Top 10 Reasons Small Businesses Excel at Social Media

Today I attended Forrester's Webinar "Defining Your B2B Social Media Strategy" with Vice President and Principal Analyst, Laura Ramos, and Vice President of Tech Industry Consulting, Dan Klein.

The seminar was chock full of interesting facts on social media usage by B2B marketers and by B2B decision-makers.

For both B2B vendors and the buyers of those solutions, social media is considered a second tier marketing medium.

Last month, Laura Ramos released a report entitled: How to Derive Value from B2B Blogging. A survey of 189 Forrester customers revealed the number of blogs started by these B2B organizations `plummeted` in 2007 from 2006 as the results from these blogs did not meet expectations.

Laura attributes part of this to using `warmed-over press releases` on blogs.

Another attendee and I leveraged the WebEx chat to ask questions on how the usage of social media varied by the size of the organization.

Anu Venkitaraman, Managing Partner of ReThink Marketing of Addison,TX and I, conducted a private chat discussing why small B2B marketers have embraced social media in a stronger way than their bigger B2B sisters and brothers.

Here are our top 10 (in no particular order and actually there are only 8):

1. Give me a Megaphone - For B2B start-ups evangelizing is a way of life to attract the attention of investors, partners and customers.
2. Talking about My Generation - Younger professionals are already well-versed in social networking and have a huge appetite for expressing themselves.
3. A Clean Slate - With little to no marketing infrastructure, a small B2B marketer can leapfrog to a web presence that includes social media. Witness the number of firms that use blogs as their website backbone.
4. The Big Squeeze - Hard dollars are in short supply for small firms. The cost of entry for social media in hard budget dollars is close to zero.
5. Sweat Equity - The greatest resource for a small firm is the hard labor that staff will invest to make their equity real. The production of relevant social media content requires this dedication and investment.
6. Risk / Reward - The small B2B marketer recognizes that the rewards associated with engaging in public customer dialog outweigh the risk of losing control of the marketing message.
7. Inverse Relationship of Press Releases - the number of parties who must approve a press release is inversely related to that organization`s embrace of social media. In other words, the more bureaucracy associated with marketing communications, the less likelihood that the wild west of social media will be approved by senior executives.
8. Let`s fail and try again - Smaller organizations are more likely to experiment with marketing media and social media is another option to test.
   

Are there any other reasons? Help me round off the number to 10!

What to make of the new Oracle.

You may have caught Kate Maddox of BtoB Online covering the recent Business Marketing Association conference.

According to Kate, the candor of Judith Sim, VP-CMO of Oracle, during her keynote at the BMA conference was quite surprising. Judith stated that Oracle has increased its return on marketing despite declining budgets. That budget is 1.7% of revenue versus more than 5% a decade ago.

From my perspective, we have seen drastic changes to technology publications over the past year (e.g. CMP's elimination of some its print publications). However, it was startling to be exposed to the magnitude of Oracle's drop in print advertising: from 55% of of its ad budget last year to 9% in the upcoming year.

Conversely, online advertising has increased to 36% of Oracle's ad budget this year substantially up from 22% last year.

Judith Sim also discussed Oracle's use of social news releases that has helped cut Oracle's PR budget in half and the posting of videos, blogs and forums on the Oracle website.

I couldn't help but think of the impact on Oracle's messaging in this massive change from offline to online communications and lead generation.

How well will the hard-hitting and competitive print ads from Oracle make the transition to the world of online media and user-generated content?

In the spirit of online camaraderie, I would like to present to Oracle my recommendation.

Let's pit Oracle and against its arch-rival SAP and compare their core websites head-to-head on Web 2.0 media.

• Employee Blogs - Oracle: 162, SAP:0 - The busy bees at Oracle win hands-down.
• Non-Employee Blogs - both websites host many - Let's call this a tie.
• Forums & Wikis - both websites offer robust forums and Wikis - Again a tie.
• Corporate Podcast Shows - Oracle:8, SAP:0 - A slam for Oracle
  
• Digg-style ranking site - Bonus points for Oracle on creating the Oracle Mix beta site
  

There you have it....even in the online world, Oracle can claim superiority!

P.S. I have recently moved my blog to Blogger. Check out the new blog and some of my coverage on the MarketingProfs B2B Forum and the SiriusDecisions Sales & Marketing Summit.

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.

Is there no future for generating leads on Social Networks?

I learned a good lesson on writing surveys. On last year’s Web 2.0 Tools Survey we asked B2B marketers what Web 2.0 media they had deployed in programs during the previous year.

It was only when I reviewed the compiled data did I realize that the marketers had responded from two perspectives: both as a B2B marketer and then in some cases, as a user.

How else could you explain the anomaly that the most favored wiki tool was Wikipedia and the most popular social network was LinkedIn despite no evidence that any B2B marketers use these media for lead generation?

Some social networks make their money on corporate recruitment. A year ago, the Economist reported that LinkedIn has over 350 corporate customers which pay up to $250,000 each.

In the March 22nd issue of the Economist, the unnamed reporter proffers a dismal view for the fortunes of social networks citing a couple of key examples:

- Sergey Brin, Google’s co-founder stating that Google’s “’social networking inventory as a whole’ was proving problematic”. Google places ads on MySpace and owns Orkut.

- Facebook’s failed attempt to make money with its Beacon applet that announced the purchases of friends provoked a backlash and prompted an apology from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Yet the social networks continue to try to build a viable business model.

Today, MySpace announced a deal with three of the big four music labels (Universal, Sony and Warner) to sell music downloads, concert tickets and merchandise through a joint venture called MySpace Music.

John Murray of the Silicon Valley News is sceptical: “The idea sounds sensible in principle, but neither the labels nor MySpace has exactly been adept at climbing aboard the digital sales bandwagon, so we'll need to see the execution before deciding if Apple and Amazon have anything to worry about.”

Based on the research on Web 2.0 tools that we conducted last year and another study conducted by the ANA & B-to-B Magazine, social networks are amongst the least attractive media for lead generation.

So if you are looking to generate leads its best to focus on the top performing Web 2.0 media: blogs, podcasts, videocasts and RSS.

Its interesting to note that the Economist concludes the March 22nd article by noting that as social networks mature, the foundation for communication will move away from ‘walled gardens’ to open communications like email and RSS, thus rendering the early social networks obsolete.

Drinking wine leads to deep thoughts.

This past weekend, my wife and I held an informal wine tasting for our neighbors. We were joined by Simon Beck, Editor – Special Editions, The Globe and Mail.

Simon had become exhausted in completing his latest project: the University Report Card 2007. The Report compiles the results from a survey of 43,000 Canadian students on their schools. (Fortunately Simon summoned the energy to sample the wine.)

In the Report, Dr. Tim Blackmore a professor at the University of Western Ontario was quoted: This isn't the MTV generation we're talking about — this is the everything, all-the-time generation. It's difficult for a professor to compete with that. It's like trying to capture the attention of a cat." Dr. Blackmore struggles to keep students engaged but continues to achieve high student ratings as he incorporates video and audio in his lectures.

As one is often prone to do, I compare this to my days in university, when we had to jealously share PCs in a PC lab to complete our required assignments. My generation was grossly underwired and under-social networked in comparison.

Therein lies the rub, are all audiences equally attracted to Web 2.0 media? Is a blog (insert any Web 2.0 medium) required for my company?

In our pursuit of the next new thing, we sometimes forget that it all starts with the customer.

With a deep understanding of the customer, the path becomes clear. Yet , the low cost of entry for Web 2.0 makes these media ideal for testing.

So if your knowledge of your customer is limited, even a small scale test is probably worthwhile.

And like Dr. Blackmore, the level of your customer engagement is a key metric.

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.

B2B marketers ahead of B2C on New Media Adoption

On August 13, BtoB Magazine announced the results of their research on new media conducted with the Association of National Advertisers.

In June, BtoB and the ANA interviewed 326 B2B and B2C marketers from their respective house files.

The research confirmed a number of tiers of new media tools. The top tier includes proprietary Web sites, e-mail marketing, online ads, search engine optimization, search engine marketing and webinars. The middle tier includes blogs, RSS feeds, podcasts and video on demand. The bottom tier consists of wikis, mobile, viral video, social networks and Second Life.

It was found that B2B marketers allocate a significantly higher proportion of their budget to new media than B2C marketers. While B2C marketers view new media as best suited for brand building, B2B marketers look to new media for demand generation.

As far as I see it, the irony for B2B marketers is that although their solutions require extensive communication (often through a sales force), the budgets and tools at their disposal for marketing are often inadequate. The opposite is true for B2C: humongous budgets to communicate simple messages.

With new media tools and in particular Web 2.0 tools, B2B marketers are bolstered by tools where the cost of entry is the development of content, rather than price of the tools or cost of the marketing medium.

For more details and a PowerPoint summary of the BtoB/ANA research, follow this link to the BtoB website.

Blogging - the new team demonstration sport at the Olympics?

What if we had a team of expert bloggers at our disposal?

KnowledgeStorm has recently launched a team blog at FindTechBlogs.com.

Matt Lohman, director of business development at KnowledgeStorm spoke with Paul Dunay and me after completing the our survey on Web 2.0 Tools.

The podcast from our discussion can be found on Paul's blog. Listen in and find out why KnowledgeStorm is a contender in team blogging and with other Web 2.0 tools.

A new category of LeadGen Tools materializes

In our research on LeadGen Tools, collaborative and dialog marketing tools made a prominent showing with email marketing, blogging and web conferencing tools leading the way.

Although our research was not scientific in a statistical sense, it does illustrate a trend of B2B marketers to deploy more ‘engaging’ tools. In a consumer-driven world, this only makes sense.

I suspect that these tools, as well as the Web 2.0 tools (e.g. blogging, wikis and social networking) will coalesce to form a new category of tools available to the B2B marketer. Let’s call these tools, LeadCom Tools, a name appropriate given the tools’ positioning between MarCom and Direct Marketing.

Unlike traditional direct marketing such as direct mail or telesales, the linkage to revenue is not as strong for LeadCom tools. And unlike mass media or MarCom options, LeadCom Tools do not amplify the message to the same extent as traditional MarCom but share some of the broadcast quality but to a narrower audience.

Taking the best from both ends of the spectrum, LeadCom tools are measurable, by level of engagement and scalable to niche audiences.

One of the most promising segments for LeadCom are nurture leads who expect a higher level of engagement with more relevant content balanced by a low-cost content delivery model.

As adoption of Web 2.0 tools increase, the use of these tools for LeadCom will be a very encouraging development.