The PR Guy: Straight to the Point

Webinar: Using Social Media to Target the C-Suite and Close Deals

2009-11-06T15:59:00.002-05:00

Last week, I had the great opportunity of serving as a moderator for a Webinar on the use of social media to target executives and close complex sales, hosted by the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA). There were two excellent presentations and a fascinating Q&A session. The speakers were:

Steve Ressler, Founder, GovLoop
Jim Fowler, CEO, Jigsaw

Download the PDF of the 36 slides here and listen to the audio here (about 60 minutes).

What do you think? Please leave a comment or drop me a line!!

The fourth and final Webinar is coming up a few weeks. Take a second and mark it down on your calendar:

Social Media for Brand Awareness, Thought Leadership and Other Traditional PR Activities
Price for SIIA Members: Free, Non SIIA Members: $89
Monday, December 7th - 1:30pm - 2:30 pm EDT
Social media should be an integral part of your PR strategy, not just your sales function. To run a successful campaign Marketing, Sales and PR need to be integrated using today's popular social media tools. How can you effectively integrate your social media strategy across the enterprise?

Moderator:
Robert Carroll, VP Marketing, Clickability

Panelist:
Richard Dym, CMO, OpSource, Inc.

Two other panelists are TBD

Social Media for Small Business

2009-11-04T14:28:00.013-05:00

Are small businesses immune to the hype of social media?

As with every new technology, there is an adoption curve that influences the penetration of social media into business. A new technology starts with the most innovative individuals in the most innovative industry and works its way through the ecosystem until the most conservative individuals in the most conservative industry adopt it. The commonly accepted stages of adoption are:

innovators
early adopters
early majority
late majority
laggards

It isn't a groundbreaking observation to point out that innovators have completely adopted social media as a medium of communications. Indeed, for many of our clients, the early adopters and even the early majority, are moving beyond test or pilot social media programs and are starting to integrate social media into their overall sales, marketing, HR, customer service and investor relations strategies. This evolution is made easier by the fact that Strategic's clients are generally well funded companies in the healthcare and technology space- both traditionally innovative areas.

It's important to note, however, when areas are lagging behind, for whatever reasons.

With this in mind, I found a new blog post by Jack Loechner (Center for Media Research) to be very interesting. He reviews a new survey by Citibank of 500 small businesses and their experiences with social media. You can read his whole post here:

76% have not found social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to be helpful in generating business leads or for expanding their business during the last year, while 86% say they have not used social networking sites to get business advice or information.

The survey found that general search engine sites such as Google and Yahoo! trump small business-focused sites and the WSJ.com as destinations for small business owners to seek business advice or information. 61% of respondents say they rely on these search engine sites.

Lead Generation by Social Networks (% of Respondents, August 2009)
Small Business Execs Who Say

Social networks are:
Very helpful- 3%
Somewhat helpful-9
Not very helpful- 13
Not at all helpful- 63
Don't know/na- 11

Source: Citibank omnibus poll by Gfk Roper, October 2009

Maria Veltre, Executive Vice President of Citi's Small Business Segment, concludes "... small business owners are still feeling their way into social media... many... may not have the manpower or the time required take advantage of them."

Additional responses found that 42% of small business owners and managers reported that in the past year they have made greater use of their company's website to generate business leads and sales. Among companies with 20 to 99 employees the percentage rises, with 57% saying they have made greater use of their website. 28% of survey respondents are also using email marketing and 25% are using online advertising to generate business leads and sales.

It's clear that the adoption rates among small business owners and executives is low, but is probably growing. As a marketer for a small business, I can tell you that we think of social media from the outset when designing our integrated sales, marketing and PR plans. This is a function of "going where are customers are." As more and more small business owners realize that their customers are on social networks, the more we'll see these adoption rates go up.

New SIIA Webinar This Monday on B2B Social Media Apps- Targeting the C Suite

2009-10-28T17:16:00.005-05:00

I want to make sure my faithful readers are aware of the next SIIA Webinar coming up this Monday, November 2 at 1:30pm. This latest episode is going to focus on how sales and marketing can work together to leverage simple, free social media tools to identify decision makers, grow relationships and close deals.

I'll be moderating the session and cuing up a fabulous panel that includes

Jim Fowler, CEO, Jigsaw
Steve Ressler, Founder, GovLoop

Click here to register: "Social Media Webinar Series: Using Social Media to Target the C-Suite and Close Deals"

There is a $89 charge to register- however, since you’ll be my guest, you can register for free if you use the following code- PRMSTRAT.

Kristin Bockius of Microsoft Shares Her Social Media Expertise

2009-10-08T14:57:00.004-05:00

How do you use social media to engage with government IT professionals? Is it even possible? Can you generate leads? Integrate social media with traditional marketing?

Well, yes, but don't take my word for it.

In the latest edition on Straight to the Point, my podcast series on BlogTalkRadio, I sat down with Kristin Bockius, the Relationship Marketing Manager at Microsoft's State and Local Government field marketing group. In a 20 minute Q&A, she shares...

how she evaluated social media as a possible communications tool
how she socialized the idea of social media with peers and superiors
how she specifically rolled out social media and kept it tightly aligned with corporate messaging and sales objectives

Here is a link to the show: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/JeffMajka/2009/10/08/Interview-with-Kristin-Bockius-of-Microsoft

or you can just listen to it here

What do you think? Would you market to government executives differently? What could she be doing different or better?

Is Windows 7 A Home Run?

2009-10-08T11:38:00.003-05:00

Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal seems to think so...

After using pre-release versions of Windows 7 for nine months, and intensively testing the final version for the past month on many different machines, I believe it is the best version of Windows Microsoft (MSFT) has produced. It’s a boost to productivity and a pleasure to use. Despite a few drawbacks, I can heartily recommend Windows 7 to mainstream consumers.

I can't remember when I've read a positive review of a Microsoft operating system, at least since the late 1990's. Which I find a little confusing, as the Vista OS on my computer works just fine. Hmmm.

Well, in the interest of balance and harmony, Philip Elmer-DeWitt, a writter at CNNMoney.com, provides a bit of a rebuttal, unfortunately using Walt's own words against him...

Mossberg has written a positive review; he has plenty of good things to say about Microsoft's latest operating system, and anybody who is seriously interested in buying it should read the whole thing.

But if you want to know what's wrong with Windows 7, we've excerpted the juicy bits below the fold.

In Walt's words:

On a couple of these machines, glacial start-up and reboot times reminded me of Vista.
On a couple of others, after upgrading, key features like the display or touchpad didn’t work properly.
Windows 7 still requires add-on security software that has to be frequently updated.
It’s tedious and painful to upgrade an existing computer from XP to 7
The variety of editions in which Windows 7 is offered is confusing.
Microsoft has stripped Windows 7 of familiar built-in applications, such as email, photo organizing, address book, calendar and video-editing programs. [They can be downloaded free of charge.]
Windows 7 still isn’t quite as natural at networking as I find the Mac to be, but it’s better than Vista.
In my tests, [a new feature called HomeGroups] worked, but not consistently, and it required typing in long, arcane passwords.
The Mac still started and restarted faster than most of the Windows 7 PCs. But the speed gap has narrowed considerably, and one of the Lenovos beat the Mac in restart time.
In the name of security, Vista put up nagging warnings about a wide variety of tasks, driving people crazy. In Windows 7, you can now set this system so it nags you only when things are happening that you consider really worth the nag.
The system for upgrading is complicated, but Vista owners can upgrade to the exactly comparable edition of Windows 7 while keeping all files, settings and programs in place.
Unfortunately, XP owners, the biggest body of Windows users, won’t be able to do that.
They’ll have to wipe out their hard disks after backing up their files elsewhere, then install Windows 7, then restore their personal files, then re-install all their programs from the original CDs or downloaded installer files.
Then, they have to install all the patches and upgrades to those programs from over the years.
Microsoft includes an Easy Transfer wizard to help with this, but it moves only personal files, not programs.
This painful XP upgrade process is one of the worst things about Windows 7 and will likely drive many XP owners to either stick with what they’ve got or wait and buy a new one.

"Bottom line," writes Mossberg, "Windows 7 is a very good, versatile operating system that should help Microsoft bury the memory of Vista and make PC users happy."

UPDATE: Kudos to reader Jon T. of Cardiff, Wales, for digging up this quote from Mossberg's review of Vista:

"After months of testing Vista on multiple computers, new and old, I believe it is the best version of Windows that Microsoft has produced." — Wall Street Journal, Jan. 18, 2007

"After using pre-release versions of Windows 7 for nine months, and intensively testing the final version for the past month on many different machines, I believe it is the best version of Windows Microsoft has produced." — Wall Street Journal, Oct. 8, 2009

LOL. Too funny. I'll probably be upgrading anyway...

Things I Found in My Google Reader

2009-09-30T16:50:00.004-05:00

This morning I was stuck waiting at my car dealership. I was there for a oil change and a new battery. Of course, they found more things wrong with my car that obviously needed fixing immediately. That meant that I needed to cool my jets and wait.

Which meant that I spent some time browsing through my Google Reader. I don't usually spend too much time on Reader- mostly, I'm on Twitter or LinkedIn or Facebook. I set up Reader a while ago with all the RSS feeds I'd been collecting for the past four or five years, so there is a bunch of stuff in there.

Here is what caught my eye. First, and I can't believe how cool this is,

Panasonic has finally invented the technology to create the Power Loader from Aliens. Seriously, check out the video. Badass.

Today is the day Google invited 100,000 people to beta test its new application, Wave. It's apparently a neat IM, collaboration, publishing platform. All the geeks seem to be excited.

Scientists at Bell Labs have broken the 100 petabit per kilometer.second barrier. Who cares, you say? Well, it means that you can download every song on iTunes in 25 seconds. Yep. Also badass.

Andy Beal has a snaky blog post about the musical chairs act among top tech CTO's, "For Tech Execs It’s Not About the Money…This Just In: It’s About the Money."

Are you a newly rich tech CTO? In the market for a new pad? Leona Helmsley's mansion is starting to look affordable, "Dunnellen Hall Price Dropped Another $15 Million." Now a steal at $60,000,000.

Brian Solis rides to the rescue of the publishing industry and explains "The reports of newspapers’ death are (perhaps) greatly exaggerated". Why, you ask?

1) Newsprint may be black and white but the media business isn’t – While people tend to lean towards a twofold viewpoint (the world was this way, now it’s that way; people used to do things this way, now people do things another way), the truth is that the advent of new forms of media have yet to wholly kill previous forms. Television didn’t kill radio. The VCR didn’t kill the movies. Okay so maybe the Internet struck a near fatal blow to the music industry, but even in that case, things continue to evolve. In Chris’ words, “People want to get into a binary debate that we used to just all want (the newspaper) because we had no choice and now people want the raw feed to mix up their own news. From where I sit what’s really happening is that people have splintered in a lot of different directions. You still have people who value the gatekeeper/passive experience at one end and then you have (people on the other end) who just want the raw feed of all data washing over them, but mostly people exist on the span in between.”

2) Never underestimate the power of human nature - The people who get newspapers in print tend to be committed to getting the product in that form and whether it’s habit or not, they tend to stick with getting that paper delivered to their doorstep. O’Brien related that when the Seattle Post-Intelligencer ceased publishing its print edition and went web only, thanks to a joint operating agreement all P-I subscribers were switched automatically to the only remaining Seattle daily – The Seattle Times. People had the option to cancel, but something interesting happened. They didn’t. Not only did they retain their existing subscriptions, but when those began to run out, almost everyone renewed. O’Brien is not surprised by this and spoke of the digitally saturated people with whom he speaks every day – the venture capitalists and tech company executives whose lives are shackled to Blackberries and RSS feeds. “These are people who use technology for everything in their lives and they still get the paper in print. They still have it delivered to their doorstep.”

3) In today’s rapidly moving world, tactile yet passive experiences have merit - One of my favorite things about that morning paper is, quite simply, turning the pages. Humans are, after all, kinesthetic creatures, so the hands-on experience of a paper has some value. O’Brien agrees with that, and thinks that there’s something even more simple. Sometimes people just want a “psychologically different experience … a purely passive experience.” He went on to explain that oftentimes people don’t want “something with buttons or to click around. Even with a Kindle, there are buttons to push and that’s not appealing to them. They just want something that’s there. Something they don’t have to think about.” There are some who disagree with that perspective, but I’m not one of them.

Now, we turn our attention to two of my favorite topics, history and food.

Archeologists working in Rome have discovered the Roman Emperor Nero had a rotating dinning room in his modestly named "Golden Palace." This new fact about our culinary heritage prompted the food writer at the Guardian newspaper to go on a ballistic (but very properly British) rant on the eternal need for gimmicks in restaurants.

Listen to my Webinar- an Overview of B2B Social Media Business Applications

2009-09-15T16:20:00.005-05:00

Last week, I had the great opportunity of serving as a speaker for a webinar hosted by the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA). There were three excellent presentations and a fascinating Q&A session. The speakers were:

Jeff Majka, Director of Marketing and Business Development, Strategic Communications Group
Gail Nelson, SVP, Marketing, BurrellesLuce
Angela Lauria, CMO, AppAssure

...and the session was moderated by Karen Leavitt, CEO, Marketing Fusion.

Download the PDF of the 36 slides here and listen to the audio here (about 90 minutes).

What do you think? Please leave a comment or drop me a line!!

As I told you here, this was the first webinar in a four part series. The next three webinars will be held as follows (mark your calendars and click on the links to register):

Enterprise Sales Support - Using Social Medial to Support the Enterprise B2B Sales Cycle
Price for SIIA Members: Free, Non SIIA Members: $35
Monday, October 5th - 1:30pm - 2:30 pm EDT
With new service-based models and the rise of "freemium", the sales cycle is getting complicated -- and every advantage counts. Social media has the potential to connect these new models to the customers that want them, but how do you implement it? Where do you start? Hear how social media can transform the way you approach lead generation and sales cycle support.

Panelists:
Adam Mertz, Product Marketing Manager, Jive Software
Jay Hallberg, Co-founder & VP of Marketing, Spiceworks

Using Social Media to Target the C-Suite and Close Deals
Price for SIIA Members: Free, Non SIIA Members: $89
Monday, November 2 - 1:30pm - 2:30 pm EDT
Many of your customers are using social media to communicate with THEIR customers. How can you tap into their social media programs? The first step to closing the deal is to conduct a social media audit of your principal prospects. How can this be completed efficiently and comprehensively for a large number of prospects? How can you facilitate social media for deal capture?

Panelist:
Jim Fowler, CEO, Jigsaw

Moderator:
Robert Carroll, VP Marketing, Clickability
Panelist:
Richard Dym, CMO, OpSource, Inc.

Penny Wise, Pound Foolish? Marketing in a Recession

2009-08-28T12:27:00.005-05:00

It's conventional wisdom that Americans are moving to a more frugal, debt free society. It's called the "great de-leveraging". Both companies and individuals are fixing their balance sheets by cutting expenses and lowering debt levels. Everyone seems to be caught up in this movement, except, of course, for our dear friends in the federal government.

But I would caution those that would cut too far. History is replete with examples of companies that lost their competitive advantage during downturns by starving their product development and marketing budgets. Here is a great list of examples from Derek Naylor, of Mobile Self Storage Magazine,

In April 1927, the Harvard Business Review found companies that advertised most during recessions had the biggest sales increases.

Companies that had higher sales and net income during the recession of 1974 to 1975 didn’t touch ad budgets. What’s more, they also beat non-advertisers in the two years following the recession’s end.

According to McGraw-Hill, companies that increased ad budgets during the 1981 recession trounced competitors not just during the downturn, but also for the subsequent three years.

Kellogg’s® pushed their ads through the Great Depression; Post® didn’t. Guess who dominated the cereal market for the next 50 years. Can you say corn flakes?

Stanley® Tools launched its biggest ad campaign during the 1974 recession. Their consumer product division took off. They grew at twice the rate of competitors every year thereafter.

Chevy® drove car sales in 1975. Ford® scaled back by 14 percent, afraid of higher gasoline prices. Chevy picked up two percent of the auto market. It took Ford five years to regain the lost ground.

In the recessions of 1949, 1954, 1958, and 1961, companies tracked for ad spending cutbacks saw sales and profits fall off. Those who kept ad budgets saw profits increase and kept an edge in the years that followed.

Consumer spending has increased during every post-WWII recession, according to The American Association of Advertising Agencies. (OK, maybe this one won't hold water anymore...)

When Coca-Cola® increased their worldwide marketing budget to $350 million in 2001, net income went up 22 percent.

IBM® increased its ad budgets 17 percent last spring; sales are up 8.9 percent.

In 1947, Buchen Advertising tracked the annual advertising expenditures for a large number of companies, correlating spending to sales trends before, during, or after the recessions of 1949 and 1954, as well as sales and profits trends surrounding the recessions of 1958 and 1961. It found that sales and profits dropped off almost without exception at companies that cut back on advertising, and these lags continued even after the recession ended.

For the 1970 and 1974 to 1975 recessions, The American Business Press and Meldrum & Fewsmith showed that advertising aggressively during recessions not only increases sales but increases profits. Speaking of the 1970 recession, the study concluded, “Sales and profits can be maintained and increased in recession years and in the years immediately following by those who are willing to maintain an aggressive marketing posture, while others adopt the philosophy of cutting back on promotional efforts when sales appear to be harder to get.”

Regarding the 1974 to 1975 recession, the study stated, “Companies that did not cut advertising expenditures during the recession experienced higher sales and net income during those two years and the two years following than those companies which cut in either or both recession years.”

McGraw-Hill Research analyzed 468 industrial companies during the 1974 recession and 600 industrial companies in 16 different industries for the 1981 to 1982 recession. Findings showed that firms which increased or maintained their advertising spending averaged significantly higher sales growth, both during the recession and for the following three to five years than those who eliminated or decreased advertising. As the graph shows, sales of companies which maintained or increased advertising during the 1974 recession showed 132 percent sales growth by 1978, while those who cut advertising were ahead by 79 percent. During the 1981 recession, sales of companies that were strong recession advertisers had risen 275 percent, compared to an increase of 19 percent growth for those companies which decreased spending.

In 1982, Cahners Publishing Company & The Strategic Planning Institute studied 2,000 businesses to explore the relationship between market share and profitability, and advertising’s impact on this relationship. As it pertains to our discussion of recessions, the study found that businesses which increased media spending by up to 28 percent had a 0.5 market share increase during periods of recession, and those that increased 28 to 80 percent increased market share by 1.5 share points. During expansion times, however, those that increased media spending up to 28 percent saw a 0.2 share increase, and those increasing 28 to 80 percent also had a 0.2 share increase.

In other words, the study suggested that recessionary market conditions can provide an opportunity for a business to break from traditional budget cutting patterns and build a greater share of market through aggressive media advertising.

So what can happen if you cut the budget? Here is a list from the people at the Opposable Thumbs blog:

1. Your reputation can suffer
2. When times are tough people look for deals
3. If you are not moving forward, you are moving backward
4. Marketing in a recession can give you a competitive advantage
5. Cut advertising, cut market share

Now, there is a silver lining here. The phenomenal change in marketing in the last 3-4 years has been the rapid raise of social networks and the integration of social media into overall B2B marketing strategies. Low cost, easy to track, quick to pay for themselves- my firm has been developing executing social media pilot programs in a variety of industries in the middle of this great recession with positive ROI, expanded budgets and ecstatic marketing managers.

What does this mean? It means that you can invest in marketing w/o having to go to the CFO with a budget request that you know has no chance of getting approved.

What do you think? Are you integrating social media into your marketing programs?

New SIIA Webinar: "The New Marketing Paradigm: Social Media in a B2B Setting"

2009-08-19T13:44:00.004-05:00

I'm announcing a new webinar series, "The New Marketing Paradigm: Social Media in a B2B Setting", to be held over the next four months, sponsored by my firm, Strategic Communications Group, in conjunction with the Software and Information Industry Association. We will explore the many business applications of social media in a business to business environment. Some of the topics will cover how and when to use social media for:

Lead generation
Enterprise sales support
Competitive intelligence gathering
Deal capture
Distribution partner identification and cultivation
Search engine optimization (SEO)
Executive visibility and thought leadership
Reputation management
Employee recruitment
Team, culture and morale building

Click on this link for more information and to register: "The New Marketing Paradigm: Social Media in a B2B Setting"

Webinar #1: Overview of Business Applications of Social Media
Price for All: Free
Tuesday, September 8th - 1:30pm - 3:00pm EDT
Social media has already begun the transformation of how we interact, and has the potential to transform the way we do business. Understanding and effectively implementing a social media strategy can have a major impact on how businesses are perceived and how they interact with their customers. Nowhere is this more evident than the PR, marketing and sales departments. In this 90-minute webinar, you'll hear how social media tools can be used in lead generation, enterprise sales support, competitive intelligence management, employee recruitment, team culture & morale boosting, and branding & awareness

Moderator:
Karen Leavitt, CEO, Marketing Fusion
Panelists
Jeff Majka, Director of Marketing and Business Development, Strategic Communications Group
Gail Nelson, SVP, Marketing, BurrellesLuce
Angela Lauria, CMO, AppAssure

Webinar #2: Enterprise Sales Support - Using Social Medial to Support the Enterprise B2B Sales Cycle
Price for All: Free
Monday, October 5th - 1:30pm - 2:30 pm EDT
With new service-based models and the rise of "freemium", the sales cycle is getting complicated -- and every advantage counts. Social media has the potential to connect these new models to the customers that want them, but how do you implement it? Where do you start? Hear how social media can transform the way you approach lead generation and sales cycle support.

Webinar #3: Using Social Media to Target the C-Suite and Close Deals
Price for SIIA Members: Free, Non SIIA Members: $89
Monday, November 2 - 1:30pm - 2:30 pm EDT

Many of your customers are using social media to communicate with THEIR customers. How can you tap into their social media programs? The first step to closing the deal is to conduct a social media audit of your principal prospects. How can this be completed efficiently and comprehensively for a large number of prospects? How can you facilitate social media for deal capture?

Webinar #4: Social Media for Brand Awareness, Thought Leadership and Other Traditional PR Activities
Price for SIIA Members: Free, Non SIIA Members: $89
Monday, December 7th - 1:30pm - 2:30 pm EDT
Social media should be an integral part of your PR strategy, not just your sales function. To run a successful campaign Marketing, Sales and PR need to be integrated using today's popular social media tools. How can you effectively integrate your social media strategy across the enterprise?

Moderator:
Robert Carroll, VP Marketing, Clickability
Panelist:
Richard Dym, CMO, OpSource, Inc.

I'll be updating this page as we add more speakers. If you'd like to submit your name as a possible speaker, or if you have any other topic suggestions, please don't hesitate to email me at jmajka@gotostrategic.com.

Please don't JoeJob me, Mr. KGB Man

2009-08-07T09:55:00.003-05:00

Yesterday's big denial of service attack against Twitter is all the the talk today. Who did it and why? Dan Googin at The Register speculates that this was a "joejob" attack targeting one man, a anti-Russian, pro-Georgian activist with profiles on most of the social networks. Was I not able to twit about my lunch yesterday because a bunch of ex-KBG thugs brought down Twitter?

As Twitter struggled to return to normal Wednesday evening, a trickle of details suggested that the outage that left 30 million users unable to use the micro-blogging service for several hours - at least in part - may have been the result of a spam campaign that targeted a single user who vocally supports the Republic of Georgia.

According to Bill Woodcock, research director at the non-profit Packet Clearing House, the torrent of traffic that brought the site to its knees wasn't the result of a traditional DDoS, or distributed denial of service attack, but rather people who clicked on a link in spam messages that referenced a well-known blogger called Cyxymu.

Curious about the new version of Windows coming out this fall? Me too. This story at Silicon.com has nine screenshots of the desktops and some of the features. This new version is getting some pretty good reviews. As one of the happy users of Vista, I'm not sure why this is a surprise. But based on what I'm reading, you can be sure I'll be taking a very close look at Windows 7.

Ranking the Straight to the Point Podcasts

2009-07-27T10:07:00.004-05:00

Last week when I was scheduling a show with BlogTalkRadio (the one with Matt Langan, the Editor in Chief of GotGeoint?), I got curious and checked to see how many views the last show received on that service. I was pleased to see that 208 people have listened to my interview with Jennie Olson, the Director of Marketing at GovDelivery. That got me thinking, "what are the most popular shows I've done?" Well, here they are, in order...

Jean Foster, formerly of BT Americas, now with NeuStar - 239 views (August 21, 2009)
In my most popular audio podcast to date, I learned how Jean Foster, then VP Marketing for BT, used social media creatively to gain market share and effectively compete with Verizon and AT&T using smaller budgets and less staff.

Jennie Olson, Director of Marketing, GovDelivery- 208 views (June 26, 2009)
I interviewed Jennie Olson, Director of Marketing for GovDelivery, the world's leading provider of government-to-citizen communication solutions. GovDelivery's Email and Digital Subscription Management solution is a Software as a Service (SaaS) platform that provides organizations a fully-automated, on-demand public communication system.

Sumir Gulati, Vice President of Marketing at Appian - 152 views (August 15, 2007)
Sumir was generous enough to share his insights on how he markets a SaaS solution to the small and medium sized business market (SMB).

Charles Gold, Vice President of Worldwide Marketing at DataDirect- 132 views (May 8, 2007)
In my first BlogTalkRadio podcast, I was lucky to hear Charles tell me how he addresses the challenges that come from marketing DataDirect Technologies, the world leader in data connectivity and mainframe integration, offering the most comprehensive line of software for connecting the world's most critical applications to data and services, running on any platform, using proven and emerging standards

Oscar Fuster, Vice President of Marketing, ePok- 112 views (October 2, 2008)
I had a great conversation with Oscar Fuster, VP of Marketing at ePok, a software company that securely and efficiently extends Microsoft SharePoint’s value to the extranet; enabling public and private sector organizations to achieve new levels of business agility, while enhancing their security and information compliance posture.

Steve Lunceford, now with Deloitte, then with BearingPoint- 101 views (February 13, 2009)
I sat down with innovative marketer, Steve Lunceford, to learn first hand how he is integrating social media into his successful government marketing program.

Ed Bursk, now with Nokia Siemens Networks- 72 views (March 19, 2009)
This was a wide ranging interview with Ed Bursk, the man behind the marketing campaigns at KORE Telematics, Nortel Networks, Alcatel/Lucent and other technology companies.

What do you think of these podcasts? Are the valuable? Should I continue doing them? Change the pocasting service? Make them live shows? Are they too tame? Not substantive enough?

Is there anyone I should interview?

Please share any and all comments, suggestions...

Covering DOD and Intel Social Media with Matt Langan: A New Straight to the Point Podcast

2009-07-22T11:43:00.008-05:00

This month, I'm pleased that Matt Langan agreed to spend some time with me for my Straight to the Point podcast series. Matt is the Editor in Chief of GotGeoInt?, a social network for the geospatial intelligence community, founded and funded by The United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation. Matt has deep firsthand experience in setting up, growing and managing a community social network.

Matt's main points:
- The intelligence community was one of the early adopters of social media and there is deep penetration throughout intelligence and defense organizations
- A blog should be the central hub around which all other social media tools are arrayed for the purpose of promoting and distributing the content
- Content is king- without educational, engaging and entertaining content, any social media strategy is doomed to failure

Here is a link to the podcast hosted on BlogTalkRadio: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/JeffMajka/2009/07/21/Inteview-with-Matt-Langan-Founder-of-Got-GeoInt

What do think? Should community managers run their social networks like Matt does? Is your industry already developing social networks like GotGeoInt?

This is not a blog post, it's some links to social media best practices

2009-07-17T14:08:00.003-05:00

I read a lot of blog posts on business, social media, PR and technology. Some I read and never see again. Some make it into my bookmarks. Here is a selection of some of the more recent posts I found compelling. What do you think of them? Do you have any posts/sites/books you think I should read?

My alma mater, American University, has opened a social media center, apparently: http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/

Chris Baggott's Guide to Blogging focuses mostly on the SEO aspect of social media, specifically revolving around blogs. A bit narrow, given all the other applications for social media, but there is a ton of white papers talking about SEO with a strong emphasis on business results and ROI.

Social Media Today is a user generated social network that focuses, you guessed it, on social media. I've posted several of my blog posts there with good engagement. Definitely check this one out.

Publishers and journalists have been struggling with the impact of the web and social media for a while now. The blog, Publishing 2.0, is not only a good resource for professionals but has great advice for prosumer and amateur content creators too. Here is post on "Best Practices for Journalists".

If you are on Twitter as much as I am, the the whole trinity of add ons you should have are TweetDeck, TweetMeme and BigTweet. I can't get through a single day without them. Oh, and Tiny Twitter for my Windows Pocket PC.

What's going on in the Wireless industry?

2009-07-07T10:33:00.003-05:00

The times they are a'changing. The structure of the mobile industry has been fairly static for a long time. The last big earth shattering events- the Sprint/Nextel merger and the rollout of 3G networks. There have been fad phones that have been super popular for a time, and there has been a definite shift in preference to smartphones, like the iPhone. But the basic structure has remained the same- big wireless companies offering limited phone choice, long term contracts and maximizing ARPU.

However, I'm now starting to see some datapoints that don't support this historical norm. Most of these are driven by customers that want more options and less costs, but some are being driven by technological change. And now rides in our friendly government regulators. Here is the story from Amol Sharma at the WSJ:

The Department of Justice has begun looking into whether large U.S. telecommunications companies such as AT&T Inc. (T) and Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ) are abusing the market power they have amassed in recent years, according to people familiar with the matter.

The review, while in its early stages, is an indication of the Obama administration's aggressive stance on antitrust enforcement. The Justice Department's antitrust chief, Christine Varney, has said she wants to reassert the government's role in policing monopolistic and anticompetitive practices by powerful companies.

The law that covers such behavior, the Sherman Antitrust Act, has been used in the past against giants ranging from Standard Oil to Microsoft Corp. It lay essentially dormant during the Bush years, with the agency bringing no major case. The telecom industry is among several sectors now coming under scrutiny. Others include health care and agriculture.

The Justice Department is already cracking down on certain agreements. It recently filed an objection to plans by airlines in the global Star Alliance to cooperate more closely on international routes and fares. It has targeted payments large pharmaceutical producers sometimes make to generic-drug makers to delay cheap copies of medicines. In addition, Ms. Varney is investigating Google Inc.'s settlement with authors and publishers over its Book Search product.

The telecom review isn't a formal investigation of any specific company, and it isn't clear it will ever become one. The review is expected to cover all areas from land-line voice and broadband service to wireless.

One area that might be explored is whether big wireless carriers are hurting smaller rivals by locking up popular phones through exclusive agreements with handset makers. Lawmakers and regulators have raised questions about deals such as AT&T's exclusive right to provide service for Apple Inc.'s iPhone in the U.S. Big carriers say limiting exclusive deals would hurt innovation.

The department also may review whether telecom carriers are unduly restricting the types of services other companies can offer on their networks, one person familiar with the situation said. Public-interest groups have complained when carriers limit access to Internet calling services such as Skype.

Second, Apple is talks with Verizon about creating a CDMA iPhone. Verizon turned down the iPhone a couple of years ago. There is lots of speculation as to why. Now,

It cannot have escaped Verizon's notice that AT&T proclaimed in a widely circulated memo that the recent launch of the iPhone 3GS was the "largest order day in att.com history" and the "best ever sales day in our retail stores." AT&T sold a million of the new iPhones in 3 days. It took 74 days to sell a million iPhones when they were first launched in 2007.

With AT&T's exclusivity agreement due to expire in the next year, pressure is mounting amongst Verizon customers and shareholders for Verizon to come to some sort of agreement with Apple to offer the iPhone on their network.

Pressure is also coming from current AT&T iPhone users for Verizon to offer the device, as dissatisfaction with AT&T's coverage, and especially their DaVinci Code-ish billing practices continues to grow.

Third, the DC Metro is going offer wireless service to more than one carrier? I missed this news when it first came out in March, but I think it's so significant that I'm going to list it here anyway. As many of you know, the one mobile service that operated inside the Metro is Verizon, working off of a Bell Atlantic contract they first won back in 1993. Sprint was allowed to roam there recently, but a lot of DC people wouldn't switch away from Verizon because of the lack of service in the Metro (where a lot of suits spend a lot of time). As Rob Pergoraro says in a WaPo Faster Forward blog post:

I'm pleased and amazed by the news... although I'm not exactly an unbiased observer of this situation. I take Metro to work and to many non-work occasions, and being able to use my phone at those times -- to let my wife know that I'm on my way home, to answer a quick call from the copy desk, to scan through the latest updates on Twitter or Facebook, to check my e-mail, to look up the score of the Nats game -- is a major convenience.

And it looks like the rollout of the network will happen reasonably fast, according to WMATA's press release:

Twenty of the busiest underground rail stations will have expanded cell phone service by the end of this year and the entire rail system will be equipped by 2012.

I'm not sure what this all means but it feels like the the glaciers are starting to crack and shift. What do you think?

New Straight to the Point Podcast- Jennie Olson of GovDelivery

2009-06-30T14:05:00.004-05:00

Time again for another Straight to the Point podcast. This time I'm pleased to have sat down with Jennie Olson of GovDelivery. Jennie is the Director of Marketing at the company, which is the world's leading provider of government-to-citizen communications solutions. GovDelivery's Email and Digital Subscription Management solution is a Software as a Service (SaaS) platform that provides organizations a fully-automated, on-demand public communication system (Full disclosure- GovDelivery is a client of my employer).

What is so valuable about Jennie's experiences is that she faced the twin challenges of standing up a whole marketing operation from scratch and integrating the latest social media techniques into her overall marketing strategy targeting government buyers while accomplishing the corporate goals of driving sales and raising awareness. A tough row...have a listen and let me know what you think? Is she on the right track? What would she do different?

Nokia and Intel Team Up for New Mobile Platform

2009-06-23T16:35:00.003-05:00

I pulled up one of my favorite webpages, Techmeme, just now and found a bunch of stories about Nokia and Intel teaming up to build a new mobile platform using open source Linux operating system.

The reason, according to Brian Caulfield at Forbes, is:

Propelling this all is Apple which has rolled through the smart-phone business like a nitro-fueled tank. The company announced Monday that it has sold more than 1 million units of its latest handset, the iPhone 3G S, since it went on sale Friday in an announcement that included the first public statement from Steve Jobs since the Apple chief went on medical leave in January.

Apple's progress is more than just a direct challenge to Nokia. While Apple relies on processors built by Samsung around designs from U.K.-based ARM to power its smart phones, it has recruited a strong team of chip designers since its acquisition of PA Semi last year. That could pose a challenge to Intel's efforts to put its chips at the heart of the next generation of mobile devices.

There are other challenges the chip maker and Nokia must face in order to make their partnership a successful one. Intel, for example, has to make its processors more power efficient--so they can work well in ever-shrinking devices--and fast. If the company can't do this quickly enough, it may be a while until Nokia puts Intel's processors at the center of its handset lineup.And while Nokia has an enormous installed base, Apple, Research In Motion and Palm are all building software ecosystems around their handsets, making the handset industry look more and more like the early PC industry. The Nokia deal with Intel could give it a stronger position in that game.

Sounds like Apple is forcing people's hands, having sold over a million iPhone 3G S's over the weekend. Of course, James Kendrick, at jkOnTheRun, thinks it's all BS, as they didn't announce any products or is the agreement exclusive to anyone...

something to keep an eye on...

Some Interesting Links for Today- iPhone, Pre, Twitter...y'know, the usual suspects

2009-06-18T17:18:00.007-05:00

A quick roundup of some interesting content:

The Customer Collective- Twitter Hype Punctured By Study; - Tweet All About It

Micro-blogging service Twitter remains the preserve of a few, despite the hype surrounding it, according to research. Just 10% of Twitter users generate more than 90% of the content, a Harvard study of 300,000 users found. Estimates suggest it now has more than 10 million users and is growing faster than any other social network. However, the Harvard team found that more than half of all people using Twitter update their page less than once every 74 days.

A great quote: “This implies that Twitter’s resembles more of a one-way, one-to-many publishing service more than a two-way, peer-to-peer communication network,”

The Social Times- Collecta Launches True Real Time Search Engine

Real time search is becoming all the rage, displacing some of the hype around semantic search and catapulting services like Twitter, FriendFeed and now Facebook into new realms when it comes to accessing its content. Today, search veteran Jerry Campbell is helping to launch Collecta, a service he’s claiming to be a true real time search engine unlike anything the world has seen.
As one of the minds behind the patented process that powered Summize, the Twitter search engine that was acquired by the microblogging platform and is now Twitter search, Campbell has long-standing ideas on how search and discovery should operate on the web. He’s seen the evolution of data-sharing as it pertains to things like news within he financial industry and has learned from organizations’ necessity to reach that “aha” moment as quickly as possible. It’s that “aha” moment Collecta is trying to give you, for any topic, in a very short amount of time.

Instead of focusing on Twitter or FriendFeed, Collecta performs its real time search for the wider web. From Wordpress to Flickr, Collecta searches comments on blog posts, images, and more. When you perform a search, you’ll find your initial results along with a time stamp displaying the time your search was initiated. Watch the page as it adds more results, each of which can be expanded to show the details of your search query.

BTW, the author never included a link to Collecta in the article, which I find odd. Here it is- the site itself is pretty slick: http://www.collecta.com

Ten Hidden iPhone Features from Daniel Ionescu at PC World. Loved his Rhinoceros play.

iPhone Versus Windows Mobile 6.5 Video from PocketNow.com. I've been spending a lot of time and angst researching and thinking about buying a new iPhone 3G S or a Pre or getting a newer version of my current HTC Windows phone. There has been much rending of garments...anyone have a opinion on what's a better purchase?

Here is Gizmodo's review...arrrrggghhhh!!!! What to do?

Healthcare Social Media

2009-06-16T12:17:00.004-05:00

In a world where Facebook is bigger than Myspace and, together, they have 400 million global users, it's obvious that the healthcare industry is acknowledging it has to adopt these new communications channels... and is starting to do so. 60% of doctors say they want or use social networking sites...

While consumers were quick to embrace social media, doctors were initially skeptical about its value. Now, prodded by the need to be smarter and more competitive in the complex world of modern medicine, doctors are becoming converts. The two largest doctor-only social networks, Sermo and Medscape Physician Connect, have more than 100,000 members each nationwide...
The enthusiasm spans generations. The average Sermo user is in his or her late 40s or early 50s. Many are solo practitioners in rural areas with little time or opportunity to hang around the hospital cafeteria for impromptu consults with other physicians.
Richard Schoor, for example, is a solo practitioner in Smithtown, L.I. The 41-year-old urologist frequents Sermo, blogs as the Independent Urologist and runs his own online forum, the Physicians Entrepreneur Group, which has about 60 members who exchange advice on running a medical practice. Dr. Schoor says he's gotten valuable information from the online forums, including advice on equipment that has prevented costly mistakes.

Combined with the well known use of social networking sites by patients, along with the push for electronic health records, it's becoming obvious that companies that sell goods and services to the healthcare industry are going to have to integrate social media into their marketing strategy and communications tactics.

Here are some social media business applications that healthcare and biotechnology companies need to start looking at now...

Lead generation
Enterprise sales support
Competitive intelligence gathering
Deal capture
Distribution partner identification and cultivation
Search engine optimization (SEO)
Executive visibility and thought leadership
Customer Service
Reputation management
Employee recruitment
Team, culture and morale building

On the association side, it's critical that member-based and issue associations leverage all the communications options at their disposal. From member retention to public policy, social media should be a central part of any healthcare associations marketing strategy. Indeed, here in DC, all sides in the fight over healthcare reform are using social networks and tools to spread their messages, keep coalitions together, and achieve their goals. From Senator Grassley calling out President Obama on Twitter to healthcare LinkedIn groups with thousands of members, it's clear that social media is being used by the biggest players in the most important situations...

why aren't you?

Facebook and.....Bing!

2009-06-12T09:39:00.007-05:00

Tonight is not going to be normal Friday night. No, instead of heading downtown with the beautiful people and getting my "crunk on", I'll be home at my computer, along with millions of other nerds, waiting to jump on Facebook at exactly midnight to grab my custom Facebook URL. You haven't heard of this? Well, here is the link to the story on the WSJ blog and a link the Facebook blog. There aren't too many Jeff Majkas in the world but I'll be damned if I don't get facebook.com/jeff.majka nailed down...

I'll also be there to grab a URL for my agency's fanpage on Facebook...check it out if you haven't visited lately-- we just uploaded some pictures from Susan G. Komen Walk last weekend!

Hey, what do you know, there is a new search engine in town! Bing! And the initial reviews are in- generally positive- Bing! I checked it out and my initial review is - Bing!- I like it! Here is a link to Bing! and a story about the new search service.

AdAge Likes PR Now

2009-05-21T15:30:00.003-05:00

Sometimes being late to the party has its advantages. A grand entrance, perhaps. But arriving just as the party is wrapping up is bad timing. Traditional PR is dying alongside traditional media. A new form of earned media is being born right now- do these guys get it?

Last week, Jonah Bloom wrote an interesting article for AdAge about the new-found acceptance of PR. Apparently, there was a lot of positive comments about PR from Unilever CMO Simon Clift and Union Square Ventures honcho Fred Wilson at the recent Ad Age Digital Conference. The idea here is that social media is raising the importance of PR within the marketing mix

Fred says:

"There are still a lot of marketers out there buying their media when they could earn it, and earn it a lot less expensively," he said today at Ad Age's Digital Conference in New York.
While overall spending on marketing may go up, traditional-media outlays are declining, and spending is growing on the creative and technology necessary to implement social campaigns on Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. Agencies have to find a way to continue to make money in this environment.

"The total amount of money flowing out of marketers' pockets to agencies won't decline and will likely go up, but the mix is headed for important changes," Mr. Wilson said.

He goes on to point out that:

The challenge for marketers and agencies, then, is to engage with social media in an authentic way, and know they are going to be punished by its denizens for any perceived spam.

Which, I think, is missing the point. The problem is earned media in the past was that were was no solid ROI for any dollar spent on PR. Yes, everyone knew that an article in a trade mag or coverage on CNBC would yield awareness and credibility, but no one on earth could track just how that turned into sales and profits.

Simon Clift is the top marketer at one of the largest (if not the) consumer products companies in the world. One of his main points is that (emphasis added by me)

"brands are now becoming conversation factors where academics, celebrities, experts and key opinion formers discuss functional, emotional and, more interestingly, social concerns," and "of course, the conversation is no longer one way or 30 seconds. ... You may want to talk about sport and just doing it, and the consumer raises the uncomfortable question of sweatshops."

That's the whole point! Ongoing one-to-one conversations isn't marketing, it is relationship selling. Selling that has to be credibly earned. That isn't a intrusion. That can be tracked over time. That you can assign a ROI to. The transformation of the PR profession from pitching media to sitting at the intersection of sales, marketing and customer service.

I just don't think either of these three fellows quite gets where we are headed.

The World's Greatest Links...Right After My Brush With A Crazed Swine Flu

2009-04-28T11:06:00.007-05:00

I'm just back from a week's vacation in Mexico with my lovely girlfriend and I haven't dropped dead of swine flu yet. Sadly, I'm spending this renewed gift of life weeding through emails in my Outlook inbox, fighting trojans on my home desktop, catching up on the news and trying to re-engage with the world.

BTW, if you get some time to spend in sunny Cabo San Lucas, I highly recommend it. Here is a picture of Medano Beach, the main swimming beach in Cabo. Very nice. Notice the lack of swine flu...

One of the things I really don't like about vacations is coming back and having to go through hundreds of emails. Long ago, I had set up a number of rules on Outlook to manage the flow of emails and route them into various folders, but I ran out of space for new rules which resulted in my main inbox being overrun with spam, newsletters, etc. It took a lot of time to sort through them each day.

Today, on a whim, I created a new rule for the massive amount of emails I get from Twitter now. It worked! Has anyone noticed this? Is this some new upgrade from Microsoft? If so, I'm really happy. I'm going to be creating lots and lots of new rules from now on.

On a sadder note, I returned home to discover than my virus, trojan and spyware protected home computer had become infected with Virtumonde. I, being an experienced, spyware removal expert, spent many hours yesterday scanning, quarantining, deleting and repeating. No luck. Now, my computer has been taken over by the trojan and...get this...locked me out of my own computer. Looks like I'm going to have to do a repair installation of XP. Good times. I liked it better on the beach!

Here are some links I've come across yesterday and today that I've found interesting...

Om Malik shares some interesting stats of the usage of applications across PC, Mac and Internet platforms.

Microsoft has released the private beta of a slick looking emergency social networking thingy called Vine. Brier Dudley calls it Twitter plus Facebook on steroids.

I've read last year than super-hyped Dubai was going to be able to withstand a commercial and residential housing correction, now according to a story in the WSJ, not so much.

Those of us who own and love our PocketPC's tend to get snippy when people talk about how groundbreaking the iPhone is. Yes, the GUI is pretty slick but I've had a 3G touch screen smart phone for years and years now. It's not new. So, while I'm encouraged than Microsoft and Verizon are working together to continue to improve the experience, headlines like these, "Microsoft, Verizon in Talks to Launch iPhone Rival", drive me mad. Talk about burying the lede (emphasis added):

Verizon has performed well despite not having the iPhone. On Monday, the company reported solid first-quarter results in its wireless business, edging out AT&T in net customer additions.

Jeez.

Interview with George Spohn at Satellite 2009

2009-04-16T13:41:00.006-05:00

One of the more interesting industries I work with is the satellite industry. Characterized by extremely large upfront capital expenditures, this adjunct to the overall telecommunications field had some hard times caused by overcapacity issues in the early part of the century. Since the onset of the war in Afghanistan, and the military's embrace of the use of civilian bandwidth to support the warfighter, along with the sudden growth in popularity in both satellite radio (XM/Sirius) and satellite TV (DirecTV- note, I am a subscriber to this fine service), the industry has been growing at a healthy solid rate.

Each year, one of the main industry get-togethers is the Satellite show held here in Washington DC. This year, I took a video camera down to the show and interviewed some of the movers and shakers in the industry. One of those leaders was George Spohn, Vice President, North American Sales & Marketing at Thrane & Thrane. Thrane & Thrane is the world´s leading manufacturer of equipment and systems for global mobile communication based on sophisticated satellite and radio technology. I've know George for years. He is one of the smartest people in the satellite industry, and I'm glad I got the chance to pick his brain about the trends he is seeing.

Go to YouTube if you can't view it here.

Were you at the show? What do you think the greatest opportunity is for the satellite industry now? It's greatest challenge?

Social media and government 2.0

2009-04-13T12:30:00.003-05:00

There has been a lot of interesting discussions and events recently about the intersection of government, social media and web 2.0. Broadly described as government 2.0 or gov 2.0, there was even a way-cool barcamp like event, Gov2.0 camp last week. Even a traditional government IT event like FOSE was a-buzz with chatter about terms like twitter, conversation, brightkite, etc.

At FOSE, I had the privilege of interviewing two leaders in the field of marketing IT services and products to government customers both directly and through channel partners. I think you'll find their insight invaluable.

First, I sat down with Brian Grainger of SpectraLogic's federal group. Go to YouTube to view the video, if you can't see it here:

Second, I spent some time talking with Ed Bursk. Ed is a long time marketing leader behind the marketing campaigns at KORE Telematics, Nortel Networks, Alcatel/Lucent and other technology companies. Go to YouTube to view the interview, if you can't see it here:

What do you think about Ed and Brian's views of government spending priorities? Will the stimulus money actually hit the streets this year in an impactful way?

What I Learned at Satellite 2009

2009-03-26T18:10:00.003-05:00

I've spent the past two days at the Satellite 2009 trade show. Given the overwhelming negative news these days, I'm thankful to spend some time with individuals and companies that are doing well, making money and excited about the future. The industry seems to be in a much better place than 2001 and seems poised to motor through 2009.

Here are the main takeaways:

1. Satellite operators and services companies have multi-year contracts that buffer them from somewhat from quarter to quarter fluctuations in the economy.

2. By and large, most satellite companies have remained immune to the leverage mania of the past decade and are in reasonably good financial shape.

3. The government continues to buy a huge amount of commercial satellite capacity.

4. Satellite capacity is at 90% utilized and there isn't a big number of new satellites going up in the next few years so pricing power and margins will remain good. There is no glut, like in 2001.

5. With utilization so high, current issues are interference mitigation and squeezing every last drop of data through the pipe.

6. Communications on the move (COTM) is again a hot application for both the military and commercial customers. I particularly liked the AT&T CruiseCast in-car satellite TV.

As with the FOSE show, I interviewed a number of people about their take on the show, hot trends, etc. We'll be polishing those up over the next few days and releasing them out into the wild...

Brand New Straight to the Point Podcast with Ed Bursk

2009-03-24T14:00:00.001-05:00

I've been interviewing marketing executives as part of the "Straight to the Point" series for almost two years. One guy I've been working hard to schedule is Ed Bursk. Ed is a marketing consultant who has worked with numerous technology, networking, telecom and government IT companies in his career and has a wealth of knowledge and best practices. His experience includes Nortel Networks, Alcatel/Lucent, KORE Telematics and others. Take a listen to the interview and let me know what you think?