What Is The Future Of The Social Media Role?
Recently, I’ve been reading how “the role of the social media strategist will be changing” to become much more operational and covering more “mundane” tasks. Jeremiah Owyang from Altimeter is calling “2011: The Year of [Social] Integration” where we leave formation and organizational ideas behind. And I have already described how organizations need to integrate social media engagement into the marketing mix as well as into the DNA of our organizations.
All this got me to wondering about the future of social media marketing roles. I have friends and colleagues who I respect, admire and in some cases hired. They are fully entrenched in social media. So what does the future hold for them?
The Secret To B2B Social Media?
Today I presented on the Focus webinar titled “The Secrets to B2B Social Media Success Revealed” where I discussed how to integrate social media into your marketing mix.
The bottom line: the question is no longer “Should we?” but rather “How?” we begin to align our organization around the new/old social world. I speak about this paradox in my presentation which you can access below.
Whatever Happened To The Business Case
There is a graveyard of good ideas in the corporate world. And fields overflowing with the weeds of bad ideas grown from the seeds of false assumptions…
A couple of months ago I experimented with a blog rant on Whatever Happened To Marketing Strategy. That post is still one of my most popular. All despite the fact that I did no keyword research. I didn’t base it off a recent study. It wasn’t inspired by anything other than the main challenges of my peers across the diverse world of corporate B2B Marketing. Well this is another one of those posts…
Confessions Of A B2B Marketer
Just in case you are wondering, I am not going to start spilling crazy secrets that might put my job in jeopardy. I wish I knew all the secrets so I could transform the world of B2B Marketing forever with a tell-all book. What I do know is that B2B Marketers have a ton of options today.
But which ones are really working to drive our strategy and our business forward? In this post, I will offer a preview of the thoughts I will deliver during the Focus Interactive Summit on Progressive B2B Marketing. Here is a copy of the presentation Confessions of a B2B Marketer as well.
Internet Trends From The Web 2.0 Summit
The 7th Annual Web 2.0 Summit was held on November 15th, 16th and 17th. While I was not able to attend, I was able to view some of the amazing presentations and videos on their website. I suggest you spend the time to watch the videos of Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter’s CEO Evan Williams and also Robin Li, Chairman & CEO of Baidu.
While I enjoy hearing these pundits speak, every year I really look forward to the straight facts on Internet Trends delivered in rapid fire order by Mary Meeker, the Managing Director from Morgan Stanley. I used some of these facts from Morgan Stanley last year to argue that Mobile Is Hot and Social Media is no longer about whether to do it but how to do it. This video is only18 minutes long but below are my key takeaways. Read more
How To Focus On Your Marketing Plan
I started writing this article a month ago but became sidetracked when I realized that marketing plans were as unavoidable (and as important) as Death and Taxes. And while we all try to avoid these topics, the best way to deal with them is straight on. The best approach to dealing with uncertainty is to be prepared and to have a plan.
If you haven’t started, you’re already late. It’s that time of year for creating your marketing plan. Having crafted a few myself, I am writing this article to share my experiences and tips on what has worked and what didn’t.
Marketing, Death and Taxes
So Marketing may not be as unavoidable as death and taxes, but lately it is becoming harder and harder to escape. As a marketing professional, I am not proud of our reputation as SPAM-ers. It seems as if the lower our outbound marketing response rates get, the greater the number of emails, phone calls, pop-up ads and other interruptions we throw at our weary populace.
As a consumer, I’m fed up. I refuse to answer cold calls at work or home. I can only watch TV shows on my DVR. If I’m forced to watch live TV like the news or sports, I pause it for 20 minutes so I can fast forward through the commercials or I multi-task and catch up on email or surf the web during commercials.
Enjoy A Demand Funnel Cocktail
I was recently asked by the good folks over at Focus to participate in an exciting project and the first edition of the “Book of Funnels“. The challenge was this: put all your thoughts on the marketing and sales funnel into one page and use a picture to tell your story.
I have to admit that this project was a lot of fun. At the time, I was leading a large online demand generation program and had some thoughts about the state of the marketing and sales funnel. And I agree with Craig Rosenberg at Focus, that “every organization should make the effort to depict its revenue funnel on one page. It serves as the basis for your sales and marketing strategy.”
The New Marketing Accountability
The most popular posts on B2B Marketing Insider over the last few weeks have a common theme: accountability and The Role of B2B Marketing . You can review both How To Align Marketing With Sales and Marketing Leads: Quality Vs. Quantity for more detail on the emerging need for marketing to drive real sales and to quantify efforts.
Late last week, I responded to a post by my new friend Adam Needles, VP Marketing of Left Brain Marketing. In “Revising Our Demand Generation Definition as B2B Marketers” Adam does an excellent job of thoroughly putting a call to action out to all marketers that demand generation needs to be end-to-end. He also asks us to be accountable to results. I told him that I almost stood up and clapped. I was so excited, I thought I should recount my response here.
Integrate Social Media Into Your Marketing Mix
As a results-oriented marketer you want to only deploy your precious time and budget into marketing programs that work. At the same time, you know that social media has changed the marketing landscape: shouting to prospects with endless email offers may produce leads but you’re worried about the longer term implications to your market.
You may have heard that social media can improve not only your more traditional tactics but also allows you to engage with your prospects sooner in the buying cycle. It may even allow you to identify those influential network hubs whose recommendations can mean big referral business for you. So how do you incorporate social media into the marketing mix?
