Social Media Realities in B2B Marketing

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Ellefritz) — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 20:23:00 +0000

I love this visualization from MentionMap. Click around and explore...

Impressions of the 2010 WPP Stream Conference

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Ellefritz) — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 04:15:00 +0000

Well it’s a couple of weeks after my first WPP Stream conference and I’ve had a bit of time to reflect on the event so I’m offering up this personal summary.

In many ways Stream was as advertised with a surprise or two. First the accommodations were portrayed as Spartan and lived up (down?) to those expectations. The venue is an aging Club Med on the Aegean so the setting is benevolent while the rooms are a bit rustic. This discourages you from seeking the comfort of your room when fatigue (physical or mental) sets in. As a result, and due to the plentiful activities, distractions, libations and just plain great conversation, the social areas were busy from early to late daily. This helped amplify the biggest reason for hauling my butt halfway around the glob to attend: the people. The attendees were bright and engaged, their backgrounds and aspirations diverse and that resulted in many new connections and many fresh points of view. The event itself is run as an unconference with a host of rather playful interludes mixed in. On arrival we were encouraged to customize our badges and at the risk of having to defend my lousy arts and crafts skills I did so and these badges were colorful and personal markers for the rest of the event. Other distractions included a photo booth sponsored by Yahoo but the big winner was a gaming area dominated by Wii and Xbox, including a contest to win the new Xbox with Kinect. I'm a bit of a closet gamer and admit to adding this to my Christmas wish list this year.

The general format was driven by discussion leaders populating a schedule white board on with your fave topics. You simply then went to the discussion (1 hour format) that met your fancy. Feedback from others and my own experiences were that the discussions themselves proved to be a bit spotty. Despite precautions some were a bit dominated by solutions vendors which trended towards the edu-torial form. Another I attended seemed to steer the discussion towards some housekeeping issues among the WPP vendors themselves – how to collaborate more effectively. At any rate many of the discussions I attended were lively and thought provoking but this format could use a bit of updating; perhaps some crowdsourced focus areas set in advance as the spontaneous nature of the topic-setting seemed to result in some sketchy results though overall it seemed to work.

The highlight (again, I’m told) was Sir Martin Sorrel’s insights and reflections on topics ranging from the future (and past) of WPP to global economics and the future winners and losers in the global leadership space where he spoke repeatedly about how well China is positioning itself.

The biggest shortcoming of the event was the lack of reliable internet connections which puts the future of cloud computing in question in my mind. The inability to connect with my office to send files or use a corporate system was a material challenge for me and I spent a couple of hours in aggregate waiting… and waiting… for my VPN to connect, most frequently giving up and settling for whatever goodness my Blackberry could deliver. While one could argue that a high performing Web connection might have drawn eyes and ears from the sessions, in fact the time wasted for the handful of critical business issues I needed to attend to was a real distraction and frustration.

Which brings me to the notion of what was hot and not from a technology standpoint. When asked, the crowd hand raised about an even split of Android and iPhone adherants although Blackberries were populous too. iPads were prevalent this year; laptops seemed evenly split between Mac and PC. And I can’t leave the Xbox Kinect stuff out of the Hot category; it was fun and very differentiating in it’s utility.

I suspect that if asked again in a year I will ignore the flaws and travel challenges and join the conversation again. The bits of wisdom, the fresh global perspectives and the handful of new, fresh connections was welcome.

One final request if the WPP folks are listening: Despite assurances that you were making sure that your own folks didn’t dominate attendance they really seemed to. The WPP web runs deep and wide now and lots of tech and innovative folks were there who were indeed smart, savvy and added a lot but when so many handshakes were with someone directly or indirectly employed by WPP it felt as if I was crashing a company party at times.

Shame on Me

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Ellefritz) — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 04:07:00 +0000

Okay, I really can't believe it's been nearly a year since I've added to my blog. Of course I've been blogging a bit internally at SAP but this is pitiful. I won't get caught up in a lot of self flagellation, simply see if I can't right this ship. Sad development, sorry to any and all who were hoping to hear from me. Actually I blog more to sharpen my wits and to sort out what I truly believe to be true. Let's take another shot at this, shall we?

Twitter is easy: Make your audience look smart

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Ellefritz) — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 21:53:00 +0000

OK, Marketers, this is going to be short and sweet.

No matter how many Twitter followers you have the real magic is in reaching their followers. And so on.

The way you reach them is to have them retweet your content.

No one wants to retweet something that's personal about your life. Or dumb. Or boring. Don't be any of those things. Be really interesting. Be first with some news or insight or content.

Personally I almost never retweet something that doesn't have a link in it. But that's because I want my followers to see me as someone passing along rich, insightful content, a bar that 140 characters seldom gets over.

If you look at your tweet and admit you'd never retweet it if you saw it, go ahead and send it. To your followers; just don't expect them to pass it along. If instead you see something that your audience would like to share then you're onto something.

Not sure what that looks like? Search for retweets of your content - in my case I do a Twitter search for "RT @brianellefritz".

I know, most of you already knew all this, so go out and practice it ok? And then I'll retweet you like crazy, I promise.

Measuring Social Media - Are we Wasting our Time?

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Ellefritz) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 18:05:00 +0000

I'm still consuming Marketing Sherpa's voluminous - but important - 2009 Social Media Marketing and PR Benchmark Guide. Here's an excerpt for you folks who want to get a free taste. Granted the full version costs $447 bucks (or just half that if you buy by Nov 30) and if you agree that time is money it'll cost you at least that much to consume it's 200+ pages, but ante up folks, it's money well spent.

Here's one interesting insight that already caught my eye.

"The Most Effective Social Media Tactics are the Least Measurable"

As you can see on this chart (it's also in their public excerpt above for you copyright police), those surveyed didn't see much correlation between tactics they could easily measure and thos they found to be effective. And yet in another question they said one of their biggest challenges is measuring social media ROI.

So there lies a big conundrum in this new craft of social media marketing: that which we conclude works well might not offer much evidence to support that conclusion.

How can that be? OK, let's be practical and acknowledge that lots of things we value in our business and personal lives can't be measured very well. No less than Albert Einstein pointed out that:

"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted."

The Marketing Sherpa report implies that B2B marketers will continue to struggle to provide evidence that their social media investments are paying off. I've blogged before that social media should drive hard for accountability but I also acknowledge that marketing has a long history of investing in hard-to-measure activities.

After all many in marketing would admit after a few drinks that if they wanted to be accountable they'd go into sales.

Joining SAP

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Ellefritz) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 02:46:00 +0000

To all my peeps and tweeps out there who might not have gotten the word I'm happy to reveal a new venue for yours truly. This month I started a new chapter in my career as Senior Director of Web 2.0 Marketing, joining SAP to head up the social media practice within their corporate marketing team.

For the last two years my team and I - and countless others - have worked hard to elevate Cisco's game in the social media space and I'm very proud of our accomplishments. But the SAP opportunity beckoned and so I elected to make a change.

Let's be clear: SAP is no slouch. Their community marketing is second to none in the B2B space and I'm anxious to share a cup of joe with Mark Yolton and compare notes to see how we can build on that momentum within marketing where lots of cool stuff is already going on.

I'd be remiss in leaving Cisco without a huge tip of the hat to all my Cisco compadres. Special thanks to Bill Robb, Jennifer Bocca and Stephanie Marx who worked their magic alongside me. All too often I got to take a bow for their blood, sweat and tears and I know their hard work and skills will shine on. Thanks guys.

And for the rest of the Cisco pros, too many to name in this blog, I'll miss our daily exchanges and the simple challenge of trying to stay as smart as you are. I look forward to seeing you around Silicon Valley and at the various venues you so deservedly attend.

Social Media Marketing - Strike Out or Home Run?

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Ellefritz) — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 20:54:00 +0000

Recent posts by Laura Ramos and John Bottom, both B2B bloggers who I deeply respect, once again teed up the question about whether skepticism about the viability of B2B social media is well deserved. Their blog posts handle the current debate well so I won't try to revisit their conclusions here but let's fast forward to the inevitable.

Social media will succeed as a viable and cost effective marketing platform in the long term.

And here are three reasons why I feel so strongly:

Social media is full of people, millions of them, and more coming onboard every day. Willie Sutton was once asked why he robbed banks and responded simply "Because that's where the money is" (side note - marketers could take lessons from Willie when creating clear and memorable messages). Marketing has always flocked to large audiences because they're efficient to work with. Radio, TV, highways, magazines, newspapers, telephones, web pages and email have all been mastered over the years. Social media is next.
Problems will be solved. Just looking at the digital era we've seen lots of skepticism cast towards early efforts in web sites (remember the meager "home page"?), communities, email and mobile. All have gone on to prosperity that at least matched their early promise.
Customers will demand it. And by "it" I mean ready access to the content, service and insight of the brands I care about. And a willingness to listen to me, their customer. When I got near-instant gratification from Comcast after tweeting about an outage I lost patience for their phone queue. Overnight. Customers will raise their expectations, brands will figure out which ones they can meet profitably and we'll gradually move to a center from both perspectives.

The bottom line is there are too many motivators to keep social media from succeeding. Brands get access and preference; customers get better content, service, and brand goodness.

There is one more reason for my confidence. I've seen this movie before. I could cite a number of new platforms as example: web marketing, email marketing. But let's look at a monster: e-commerce. For two full years e-commerce rumbled along m0re as a debate than a phenomena. The cons were so numerous: buyer security, shipping, returns, taxation... but one by one these problems not only got solved but they jump started companies like Amazon, FedEx and PayPal. Customers got convenience, value AND piece of mind and brands figured out how to make a buck.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm betting my career that I'm right.

Marketing Social Media Marketing

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Ellefritz) — Thu, 07 May 2009 23:50:00 +0000

I had lunch with Mike Metz today who has steadily led the Cisco.com web program up to the top of the technology website heap. My social media group reports up to Mike and I asked the simple question walking back with a cup of espresso in hand (thanks Mike!), "how are we doing?" Mike reminded me of some simple points that are key to all of us social media practitioner.

You're working on exciting stuff, but
Don't assume everyone knows what you do.
Don't assume that if they know what you do, they believe it works.
Don't let fear of overwhelming demand for your team's services stop you from marketing yourself.

Cisco is a huge company, social media is a new practice and it's easy to get swallowed up supporting teams and forgetting to inform others of how they might use our services. Here are some simple steps I've already taken; what have I missed dear readers?

Always have an updated set of slides in hand that cover our work and results. Keep it simple, compelling.
Get to staff meetings of my stakeholders. Hold conversations. This is part evangelism, part education.
Don't get defensive. Not everyone believes this is as cool as I think it is. Education is a process.
Communicate broadly. Wrap up pilots and projects by sharing results and learnings.
Get others involved. Give them my slides. Build a community.

Comments please.

Is Social Media Held to a Higher Standard?

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Ellefritz) — Tue, 05 May 2009 03:46:00 +0000

My team and I will soon be huddling with our customer analytics team at Cisco to discuss the ROI and metrics of social media marketing. The idea is to review our current state of relatively simple benchmarks, tactic measurements and tracking techniques and see if we can't derive a better sense of what we can - and should - measure.

While I've been known to huff that social media practitioners are as capable of calculating ROI as, say, television advertising, the reality is that we have a higher bar to get over and here are some reasons why:

To invest in social media most campaigners have to divert funds from other tactics and to do that they must assess if social media represents a better value than the alternatives. Darn few groups put social media into a separate budget line last year and according to Forrester few are planning to do so this year, content for now to continue this borrowing. Which means in the near term the budget holders will want to understand the economic trade offs.
Social media seems to perform best as an awareness and relationship nurturing channel. Some of its business benefits have no prior equivalent to compare to at all. Awareness has always been a dicey category to measure and marketing has done so little relationship work (at least in the high tech B2B companies I've worked in) that we often have few or no benchmarks to compare social media to.
In the offer-to-purchase end of the demand cycle, numbers are often more tangible but most shops, ours included, have been leery about asking for the order too early lest our social media sensibilities be called into question and the relationship halted before it's begun. Besides, in shops like ours where sales cycles are long and channel partners fulfill the final orders, tying interest to purchase is difficult even using channels like email or direct mail.
Too few social marketing programs are being well designed, honestly crafted and kept in place long enough to measure their impact over time. Two key culprits in B2B are quarterly budget cycles which hunt for the next quick win, and the lack of always-on roles and programs focused on audiences, not products. Instead the tactics tend to be more superficial and unpolished than the ones I'm convinced we'll see in a years time.
We simply don't understand the horse we're riding very well. What is social media really best at? Which tactics work predictably? Who in the organization is best equipped to deliver value to the participants. What to measure, what to ignore?

I'm proud of the work my team has done in light of all these questions and uncertainties. We've advanced a long way towards building social media into a proper marketing discipline at Cisco. One of the last milestones will be the ability to successfully argue and defend investments in social media from an ROI perspective. In the meantime, I'm looking forward to the meeting with our analytics team. We'll take all the help we can get.

Marketing And the Art of Conversation

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Ellefritz) — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 05:28:00 +0000

OK, this isn't really a picture of a B2B marketing person being told they're now expected to "engage customers in a dialogue", but it could be. I've seen an expression nearly this dismal when I've used language like "conversation" or "engagement" with other marketing folks.

Let's be clear: marketing people aren't unfriendly. And they don't mind thinking of customers, it's just the notion of being left alone with one, mano a mano that gives them the heebie jeebies. I mean if marketing liked customers, we'd be in sales now wouldn't we?

Marketing folks are the sociologists of a company. We're the Margaret Meads of the corporate customer scientists. We like tribes, groups, packs. We just call them segments and audiences. We love group behavior and we draw very meaningful conclusions from it. Individual behavior though... freaks us out. It's roguish. Messy, hard to calculate predictions from it. So you asked about a white paper... should I try to sell you something now? Sample sizes of 1,we've been told, are not to be trusted.

Plus in a dialogue we need to be pretty adroit at things like, well... talking. Plainly. Spontaneously. Without lawyers in the room or brand guidelines open in front of us. Personally I edited my first blog comment for 10 minutes before I had the courage to click Save. And then there's the language barrier: in our heart of hearts we know that our native language - Gobbledygook - will draw giggles and stares.

Conversations, we think, might best be left to the psychologists of the corporate world: the sales people. Or to the physicians among us: service and support. They actually like being with customers, one-on-one, and can do so without sweating. They even seem to miss them when they don't see them for awhile. So can't we just let them have these, these... "conversations"? Please?

Is Twitter the New Corporate Newsletter?

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Ellefritz) — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 17:08:00 +0000

Cisco used to have 87 email newsletters for various customer and partner audiences. Why so many? Well the readers generically found newsletters useful, and...

The tools to make them became pretty ubiquitous
Marketing was motivated to create them since they got applause for building and owning a cool new thingy
There were some simple metrics you could crow about (number of subscribers etc)
They were simple to create and publish
Oh, and yes, in the beginning customers really liked them (okay, maybe not all 87).

Soon, ease of launching newsletters and lax governance allowed explosive growth of this new (at the time) channel to customers.

At last count Cisco has over 40 business Twitter accounts targeted at customers, and the number is growing fast. Why? See the list above. What does the future hold? 87 Twitter accounts? More? Well, let's look back at newsletters again and see how that channel evolved.

Cisco doesn't have anything like 87 newsletters now. Probably two thirds are gone and in fact the major ones, in our email subscription center, number only 16. Let's look at why that is, and think ahead to implications for Twitter:

Why did newsletter decline?

Adrenaline might get you through that first month or two but soon this moves from fun to drudgery particularly if this isn't your day job. If this isn't your real job and no one is recognizing you for all your effort it can be even harder to crank out the next newsletter. Or tweet.
As you argue for continued investment in your newsletter to keep it going more questions arise about how it's performing. If you didn't do a great job defining your objectives up front (most don't), it's even harder later on to show you're meeting them.
Competition rises up for the same valuable eyes you're delivering to. That can come from your brethren at your own company (note Cisco's 87 newsletters, most intended to reach potential influencers of Cisco purchases), or from your competitors. Your audience's in-box (or TweetDeck) swells.
Your audience becomes less and less passionate about reading and moves to "snacking" on your content. Subject lines, section headlines and even graphics become more key to drawing your oversaturated audience into your content. (If you start investing in eye scan patterns for your Twitter feeds you'll know the end is near.)
Finally, everyone's worn out. Without new blood on both the publishing and consuming ends content quality plateaus, subscribers level off, readership drops and it becomes harder to argue to keep pushing forward.

Twitter will find it's equilibrium point too and I'm predicting many of these same forces - and probably many new ones - will be at work to get us there. In the meantime Cisco is doing a lot of solid and productive work with Twitter and I hope we keep at it. But I have a sense I'll flinch when I see Cisco Twitter feed number 87.

Community Sites vs. Search

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Ellefritz) — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 15:27:00 +0000

AKA, Fishing Where the Fish Are

For some time I've watched as corporate community advocates - Cisco included - struggle to bring to life new branded, sponsored community sites. Let me preface my thoughts here with the admission that I'm not a community guy. That isn't in my DNA and community pundits out there can disagree with me. But as vendors as diverse as Jive, SixApart and Salesforce urge brands to leverage their toolsets and programs to build digital goodness to attract customers and prospects, I've sat through too many design discussions that fail to answer this question: how will the end result deliver benefits to the audience not found via skilled use of a search engine?

The bias that I've heard continually - love to hear how others have dealt with this - is that a well designed community is the classic clean, well lighted place. Content is purpose built and delivered in an orderly, predictable way. Tools (forums, resources, etc.) are well thought out and at your fingertips. Not messy and hard to decipher like a Google search results page.

But the dilemma is that gathering enough content, keeping it current, drawing in enough of an audience contributing enough content on their own so that this doesn't look like a clean, well lighted wasteland is a very daunting task. Until a site gets to critical mass (and I loudly applaud each and every one of you who have done so), a web search serves the curious as well or better for content seekers.

Another worry is that too often the value proposition of such sites is heavily biased towards the brand (captive audience, strong brand presence, great metrics and insight about visitors) and not enough to the end user who's expected to return again and again.

I wonder if we didn't spend as much time learning to fish where the fish are (thank you Jeremiah) as we did digging out and stocking new ponds, if we wouldn't be ahead in the end. Cisco has a great community site. It's called the Cisco Netpro Community. It's vibrant and teeming with "fish". And just because the applause has died down for the those who toiled for years to make it so doesn't mean the best idea is to make a new one. I'm not saying building a branded community is always the wrong thing to do, I just remind you that your challenges are immense and your dedication should be up to the task.

Comcast Cares for me, they really Care for me!

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Ellefritz) — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 14:22:00 +0000

Frank at Comcast Cares is a social media legend but it was ComcastBonnie who held our hands through a short wind-induced outage last night. First, some context. I have three kids in high school and middle school. From the moment they come home from school they (okay, me too) are plugged in, using the Internet for school and Facebook/email frenzies with a bit of TV watching (ok, mostly me) squeezed in to boot. So when they all paraded in to tell the support department (100% me) that the Internet was down I rebooted our router then picked up our phone and turned on the TV to silence in both cases. Triple Play was turning into triple payback.

So I turned to my trusty iPhone, tweeting @ComcastCares to see if there was an outage. The reply was nearly immediate from ComcastBonnie: they couldn't tell me with just my zip code, they needed a phone number. OK.... I really didn't want my phone number out there for all to see but maybe a DM... but rats, that meant ComcastBonnie had to be following me in order to receive my DM.

I checked my email. Apparently ComcastBonnie has done this before. She was following me and in short order she had my phone number, she DM'ed back that yes, there was an outage and when service was restored within 30 minutes I replied to her with a thank you for ComcastCaring.

Now I've had my gripes with Comcast. Their prices are hard to sleep with sometimes, their DVR is as graceless and utilitarian as Soviet public housing, and their commercials have lost their amusing luster for me but if you want to see how a brand has turned the immediacy and intimacy of Twitter into a great business tool, check em out.

And ComcastBonnie (can I call you "CB"?), thanks again.

When Will Social Media Marketing Start to Feel Like Direct Marketing? How about NOW.

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Ellefritz) — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 02:38:00 +0000

It's been creeping up on me like cheap underwear... a sensation that something is going very wrong in the crisp new air of social media. When I first transitioned to this field from a couple years of direct marketing, I sucked in the fresh air and happily left the invasive acts of "email blasting" behind. Ah, social media. Friends. Communities. Conversations. This is the life!

Or is it? Is social media still social when our president elect, under the banner of "leveraging" social media in his presidential bid, has now built one of the best house lists in the world? Beth Fouhy of the Associated Press shouts out "Obama team sees its Web network as dynamic tool". Dynamic indeed.

While Obama fans cheerfully received updates about Baracks' background, were educated about his policies and finally asked to chip in a few bucks for the cause, almost all of us missed a troubling storm cloud in this unprecedented campaign: This experience had all the trappings of a garden variety demand generation campaign. Awareness. Nurture. Present Offer. Upsell/Cross-sell. Loyalty.

Oh of course we'll change the terminology a bit. Nobody wants to be in a marketing database, but nobody seems troubled by being a Friend. Or Follower. Or Connection. Hey, don't send me any of those mailings or put me on your telemarketing rolls, but go ahead and give me a Shout Out, drop me a Tweet, let me see your latest Post.

Please don't take this as criticism of the president-elect's campaign; I am a Barrack Obama supporter and have tons of admiration for their campaign. Maybe I'm just a bit disappointed at how easily the rising ingenue - social media - was so easily seduced by our surly villain direct marketing.

Am I upset? Am I shocked? Not at all. Marketing, after all, has a job to do. But if we can so casually accept the the social media marketing machine the recent election has introduced, can social media lead programs be far behind?

Oh, sorry, did I say "leads"? I meant "friends".

New Product Launch Using Social Media - Phew!

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Ellefritz) — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 02:15:00 +0000

Well gentle readers I'm proud to announce we've unveiled Cisco's latest high end product - the ASR 9000 - and the social media exploits were the culmination of months of planning by several able bodied employees and assistance from our agency partner, M80. When I catch my breath I'll do a recap of all the moving parts on this one; hopefully my brethren out there can draw some helpful insight from that. For today I'll let some of my fellow bloggers tell the tale, especially Dianna Huff in her Marcom Writer Blog and Leo Boulton's Confluence Blog. Are we done? No, now the fun work begins:

Daily monitoring to assess the scope and tone of coverage in social media
Read all the posts and Tweets. All of them.
Outreach to blogs and Twitter-ers to thank, clarify, assist, and hopefully amplify our coverage
Metrics for all activities: Facebook group, Twitter feed, Tech Edge Weekly campaign blog, corporate blog, YouTube videos and external coverage.

Thanks to all my colleagues who made this a great effort, especially Melissa Mines, Deborah Strickland and Jennifer Bocca. Great ideas plus great attitudes = great launch.

Telepresence - Definitely an "E" Ticket

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Ellefritz) — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 23:51:00 +0000

If you follow Cisco but don't work here you might imagine that we use our own Telepresence solutions routinely but I got the chance to use it today for the first time in other than a demonstration format. Jeanette Gibson, Director of New Media and I met with a Cisco customer headquartered 1,500 miles away and for 90 minutes we were in the same room together. We were asked to share our social media strategies and war stories and since they only had to make a short drive and not a long flight the customer was able to have six folks attend instead of maybe flying one or two out here to San Jose. Is this a shameless plug for Telepresence? You bet. If you can't wave your Cisco badge proudly after using Telepresence you shouldn't work here.

My Top Five Reasons Telepresence Is Awesome:

Presentus Interruptus: When, on most conference calls, the presenter gets on a roll short verbal interruptions don't make it through the noise and it's easy for the curious and confused to simply give up asking questions and go back to working on emails. With Telepresence you simply lift your finger or lean forward your chair, voila, the presenter turns the floor over to you.
Energy: As a presenter you get a lot of validation through body language and you use that energy - positive or negative - to keep surging forward or to take a new direction. On phone conferences you miss all those cues but with Telepresence smiles, frowns, - and boredom - come through loud and clear.
Laughter: I'm going to call this out specifically from the Energy item since, in a business context, smiles and laughter are so humanizing and relationship building. With Telepresence the formal soon becomes informal and presentation becomes collaboration.
The Technology Disappears: Oh, not right away. For the first few minutes the experience is so unique that you are distracted by the lack of distractions. But soon the technology fades and the humanity emerges. Voices and images are realistic to a fault (with one minor flaw): apparently my image was projected to the left in the customer's room and when I spoke they appeared to be looking over my shoulder "at" me).
It's Easy: Really. I was told it was easy to initiate the session but when I walked into the room and there were no A/V nerds about I was a bit nervous. But there was a single phone on the table, our meeting showed up on it's display as the next meeting in the queue, a couple buttons pressed and the customer showed up and we did too. Awesome.

Finally, for you non-Boomers, by e-ticket I'm not referring to your electronic boarding pass.

A B2B Launch via Social Media

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Ellefritz) — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 21:52:00 +0000

The most recent project my team is working on is a campaign to raise awareness for a new product launch. This effort involves a combination of tactics (yes, like a "spoof style web site") to raise awareness about this new product, a typical marketing activity in high tech. We've already made it pretty clear we can't unveil the product yet but we do want people to know it's coming. Why? Because like many technology companies we need to compete with new compelling products in the market so their arrival is key to our success - and, we like to think, our customer's success too. The trick is we have less dollars to spend on live launch events and so we are looking to leverage digital channels to get the word out.

For a launch like this a couple of years ago we would invite hundreds of press, analysts and customers to drop what they were doing for a day or three, fly to a live event, sup, nosh, and otherwise hobnob and then rush home to hopefully write their stories (press) and rewrite their purchase roadmaps (customers). Expensive. Time consuming. Not terribly efficient.

So let's fast forward to today and you'll see Cisco using virtual events and digital content to give back time to attendees and dollars to our bottom line. The actuarial types have gone over the ASR 1000 launch we did last spring and even with the fancy media we created to build buzz we still saved 80% over the typical live event it replaced. Savings like that get attention from execs and stockholders and so you'll see us working that model more and more in the future.

Remember that live events used to be crafted to have enough going for them to argue for people's precious time to attend. Live demos, comfortable venues, access to key execs etc., all spelled out in the invitations sent to attendees. So what has this got to do with the kind of buzz marketing we're doing for this launch? Well, to be candid I see them as one and the same. Buzz marketing is equivalent to sending out the invitations. But one great difference is that in the old model we couldn't afford to host everyone who wanted to attend. Now we can.

Now, are we doing any of this as adroitly as we can or should or wished we could? Absolutely not. For example we've been using Twitter and Facebook and our ability to microtarget within our Twitter feeds and Facebook groups is nil. So we notify all the followers and group members and hope that those who are interested hear about it and that we don't annoy those who couldn't care less. We'll be running some web banners that inevitably draw in some clicks that wasted a few seconds, but we'll also have some folks at our virtual launch that never would have gotten to attend in days of yore.

So for social media, we are optimistic but not yet optimized. Part of my job is to keep working with the various marketing teams to become both. I can't impact how compelling the products and announcements are but I can tell you we are - and will continue to be - committed to making our social and viral efforts interesting, fun, worthy of your time and a great use of Cisco resources.

I'll finish here with quick a shout out to Greg Ferro and his Ethereal Mind blog for taking the time to tell Cisco that we're not getting it right with our marketing efforts - and maybe even our products. Greg, thanks for your comments. We really do take them seriously.

Ad-driven entities WILL contract, but at what cost?

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Ellefritz) — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 04:52:00 +0000

AdAge didn't exactly go out on the limb this week when it prophesied that ad-supported Web 2.0 and social media businesses were in for tough times with the recent economic swings downward. With the economy nearly fully engulfed in flames they predict overall ad spending will be flat and while online advertising will still grow, it'll be much smaller than the boom times of the last few years (over 30% annual growth from 2004-2006).

So with too many baby chicks in the advertising nest Darwinian principals are now the elephant in the boardroom of these startups, methinks. As always you'd expect the strong brands to prosper and assume control of smaller, point solution or services companies. For example I'm shocked at the number of brand monitoring services that keep popping up despite the best efforts of the media and agency companies to scoop them up either via partnership or outright acquisition.

For us brands, this is simpler stuff to deal with. Every new 30 person shop that knocks on Cisco's door with an interesting solution is one more vendor to get through our on-boarding processes just to pilot or test their solution. Larger entities with multiple solutions will give me less throats to choke, less POs to write, and less tables to pound for better service, integration, price/performance and all the other unreasonable demands we big brands tend to make.

But I hope it doesn't happen too quickly. The last few boom years has provided a terrific Petri dish in which to grow the cultures of a new wave of capabilities. Let's hope the economy is not all penicillin and leaves a few dark corners in which to cultivate the next Twitter, Facebook... or even Cisco. It'd be a lot more fun to climb out of this economic pothole via innovation than with higher mounds of national debt.

8,000 Macintoshes and no IT Support

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Ellefritz) — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 04:52:00 +0000

I heard a reliable source at Cisco the other day quote that we have 8,000 Mac users internally. Sounds about right. I'm one of 'em. Love my Mac and I'm grateful for it's durability and easy of use cuz if it breaks?

I get no IT support. None. Nada. Zippo.

So how do we get by? The community supports itself. Thanks to a robust Wiki and mailing list, smart rabid Mac fan-boys and -girls get along just fine for the most part. Oh I admit I've had moments of hair pulling but the unofficial channels work fine for the most part. No full time IT staff, no SLA's for responding to my problems, just lots of warm hearted souls willing to answer my questions. It's the new world order at work. Pretty cool.

The Lame-Ass Social Media Department?

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Ellefritz) — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 01:19:00 +0000

When I ran demand generation programs for Cisco, I offered a turnkey service. You came to our department, dropped off a project, and we created and delivered programs for you. Email. Direct Mail. Lists. Reporting. We did the work, and the marketing program owner was the beneficiary.

It still works this way for demand gen. And media buying. And advertising, events, and web. At least at Cisco.

But try ghost writing someone's blog or Twitter feed and you get the rant you expect and deserve. When we recommend blogging, we can't write the blog. Ditto with Twitter. Facebook. Participation in forums. Oh we can help with strategy, tactics, best practices, training... but we can't manage the conversation for you. And that's where we often hit the wall with teams who want to try social media.

Marketing is relatively well resourced in dollars and light on people. That allows marketing to expand and contract quickly as campaigns come and go, depending on systems of outsourced specialty skills and internal networks with thought leaders and content subject matter expertise. Sustained conversations, deep subject matter expertise, even a passion for managing customer relationships is hard to find in marketing. So we're looking elsewhere in the organization. Hello, service and support? Got a minute?

My First Stammtisch - "A Regular's Get Together"

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Ellefritz) — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 14:21:00 +0000

1. Sean O'Donnell sends an email (who said email is dead?). 2. RSVP's flow back. 3. And in a weeks' time he hosts myself and seven other Silicon Valley community and social media types for a great dinner on Santana Row. It was a great combo of food, wine, work-related chit chat and diverse personal conversations. Thanks Sean for getting us together for, I trust, the first of many such confabs. Attendees included Mark Freeman Williams (Apple), Katina Johnson (Google), Len Devanna (EMC), Matt Warburton (Yahoo), Tim Albright (Cisco), Rachel Makool (EBay) and Aimee Caton (Adaptive Planning). Oh, and Sean and myself of course. I'd post some pics I took with my iPhone but it's limited optics and the dim lighting conspired against me - nothing usable turned out. Note to self - bring a proper camera next time. Quote of the night? Mark from Apple describing his Burning Man Festival experience: "Basically it's thousands of people trying to survive each day." Another note to self.... :-)

Thank you Sean for this introductory meeting and we collectively plan to keep the conversation meeting.

Dell's Digital Nomads sites draws some politely critical comments

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Ellefritz) — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 05:09:00 +0000

Dell recently took an admirable step by creating a sponsored but lightly branded community site for mobile power users, Digital Nomads. They smartly targeted this segment with some new killer Latitude notebooks and should be applauded for NOT building yet another promotional microsite but decided to take a social approach instead. They even fleshed out this effort with accompanying resources on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube. I actually got a couple of good tips from featured Nomad Marshall Goldsmith:

But one of the classic challenges with any new community is seeding it with solid content to attract a following. It seems that at least a couple of the mobility geeks that Digital Nomads was built for have taken the early efforts to task, when Bruce Eric Anderson's post "I Work Everywhere" received the dreaded "do you just work in marketing and promotions for Dell?" comment.

Give the commenter, "Houdini" credit for being politely critical, even leading with "Mate, don't take this the wrong way...", and to Anderson's credit he openly admitted to having some solid mobile experience but was in fact working on behalf of Dell to post content that would seed the conversation.

If anyone has some better examples of how to jump-start a community site without running into these kinds of objections, let me know please. Cisco would welcome the insight. In general, it seems to me that Dell handled this about as well as they might although seeing Mr. Anderson's name on post after post certainly did raise my eyebrows, too.

Laura Ramos: "For social media, think relationships not campaigns"

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Ellefritz) — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 15:08:00 +0000

OK, that quote is a bit out of context but it's a heady reminder for us B2B'ers. Take 3 minutes to listen to my colleague LaSandra Brill interview Forrester's Laura Ramos on her takeaways from Cisco's Social Media boot camp yesterday. Want more on the boot camp? Read my next post.

My first Social Media bootcamp, and it didn't even hurt

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Ellefritz) — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 04:47:00 +0000

Cisco hosted Jeremiah Owyang and Laura Ramos from Forrester Research in our first ever Social Media workshop today. I'm struggling to think of a way we could have made it much better. Our goal was to introduce the POST process which Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li introduced in Groundwell and use it to build sound social media strategy execution plans. Judging from the audience's feedback it was a great success and we plan to run this for other teams to move more groups at Cisco into using sound, objective-driven social media planning. We're still getting attendee feedback things to improve but here are some things I think we* did right:

Bring in the experts. Sure, my team and I have read Groundswell but no way could we have presented the content and fielded the questions as adroitly as Jeremiah and Laura (thanks guys!) With Jeremiah's focus on social media tools and best practices and Laura's expertise on B2B marketing they were the perfect tag team.
Allow plenty of time. We started at 8, finished at 2 and worked through lunch. Laptops were closed (amazing for Cisco!) and the feedback at the end? Wish we had more time! The crowd was engaged the whole time: credit the presenters and the solid content.
Make it real. We finished the day by putting the content and theory into practice. We brought in two upcoming marketing efforts and put those objectives through the POST process so this group worked on problems they need to solve and walked out with a plan they can use. Or at least the start of one.
Focus. We confined this to a single business unit and that really paid off. Attendees had a shared set of issues and objectives and this kept the conversation moving and allowed us to go deeper into their specific challenges.
Prepare. Don't underestimate the logistical, content and planning challenges. Thanks go out to Jennifer Bocca on my team who made the day flow like water. Or wine, depending on your tastes.

Here was our agenda, feel free to leverage this for your own Social Media bootcamp. And don't forget to have fun while you're at it.

Agenda:

State of Web 2.o and Social Media in B2B
Key tools for Social Media (pick the ones you use or need; we covered blogging/microblogging, tagging, communities, social networks, virtual worlds, etc.)
The POST process and technographic profiles for our key audiences
Breakout sessions to develop social media plans using this content

* A huge tip of the hat to LaSandra Brill who cohosted and cofunded this event, made sure this moved from concept to reality while I was off vacationing with my family in Pismo Beach, all while preparing for the birth of her first child. She even came in from maternity leave to join us for the day. She seemed calm and we pretended to be. Check out her blog although I suspect she'll take a short hiatus while she starts her family. Best wishes, LaSandra!

Wow, THIS is a scary checklist

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Ellefritz) — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 02:53:00 +0000

My new fave top 10 list - scary because it's a lot to live up to - is courtesy of Sam Lawrence of "Go Big Always" blog fame in his post "10 Fantastic ways to f*ck it up" In fact, with your permission Sam (I want to respect the copyright notice on your blog) I want to turn this into a checklist for us to use internally to go beyond our standard gut checks for social media campaigns. My favorite might be "Try to be sticky or viral". I can use that tomorrow with the woman who wants to meet to discuss the "viral video we created". Wish me luck.