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

Over the past few years marketers have been working on tracking conversations about their brands on the Web (you are tracking and listening, aren’t you?). But once you have that in place, then what? Strategies for understanding and dealing with the flow of all these conversations are the natural next step. As more and more [...] [...]

April 29th, 2008 | Category: Podcast, Reputation Monitoring, Social Media | Comment

5 Ways to Prevent a Reputational Disaster

Lots of brands are finding out the hard way that there are plenty of conversations taking place about them online. For good or bad. Many brands choose to ignore this. But hope is not a strategy. Since consumers rely heavily on the Web as an authoritative source of information, managing a brand’s online reputation has [...] [...]

April 27th, 2008 | Category: Reputation Management, Reputation Monitoring | 5 comments

Can a community be successful with low brand awareness?

Ok, here is something I’m wrestling with: Can a community be successful with low brand awareness? If you are a big tech brand like Dell or Microsoft, you have no problem launching a community. In fact, many of these organizations have several communities. But what if you are a small SaaS vendor? Forget costs for [...] [...]

April 20th, 2008 | Category: Communities | 22 comments

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

A growing trend in B2B marketing today is in the realms of “lead nurturing” and “lead scoring.” I have often found the best way to impress the sales team is to feed them a stream of high-quality leads. Events, webinars, account-based marketing, trade events and speaking engagements all offer opportunities to find and feed some [...] [...]

April 8th, 2008 | Category: Lead Nurturing, Podcast | 7 comments

Don’t Interrupt what Interests People – BE what Interests People!

I can’t get an idea out of my mind that I think is profound for this social media age. Recently I blogged about giving your customers and prospects the opportunity and the permission to start a dialog with your brand. Here’s the important follow-up to that idea – don’t do it with banner ads or [...] [...]

April 6th, 2008 | Category: Advertising, Branding, Buzz Marketing, Social Media | Comment

Market to Change Customer Behavior, not Attitudes

Harvard Business School professor John Quelch once said “The purpose of marketing… should be geared to changing and reinforcing customer actions rather than customer attitude.” I recently revisited this quote and feel it still holds true. But in the age of social media, it is likely to come under siege. Within his quote is the [...] [...]

April 2nd, 2008 | Category: Advertising, Behavioral Targeting, Branding, Buzz Marketing, Conversational Marketing | 8 comments