I have to say I have been following Scott since I first joined Twitter in 2009. He helped to teach me that social media is truly about having conversations and about engagement. I also love Scott for his famous quote in a former speech that whenever someone asks “what is the ROI of social media?” a unicorn, a kitten and a puppy all die!

Scott taught me a number of other things like the importance of saying “thank you” in social media and also some signs that you might be a social media diva.

So I had to show up to see which gems Scott would present in “Top Tools For Engaging Your Audience Online.”

Scott started by explaining that he wrote the book “UnMarketing” because he was tired of hypocritical marketing.

Tip 1: Marketing is about building relationships and getting people to know, like and trust you.

Social media is maybe a new term but it is as old we are. We have new tools, online but it is more about being social than it is about media.

Tip 2: Focus more on being social and less on the media or tools.

People think marketing is a tactic and something we need to do. But marketing is about much more than that. It is sometimes about who we hire. It is everything we do in a company. It is not a department.

Tip 3: Marketing is not a tactic or a department. It is everything a company does.

Branding is defined by our customers. They tell you what you stand for. Customers don’t care about brochures or logos, they care about experiences.

 Tip 4: Focus on delivering amazing customer experiences.

We all create stories and content but much of it is “frequently futile.” The time and frequency of content should be defined as how often we have something valuable to say.

Tip 5: “Capitalize on the spread.” This is defined as our innate human nature to spread great stories.

And now content needs to be mobile-friendly. Scott stated that more than half of the time spent on Facebook is from a mobile device! So if people can’t read your content, they can’t share it. There is a big difference between mobile-ready content and content customized for mobile. Content should be customized for mobile and then tested on all the main formats.

Tip 6: Create a customized mobile content platform.

Scott hates Farmville. He said that 247 million people play Farmville and that Zynga, the company that started Farmville made more than a billion dollars in 2011. So if your audience is there, you need to figure out why they are there. So Scott looked at why people spend time there. The average user is a 47 year old female who enjoys the social networking aspect of the game.

 Tip 7: “You can’t ignore what you hate.” Understand why your audience does what it does and goes where it goes.

Many businesses use techniques that send potential customers away. Captchas, popups, registration forms that are poorly-timed – all tell a new visitor of your site to go away.

Tip 8: Stop “UnSelling” your customers

Social media is not a platform for sending out promotional messages. It is a conversation where you need to talk with people, not at them. Sometimes we make mistakes but if you do, take the opportunity to be awesome. Critics should be answered. Customer complaints should be addressed. But don’t feed the trolls or spend time with people who are just looking for attention.

Tip 9: Use social media to be awesome and engage with potential customers but don’t get distracted.

For more of Scott’s unique style and sense of humor, check out his blog, follow him on twitter or read his post on the value of social media – one of the most popular blogs ever written and shared on social media.

Photo Source

I was thrilled that they discussed the launch of our Business Innovation website where I am the chief editor (disclosure: I am a paid SAP employee.)

But I was more excited about the open discussion they had around the importance of full disclosure, about the need for brands to get involved in the conversation, to become like publishers and to reach out to new audiences with quality content.

Here is a summary of the discussion, a link to the video, along with a few tips to keep in mind for your own content marketing initiatives.

Background

Jon and Jonathan spoke about a few very specific SAP examples. So I will summarize their points at a more generic or abstract level since I believe they apply to any brand or marketer or content contributor.

As additional background, I wrote this article called “Will Content Marketing Destroy Social Media” based on a Tweet during the Superbowl from a different analyst but on this same topic of sponsored content. With 47 comments, it was one of the most active discussions that have taken place here at B2B Marketing Insider.

Video Summary

Jon Reed framed the discussion by outlining that there is a big shift in media. There is brand journalism. Brands often sponsor content, alongside advertisements and this raises issues of disclosure, transparency and authenticity.

Jon mentioned that there is some criticism of brands who produce great content as members of an active community and then also produce sponsored content which “has a whole different vibe.”

According to SAP CMO Jonathan Becher, everyone is struggling with the question of what is our message vs. what is someone else’s message. “The lines are blurring,” he says. Everyone agrees that brand employees should be part of the conversation and interact with the community.

But should brands censor their own “promotional” messages or certain voices? Jon Reed said “we’re all being paid by someone.” And so they both agreed that employees and other evangelists should all be part of the conversation as long as they achieve this full disclosure: explain who is paying you and for what?

But then Jonathan explained that brands are always looking to achieve greater reach. To achieve that, to participate in new conversations on other communities, brands need to reach out to third-party channels.

When a brand participates on a third-party site, there should be full disclosure that you are a brand employee. And if the space is paid for, that should also be disclosed. Bottom line is that authors of content should disclose their employer and should disclose if they are getting paid to write an article.

The pair also discussed the need for brands to become like publishers and magazine editors and develop sites that “earn eyeballs” through use of thought leadership, featured content and news. These sites should set the bar high for the quality of the content. And they need to be meticulous about disclosing transparent relationships and presenting a balanced view.

Key Messages

• A strong brand will have active and socially engaged employees
• Contributors on any site should fully disclose their employer and any paid arrangements
• Companies are beginning to realize that in order to reach a larger audience, they need to think like publishers
• Leading companies are creating content destinations that provide high-valuable content to potential customers
• Disclosure is an important issue for these sites as well

The first one, 18 Stats on the Mobile Market You Need To Know, was posted earlier this week and hopefully caused you to consider your mobile strategy.

This next one is called “The Inbound Marketing Process Infographic.”

It comes from Impact Brand and Design and includes 6 steps to inbound marketing success.

It is appropriately sub-titled “Start generating more leads from your website today!” This is an excellent companion to my 7 steps to effective inbound marketing.

The 6 Steps to Inbound Marketing Success

1. Develop an effective marketing strategy. Marketing is an investment in the growth of your business, not an expense.
2. Create and maintain a powerful website. An effective website is the hub of all your online marketing and lead generation activities.
3. Generate more traffic through effective blogging, social media, SEO and paid search. By increasing the traffic to your website you increase the number of opportunities for visitors to convert into leads.
4. Convert traffic to leads. Create effective offers and calls to action that appeal to potential buyers at all stages.
5. Convert Leads into sales through effective nurturing strategies and marketing automation.
6. Measure everything! The most important measures are: Traffic to leads, Leads to customer, cost per lead and cost per customer.  But the image also provides 24 measures you should use for each inbound marketing tactic.

I hope you enjoy this latest update to the best marketing infographics…

With more than 2,400 Retweets, 650 “pins,” 200 LinkedIn shares, 47 “likes” and 45 Google+ shares and 25 comments, I was truly astonished by the amount of support and interest.

So in the next week, I will share 2 additional infographics to help inspire your efforts, to focus on your customers and to drive better results in 2012.

We know that mobile advertising is hot and I have already provided 4 steps to mobile marketing success. But if you’re still not convinced or you haven’t established your mobile strategy, then this post is for you…

The original “8 great infographics” post included a mobile marketing chart that showed the size of the mobile market compared to other channels and in context of the average person’s use of mobile technology to access information.

This one goes a little further and provides 18 facts and stats on the state of the mobile market:

• 4 billion mobile phones in use worldwide
• 27% of those are smart phones
• 75% are SMS-enabled
• By 2014 the mobile internet will over take desktop internet users
• One half of all local searches are performed on mobile devices
• Mobile tags provide more product information than traditional bar codes
• 86% of mobile internet users are using their device while watching TV
• 29% of mobile users are open to scanning a mobile tag to get a coupon
• Americans average 2.7 hours per day on their mobile device
• That’s twice the amount of time spent eating
• And that’s more than one-third of the time Americans send sleeping
• 91% of mobile internet access is for socializing vs. 79% on desktops
• Games, weather and maps/search are the largest search categories on mobile devices
• Over one-third of Facebook’s 600+ Million user base uses Facebook mobile
• 50% of Twitter’s 165 million users are accessing the site through Twitter mobile
• 200 Million+ video views happen on a mobile device
• 30% of smartphone owners access social networks from their mobile device
• Women 35-54 are the most social-mobile active

Unfortunately, many marketing plans are built with a few minor modifications to the previous year’s plans and some new buzz words added in. But an analysis of what marketing activities have really worked for many of us in the past will show that something like 80% of what we do is ineffective and does not justify the cost.

So keep the 20% – the best tactics, creative, campaigns and programs – and use the rest of your budget to drive a search-driven marketing plan…

What is a Search-driven marketing plan?

A search-driven marketing plan is the only way to ensure that your marketing activities are aligned to your audience. Through a search-driven marketing plan, you are using the words your customers use. You are using the volume of searches to prioritize their most important issues. From this you can create an audience-focused marketing plan that delivers valuable content on your customers’ hottest topics.

You can group the keywords into appropriate category clusters and analyze their importance by buying stage:

• “what” and “how” searches are generally “early-stage” searches indicating your customer’s desire to get educated on how to solve their problems.
• “who,” “”why” and “where” searches will indicate middle-stage searches when your customer’s are looking to identify the vendors that can solve their problems.
• “how much” and comparison terms like “vs.” (such as “Coke vs. Pepsi”) indicate late-stage searchers who are looking to make a decision.

What exactly is Search?

Search is simply about getting found. Earlier this week I wrote about search engine marketing and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) as one of the keys to effective inbound marketing along with social media and content strategy.

Shelly Kramer (@ShellyKramer) also wrote earlier this week a post called SEO 101: How Google Works where she provides a link and overview to Google’s Matt Cutz who attempts to white board his explanation on how Google works by 1) crawling the web, 2) indexing those pages and 3) ranking and serving up the best results to keyword searches.

Shelly also provides links to great resources like SEOmoz’s “Beginner’s Guide to SEO,” and Search Engine Land’s “Guide to SEO.”

How to get started:

1.  Help your marketing team understand that a Search-driven marketing plan is key to your success
2. Don’t forget that for most marketers, search is really hard. It does not come naturally to the traditional marketer who thinks in terms of targets, promotional messages and outbound tactics.
3. Find SEO resources to help you do the research. You should start with Google’s Keyword Idea tool to understand the important keywords for your audience, group them into clusters and prioritize the clusters based on search volume and conversion.
4. Combine this information with your social media and content strategy to create one heck of a killer inbound marketing plan.

Photo Source

The simplest definition of Inbound Marketing is to attract new customers. And you can’t do that with boring, promotional content. You can’t do it without engaging with your prospects in the earliest stages of their buying cycle, and on social channels. And you can’t do it without helpful content that isn’t properly placed on the channels your prospects are using.

The keys to inbound marketing success are search, social and great content that allow you to get found, get shared and gain the trust your prospects are looking for in a new business relationship…

How Marketers Market

The problem all starts with what I like to call “linear” thinking. As marketers, we have a product to sell. So we immediately think that the best way to sell it is to talk about it. Here’s what most of us marketers do:

1. We identify “targets” based on flat labels that don’t accurately represent our customers
2. We “position” our products vs. the competition
3. We identify key “messages” for audience segments (industries, functions, sizes of company)
4. We combine a series of promotional “tactics” like emails, webinars, events and cold calling “campaigns”
5. We get lucky and sell some stuff

The problems with this approach start with the fact that this is the biggest mistake marketers make – it is all about us. It is not aligned with the way our buyers think. And it is increasingly ineffective as prospects tune out our unwanted messages.

How Buyers Buy

Our prospects are people (not labels) who have families and bosses and stressful jobs. They don’t want to be sold to or talked at and they don’t have time for marketers who only care about themselves. Here’s what most buyers do:

1. They think about the best way to achieve their business’ objectives
2. They identify the obstacles, challenges and risks to achieving those objectives
3. They search for answers to the questions those obstacles, challenges and risks pose
4. They make decisions about the best path to help them achieve their objectives
5. Sometimes, this process leads to the purchase of a product or solution

So where our prospects are looking for answers to questions, we give them promotions they don’t want.

Inbound Marketing = Get Found

In order to deliver the answers to your buyers’ questions, you need:

• A content strategy that identifies all the content that answers your customers top questions in all the places they search for it, for all stages of the buyer journey, for all the types of buyers you serve
• You need a search strategy that effectively places that content in all the places they search for it
• You need content that is engaging enough to get shared
• You need a conversion or nurture path that maps to the buyer journey by offering the right content to the right person at the right time.

Tips To Effective Inbound Marketing

Here are just a few tips to review the above and to help get you started:

1. Stop making your content all about you.
2. Freeze your investment in outbound promotion.
3. Identify the keywords your customers use. If it isn’t a top keyword, it isn’t a customer need.
4. Create content that tells a story. Use your customers to help you.
5. Identify and cultivate relationships with your top influencers. Have them help you tell stories.
6. Test and learn what types of content gets shared.
7. Optimize your efforts to the content, channels and buyers who convert

OK, so I tried to create a little scratch doodle to visualize what I am trying to say here about the disconnect between marketers and our audience. I am a terrible artist so be nice, but please tell me if this article helps? If the picture helps? Or if you disagree?

Photo Source

And so I offer up to you that the most important words in social media are “thank you!”

They may be the most important words in, well, the history of words. But in social media, where we only see avatars and not real expressions on real human faces, they are particularly important.

I recently read Tweet Smarter Not Harder by Rachel Thompson (@RachelintheOC) and I was reminded about how simply saying “thank you” has helped me make amazing connections on the social channels where I interact with people, sometimes and often on a daily basis.

So I will explain my approach to be thankful on social media here in this post.

And whether you use Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Linkedin, Tumblr,  or any of the social tools available, remember that you are connecting with people, not avatars.  And that a little “thank you” goes along way!

What the heck does “Magnanimous” mean?

“We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.”  ~ Winston Churchill

I met Bill Lublin (@BillLublin) at a social media conference here in Philadelphia. We were on Triberr together and had the pleasure of reviewing and sharing each other’s blog posts on a regular basis.

After I thanked him for his support and told him how great it was to meet him in real life (aka #irl), he introduced me to his colleague as the most “magnanimous man in social media.”

I didn’t really know what magnanimous meant (it’s OK! Look it up…I had to.) but I guessed from his context that he meant to say that I was a nice guy or something – which is pretty cool, right?

“Hey man, thanks a lot!” I said. And didn’t think much about it for weeks. Then a few months later, I was asked by Bill Strawderman (@marketingbard) to present on personal branding to a group of volunteer bloggers and I found myself using the word. I instructed the audience to be magnanimous.

So afterwards I looked it up. It basically means “generosity but literally means “being of noble mind.” So while it maybe really hard to say (and not so easy to spell), I suggest we should all think about being noble and generous as you approach your social activity.

The Thank You Economy?

“As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.” ~ JFK

Last year, famous social media influencer and entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk (@GaryVee) wrote The Thank You Economy (not an affiliate link). In the book, Gary talks about how the internet and social has – both consumers and business buyers – given our voices back and transferred the balance of economic power to each of us.

He talks about how it is not the company with the biggest budget who will be successful in the new business climate of social interactivity, but it is the company who cares the most about their customers and makes them feel like they have a personal connection with a brand that will succeed.

I have not read the book (yet – summer reading list), and I’m not endorsing it (yet) but I totally agree with him that “businesses [that] can harness all the changes and challenges inherent in social media [can] turn them into tremendous opportunities for profit and growth.”

Thank Everyone?

From the time I first started on Twitter (on July 9th, 2009) I thanked everyone who ReTweeted me. I follow back every real human being (as far as I can tell). I answer every @ mention and I respond to any direct message that doesn’t look like SPAM or an auto-reply.

Some people might think I am “crowding the twitter stream” with useless “thank you’s”. But for me, it’s the least I can do if you take the time to share something of mine or mention me. I also try to ReTweet and @ mention and comment on blog posts to return the favor. But I always thank my ReTweeters.

My Conclusion: Saying “thank you” and being “of noble mind” is important for personal success. It is especially important for personal social media success and it may be just as important to build gratitude into your business.

Looking To Get Started On Twitter

If you’re not already a Twitter rock star, go back and read Rachel’s post (and the first part of her series) linked above or read my early post on how to get started on Twitter.

Or check out my 10 Tips for Twitter Success. I mention “being nice” but maybe I should have said “be magnanimous!”

Photo Source

I talked about how every business needs a content strategy – it is not just for large companies.

I also answer the question of whether content marketing is just another term for marketing.

Finally, I discuss how can companies get started in content marketing and also how to get past “campaign-brain” and create the mindset that puts customers first.

Here is an overview of my comments but I invite you to check out the audio recording here…

Is Content Marketing Just Another Word For Marketing?

The answer is yes and no.

Yes, content marketing is just another term for marketing because effective marketing should already seek to deliver on the needs of individual buyers at different stages of the buying cycle with helpful information and educational content.

But the fact is that when you say the word “marketing” to non-marketing business people they often think of SPAM – overly promotional messages that no one wants.

So the answer is no, content marketing is not the same as marketing today because it does not seek to blast the market with overly promotional interruptions that do not serve the customer audience.

Content Marketing exists to bridge the gap between the largely ineffective marketing that takes up the largest share of marketing budgets today and the more effective, customer-focused marketing that will be required in the future – required by our customers, by our executives and by our larger ecosystems.

Does Every Company Need A Content Strategy?

Every company needs a content strategy because content strategy addresses the problem of all the noise in the marketplace. There are way too many messages in the marketplace. And customers are simply tuning out!

Content strategy is defined as the content our audience is looking for, in all the places they are searching for it, for all the stages of the buying journey and for each buyer persona.

But with the rise of internet connectivity, mobile access and social media, content development and delivery has become affordable for even the smallest company.

Is Content Strategy Just For Large Companies?

Content marketing is not as hard as small company marketers may fear. Because of web and mobile access and the rise of social media, small companies truly can compete with larger companies. By focusing on customer-driven content, small companies can be effective at generating leads, opportunities and real revenue.

Content creation can come straight from a small company’s existing customers. Profile who they are, what challenges they faced that led them to your solution, and how they traveled the journey to a solution. Have them tell a personal story about the challenges they faced.

And stop there…create a webcast from the content featuring the customer. Write a blog post. Write a whitepaper.

These are the kind of stories that people want to listen to. And with enough of this content and a strong conversion engine on your website, any company can be effective with content marketing.

How Can Companies Get Started In Content Marketing?

1. Remove the campaign-brain mentality and start thinking about the content needs of your audience
2. Define the buyer stages, channels and personas of the people whose business you want to earn
3. Look for compelling customer stories to create effective content in multiple formats

Photo Source

I mean no one wants to call someone else’s (content) baby ugly…

This is not just about marketing. This is relevant for all business professionals who write emails, create PowerPoint slides and leave voice mails (And that’s all of us).

Inspired by Hubspot’s Inbound Marketing training, Joe Pulizzi’s CMI presentations and my own views, this training seeks to create a world where no babies are ugly – where all our content is interesting…

Is Your Baby Ugly?

Last month I wrote “Is Your Content Boring? 6 Steps To Great Content“ where I covered the Content Marketing Institute founder, Joe Pulizzi’s (@juntajoe) presentation from OMS 2012.

After posting this article on an internal website with the above title, I was asked to present my view on the 6 steps to effective content marketing to an internal group of more than 300 registrants. The group contained marketers as well as non-marketing business people.

I told them that the majority of content today is just plain awful. And the reason is because we try too hard to sell and we can’t stop talking about ourselves.

Focus On Your Audience

Effective content is emotive, educational, entertaining.  It reaches out and touches you. It makes you laugh. It puts your needs ahead of its own goals.

And we know that our customers start their search for solutions on search engines. So our goal must be to:

• Get Found (SEO)
• Get Shared (Social)
• Convert (Leads, Revenue and Happy Customers)

Become Like A Publisher

Since most of our content is so awful, most customers are simply tuning out. Our buyers and those who influence them follow a self-directed journey seeking for solutions. They are attracted to content destinations they can trust and that provide value.

This is forcing businesses (not just marketers) to think like publishers – to deliver the content our customer need, in all the places they are searching for it,  and in each stage of the buyer journey.

Content is bigger than marketing because it requires all elements of a business to meet the needs of the audiences we serve.

Get Social Now

So we all need to get involved. We need to grow our personal brand by getting active and engaged in our own way on social platforms, to blog about our passions (whatever they may be) and to allow our voice to be heard.

So check out the slides below. I hope it helps you support your team in getting all trained up in content marketing. Or share some of your inspirations or tips for effective content marketing.

The second is that  marketing can be more effective at creating value for our own business when we seek to meet the needs of our customers.

Well, almost as a rule, I try to follow my own advice and don’t use this site as a platform to promote what we are doing at SAP. But I think we have a great example launching today on how to use customers to tell our story. And how to focus on meeting their needs.

So with that request for forgiveness but hope that you find some value in the example, I invite you to read about how we’re trying to put these principles of customer focus and customer storytelling to work in our latest advertising campaign…

Run without warehouses. Run with a department of one. Run with less hardware. Run anywhere, anytime. What’s your vision for how your company can run like never before?

With the launch of our new Run Like Never Before advertising and marketing campaign, SAP is inviting people to imagine what is possible for their businesses today. The campaign is designed to show how companies are transforming with powerful business innovations – not only to run better, but to run like never before.

The “Run Like Never Before” campaign is aimed at telling the story of innovation – and how SAP’s strength across the categories of mobile, cloud, analytics, and in-memory computing is bringing the future into focus – today. Rather than using a traditional landing page with product information, the Run Like Never Before campaign links back  to the Business Innovation from SAP site to let people further explore how these innovations can enable their vision for their business.

Unlike many B2B campaigns, “Run Like Never Before” aims to connect to audiences across the world on a human level, speaking not to businesses, but to the people behind those businesses.  Our campaign is designed to create an emotional impact with imagery, music, and film techniques more typically associated with consumer advertising.

Filmed in five countries and across three continents, the campaign seeks to reflect what global business means today and saying: “whether you’re a small local business or a global corporation, SAP is ready to partner with you to help achieve amazing things for your company.”

As I said, I don’t normally talk directly about our marketing efforts at SAP. But I’ve been personally involved in the campaign as editor of the landing experience.  (See this post on creating inbound marketing destination pages for your customers.) So I invite you to check out the “Run Like Never Before” campaign on this site or through the SAP Youtube, Facebook or Twitter accounts and let me know what you think!