or offer one to a local college.

Write an article for your local paper

Newspapers are in their death throes. Many will gladly accept a well written news article if it is local, relevant, and does not come across as an advertisement. Submitting courtesy photography along with the text betters your chances of the article running.
If something happens in the news that relates to your book, (new regulations, laws, etc) write an article about your views on the subject and back it up with your credentials.
Write a letter to the editor on something to which your book relates.
Create your own news by sending out press releases (again, not just advertising) announcing a new edition of your book, sales status (did it make it on any kind of list?), and business that has been obtained as a result.

Create a workshop where your book is used as the text

If you are versed in training, put a workshop together which outlines your techniques and information. Be sure to not give all your best points away. Design the class so that it can be followed by an “advanced” or “part two” class. Always think ahead to the next step.

Authors have to be savvy these days in order to get their message out. It can be done and it can be done well without breaking the bank. You just need a good dose of creativity, a good understanding of what is available, and a desire to do what it takes to get your book noticed.

How Buyer Personas Shape White Papers

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 07:29:00 -0600

In my last post, I discussed the importance of developing buyer personas – and steps marketers can take to get started. I thought it would be helpful to show how a buyer persona comes into play when creating a specific content asset, in this case a white paper.

When I ask clients about the audience for a white paper, I sometimes hear: "the technical and business decision makers" (i.e., we're trying to reach everyone with this one piece) or "the CIO" and that's where it ends.

Your ability to connect with your audience hinges on how well you understand what makes that person tick – what keeps her up at night, how she solves problems, how she prefers to consume content, who influences her decisions...that's just a start. The key is that the more you know about your audience, the more likely you'll produce a focused white paper that hits the mark.

Let's assume you've defined the ideal reader as the director of HR at insurance firms with 500 or fewer employees who is:

Overstretched on a daily basis
Reliant on in-person training sessions for new hires and other HR issues
Skeptical of qualitative statements about the marketplace
More concerned with the ways technology helps her do her job than understanding how it works
Wondering whether her daily struggles are the industry norm
Just beginning to research the topic

Here's how this information can shape your white paper.

Align with the buying stage. Since the prospect is in the early stages of the buying cycle and not aware that she has a problem, write a paper that educates her on industry trends, and shares best practices for addressing the types of issues she's grappling with. In other words, do not talk about your product or service – it's much too early to get into those details.

Grab attention. Once your paper has been written, getting your paper noticed and read starts with the cover design, title, and executive summary.

Cover design: When your white paper is competing for attention in a sea of white papers on third-party sites such as IT Business Edge, TechTarget, and FindWhitePapers, you need to make it stand out. It's a no-brainer that a well-designed cover is more likely to catch the eye than a bland one.

Title: You have about three seconds to capture someone’s attention so your title is key. And since most prospects come across white papers while conducting searches – either on a major search engine or a site that syndicates white papers – your title needs to include the keyword phrases that your prospects will be using in their search. According to MarketingSherpa, prospects search on terms related to their problems far more often than they search on terms related to a solution. As an example, papers with the term "spyware" in the title were 77% more likely to be downloaded than those with "anti-spyware" in the title. You also want to make it clear who should read your paper. Include the ideal reader's role in the white paper title – for example, "Six Ways HR Directors Can Trim Training Costs."
Executive summary: The executive summary gives skim readers a good idea of the entire paper at a glance. This is especially important if you are targeting busy executives. Sometimes all they have time to read is the executive summary – if that resonates with them, they’ll often pass the paper on to a subordinate for a full read. By focusing on the salient points, you should be able to convey the essence of the paper in a few paragraphs. Similar to crafting a title, you want to keep in mind the following when writing the executive summary:

+ Avoid terms specific to your offering. Focus on the terms that prospects are likely to search on – that's probably not going to be your product or service name.
+ Spell out who the paper is intended for, e.g., "This paper helps HR directors at mid-sized companies gain insight into blah blah blah…".
+ Highlight the problems or challenges or opportunities that your paper covers.

Format for readability: Again, your audience is a group of busy HR directors. If this person does decide to read your paper, it's more likely than not that she'll start by scanning or "power browsing." Here's what you can do to help your reader glean the essence of your paper at a glance:

Use headings and subheads to succinctly describe the section – and convey the key message.
Pepper the paper with call-out boxes and quotes that highlight important points.
Format the paper so that these elements stand out – ideally in a column dedicated to call-outs and sidebars.
Insert graphics – drawings, charts, or photos – that help illustrate critical points.

Move the prospect to the next stage. At the end of your paper, include a call to action that guides the reader to the next logical step. Remember, this person is early in the buying cycle, so she's looking for information that will help her better understand her issues and options. At this point, it may make sense to encourage her to sign up for an educational webinar or download a podcast interview with an industry analyst. Whatever you suggest, spell out how the prospect will benefit by responding to the call to action.

Do buyer personas shape your white papers? Share your tips and insights!

Related Posts:

Kickass Webinar Content in 3 Steps

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 09:10:00 -0600

"Sure," you say, "I know that delivering valuable, informative, and engaging content is an excellent way to earn trust, increase credibility, and generate interest in my products and services ... but, HOW DO I DO THAT?"

Last week, I had the pleasure of co-presenting with fellow Savvy Sister, Heather, at the 2010 iConnect conference sponsored by iLinc. Our topic was how to create engaging Webinars and then leverage the heck out of them - before, during, and after the live event. My piece of the presentation focused on how to build a great presentation. No pressure there. Today's post is a quick recap of some of the key points. If you'd like more (including the chance to hear me go through 24 slides on the topic, despite being the oh-so-lucky recipient of my daughter's vicious cold bug), you can cruise over to iLinc where our full 50-minute presentation (From Sale to Renewal: Leveraging Online Events to Improve Your Entire Customer Lifecycle )has been archived for your listening and viewing pleasure.

If you haven't got time for that - here's the Cliff's Notes version:

Important Things to Remember:

It's NOT about you. It's also not about your product, your services, your opinion, or your agenda. Ever. Your content must be about your audience's needs - the challenges they face and the solutions that will help them conquer those challenges. Your content should prove to the reader that you get him. You really, really get him.
Put yourself in the role of teacher, not salesman. Become an advocate and ally. Make it clear that you are there to help by providing valuable information. Your job is to enable the listener to accomplish something she couldn't accomplish before.

Content

Build your content around the learning needs of your audience. These needs will vary depending upon the nature of your audience - prospects have different needs from new customers who have different needs from returning customers. Figure out what each group needs to know in order to deepen the relationship with your brand, and then deliver that content on a silver platter.
Always remember the WIIFM rule: What's in it for me? The ultimate goal of any marketing content is to inspire action. The ultimate question of any reader of such marketing content is to know how taking that desired action will make his life better. Don't hide the answer. Talk less about the features of your products and services and more about the benefits. How will engaging your brand improve someone's day-to-day life? That's the sweet spot.
Tactically:

One idea. People can only process so much information at once. Throw too much at them, and your audience will feel overwhelmed - or, worse, stupid. Keep it simple and focused. This will increase comprehension and inspire confidence.
Use visuals. Avoid death by PowerPoint by using images to increase the clarity and impact of your message. If one picture is worth a thousand words, you can save yourself a lot of typing! (Got 9 minutes and need a laugh - check out Don MacMillan's Life After Death by Powerpoint ... clever and informative!)
Embrace brevity. Your key points will jump off the page if you keep things short and sweet. Again - it's about focusing the message, eliminating overwhelm, and making sure your audience "gets" those all important key concepts.

Engagement

Be a real person. Part of your content's job is to create connections with your audience. People connect with real people, not talking heads. Don't be afraid to show some of your own personality. Some of the world's finest teachers (Remember, you're a teacher when you're creating a Webinar!) use unorthodox techniques to reach their students.
Tell Stories. Human experience is made up of stories. Telling and listening to stories is a natural way of assimilating our world. Whether sharing an anecdote, giving an example, or providing a case study; stories have big impact for two reasons: they are memorable, and that makes them repeatable. Tell a good story and not only will your audience remember it, they will share it.
Invite dialog. Let your audience participate by creating a two-way conversation. In a Webinar format, you can leverage survey and polling tools or field questions in a live Q&A. Find ways to give your audience a voice and they will be a lot more apt to pay attention to what you are saying.

Presentation

This is a performance. For inspiration, check out the archives of the TED conference - TED Talks. Great presenters who are passionate, funny, and know how to put on a good show while still delivering their message.
Don't read. For goodness sake - resist the temptation to read your presentation word for word. That sucks the life right out of things. Instead, deliver your content as though you're having a one-on-one chat. It's more intimate and personal, and the conversational cues in your voice will put the audience at ease and draw them in.
Work as a team. Some of the most successful news, sports, and entertainment presenters work in teams. A variety of voices and perspectives not only spices things up for your audience, but can also give you the chance to engage in some witty banter that will humanize your presentation.
Practice. Don't step on stage cold. Rehearse your presentation for flow (sequence of information), timing (including tempo), interactivity (opportunities to engage the audience more deeply), and all the technical and administrative details that can trip you up at the last minute.

And now you want to know what's in it for you if you put in all this hard work, right? Well, if you can teach instead of sell, connect with your audience, provide opportunities for audience participation, and - as a cherry on top - entertain, you will boost your credibility, connect on a deeper level with your audience, and inspire trust. When you've got those three things working for you - credibility, connection, and trust - you've' made it easy for your audience to take the next step, whatever that might be.

Are you using live events like Webinars in your marketing mix? If not, how come? If you are, what tactics have been most successful for you?

Savvy Week in Review - February 26

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 08:41:00 -0600

It's a windy day here in the Boston area. Seems like a perfect time to hunker down and peruse some thought-provoking posts from the past week. Enjoy!

The Science of Building Trust with Social Media - by @ferenstein via @mashable

This post explores what type of content formats are best if you want to establish trust with your audience.

B2B Buyers Need to Look Beyond Decision Makers - by @ardath421

Ardath Albee looks at how and why we need to consider how our content is shared between those making purchasing decisions.

Small Business Tips for Reporting Web Metrics - by @AdamSinger via @toprank

If you are trying to figure out what is important to measure in Google Analytics, check out this post from Adam Singer that takes you through the basics.

When You Only Have a Hammer - by @conversationage

This is thoughtful from Valeria Maltoni about how to take a different perspective to find opportunity.

Content Marketing is for Customers Too! by @ardath421

Ardath Albee does it again this week! Here she explains the downfall of many B2B marketers: trying to keep customers engaged by relying on content aimed at prospects.

Three Ways to Gather Actionable Data to Improve Marketing Impact by @lorenmcdonald

Loren McDonald of SilverPop lays out concrete steps for avoiding the collection of bad data during the sales cycle.

Should you teach your customers how to buy? by @aprildunford

April Dunford says it's okay to influence customer buying criteria -- and suggests three helpful resources you can provide to do just that.

Are You Backing Up Your Social Data?

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 08:20:00 -0600

What would you do if Gmail crashed, your facebook account got suspended for suspicious activity, your LinkedIn network disappeared, or the Fail Whale moved in permanently?

Online networking and collaboration services provide us with great tools that have become part of our everyday routine. It's important to remember, however, that we don't own that data. If something were to go wrong with one of your service providers, you could lose access to all your information - contacts, files, correspondence, documents ... EVERYTHING. You backup your hard drive (don't you?!?), why wouldn't you backup your online files as well?

Ok. I admit it. I haven't backed up my online accounts either. BUT ... I have thought about it and begun investigating the available services and apps. The goal of this post is to 1) get you thinking about backing up your "cloud" data, and 2) provide you with some solution options to explore. Please Note: I have not yet test-driven any of the tools from these providers, so - please! - download, install, and purchase at your own risk. On the other hand, if you've had experience (good or bad) with any of these, OR have some alternate suggestions to make, please feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments.

Now - off we go!

Twitter:
Considering the 140-character-sized data to be backed up, twitter seems to have the largest selection of backup options of all the primary social networks.

Backupmytweets Automated, daily back up of your tweets. 1GB of storage, free ... if you allow them to send one automated tweet to your followers announcing that you've backed up with their service. For $9.95/year, you can skip the auto-tweet - same storage: 1GB (about 1 million tweets).
Tweetake Currently requires that you provide your twitter log on information, but OAuth access coming soon. Allows you to backup your followers, friends, favorites, DMs, your tweets, or all of the above. Donation button on the site.
Tweetbackup Daily back up of tweets, no install, no need to provide them with your twitter password. You are required to follow tweetbackup on twitter.
And here's a tip from TweetCrunch on how to manually back up your followers and friends.

Facebook:
Your choice for backing up facebook is simple, since there appears to be only one app that fits the bill:
SocialSafe (Adobe Air) $2.99 seems a fair price for this robust app which accesses your account via facebook connect to back up your profile, friends, photos, and wall status updates with comments. The interface that allows you to access your back ups offline is very intuitive, connected to the live site (for instance, if you click on a friend's name or profile pic in the back up, you'll be linked to their live profile on the facebook site), and features a cool "time capsule" view that provides a visual overview of your iterative back ups along with key statistics.

LinkedIn:
Perhaps because LinkedIn kindly provides a couple of simple ways to backup from within the application, there don't seem to be any third party services available.
To backup your contacts:

Click on the "Contacts" item in the primary navigation
Scroll to the bottom of the Web page
Click the "Export Connections" icon at the lower left
You can select a format. I chose an Outlook CSV which opened up in Excel and was easy to edit and save.

To backup your profile:

Click on the "Profile" item in the primary navigation
Click the PDF icon under the list of actions shown in the upper right-hand corner of the page
LinkedIn will generate a nicely formatted PDF that includes your overview information, work experience, and any recommendations. In a pinch, it would work as a quickie resume.

Google:
It's sometimes frightening to me how much of my professional life is stored in Google. I don't even use Gmail, but my life is run by google docs and google calendar. Not to mention that I just got an invite to Google Wave ... who knows where that will take me!

Gmail:
After you finish railing about the fact that Google doesn't make it simple either export or backup your mail from within the application, you might give one of these options a try.

BackupMyMail Free trial. Requires that you provide your Gmail account log on information.
Gmailbackup Freeware solution that looks to involve a bit of configuration on the user side.
GmailKeeper $19.95 special with 6-month upgrade period. Provides automated back up and restore for all Gmail folders.
POP/Thunderbird If you prefer to have a little more hands-on control, you might try to set up a POP account through Mozilla Thunderbird. Matt Silverman's post walks you through the how-to.

Google Docs:
When I think of all the collaborative data I have stored in google docs (and the fact that I haven't yet backed it up), I feel a little sick. This may be my top priority backup item!

GDocBackup This site looks a little "homemade," but I came across a number of positive write ups on this tool. Free download that appears to be frequently updated.
Google Docs Backup $10 download app that allows you to back up to a local folder, network drive, or Amazon S3. Offers both a command line and Wizard-style GUI interface options. Can be scheduled for automated back up.

Google Calendar:
This seems to be the only app for which Google provides a native backup option. You can do a direct export to an ICAL file (one for each of your calendars).

Your Blog:
Finally - what about backing up your blog? First, if you're self-hosted, check with your hosting provider to find out what backup provisions already exist on your servers. Then, you can check out these supplemental services:

BackupMyBlog Works with Wordpress, Blogger, and Typepad. Automatic back up of your content, pictures, comments, and site styles. $19.95 for 1 year of back up (1GB storage) - recurring annual fee billed automatically.
If you're blog is a self-hosted Wordpress blog, check out the WP-DB-Backups plug-in.

So - that's what my research turned up. How about you? Do you have any horror stories about lost data? Any tips you'd like to share to spare others your pain?

Savvy Webinar Resources from the iConnect Conference

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 16:33:00 -0600

Greetings to those who attended the iConnect Webinar event From Sale to Renewal: Leveraging Webinars to Improve Your Entire Customer Lifecycle this afternoon sponsored by iLinc.

As promised during the live webinar we are sharing our presentation and some additional resources to further illustrate the points we made during the presentation.

Have no idea what I am talking about? Didn’t know the Savvy Sisters were presenting at iConnect? Don’t worry we are still going to hook you up. iLinc will have the recorded version of the webinar available in a few days and Jamie will do a follow up post at that time to share additional tips and tricks and that link.

So first and foremost attached is the presentation. While Jamie and I created the outline for content the brainpower behind the overall content and certainly the links to the resources provided below were compiled by all the Savvy Sisters. Without Kate who made our plain boring slides “alive” with photos and formatting we would hardly have been engaging, interesting or informative. Michele, Stephanie and Wendy were quick to share their personal insights regarding best practices and resources. It was truly a collaboration.

Other resources referenced during my presentation were the two Marketing Sherpa studies. The graphs mentioned are attached here.

I referenced two books that I highly recommend:

Flip the Funnel by Joseph Jaffe

Digital Body Language by Steven Woods

Flip is a brand new book just released about a week ago and I will be reviewing it here as soon as I finish it (probably next week!). I know my review won’t do justice to the breadth of information that is contained in the book so trust me and run out to your book retailer of choice and pick up a copy.

Additionally when I was researching for the presentation I ran across the following Marketing Sherpa toolkit that covered far more breadth than did our presentation today on all aspects of creating and producing a webinar. I think this is a fabulous small business resource or primer for someone who had recently been tasked to do one so I would be remiss if I didn’t share it. This is bigger than our conversation today but valuable.

Finally a couple of blogs that the Savvy sisters ran across for me that talk about webinar and would be good places to ask and research your questions. The first is a blog completely about the subject of webinars run by Ken Molay. We at Savvy try to cover a variety of B2B topics and webinars as a key part of any overall B2B strategy gets a fair amount of exposure but Ken has devoted a significant amount of intellectual capital to the collective webinar community and for his contributions we illuminate him here.

The second blog post came out this week by April Dunford. We didn’t coordinate with April ahead of time but her timing and content as it related our presentation was uncanny. Great minds thing alike?!

It was a pleasure to be part of iConnect 2010 and we look forward to engaging with more of the participants from the event through comments and feedback here on our blog.

Are people really reading more?

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 07:12:00 -0600

For years "they" have been telling us that the next generation is going to heck in a handbasket. This includes a serious decline in the nobler pursuits, including marriage, lifetime careers, and reading.

According to an article in the NY Times, a recent report released by the National Endowment for the Arts -“Reading on the Rise: A New Chapter in American Literacy” - shows that people are reading more, and not just tweets and texts, either.

The report is based in part on information derived from data gathered by the United States Census Bureauin 2008. The good news for civilization as we know it, is that the percentage of adults who admitted to reading at least one work of fiction in the past twelve months has risen for the first time in nearly thirty years. The greatest gains were made in the 18-24 year old set. This is good news for the publishing industry, which was already struggling when the economic downturn hit last year.

Dana Gioia, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts was quoted as saying that “in a cultural moment when we are hearing nothing but bad news, we have reassuring evidence that the dumbing down of our culture is not inevitable.” I enjoyed the movie "Idiocracy," but I am glad that it might not actually go down that way.

What does that mean for us as marketers? Well, when the Millenials become the next generation of C-level execs, they will have the attention span to keep reading white papers, case studies, and all of the other in-depth marketing collateral they need to make good business decisions. MTV who?

Do you read more now than you used to? Is ten pages still the right length for a white paper? Chime in with a comment!