More Reasons that Small Businesses Excel at Social Media

After my last posting on small business and social media, Chris Brogan was kind enough to tweet my blog and attract some savvy writers.

At the same time, Ann Handley was a welcome visitor to ye old blog.

A surprise for me: all of the comments were positive and relevant (except for the guy trying to sell me on doing business on Costa Rica).

Before we take a closer look at some of the comments, I wanted to share with you the question that I asked during the Forrester webinar and Laura Ramos` interesting response.

Q: Robert Lesser: It appears that smaller B2B companies are more successful with their social media marketing than large B2B marketers. Is this showing up in the data? If yes, why?

A: Laura Ramos: We have not looked at the data from this perspective, but it is possible to do so if interested in exploring this further. Anecdotally, we have seen social media and online tactics favor smaller companies in general because small companies are more agile, less constrained by legacy, and able to "look bigger" than they are in the digital realm (emphasis provided).

So it seems that we all are in agreement, at least at a conceptual level, on why small businesses are excelling at social media.

And now let`s feature some of the top reasons submitted from those who read the blog:

• Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer, MarketingProfs
  "Got passion? (Actually, this could be considered a part of the "megaphone" and "sweat equity" reasons, too.) But so many small business owners have real passion for what they are doing, and that converts into the energy and authenticity necessary to commit to doing social media right."


• Ann Kingman, Blogger, Books on the Night Stand CEOs are the Public Face - "In most small businesses, the founder/CEO *is* the company, or there are a few key employees who play that role, and so it's much easier to put a human face on the organization than if it were a huge multinational corporation.
  

• Giles Crouch, Partner & CEO, MediaBadger / Blogger, Webconomist
  "Building Loyalty: Small biz can engage customers more directly, leading to product innovations and increased loyalty through conversations."

MarketingProfs Panel Discussion at B2B Forum

On the second day of the MarketingProfs B2B Forum, I greatly enjoyed the opportunity to sit on a panel led by Roy Young, President of MarketingProfs and including online marketing experts Chris Brogan, VP Strategy & Technology of CrossTech Media and Joel Granoff, Co-founder and CEO of Be Greeted.

We presented highlights from our recent research on how B2B marketers were using online media.

We discussed how webinars, search and email were widely deployed by B2B marketers (see chart `Lead Generation Goal by Medium`).

Although Chris was somewhat surprised that 49% of respondents are using blogs for lead generation, I noted that this in sync with other surveys. B2B marketers have leveraged blogging to boost their organic or natural search rankings. Higher rankings translate to more web inquiries.

Traditional content such as newsletters, press releases and case studies ranked highly for lead generation.

This chart pertains to a question asking marketers about content residing on their website.


Although media such as blogs, video and podcasts are ranked much lower, their ranking is signifcant given their newness.

Although these results were similar to previous studies, some marketers were confused by the findings. See Mike Stelzner`s blog for some comments.

MarketingProfs B2B Forum Small World Stories

Some of my random encounters in Boston had me shaking my head in disbelief at the hidden connections we have with acquaintances.

Two years ago, Ruth Stevens conducted an interview with me on our research on LeadGen Tools. Ruth was kind enough to cite our research in her article in DIRECT Magazine. Ruth is an author, writer and consultant extraordinaire residing in New York. You may know her through her work with the DMA.

I was delighted to meet Ruth at the MarketingProfs B2B Forum and discuss some of her research initiatives.

As we were chatting, the conversation turned to the neighbourhood in Toronto where my family lives: the Beach.

Wham – Surprise #1! Not only does Ruth's best friend live on my street but her brother lived across from my house up until last year!

My office is on the second floor of a 100 year old brick & beam warehouse in old Toronto.

One of our neighbours is Idée who moved into their office across the street at about the same time as us in 2000.

Co-founders Leila Boujnane and Paul Bloore have developed a fascinating technology that identifies the fingerprint of an image and then identifies matches by crawling the web. Unlike Google or the other search engines which rely on image text tags, Idée uses hundreds of criteria to categorize and unique identify an image.

I ran into Leila and Paul in the cramped and run-down Air Canada terminal at Logan. They had just finished a round of meetings with the Boston VC Community looking for the $10M+ of expansion capital.

Think of the photographer who publishes her image on the web but wants to ensure that unscrupulous website owners disregard her rights to that image. This technology allows that photographer to troll the web for copycats.

Wham – Surprise #2! A member of Idée's board also hails from my hometown of Hamilton and whose father was the best friend of my father.

MarketingProfs B2B Forum 2008 - Day 1 Highlights

Here are a couple of highlights from the first day at the MarketingProfs B2B Marketing Forum 2008 in Boston:

Leveraging New Media – Greg Verdino
When I spoke with Greg Verdino, Chief Strategy Office, Crayon, at the speakers` cocktail reception the night prior to the conference, I was surprised to find a very jovial Greg - quite the contrast to his sombre online persona.

I had met Greg Verdino twice prior to his presentation on leveraging new technology. I was suitably impressed with his choice of T-shirts and flip flops and wondered what thought leaders like Greg would wear for their presentation.

Greg`s choice of basic black worked well with his dry wit. A super presenter, Greg smoothly presented complex technologies in easy-to-understand choice phrases.

With a generation reared on social networks and online gaming, there are a host of technologies that businesses should explore to collaborate, communicate and build their business.

There were some interesting examples of B2B companies that were using new media. CDW, a reseller of technology products, offers a social network to its clients and uses this as an advisory board.

IBM engages prospects with a call, chat or should the prospect wish, a meeting in a virtual world.

Deloitte offers a deep selection of content through blogs and podcasts. In pursuing a thought leadership strategy, Deloitte has `greased the skids` by giving away valuable information.

Greg gave an example of how he leveraged his social networks including LinkedIn to prepare a presentation for Cisco. Senior marketers from IBM, Forrester and SAP came forth with suggestions.

Greg believes that knowledge is a commodity and connections are the differentiators. New ideas are often created when linked two existing ideas.

Unlocking Customer Behavior...How to Understand and Profit from Predictably Irrational Customers

The keynote was given by Dan Ariely, Alfred P. Sloan Profession of Behavioral Economics at MIT, Author of best-selling book Predictably Irrational.

Dan delivered a slam-dunk of a keynote drawing numerous examples of how we make irrational decisions.

Dan`s research indicates that we are susceptible to irrational behaviour and that our intuitions on behaviors are often wrong.

Dan made a very strong case for marketers to test. Marketers must conduct experiments rather than rely on our intuition. He added that it is only natural for a marketer to give an offer to everybody if the original offer worked.

One fine day in Chicago

This afternoon I flew into Chicago from Toronto.

The weather was ideal for my plans before the MarketingProfs Conference began: sunny and warm with a nice breeze off of Lake Michigan.

With the blessing of my family, I flew in early today to take the Architecture Cruise on the Chicago River in picture perfect conditions.

My newfound knowledge of Chicago architecture came in handy at 6:00 pm during the speakers cocktail party. We stood on the third floor patio of the Renaissance Chicago and talked of the behemoths that lined the river.

It was great to meet and chat with the MarketingProfs team: Allen Weiss - Founder, Roy Young - President and Ann Handley - Chief Content Officer and employee #2. The MarketingProfs team was hyped about their first conference and the 300 attendees.

Ann Handley, Paul Dunay (my presentation partner) and I spoke on the patio, amongst other things, about blogging and Twitter. According to Paul, master blogger / podcaster Robert Scoble was surprised that he was not inundated with baby product pitches after covering the personal event online.

My response was that it seems odd that with rampant privacy concerns such as identity theft, bloggers are not more guarded about their private life. If Robert and his family are at the hospital, who is watching his house?

Would-be burglars no longer have to watch the newspapers and mail pile up. Its now as simple as subscribing to an RSS feed to know when no one is home.

Content takes center stage with Web 2.0

Through our research on Web 2.0 tools, B2B marketers are deploying these tools equally to target customers and prospects. The cost of entry is practically nothing. Most tools are free or next to free.

With the widespread adoption of Web 2.0 tools, it's interesting to juxtapose Web 2.0 to direct mail. You may remember hearing the debates on the key success factors for direct mail. Most experts speak of the 40:40:20 rule. The success of a direct mail program is based on 40% list, 40% offer and 20% creative.

For Web 2.0 media, the formula for success is very different: 100% content. You could also argue that SEO (Search Engine Optimization or Organic Search) is critical to your audience finding you, so a strong linking strategy is vital. Content creation has now been turned on its head. With direct mail, the creation of copy and offer is mostly outsourced to professional copywriters.

Not so with Web 2.0 as the content creation is the domain of amateurs (i.e. blogs are usually not ghost-written).

For those B2B marketers with a need to stretch their budgets and a do-it-yourself attitude, Web 2.0 provides a golden opportunity.

P.S. Please join Paul Dunay and me at the Marketing Profs BtoB Forum in Chicago Oct. 1 - 2, 2007 for a presentation on Leveraging New Channels to Create Marketing Buzz. We will present how to include these new channels into your marketing mix along with insight from our research. To save $200 on the registration, use promo code ESPK07.