7 Things To Do in the Next 7 Days — Part One

It’s a crazy time to be a marketer.

So much to do, so much to learn, so much to stay on top of. It’s the most dynamic time in the last 15 years. Technology evolves at a breakneck pace even in the down economy. Social media rewrites the way marketers can engage customers and build relationships. Twitter rises to a frantic level of use — and marketers become frantic overnight trying to embrace it. Expected evolution in traditional tactics like direct mail and email still continues (yes, we’ve arrived at the point where email is now a “traditional” tactic). And you have to keep an eye forward to prepare for next-generation advances in targeting and technology.

How can you do it all, AND do your day job?

Ultimately, the answer lies with you. You have to find a way to balance the skills that keep you employed today…

Driving sales

Achieving goals

Raising ROI

Motivating employees

Building brands

…with the skills that will keep you employed tomorrow.

Utilizing the latest technology

Understanding shifting customer needs/wants

Building a strong personal brand

Evolving your brand positioning with the changing market

Driving sales, raising ROI, building brands, and all the rest — in different times, with different rules, and different strategies

So, in the interest of helping you find that balance, I offer you a few things to do in the next seven days (if you’re not already doing them). Take a good, long look at this list, and find time to dedicate time to each task — not just this week, but for good. You’ll be better prepared to charge ahead with whatever the economy demands of marketers in the coming months.

1. Find five blogs to read regularly.
This is the first thing on the list, because it is a complete MUST. There are so many experts out there who write compelling things every day to help you do your job. And they don’t work for publishers, they’re not all journalists — if you read this blog, you know our future is driven by content, not journalism. They’re marketers with decades of proven experience who blog and offer ideas and insights you need to read, understand and apply.

Seth Godin and Chris Brogan are two I read always. There’s a buzz-generating new book out called Free by Wired’s Chris Anderson…do you know about it? You would if you read blogs. There are also people with excellent business acumen, who aren’t necessarily marketers by definition, that can help you. Mark Cuban, for example. Look at the blogroll on my homepage for more. Use Google, search in your vertical market for other experts. Ask colleagues. Whatever you need to do. The point is this — set up a My Yahoo or Google Reader page, and find at least five blogs you must read, minimally, at the start of each day. You will be smarter at the end of the week.

2. Talk to one customer each day.
Every day, we’re busy. We have copy to write, projects to manage, bosses to assure, and strategies to present. Yet if part of the day doesn’t involve a conversation with a customer, then all that other stuff may end up being inaccurate. How do you know if the copy you write, projects you manage, and strategies you present — all of which are targeted to your customers — will be effective with your customers if you don’t ask them? How do you know what media to use for your message — not just today, but tomorrow — if you don’t ask them? How can have a breakthrough launch or idea that differentiate you from your competitors, if you don’t ask customers what they need?

More importantly, you can’t build a strong personal brand without a refined way to understand customer needs.

So get a customer list and call one each day. Young marketers, especially you. Don’t just be an executer — be someone who can offer insightful input based on conversations you have with people in the market. Ask that customer each day what keeps them up at night, what media they use, what budget challenges they face, and what keeps their customers up at night. And use that feedback to guide all your decisions. You will be smarter at the end of the week.

3. Rethink your email marketing campaign.
I almost gagged the other day when I heard about someone in my own company who emails every person on his email list every single week. Everyone gets everything. Here’s a better idea — save the time and money, and just opt-out all your customers right now.

There are two ways you should rethink your email campaign right now: frequency and relevance. More is not better — more relevant, however, is. So take extra time to understand your customers and your list, and craft well-timed messages that are more relevant to what keeps them up at night (which you’ll found out by talking to a customer each day…#2, see above). Some people on your team may push for more, more, more — I say go for quality over quantity. Email inboxes are full right now, in case you’re the one exception to that reality and didn’t realize it. Stop pushing messages just to be pushing — study your metrics and know what works for a particular list, know what customers need and find relevant, send messages around times/dates that are important in the metrics, and focus the message on key needs and/or pain points. Doing it this way, less will get you more.

Oh, and if you’ve been doing the same thing, try something different. Find balance between consistency in branding and fresh messaging that generates response. If you have a brand email template, try a text-only message that’s on-brand yet delivers the message in a unique way.

There you have it. Three things to start on right now. See you in three days for the rest of the list.

Another Letter to Marketing Professors

Dear Business School Marketing Professors–

How are you doing? I haven’t had time to drop you a letter since my last one in April, but I took a good, long look at something today that made me think of you.

Leave it to the guru, Seth Godin, to write another blog post that makes it all clear (you guys might want to consider recruiting him and turning him into the President of Professors). His post is about the textbooks you guys use to educate these kids you send out here. You may want to rethink the whole concept, as he suggests.

I’ll tell you why I agree with his ideas. Re-read the last letter and think about the skills these kids lack when you send them out here. You can’t teach that stuff in a textbook. These kids need real-world skills and perspective, not definitions and false belief that they’re equipped with what it takes to succeed. Seth is right, let Wikipedia have the definitions — their definitions are much deeper and broader than anything in a textbook anyway.

Plus, when do kids ever learn things like people skills with customers, time management and managing expectations from a textbook? I know, I know, you guys do that all the time — but I keep reminding you, you’re academics, you’re j-o-b is to write, read and learn from books and studies and papers. I don’t give out a how-to book to people out here, you’ve gotta figure it out on your own, and quickly. But c’mon, a marketing textbook for a class in 2009 with no mention of Google? How is that in anyone’s best interest? The folks who write your books don’t know about Google yet?

Listen, give Seth a call, invite him to your next conference. Hell, read his latest book, and use that as the textbook in your next class. If nothing else, go Google some information on Google.

Let’s keep working to make sure the kids you send out here charge ahead with the best idea on what it takes to get ahead, create a strong personal brand, and build a career.

I’ll be in touch again soon.

The Real World

Sometimes It’s All in The Show

It’s been said time and again, in one way or another. Focus on substance, not style.

Yet this is a fact — sometimes, your customers want a good show.

Sometimes style is king. Sometimes it differentiates. Sometimes it appears unneccesary, yet has deep impact.

In tough economic times like now, style is often the first to go in favor of efficiency and economy. And hey, that makes alot of sense. Yet when well-placed, style can win customers in these same tough times. If you watched the video stream of of Apple’s iPod 3G S launch today, you saw alot of style. And you think that won’t make a difference at the point of purchase when it comes out next week? You don’t think people who make less money than last year or have no jobs or have huge debt won’t be laying out cash for an iPhone that isn’t a need but a want? Style is part of the reason they want it.

You have to take a good, long look at substance, because that is most of the value proposition that wins and keeps customers. Yet sometimes you have to charge ahead and add a little style, because that may be the extra kicker that makes the offer, product or brand too enticing to pass up.

There’s a time and a place — it’s up to you to be the filter.

The Future of Content, Part 3

I feel refreshed today.

No, it’s not because I got to the pool today after along day on the road at a conference.

It’s because, for all the journalists who don’t get it, like I mentioned in my last post, there’s one who takes a good, long look and sees it like it is. And by “like it is,” I mean “the customer now dictates what constitutes content.”

The Twitter phenomenon epitimizes the kinds of technology-enabled shifts seen in the ways consumers communicate and seek information over the past few years.

And yet again, I emphasize that the opportunity is there for marketers — we have as big a role in the future of content as journalists do. Bring people together with the content they want, and you are their trusted source. It’s news they want? Tweet from a show floor (like I’ve been doing all day at this conference), an event, a concert, a press conference. Expert analysis? Create a path to experts — a CEO blog, a unique Twitter solution like ExecTweets, or a mashup of content. Personal viewpoints or reality reporting? Build a community where people can identify and network, like Facebook or Sermo in the healthcare space. The list goes on.

The beauty of Twitter is its simplicity. Of course, that’s also what some dislike about it. But that simplicity, in all it’s brevity, makes for one whole boatload of content when you add up a few hundred followers, whether it’s your sister, five cousins and grandma or it’s Ashton Kutcher, Kathy Ireland and Sanjay Gupta. When you charge ahead with your particular solution, it may end up being as simple as Twitter or it may be much more complex.

Just make sure it delivers the content your customers want and you’re golden.

The Future of Content, Part 2

In a recent post, I discussed how marketers have a role in the future of content. Sitting here on yet another JetBlue flight, I came across two articles that highlight this position even further.

I’m reading an issue of Medical Marketing & Media — it’s actually a recent issue for a change, typically I’m catching up on magazines two or three months later. The first article touches on the launch of FacetoFace Health, an online community that lets patients find other patients based on similar conditions or medications. Many times, this is exactly the kind of content people want — not second-hand knowledge pieced together through interviews and research. Interviews that people can now do first-hand via Facebook, Twitter and other social networking communities. And research, mind you, that people can do themselves online via robust tools like Wikipedia. The FacetoFace site, like many social media sites, provides first-hand interaction with people based on experience, interests, likeness or non-likeness, or anything else. Your agenda…not someone else’s. It’s a real-time, ever-changing window into a give-and-take world of content. If you’re a marketer, talk to your customers, find out what they need to know or who they want to know, and build a community that delivers it. Welcome to the future of content.

The other article is written by a PhD and entitled “Healthcare journalism needs a recovery plan.” My impression (no evidence whether it’s accurate since I’m on a plane and can’t research it) is that this person isn’t an active participant in social media, and thereby not destined to be an active part of the future of content. A few pearls of wisdom from the article center on a new survey of healthcare journalists. 65% say the quality of health coverage is fair or poor, 48% think health journalism is heading in the wrong direction, 43% say training opportunities have declined. Really? The training opportunities have declined? When whole new communities like FacetoFace spring up overnight? Are they thinking about social media as an opportunity to get “trained” every day on meeting customer wants? Obviously not.

I can see why they feel journalism is headed in the wrong direction — because customers are now in control of content and where they get it. As I said in my earlier post, they want different types of content from different types of content providers. Time and again it sounds like journalists don’t see that journalism, in it’s traditional form, isn’t as tethered to the future of content as it once was. But the opportunity is there to them to take a good, long look and evolve and be part of it, just like it does for marketers.

Because comments like this one in the article sure aren’t the way to charge ahead into the future of content:

I’m going to hope that we’ll see demand for health and science reporting increase as we continue to shake off some of the anti-intellectualism that has bogged us down.

HUH? I guess I’m not an intellectual, because unlike those who think journalism is just going to bounce back, I’m with all the other marketers who are helping building solutions to meet customer demands in the future of content.

Wake up and maybe we’ll see you there.

Steps to Improve Your Social Network

This may be preaching to the choir, but clearly I am not against that in this blog. You know this.

Marketers are, by and large, good networkers. This is probably due to the fact that, like I said in a recent post, we are in sales as much as we are in marketing. We’re accustomed to seeking and finding customers on an hourly basis, so seeking and finding others like ourselves either comes naturally or comes through experience. And as part of Brand Y-O-U, your personal brand, networking is critically important to the vitality of your career.

Yet for young marketers, those who’ve been in a particular job or field for a long time, or those who are not either natural or trained networkers, you need to take a good, long look at your social network and get up-to-speed quickly with the power of social networking. And specifically, building the power of your own social network — the generalities and statistics and cool factor about social networking are great, but the ROI in social networking needs to include some tangible benefits for you and your personal brand, right?

Make no mistake — investing some of your time in establishing a strong social network for yourself is just as important as investing time to understand the social networking tools you use to engage and acquire customers. And it’s important to invest this time when you’re:

At an experienced career level, in the growth stages of your career, or just starting out

In a strong employment position, rather than just when you’re looking for a job

That’s because when you’re out of a job, of course you’re reaching out to people — and it’s perceived that way. You’re out of your comfort zone — and if you’re not a regular networker, you’re viewed as putting on a persona that’s not normally you.

So, now that we’ve got the reasoning for networking out of the way, here’s the whole purpose of this post. A brief list of things you can do to be a marketer with a strong social network:

Build a power profile on LinkedIn — Keep it updated to-the-minute with all your experience, connect to people you work with and know, and ask people to recommend you. Sure, it may be a little cliche now, yet it’s the easiest and first thing to do, and it’s recognized by all. Make your profile a place you can send people to easily learn about your credentials.

Read and comment on blogs — You need to read blogs for their valuable perspective and insights, so comment on them to put your thoughts on record, build a search-engine friendly way to find you, and establish your expertise. If you don’t have your own website or blog (which, if you’re considering starting a blog, ask yourself these questions first), link back to your LinkedIn profile.

Reach out to marketers who look like you — Create relationships with people you can learn from, bounce ideas off of, and share insights with. They may work for your company, your vendors, other companies in your industry, or even your competitors. That’s right — competitors. Fostering a strong social network and empowering a give-and-take of knowledge is more beneficial than erecting barriers that diminish your network’s reach. Find these people on LinkedIn, at industry events, on blogs, on blog comments, on Twitter, on Google, on company websites, and via other colleagues in your social network. Reach out to them with an invitation to share expertise and discuss issues.

Stay in touch with your network — Don’t meet people and then just let the relationships wilt. Stay in touch with your network, where they are, what they do, and more importantly what and who they know. Find relevant reasons to communicate — share ideas, forward data and articles, set up meetings, propose partnerships.

These are the basics. There are other things you can do — start a blog, seek speaking opportunities, and more. If you’re new to being a social networker, start slow. Build a good foundation for your network before you charge ahead into the world of blogging and advanced social media.

You’ve invested the time, money and effort in being a good marketer — don’t let it go to waste because you didn’t invest in your social network and Brand Y-O-U.

Little Details

They are many things to marketers.

They are both a reward and a penalty. A necessity and a necessary evil. The best thing ever and the bane of our existence.

However, of all the things those damn little details can be, there’s one thing you don’t want them to be when someone takes a good, long look for them: absent.

Yet, that’s what they were when I received a direct mail piece for a big trade show this week. It was a simple, brand-oriented self-mailer — high on style, great layout, great call-to-action. “If you do this by this date, you get a free pass to this big show.” Yet, in all the shiny art and sexy words, the show dates and location were absent on the piece.

At first I thought it might be by design. But then I realized why would you move on the call-to-action and get a free pass to a show if you don’t even know you could make it? No, it was missing for sure, and by fault, not by design. And it’s easy for customers to notice.

In a prior job, one month we published an issue of a magazine that had a full page ad in it from a major promotion agency. The ad was all white space, except for once sentence of copy, a brand logo, and a URL. The sentence read something like “We Build Your Brands.” Except “Build” was spelled “Buid.” Someone at the agency lost a job over it.

Just goes to show that no matter what level of strategy goes into the concept, an equal level of hands-on attention-to-detail must go into project management and execution before you charge ahead. No matter where you are on your career learning curve, don’t forget that.

A Letter to Marketing Professors

Dear Business School Marketing Professors–

First of all, I want to thank you again for all the kids you keep sending my way. So don’t take my letter out of context — I appreciate our relationship, and your work and dedication to education is what keeps me going every day.

It’s probably been a little while since I’ve written. I apologize, I know candid feedback is something you need to educate your kids properly. And apparently, some important information hasn’t gotten back to you about what these kids need to succeed out here.

These marketing graduates you’ve sent recently — and communications and management grads too — really need some additional grooming in order to have what it takes to succeed. It seems like they’re lacking both tangible and intangible things that are important to success.

Now, let me be clear, it’s not all of them. There are some definite winners in the bunch. Yet ALOT of them would benefit from some additional schooling on the following points:

Please tell them that a career in marketing means a parallel career in sales. If you’re in marketing, you’re in sales. You need to sell things — that may include products, or your own ideas. In many cases, the latter is just as important to your career as the former. You need to be adept at dealing with all kinds of people, networking with people you’ve never met, and convincing people you don’t know.

Please help them focus on the different facets of time management. It’s important — and I don’t just mean being able to update Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and Myspace all at once. Out here, you need to manage multiple projects, all with the same deadline: yesterday. You need to figure out how to prioritize and make progress on everything, all on the fly. Help them get ready to manage their day and their workflow.

Please help them focus on managing expectations. Don’t go into work thinking about what’s on tap for that day. Don’t wait for something to become a problem. Work with some perspective, work with strategic purpose — think how your boss thinks. See when something could be a problem, and manage it in advance so it doesn’t become one.

Please tell them that appearance matters. Yes, I partially mean you need to dress appropriately. But I also mean it’s important to appear like you’re giving your all, like you’re focused and motivated. Like you work with passion and purpose. Like you want to get ahead.

Anyway, I’m going to stop there for now. I need to get back to breaking in the latest batch of newbies you sent last quarter, and making business a little harder for everyone in general over the next few months. I’ll make sure I write again soon.

Best Regards,

The Real World

Marketing has a Role in the Future of Content

This post is proof that a small spark can lead to a roaring flame.

I began the day reading a column from former colleague Ray Schultz, one of the best marketing journalists of the last several decades. Hours later I’m on a plane, some thoughts still kindling from reading the column, and a raging blaze emerged. Cue up the iPhone with mobile WordPress, and here we go.

The topic of Ray’s column is the future of publishing. To those who haven’t noticed, that particular future is not looking bright right now, with flagship entities like the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, and countless magazines (both B2B and B2C) bleeding jobs and flat out disappearing. Not to mention advertisers slashing budgets unmercifully (for good reason). The column also speculates about the future of journalism — undoubtedly tied to the future of publishing with a heavy chain. Clearly jobs in journalism, especially in the print world, are not a good spot to be in right now.

After thinking about this for a little while, this key thought became obvious: it’s not at all about the future of publishing, or the future of journalism. It’s about the future of content.

Sure, as a business or industry or career field, you can speculate about publishing and journalism all day. Yet neither is necessarily connected at all to the future of content. People can get content in many ways without publishing or journalism involved. Many people don’t even want content from journalists at all. They want content from people just like themselves — or people not like them at all. They want content from people right in the moment — in the euphoria of victory, throes of defeat, fear of chaos, or other states of happiness or misfortune. They want dialogue, engagement and interaction — the hallmarks of social media — and not from an unreachable person behind a printed page. The future of content is give-take. It’s Twitter, it’s YouTube, it’s Facebook, it’s blogs, buzz and beyond. It’s still some printed media too. It’s whatever customers and consumers want, however they want it.

And so presents the opportunity for marketers to take a good, long look at how and where we can fill a much-needed role in the future of content. We can build communities of people (or, if you read Seth Godin, tribes) arguably faster and better than any publisher can, because we know our customers well (or at least, we’re all supposed to, right?). And customers want content. They want to talk to other customers. Happy customers want to share their experiences. Angry customers want a voice, too — and brands want an opportunity to win them back. Many people, customers or not, just want objective information. And don’t give me that “marketers can’t be objective” schpiel — time and again that’s been proven wrong, especially when it’s the community driving the content.. And journalists can be just as biased as anyone, you have to apply the same filters you’d apply when evaluating any information source.

So charge ahead and provide the types of content people want about your brands, or more importantly, about your market and about each other. Build communities of knowledge, and you’re building content. And your an active part of its future.

Twitter Partnership Lays a Blueprint

Talk about an inspiring partnership.

A while back I wrote a post on forging partnerships and the benefits that allies working together can leverage for a marketing campaign or a business. I’m sitting here in the Production Room of a studio in Boston, preparing for a live webcast today, and noticed on my RSS feed an article about a new Twitter feed and website developed by a partnership of Twitter, Microsoft and Federated Media.

Twitter Inc. and ad network Federated Media on Monday unveiled what might be a new way for the popular microblogging service to make money.

They launched an “ExecTweets” page built by Federated Media and sponsored by Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT) that collects Twitter postings, known as tweets, by prominent corporate executives.

Despite the typical rants and raves of users any time a brand or corporate entity tries to leverage a mainstream social media community like Facebook or Twitter, this kind of partnership provides value. Other than digesting one these executives’ corporate blogs, this may be the next-best way to get into their heads. Possibly even in a more personal, less-jargon-filled way (wait, I’m a marketer…jargon is good!). It could be a bueprint for companies that want to leverage Twitter in a powerful, contextual way.

Again, I advise you to take a good, long look at potential partnerships, and think differently about how to accomplish goals that look unreachable by working with others.

New Study Tells Same Old News

I love it when a new press release or article comes out for a new study that tells you the same old things you already knew. I mean, nothing wrong with some good spin and PR, who am I to hate on that?

But c’mon, I don’t need a new IBM study to tell me about the convergence of direct marketing and branding.

Return-on-investment direct marketing and traditional brand advertising are converging online, according to “Beyond Advertising: Choosing a Strategic Path to the Digital Consumer,” a report released Monday by IBM Global Business Services.

Hasn’t direct marketing, and every other form of direct-response, always converged with branding? It has for me. Probably you too. Maybe we’ve always just been on the cutting-edge. Don’t you always ensure brand messaging is consistent across channels? Don’t you have a brand style guide to ensure visuals are consistent across all media? Doesn’t customer experience begin at the moment the customer reaches a touchpoint and extend all the way through post-sale?

So I was thinking “This is old news.” Not even worth a good, long look. Then a little Google search turns up Fox Business coverage that provides more robust perspective and analysis that came from the study (kinda disappointed in the B2B article cited above…focused on that one little snippet that was old news anyway…why?). Now this tells me something interesting:

According to the study, today’s suppliers (agencies, content networks and distributors) are not ready to meet the demands of the digital consumer and advertiser. Eighty percent of advertising industry participants interviewed for the study expect the industry to be at least five years away from being able to deliver true cross-platform advertising (including sales, delivery, measurement and analysis).

Surely our advertising and media delivery systems evolve on a damn-near daily basis now. It’s interesting to know that the “suppliers” recognize the shifting demands of both consumers and how to reach them, and are charging ahead with solutions to make brand messaging and measurement truly seamless.

If success at that endeavor, according to them, is five years away, I wonder how far away it’ll be in five years? It’s not like evolving demands will cease at present day.

Consistency — Again and Again

Every time I go through JetBlue’s Terminal 5, I find myself inspired and then writing about something while I’m flying.

Did I say flying? I meant “jetting.”

JetBlue’s “Happy Jetting” campaign is proof of the critcal role that consistency plays in marketing. Without going through a detailed description of all the campaign’s finer points (it’s cool, look it up and take a good, long look) or its many subpar reviews, it basically tries to redefine flying according to JetBlue’s creative messaging, catchy humor, and customer-first value proposition. Consistency is important to any marketing campaign of course, yet when you’re trying to redefine something or change a perception, it takes on an even greater importance. That’s because if the message isn’t always consistent at every touchpoint, it’s easy for that old definition or perception to stick around.

The “Happy Jetting” campaign takes center stage at every customer touchpoint. Advertising and customer acquisition campaigns across all media channels. The JetBlue website when you book a flight. The signage you see from the minute you first hit Terminal 5. The directional and branding brochure you get in the terminal. The messaging on-screen at the check-in kiosks. The screens and signs around the terminal and on the at-gate food-ordering stations. The messaging on-screen when you sit in your seat and the in-flight DirectTV boots up.

And, most importantly, in the words of JetBlue employees from the Terminal 5 entrance right through walking off the plane. I mean, jet.

That last part is sometimes where the translation gets lost. All the other stuff is easier — write the message, design the creative, print the signs, push the button. Whatever it is, most of it is within matketing’s purview. When it comes to absorbing a message into the company culture and a staff’s countless interactions with customers, however, it is alot more challenging. And if the translation gets lost, your work gets lost, along with all the things sacred to that campaign — ROI, share, sales, changed perceptions, successful differentiation, etc.

There are a few things you can do to help your staff absorb your branding message and deliver it to your customers:

Explain the business value of the campaign — how it helps move the needle, how it helps accomplish goals

Utilize customer feedback — match up your campaign logic and strategy with qualitative and quantitative feedback

Provide a list of talking points — it’s easier to say when someone else scripts it for you

Also, work with the different areas of your team to help them buy into the campaign and integrate their talking points into their routine. Spend time with them and help make the branding message unique in terms of what they say or how they deliver it. This will make it easier to buy-in and charge ahead as your ally.

New Whitepaper on Web 2.0

In such a challenging economy, the number of value-centric offers is becoming overwhelming. Everyone is offering more for less — or more for free — and letting you know about it.

Now you can add this blog to the list too.

The freebie you get here is knowledge. You get it in the form of a free whitepaper on Web 2.0 best practices for B2B media companies, which I think is worth a good, long look. As Chair of the American Business Media’s Media Marketing Committee, myself and some highly-skilled colleagues pulled together and put in the time to create this whitepaper. I’ve put in some good time on Web 2.0 and social media projects, especially lately, and my committee members from Business.com, MarketingProfs.com and Questex Media Group have as well. Kudos to Ben Hanna, Tara Curran and Michelle Mitchell for their input on this project.

The whitepaper focuses on education for B2B media executives who may not be highly familiar with all of the Web 2.0 tactics and technologies out there today. Or maybe their companies have been slow to embrace the potential (and potential costs) of Web 2.0 — believe me, among B2B publishing companies, there are definitely some guilty of moving too slow on this.

This whitepaper includes results of an email research survey we created and sent to ABM members. It included some surprising results on the use and perceptions of Web 2.0 — only 15% consider themselves “pros” on Web 2.0 and social media. That number has to improve.

Hopefully this whitepaper is a good first step in that direction.

Get the free whitepaper right here before you charge ahead with your plans for Web 2.0.

Brand Y-O-U

In the race to find customers, sales and success for our companies’ (or clients’) brands, marketers sometimes forget about the leading brand in any industry — Brand YOU.

It’s important not to forget about Brand YOU. Or about investing time in building your brand and making it better. And of course not doing anything to tarnish your brand — it’s too easy to find nowadays.

Brand YOU is critical for marketers for several reasons. So much of what we do involves selling ideas we believe in — whether it’s a launch strategy for a client’s product, spending on a new tactic, changing a marketing plan or creative that’s been the same for a while, or going after a new market. Just like in the store aisle, a strong brand and strong recall means something. It lends equity to those ideas we sell.

A strong Brand YOU is also critical in tough job markets like now (really, in any job market it’s important). A rich job history and track record of proven results are great thinga for any marketer — yet if nobody knows it, if there are no Brand YOU evangelists spreading the word, if there is no viral marketing about Brand YOU, are you getting the most out of all the hard work you put in? You have to make the effort to market yourself. Meet people, comment on blogs, attend networking events, reach out to people you don’t know and get to know them, start a blog. Of course, you can sit back and just prove what you know to anyone who asks — yet it’s alot easier when you don’t have to prove it, because someone else who knows it has already made your case.

This is important whether you’re happy in your job, not on the job market, not looking, and perfectly content. Because things can change very fast (just like in our markets) and you need to be ready.

It’s not always easy to do all you have to do in a given day. Yet don’t let too many days pass without investing time in Brand YOU. Marketers work too hard to let our own brands wither from lack of effort.

The Demands of Social Media

There is a drove of companies flocking to social media right now, especially in B2B media, healthcare, and of course consumer products. There’s no doubting the magic that happens when brands build meaningful relationships with customers via social media.

If you’re among the people taking a good, long look at making the dive into social media, make sure it’s an effort that’s set up to succeed.

I’m proud to say that right now, my ABM Media Marketing committee is putting the final touches on a Web 2.0 best practices whitepaper. It focuses on educating B2B media companies about various social media and Web 2.0 tactics and technologies. In the process of putting this project together, I talked to several leaders in the industry about what’s needed in order to make social media efforts successful. Joe Pulizzi, founder of customer publishing dynamo Junta42, made this all-to-true statement:

B2B media companies now need people who live in social media all day, every day. They need a Chief Conversation Officer who follows online conversations about their brands, monitors Twitter and Google Alerts, and comments on key blogs.

Many don’t realize the effort required to make social media successful — it’s not as simple as creating a Facebook group or creating a blog and seeing the interaction blossom. It’s about living and breathing your industry, through the lens of social media, for hours every day. It’s about becoming part of conversations about your business wherever they happen — on other websites, other blogs, LinkedIn groups, Facebook discussion boards, Google Knol, Twitter, and anywhere else. It’s about being a proactive force all over, not being a passive voice on your own website and expecting people to come to you. It’s about making the interaction with your brands feel personal and real — without marketing copy or the corporate platform. It’s about honest conversation and knowing (and playing by) the established rules and expectations and dealing with opinions that differ from yours. It’s about making a commitment to spend the time required to make it work, and be patient for the amont of time it takes for genuine trust and interaction to build.

Make sure you know the effort required before you charge ahead. Your customers will hold you accountable if you don’t.