An interesting study from the University of Texas recently showed that the typical information posted on social networking sites – favorite books, movies, music, and quotes; major; hometown; and similar personal items – doesn’t always give others an accurate impression of you. When the researchers tested so called “friends” of a user on basic questions like those found on social networking sites, the information did not help users figure out what others were & ...     Read entire post

For years, classic brand strategy has always been about the creation of a single message that can be used with all of your constituents; investors, employees, senior management and customers about who you are and what value your company provides. Brand managers tend to write it up and paste it on every wall and train every new recruit in it. It’s a classic approach to command and control brand messaging which then gets deployed via all the traditional media and used in every communicatio ...     Read entire post

The folks at Bulldog Solutions compiled the Q&A session from a live Webinar I did last week with them called "A Case Study: Improving Lead Quality and Quantity" with the American Marketing Association. Lead nurturing is something I am very passionate about and feel marketers need to start embracing more. A recent Forrester study cited over 50% of B2B marketers rated Lead Quality as their TOP concern. The antidote to this stay awake issue is clearly a well defined process for ...     Read entire post

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 become a top priority for companies. Here are 5 tips that could help you avoid a major disaster and reduce the risk of a flogging in the blogosphere. Tip 1: Monitor the New ...     Read entire post

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 leads (usually the hottest ones) to the sales team. But what happens to those that are not so hot? Typically they hit the cutting room floor or ...     Read entire post

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 other roadblocks! Create content that doesn’t interrupt users as they explore what they’re interested in. Instead, create the very content that is what they’re ...     Read entire post