Posts Tagged: B2B

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14
Sep 09

Link roundup: read & recommended between September 9th and September 14th

Added to my Delicious bookmarks between September 9th through September 14th:

  • The Three Spheres of Web Strategy –Updated for 2009 « Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang | Social Media, Web Marketing – Who’s a Web Strategist? In a company, they often are responsible for the long term vision of corporate web properties. At a web company where their product is on the web, they’re often the product manager or CTO. Regardless of role, the responsibilities are the same, they need to balance the three spheres of community, business and technology – and make sure their efforts are in the middle of all three.
  • Why B2B Companies Have a Distinct Advantage Online – Conversation Agent – Beyond online ads, the opportunity for B2Bs is in truly creating, joining, or expanding direct ways to work with their customers. If the goal is broader than just moving existing inventory – service or product that is – it works.
  • 5 Ways Banks Are Using Social Media – Many banks have started using social websites to help them with everything from healing the financial industry to promoting their latest credit cards. By embracing the most popular tools available, the industry has also been embracing the best of what social media culture has to offer, and smaller, community banks seem to be leading the charge when it comes to social media innovation.
  • New Reports Suggests Tuesday And Wednesday Are Best Days To Post On Facebook – A new report published yesterday suggests that Tuesday and Wednesday are the best days to post status updates on Facebook.
  • Display Ads Boost Search Site Visits and Click-Throughs – Running a display campaign causes a statistically significant increase in search traffic, specifically search visits, unique visits and search click-throughs. Moreover, the paid search cost-per-click was lower during the display campaign with SEO and suggests that targeted display campaigns can help other media campaigns reach cost efficiency.
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1
Sep 09

Link roundup: read & recommended between August 31st and September 1st

Added to my Delicious bookmarks between August 31st through September 1st:

  • HOW TO: Answer Tough Kid Questions – Whether you have children of your own, or simply look after or spend time with them, you’re very likely to find yourself in a situation where you’re stumped by the questions that they throw at you at any given time, and on any given subject matter. You probably know the answer, but do you know a child-appropriate answer for those extra tough questions? Whyzz does, and they can help quell those inquisitive minds with suitable answers for children whether you’re at home or on the go.
  • apophenia: Teens Don't Tweet… Or Do They? – The most salient visceral reaction that I got when looking at the teens' Twitter streams was that teens on Twitter seemed to fit into three categories: 1) geeky teens, tech teens, fandom teens, machinema teens; 2) teens who are in love with the Jonas Brothers/Miley Cyrus, musicians, or another category of celebs; 3) multi-lingual foreign teens with friends/followers around the world who seemed to participate in lots of online communities.

    While I can't make any meaningful conclusions until I spend more time with the data, it seems to me that the teens on Twitter – or at least the teens responding to the trending topic – are not representative of teens as a whole. That's not a bad thing. They're geeks and passionate creators and trendsetters and pop culture addicts. I don't get the sense that they're dragging their friends into Twitter, but rather, focusing on using Twitter to engage with other people who share their interests or people that they admire.

  • Seth's Blog: On becoming a household name – Being a familiar name takes you miles closer to closing a sale. People like to buy from companies they've heard of.

    It turns out that this is an overlooked benefit of banner ads. Banner ads are fairly worthless in terms of generating clickthroughs… you have to trick too much and manipulate too much to get clicks worth much of anything. But, if you build ads with no intent of clicks, no hope for clicks… then you can focus on ads that drill your name or picture or phrase into my head. 100 impressions and you're almost famous.

    A household name. Not for everyone, but for people who matter.

  • Neuromarketing » Collecting Visitor Info: Reward vs. Reciprocity – Most users confronted with a form won’t complete it. If they arrived at the site looking for some specific information, they will likely hit the back button and see if they can access it without the aggravation of form completion and without the risk of getting spammed later.

    It turns out that a reciprocity strategy works better – give them the info they want, and then ask for their information. In the impressively titled Embedded Persuasive Strategies to Obtain Visitors’ Data: Comparing Reward and Reciprocity in an Amateur, Knowledge-Based Website, Gamberini et al found that twice as many visitors gave up their information if they were able to access the information first. It’s counterintuitive, perhaps, but even though these visitors were under no obligation to complete the form, they converted at double the rate of visitors seeing the “mandatory” form.

  • Official Google Docs Blog: Use Google Docs & Google Checkout to Sell Online – The Google Checkout store gadget — a new offering just released to Google Labs — allows anyone to create an online store using a Google spreadsheet.
  • Social Network Marketing Expands Sphere – eMarketer – according to Anderson Analytics’ May 2009 survey—52% of social network users had become a fan or follower of a company or brand, while 46% had said something good about a brand or company on a social networking Website—double the percentage who had said something negative (23%).
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4
Aug 09

Link roundup: read & recommended between July 31st and August 4th

Added to my Delicious bookmarks between July 31st through August 4th:

  • YouTube Goes After Local News, Attempts to Sign Newspaper, TV Partners – MarketingVOX – ouTube has created a new feature called “News Near You” which uses the internet address of the visitor’s computer to determine the user’s location, and offers relevant local videos from within a 100-mile radius.The feature is just one element in YouTube’s push into news video.
  • Study: Women Value SocNets but Won't Pay Fees – MarketingVOX – The top five reasons women belong to social networks:

    To network professionally
    To stay up-to-date with friends
    To stay up-to-date with groups they belong to
    To promote their business.
    To research products or services

  • Trends Shaping the New Consumer » Ipsos-Ideas.com – The New Consumer has re-evaluated individual and societal roles and has decided to 'reboot' and start over. No longer content to leave it to institutions to repair what they see as the system's shortcomings or failures, they are leading the way and taking charge. They are taking this opportunity to do away with artificial and manufactured needs, rediscover the true value of things and live new experiences. They are conspicuously green, consuming in different ways – looking for tangible ways to indulge on a dime instead of a dollar, to share and swap as opposed to buy, to reuse and exchange instead of dispose – and are not shy about letting people know they are doing it. They choose to do their business with suppliers who authentically share their values of social and environmental responsibility, and they understand that the internet has empowered them with an unprecedented voice, reach and participation in product or service development.
  • Stop Saying Sorry, Start Getting Really Social – "It's a mistake to think that simply responding to negative customer experiences with a speedy Tweet, or jolly little video, is enough. But unless you’re prepared to perform root and branch surgery on the way that your company works, and put the customer at the heart of everything that you do, it won’t make a difference as you’ll always be fighting fires"
  • MarketingSherpa: Using LinkedIn for Lead Generation: 6 Lessons – LinkedIn requires a special approach to lead generation, and presents some unique challenges for marketers.
  • Mobile Data Users Connecting To Ads In Other Media | MediaPost – while people are not averse to advertising on mobile devices, they object to the lack of relevant ads. Working with comScore on its latest round of mobile research, Starcom found 63% of mobile data subscribers are using mobile phones as a way to access ads or offers in other media.
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31
Jul 09

Link roundup: read & recommended between July 28th and July 31st

Added to my Delicious bookmarks between July 28th through July 31st:

  • Social Media Best Practices – eMarketer – In late 2008, MarketingSherpa surveyed social media marketers about the effectiveness of their practices. Large majorities rated social media marketing effective at influencing brand reputation, increasing awareness and improving search rankings and site traffic.
  • Managing Your Small Business’s Online Reputation – NYTimes.com – Local review sites are reshaping the world of small business by becoming the new Yellow Pages, one-stop platforms where customers can find a business — and also see independent critiques of its performance.

    How do you manage your reputation when everybody is a critic?

  • B2B Marketers Latching Onto Social Media : MarketingProfs – Most B2B marketers have begun using social media and more of them are planning to use "newer media" than ever before, according a new study by BtoB magazine and the Association of National Advertisers, reports BtoB Online.

    Nearly two-thirds (66%) of polled marketers said they use social media, up from 20% from two years ago. Among B2B marketers, 57% said they now use social media, up from 15% in 2007.

  • MediaPost Publications Study: Who's On Which Social Nets 07/28/2009 – More than half of social network users have associated their profiles with a brand, company or product. While much has been written about negative nature of Web 2.0 and blog posts, social network users are more likely to say positive things about brands, companies or products.
  • The Importance of Social Media Audits « Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang | Social Media, Web Marketing – Just as brands conduct audits of inventory, employees, and budgets on an often annual basis, they should also survey the landscape to find out what customers, influencers, partners and employees are participating on the social web. Audits are key for identifying priorities, benchmarking previous efforts, and planning for future efforts; the same applies for social media.
  • Why People Use Twitter – eMarketer – Men and women both used Twitter primarily to keep in touch with friends. Secondarily, men were interested in finding news and women in updating their status.

    Users under age 35 were more interested in broadcasting their status than their senior counterparts. Older users were more likely to use the service for work-related purposes.

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24
Jul 09

Link roundup: read & recommended between July 23rd and July 24th

Added to my Delicious bookmarks between July 23rd through July 24th:

  • B2B Marketing On a Budget: Thought Leadership with John Watton of ShipServ – Marketing & Strategy Innovation Blog – The next interview in the B2B Marketing thought leader interview series is with John Watton, VP Marketing at ShipServ, the leading e-marketplace for maritime shipping (and also a Marketo customer). Over the last two years, John has revolutionized the company's marketing strategy using Marketo Lead Management, introducing social media engagement, and leveraging the best practices he garnered over two decades of marketing at communications and high technology companies such as Cramer Systems (acquired by Amdocs), Microsoft, Oracle, SAP and Ariba. You can follow John on Twitter @jwatton.
  • Twitter 101 for Business — A Special Guide – Twitter launches new guide for business
  • Build a better bond with bloggers – iMediaConnection.com – Sponsoring bloggers and the conversations taking place online is big business these days. So big that businesses, according to an article in the June 21, 2009 PARADE Magazine, "spend about $1.6 billion a year on 'word-of-mouth' advertising, promoting their goods to bloggers and to people who use social-media websites like Facebook, according to the research firm PQ Media."
  • 10 Ways Universities Share Information Using Social Media – Universities are constantly exploring new ways to use social media to fulfill their missions of engaging and sharing knowledge with their constituents. Below are just 10 highlights of how universities are using social media for public affairs.
  • 10 Ways Universities Are Engaging Alumni Using Social Media – Universities across the country are beginning to use social media tools to engage alumni and build a network of graduates with a shared affinity for the institution.
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30
Jun 09

Link roundup: read & recommended between June 29th and June 30th

Added to my Delicious bookmarks between June 29th through June 30th:

  • Teens More “Normal” Than You Think Regarding Media Usage | Nielsen Wire – "It might sound hip and trendy to suggest they’re too busy texting, Twittering or LOL-ing to be engaged with traditional media, but ultimately, the research proves otherwise."
  • HOW TO: Use Social Media for Enterprise Business – Don’t underestimate how much information is on the web. It’s stunning what you can learn just by reaching out. If you and your business have a strong social presence, it’s simply easier for potential partners, customers, employers, and businesses to find you. In enterprise, it’s about closing the deal and standing out; social media’s one of the easiest ways to achieve this goal.
  • BBQ Chain Smokey Bones Turns Staff Into Social Media Hosts – Advertising Age – Digital – “It's great for somebody to have a job as a tweeter. [It's] much better if tweeting, Facebook, blogging, etc. is part of lots of employees' jobs.” Case study of a small chain of restaurants that has created a 'social media army' of its employees to spread the word about the restaurant. Since the new website and associated features went live in February, web traffic is up 50% and the chain's e-mail list has increased 30%, "to the six-figure range," Mr. Unger said. Building the e-mail database was critical for the agency, which will rely heavily on e-mail blasts for future marketing efforts. Across the Facebook, MySpace and corporate pages, Mr. Unger said, the chain is adding about 2,200 followers each month. The web launch was accompanied by limited print and outdoor support.
  • Mobile Phones Beat PCs for Young Women – The “Women and Digital Life” study, revealed that more than 80% of US women now use a wireless device and 17% use using a smartphone, such as an iPhone, BlackBerry or models from HTC, Samsung, LG or similar. Among those in the 12-24 and 25-39 age groups, smartphone ownership is now 23%. In contrast 11% of women ages 40+ own a smartphone.
  • The 5 Phases Of The Facebook Sales Funnel – A useful 'Facebook Marketing 101' reference: "The Facebook sales process is an elongated one which entails engaging the user throughout the entire sales process (starting with their pre-purchase experience)."
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4
Jun 09

Bookmarks for June 4th from 16:33 to 16:33

Bookmarked on June 4th

  • Forrester B2B Profile Tool – Following their consumer 'social technographics' profile analysis, Forrester has released a new interactive tool that reveals social media habits of B2B buyers in key industries like Telecom, Software and more.