Social Media Darwinism » Communities

Social Media – is it really mainstream in B2B Marketing?

Paul Dunay — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 15:43:57 +0000

So I ran across some interesting stats last week when I picked up a tweet from Jeff Bullas on the 15 essential social media facts and figures for B2B Marketing.

Seems as if more B2B Marketers are engaged in Social Media then B2C marketers (actually data point from the article – 81 % of B2B companies have accounts on social media sites compared to 67% of B2C) which leads me to think Social Media has gone mainstream in B2B. That’s a good thing yes but I don’t feel like we are there yet.

Let me explain …

I don’t know how you feel but I certainly feel like everything I read about Social Media is the same old thing just a rehash of something else I read before. There doesn’t seem to be anything really new. Sure Facebook changes its platform every Tuesday but I mean something more like groundbreaking ideas using social. Maybe that’s because we are entering a stage where we are all including social in everything we do. It’s no longer a social science experiment by a bunch of early adopters – it’s just part of our everyday approach!

Also I am not seeing anyone really “killing it” with or in social media (sans Mark Zuckerberg of course). There seems to be tons of Social Media consultants and Directors of Social Media but will that party last? (see my post on Fire your Director of Social Media).

Furthermore everyone seems to have a book out on Social Media – heck I have 3 books on social media (2 out there and 1 on the way!) It’s amazing to see so much written on this topic which leads me to believe the party is over.

So where do we go from here?

I guess we head back to the core of what we do as B2B Marketers and take these lessons learned in Social Media back with us and see if we can innovate. I once heard that innovation happens when people get bored with a technology – perhaps we are at that point now in social.

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Do you need to be an Extrovert to be in Social Media Marketing?

Paul Dunay — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 16:07:23 +0000

Great question which I found myself asking last night after I reviewed my recent Myers Briggs score. I found it interesting that my score came in as ENTJ.

For those of you who aren’t aware of the Myers Briggs test it asks you a bunch of questions from multiple angles to rate you on 4 basic scales: your Favorite World (Introvert/Extrovert), Information (Sensing/Intuition), Decisions (Thinking/Feeling) and Structure (Judging or Perceiving). The result is a 4 letter score such as mine – ENTJ – which means a person who prefers being an Extrovert rather than an Introvert who prefers Institutional Information over Sensing, that prefers Thinking rather than Feeling when it comes to making Decisions and prefer to Judge Structure rather than perceiving it.

But focusing on the Extrovert angle for a second, I began to wonder if you need to be an extrovert to be in social media. Certainly internally in your organization you need to be an extrovert if you want to organize a Tribe or movement in your company to take on social media. And for sure you need to be an extrovert if you plan on becoming a proclaimed social media expert or guru. But I never thought of myself as an Extrovert, even though I know the test is very consistent (yes I have taken it before and gotten the same score – even before Social Media existed).

I wonder if this spectrum from Introvert to Extrovert will play it’s way out on Social Media. Meaning if the 1-9-90 rule (see link to my post) will actually change over time. The 1-9-90 theory that says out of every hundred people who join a community or network – 1% actively contribute – 9% contribute from time to time – and 90% are lurkers. Perhaps as more people get comfortable being extroverted and live completely transparently then we will see a shift in that law to a ratio that resembles more of the online population.

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B2B Marketers Fate Rests in the Hands of a Few

Paul Dunay — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 16:38:30 +0000

At the recent ITSMA Marketing Leadership forum I was stunned by a presentation given by Sean Geehan CEO of the Geehan Group author of the upcoming book the B2B Executive Playbook. The big eye opener for me was – B2B marketers are always tasked with getting net new customers when in reality their existing customer base is their most important source of revenue and referrals. Therefore our spending patterns are typically reversed. Hear me out …

If B2B marketers are constantly focused on gathering new customers our spending will be misaligned with the actual group that can delver us the highest return – our existing customers. And while that doesn’t sound that exciting – it can get really exciting when you align your budget to a group of customer that can help you deliver sustainable growth! (Which is what the CEO and the market wants from you anyway!)

New customers will cost a lot to acquire and in their first year or two deliver small revenue as the relationship between your company and the new customer is growing. It’s a tender sapling that needs to be nourished.

But in many cases, 20% of a B2B company’s’ customers are responsible for 80% of the revenue. If you apply the Pareto principle that means that out of 400 customers – 80 customers are the ones that deliver a bulk of your revenue. (In most cases that means 80 decision makers!) The question that really opened my eyes was – how much are you spending on those customers? What percent of your budget? 20%, 50%, 80%?

Unfortunately in most cases the proportion of spend on those customers is painfully small and the argument here is that needs to change. Especially in an economic climate like this! The Bottom Line – The Fate of B2B Companies Rests in the hands of Just a Few People! Its time to start embracing those few people in ways B2B marketers haven’t before.

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Creating Engagement in B2B Marketing

Paul Dunay — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 16:47:13 +0000

A recent Cone Inc.’s Social Media in Business study found that 60 percent of consumers believe they are already interacting with companies on the social Web. Nearly all participants — 93 percent — believe all companies should have a presence in social media. And 85 percent believe companies should not just present information via social media, but use it to interact and become more engaged with them. And the payoff for such engagement is evident in the 53 percent who already say they have developed a stronger connection to a brand through social media encounters.

But the question has long been 2 fold: 1) How do you create engagement and 2) How do you measure it. Hopefully this will give you some insights into how my team creates and measures engagement at Avaya.

Creating Engagement

Over the last few years of writing this blog I have talked a lot about the virtues of creating a steady stream of content that is consistent in its frequency to bring people back to your site time and time again. You can call it Inbound Marketing (like the folks at HubSpot do) or you could call it Content Marketing (like the folks at Junta42 do) but whatever you call it this is the basis for all your online activity. Over the last month or so we really have gotten our content engine humming producing not only some great thought leadership, eBooks, blog posts etc which we use as social “objects” but also we held (what I believe is) one of the largest Virtual events ever with On24. Their platform is good up to 20,000 people and we had 24,000 signed up for our January 19, 2010 virtual event. Sure we were worried what would happen if everyone showed up – but luckily that wasn’t the case but we did test the upper limits of their system! With all this create content both in object form and recorded form from the virtual event we were really able to ramp up the number of conversations we were having out on the socialsphere as you can see from the snapshot taken from our Networked Insights dashboard which is comparing the month of December to the month of January.

Measuring Engagement

Years ago on this blog I remember saying “measuring engagement is hard since there is no one button you can push as a marketer to measure it”. Well I have since learned otherwise from the folks at Networked Insights who not only measure the number of posts in one period versus the number posts in another period but they also measure the tone and sentiment of those posts giving you an indication that (in our case) sentiment is trending in a positive direction!

As you may know already, blogging is a quantity game. 5 of the top 10 media properties are blogs and all of them are multi author blogs which post several times per day. Social also acts in the same way – the more your engage the more people engage back. So one of my team’s objectives this year is not only to create more social content but also to move the needle on engagement and sentiment. Stay tuned to this blog for more updates and to see how we are doing that!

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B2B Marketing: Trust + Community = ROI

Paul Dunay — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 16:34:18 +0000

Trust is not a new thing when it comes to marketing and communications as evidenced by one of the most awaited studies in the communications world is always the annual Edelman Public Relations Trust Barometer.

Trust is not a new thing in the world of sales either – its a fact that people enjoy buying from people that they trust and in B2B Marketing part of our job is to shorten the time spent building trust so sales can have an easier time and focus on selling.

Social Media changes that and elevates Trust to the individual level. This is actually good news for the B2B Marketer. We get to help our thought leaders build trust virtually before they even walk in the door. Building demand for their unique point of view.

I think the element of Trust in B2B Marketing runs deeper and is more important than in B2C Marketing which makes it a really unique attribute when it comes to B2B Marketing since it is much more critical to the sale.

If you can combine the element of Trust across a wide range of fans, followers and advocates then you have a community. The word community is often overused now that Social Media has come along. But think of it here as an audience that you have built by creating and publishing attractive content that engages them with your thought leaders. Social Media gives you this great gift of the ability to create community because you publish content on a regular basis – think of the way publishers have created community around their brand and their editors – the same holds true for B2B marketers.

Other than selling to your existing customer base which is always the shortest time to cash sale that you can find in any B2B organization – I see not trouble envisioning that your community is the 2nd best place to find and create a sale. Prospects who have been listening to you, watching what you publish and responding to your content are already working their way up the Awareness to Consideration to Purchase cycle. Its just up to you to get them the right offer in order to get them to buy!

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Influencers vs Advocates in B2B Marketing

Paul Dunay — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 16:35:55 +0000

According to Wikipedia – Influencer Marketing is a form of marketing that has emerged from a variety of recent practices and studies, in which focus is placed on specific key individuals (or types of individual) rather than the target market as a whole. It identifies the individuals that have influence over potential buyers, and orients marketing activities around these influencers.

In my own words – Influencers are individuals that write about Avaya but they also write about Cisco and Siemens in social media or otherwise. They are non partial and therefore they write about many firms. Which is why I prefer to have my communications group work with them much like they have always worked with the media.

I draw a hard line between Influencers and Advocates.

An Advocate is an individual we know perhaps via social media that tweets about Avaya or retweets about news coming from Avaya. My social media team deals directly with them and they rarely talk about other firms in our space. They are “advocates” of the Avaya brand.

Over the last year we have really grown our base of Influencers and Advocates. But the group that excites me the most is the Advocates – I want to grow that budding community – I want to offer them special access to news and previews of our latest product. I think growing and focusing on this group is the key to igniting more WOM in your business!

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Crowds have no leaders!

Paul Dunay — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 18:03:00 +0000

The Internet has eliminated the barriers of geography, cost and time. Social tools like blogs and social networking sites are helping crowds form around very discrete topics.

But what is missing from these crowds are leaders. Like any social network that you may join you have those that join and just lurk, those that maybe make a comment or contribute but then you have those who stand up, take some initiative and lead! And that’s what these social networks really need is more leaders!

That’s what Seth Godin’s new book Tribes is all about.

For example, the internet is a great place for Ukrainian Folk Dancers because now for the first time people who love Ukrainian Folk Dancing can ban together and create their own “Tribe”.

This is an important fact since traditional media is no longer working. There is just too much noise out there to shout at people. No consumer brand has been built on the back of traditional media for a while now. TV certainly isn’t working for the creation of new consumer or B2B brands.

Which means your only option is to define your brand in a way that is open to a dialog (no Command and Control branding please) and in a way that is narrow enough to start or tap into a “movement”.

Take for example – Harley Davidson – here is a consumer brand that also is a movement a Tribe. Take from the brand what you want and maybe even lead your own Tribe in your own area.

Seth recently held an event in NY to bring his own Tribe together. You can view his slides here and you can listen to the audio of his presentation here.

Some of the highlights from my notes were

7 elements of leaders
- Challenge – leaders challenge their tribe
- Culture – leaders create a culture within the tribe
- Curiosity – leaders open up a curiosity gap for outsiders
- Charisma – being a leader gives you charisma
- Communicate – leaders communicate
- Connect – leaders connect others in the tribe
- Commit – to the movement

5 things tribes want
- Connect – they join to connect with others
- Create Meaning – joining gives them purpose
- Make a difference – joining allows them to make a difference
- Be Noticed – they join to be noticed
- Matter – they join because it matters to them

Marketing management is now Tribal leadership. Start doing things for people not to them. It’s an obligation and it up to you!

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LiveBar – Add Community to your Site in Seconds!

Paul Dunay — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 19:12:00 +0000

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

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

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

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

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

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

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About Peter

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

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

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Web 2.0 Expo – cool stuff seen on the floor of the show

Paul Dunay — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 00:48:00 +0000

Here are a few companies in alphabetical order I thought had shown some real promise at the Web 2.0 Expo

Ascentium – A model for the agency of the future

I spoke to the CMO, Romi Mahajan who explained Ascentium’s go-to-market strategy to me. They are the nexus of a digital marketing company mixed with a technology firm that does Microsoft CRM, Business Intelligence and Analytics to provide creative solutions for brand perception and instantiation.

No doubt very useful and very powerful when they come together (I read this as an agency mixed with a lead nurturing platform that can track ROI!). Not only do they build cool marketing campaigns but they can connect to your sales process. They in effect unify sales and marketing so that clients see that their campaign pay off – thereby eliminating the normal tension between sales and marketing.

Romi was also a speaker on Agency 2.0 on how should agencies of the future be organized. Clearly I would think Ascentium is a model for agencies of the future.

Brickfish – Measuring Social Engagement

Brickfish offers an innovative way for brands to connect with their target audience online. They offer a launching pad for highly viral marketing campaigns that allow you to reach consumers where they live on the social web. They get them to listen to your message and interact with your brand, and more than that, they produce the results.

What does this mean – as I understood it – they make various viral marketing campaigns or social applications that can then be shared with friends who can customize them to post it to their blog or website via an iFrame. The iFrame technology allows Brickfish to measure where, when, who and how many times your messages were viewed.

Some examples are Coach engaged consumers to design a new tote. Nike asked consumers to share their inspirational athletic achievements. Kodak got consumers to share their Kodak moments to celebrate their new low-ink printer. All of these examples needed consumers to make customize the message and make it their own then spread it virally. Best off Brickfish is an all in one platform to do this.

HiveLive – Platform for building unique communities

I spoke to the CEO John Kimbel and visited with HiveLive crew on the Expo floor and was very impressed. HiveLive has a very different take on Enterprise Communities. In short, what they do is act as a platform that aggregates all your types of media (both new media and social media) to create a very different type of experience than say a standard community. So that means they integrate things like blogs, podcasts, wikis, forums into a “Hive” (one could say mashup here). That can be customized to the experience you want to create for your users.

One of their customers is Serena Software. Their CMO, Rene Bonvanie is a forward-thinking marketer who’s been leading the community charge for quite some time now at places like SalesForce, SAP, BusinessObjects, and Oracle. Below is a video where he does a great job explaining Serena’s vision of a new model of community-powered marketing and how they’re using tools/technologies (like Facebook, HiveLive, and YouTube) to reinvent their business: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDsJE98NPbM

InsideView – Smart marketing and sales tool

I was lucky enough to have breakfast with the CEO Umberto Milletti. Who started InsideView in 2005 because he saw that “business information was becoming more distributed over the web” though articles, interviews, various databases and then eventually social networks.

He viewed this as an opportunity to aggregate these sources of information to provide a composite view of a person or a company through the use of some proprietary Natural Language Processing.

All comes together in a mashup within your own CRM – InsideView integrates with all of today’s most popular CRM systems namely Salesforce.com, SugarCRM, and recently announced Microsoft Dynamics, Oracle, and Landslide.

InsideView also tells you who you are connected to in Facebook or LinkedIn. It’s a form of “Smarketing” as Umberto called it.

Over 200 companies use their application with hundreds of sales reps using the application. They sell per seat licenses but they also have a free version in the spirit of Web 2.0 with a limited version of the functionality. No doubt this is a company to watch in the coming years!

Wi5Connect – Welcome to Social Learning 2.0

I spoke to Matthew Bowman, VP of Sales and Marketing, from Wi5Connect who explained what they did as a “different approach to learning that marries two technologies – Social Networking and eLearning” into an easy to deliver SaaS solution.

Their new product LearnSocial is a revolutionary new way for businesses to train employees. Different than online learning, user manuals, or instructor lead training, LearnSocial is an online community that captures the power of social networks and fortifies with a state-of-the-art Learning Management System (LMS) platform. Finally, an effective learning tool that allows you to better engage, track the engagement, correlate progress to training, and measure ROI.

Matt called it “a way to combine the brain trust hidden in all levels of your own organization with the magic of your own corporate social network!”

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

Paul Dunay — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 13:07:00 +0000

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

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

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

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

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About Catherine

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

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