One of my goals this year was to do a study on reputation management. As we all factor in the effects of new media on our brands, I felt this was a topic with long-lasting appeal to every marketer.

My hypothesis going into the creation of these questions was that B2B marketers (including yours truly) just aren’t adequately prepared for an online reputation crisis. Dell wasn’t, Wal-Mart wasn’t. If those big B2C brands weren’t ready, I was betting we weren’t ready either. And I was right!

To be totally transparent with you, I wasn’t surprised by many of the responses to my survey. The bulk of you are monitoring your reputation in some way, shape or form. But are you poised to respond in the case of an online reputation crisis? 55% admitted you weren’t.

Perhaps you need stronger guidelines in place, like a blogging policy. Two-thirds of respondents don’t have one!

Many of you are do-it-yourselfers when it comes to monitoring your reputation. Is that perhaps because your company hasn’t made this a strategic priority? 53% admitted it wasn’t a strategic priority for you – yet!

My goal here is to give you the state of the union when it comes to monitoring reputations online. This data is bound to change, so I hope I get you thinking of ways to close the gap with your organization’s reputation!

Click here to download the free research report

Special thanks to my sponsors – Trackur.com, run by the renowned Andy Beal of the blog MarketingPilgrim.com, and Marketing Profs’ equally renowned Ann Handley for their support on this survey.

B2B marketers with highly complex products and services have been given a gift in the last few years in the form of Social Media.

In my opinion, Social Media doesn’t easily equate to Lead Generation for the complex sale. For example a prospect reading a blog entry doesn’t mean they want to buy anything, but it does mean they have engaged with your brand. In fact the stats show that certain forms of Social Media even out perform more traditional ones when it comes to awareness and recall. For example, unaided awareness from podcasts were 68%, compared with 21% for streaming video and 10% for television. Now that’s great recall!

B2B marketers need to set aside collecting metrics like page views, clicks, conversion rates and start nurturing individual leads by using the gift of social media they were given. Social Media is great for consideration so why not use it that way? Don’t measure your teams on page views generated from a campaign. Measure them on how engaged they can get your leads with your content and turn them into sales.

Sales generated from your lead nurturing program are the only real measure of engagement with your campaigns!

Classically marketers have always been protective of their content locking them up in PDFs and then putting a registration page in front of them. This behavior is known to have a 1 in 10 (10%) download rate which isn’t bad by marketing standards but on the flip side that means there is a 90% leakage rate!

Studies have shown that a NON protected PDF will get as high as a 20X greater download rate. But then how can you capture registration information?

Peter Nieforth’s company, Vitrium Systems, has created a web-based tool called docmetrics. Their solution moves away from external registrations forms to forms that are embedded directly inside the PDF - this allows marketers to collect reader data while they are engaged in the content and share the content with their colleagues. In addition to the data on who is reading the content, docmetrics provides data on when the document was opened, how many pages were read, and how much time was spent on each page.

To hear more about this exciting new technology with my interview of Peter right on the show floor at the MarketingProfs B2B Forum! WARNING: this was recorded on the show floor so it is a little loud (sorry) because there was quite a crowd in his booth!
About Peter

Peter Nieforth is the Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder at Vitrium Systems Inc. Nieforth founded Vitrium Systems together with Narayan Sainaney, Blair Adamson and Alfred Dorey bringing together a core group to crystallize and commercialize the ideas and research of Sainaney. Nieforth specializes in financing, organizing and commercializing promising start-ups, most recently acting as Director of Investment for The Loreto Bay Company (LBC), where he worked on raising a total of 18 million US dollars for the world’s largest sustainable resort community, which is currently being built by LBC in the Mexican Baja. Nieforth has also served as an investment specialist for BMO Bank of Montreal, as Financial Advisor for Yorkton Securities Inc. and as Financial Consultant with Merrill Lynch Canada Inc.

Nieforth studied Political Science at Acadia University, and graduated from Mount Saint Agnes Academy in Hamilton, Bermuda.

 

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It should come as no surprise that the online gaming market is exploding. In fact, last year online gaming attracted 28 percent of the total worldwide online population — almost 217 million people!

For a long time gamers were thought of as young guys with glasses and zits playing for 14 hours a day but all that has changed. The market has been embraced much more by women and the age range has expanded from 7 to 107.

Opportunities for product placement as well as experiential branded games are close at hand for us as marketers. Now that games are becoming so prevalent, we’re beginning to see specialized ad networks focused on in-game advertising as an untapped channel. Microsoft and Google have already made acquisitions in the space and start-ups are chomping at the bit.

So to get a better understanding of the gaming space, I had the opportunity to interview Roman Nouzareth the President and CEO of Café.com. Roman is no stranger to online gaming, having successfully founded Boonty, Inc., a leading digital distributor of casual and hardcore games, and ushered in the try-before-you-buy downloadable business model. This time around, his business is focused on entirely new revenue streams – advertising and micro-transactions, or virtual items you buy and use in and around the games. He has a unique perspective on where the online gaming trend is heading.

About Roman

Roman is one of the founders of Boonty.com, the worldwide leader in the digital distribution of video games. Boonty offers Internet portals, ISPs, mobile phone operators, advertisers and PC manufacturers a complete solution that combines all areas of expertise needed for a generic video game digital distribution offering, the negotiation and selection of content from publishers, the design and management of a complete e-commerce and downloading platform, online marketing know-how, and a leading role in managing websites’ Games component. Casual and hardcore gamers can thus access a catalogue of over 1500 PC and mobile games for an optimal gaming and purchasing experience.

After successfully being in charge of sales strategy, marketing, and publisher relations in Europe and Asia, Roman is now responsible for the North American market. From Manhattan, Roman also took the Product Management lead for the company in order to design and release the new social gaming site cafe.com. Roman was also a Jury member at the famous advertising Cannes Lion Festival in 2000 and a speaker in various events like CES in Las Vegas. He holds a Law Degree from the University of Paris II Assas and is an investor in several start-ups.

 

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One of my most trusted friends and mentors recently joined a very intriguing company called – SuccessFactors (stock symbol SFSF). They specialize in HR software with a SaaS product that is second to none in the market.

From a marketing and social media perspective several things about this company got my attention and my envy as a marketer.

First was the clear communications from the top down. The CEO Lars Dalgaard uses email to the entire company much like an internal blog at all hours of the day reporting back on things like successful client meetings and other interesting findings. Best of all it creates an open dialog with the entire company and builds an internal sense of community and esprit d’ corp.

Next was the sheer amount of new client wins that are coming out of this company. I monitor their RSS feed and every time I turn around they are pumping out press releases with another new client name in it. Kudos to the communications department and the sales team for making that happen!

But what really got my attention was how they unleashed their own internal community on rating and ranking each of the Presidential Candidates by 10 different competencies and published it on their public website. This is a fabulous example of demonstrating your product and its possibilities by connecting it to something that everyone is interested in.

So when last I checked here was the tally…

1. Budgets/Cost Controls – Vote McCain
2. Communication – Vote Obama
3. Decision Making/Judgement – Vote Obama
4. Dependability – Vote Obama
5. Global Perspective – Vote McCain
6. Integrity/Ethics – Vote Obama
7. Listening Skills – Vote Obama
8. Leadership – Vote Obama
9. Managing Conflict – Vote Obama
10. Planning – Vote Obama

Overall Winner - Obama

Sorry Hillary but I guess you already knew that!

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 “really” like. Instead, the researchers found that users’ personalities were much better understood if they posted things on their profile like their most embarrassing or proudest moment, or their spirituality.

What can marketers learn from this study?

To me, I think it says a lot about a brand! If a brand posts very light information on a Facebook company page, has few conversations in the blogosphere, and isn’t really engaging, I expect the researchers would say the same about the brand – people don’t know what it’s “really” like.

But if the brand is creating interesting content, commenting in the blogosphere, reacting to postings with senior leaders, and maybe even having a misstep or two online, in my eyes it makes the brand real. Now I’m not saying to let it all hang out and anything goes online. But if you can tend toward letting go of your defenses and creating some controversy, perhaps you will be much better understood.

Many marketing teams are being asked by senior leaders in their organizations why they aren’t using the same cutting edge tactics as some of their competitors. When is it right to use cutting edge tactics? When is it right to use traditional tactics? When and how should you integrate the two?

To answer these questions, I interviewed Michael Mace of Rubicon Consulting. He runs a Web Marketing Boot Camp to help marketing teams come together, discuss these issues, and learn what Web marketing tactics link best to their corporate strategy.

Here is a taste of what Michael covers and what he thinks the future looks like for Web marketers.

About Michael

Michael is a principal at Rubicon Consulting, where they help tech companies solve tough strategy and marketing problems. Michael is a former Chief Competitive Officer and VP of Product Planning at Palm, VP of Strategic Marketing at PalmSource, and director of Mac Platform Marketing at Apple. He also has served in many other roles. For more info on him please visit his website.

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Personality Not Included – a podcast with Rohit Bhargava

What if you placed a call to GM and the CEO answered the phone?

You would think perhaps this company is too small to suit my needs. This is why the bigger a company gets the more faceless they become because they layer on infrastructure to foster a certain perception.

But new media changes that paradigm and enables every brand to have a voice. From the smallest of firms to the largest and from the most obscure products to the most complex services. This is something every brand manager in every company should be working on right now – opening up your brand to be more conversational!

Which is exactly why Rohit Bhargava wrote his new book entitled Personality not Included. It’s not just another book about social media – it’s a book about how to regain a brand personality.

I had a chance to catch up with Rohit and discuss questions I had after reading the book. I hope you enjoy my interview with him as much as I did.

About Rohit

Rohit is a founding member of the pioneering 360 Digital Influence team at Ogilvy, a leading agency, in helping clients navigate the social media universe. He publishes the Influential Marketing blog, ranked among the top 50 marketing blogs in the world, and is often featured as an expert in media including The Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, and Fast Company.

Rohit is also the author of the newly released book, Personality Not Included, published internationally by McGraw-Hill. A guide for companies on how authenticity is the new standard that brands need live up to in the social media era, the book has received significant early praise and features a forward by bestselling author and entrepreneur, Guy Kawasaki.

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Right now, your customers are writing about your products on blogs and reediting your commercials on YouTube. They’re defining you on Wikipedia and ganging up on you on social networking sites like Facebook. These are all elements of a social phenomenon — the groundswell — that has created a permanent, long-lasting shift in the way the world works.

Most companies see the groundswell as a threat. But you can see it as an opportunity!

That’s the reason that Charlene Li and her Forrester Research colleague Josh Bernoff wrote their new, appropriately named book Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies.

In the book, they describe the strategies and stages every company needs to go through to listen to, talk to, energize and embrace the groundswell. I had a chance to catch up with Charlene to get some answers to questions that came to me as I read the book and compared my social strategy with their recommendations. So I hope you enjoy this podcast …

About Charlene

Charlene is one of the leading voices in the area of Social Computing and Web 2.0 through her work over the past nine years with the respected technology and market research company Forrester Research. She is one of Forrester’s most quoted analysts. An accomplished and frequently requested public speaker, she often appears at industry events and delivered the keynote speech at Forrester’s Consumer Forum in 2007.

Charlene analyzes how companies can use technologies — like blogs, social networks, RSS, tagging, and widgets — to meet business objectives. She started her own analyst blog in 2004 and is regularly cited as America’s most influential analyst blogger. She shares her blog with Josh Bernoff.

Previously, Charlene led the marketing and media research team at Forrester and ran its San Francisco office. She has also been publisher of interactive media for Community Newspaper Company, a group of newspapers in Massachusetts, and served on the board of directors for the Newspaper Association of America’s New Media Federation. Charlene has managed new-product development for the San Jose Mercury News and has also been a strategy consultant for Monitor Company. She holds an M.B.A from Harvard Business School.

Charlene lives in San Mateo, Calif., with her husband and two children, all of whom are happy, engaged members of the groundswell.

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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 communications channel.

But these days you hear a lot of discussions about the explosion of new media types and formats like RSS feeds, blogs, podcasts, video, communities, micro-blogging and other emerging forms of social media. And it is causing plenty of concern that this disruption of media is eroding the traditional command and control branding that has become such common place for marketers.

Well, I say hallelujah and good riddance!

I believe that there is a very compelling argument that media doesn’t have to be fragmented while at the same time the message need not be command and control anymore. It is only a matter of knowing how to orchestrate it.

One of the first instances of this to hit the marketplace was Ogivly & Mather’s Dove “The Campaign for Real Beauty” (ok yes it is B2C but sometimes we marketers can take inspiration from our B2C brethren) Which won the 2006 Grand EFFIE Award and for good reason, They did a great job finding a powerful attribute of their brand and made a very inviting campaign around it that engaged their key audiences into a conversation. Evidence this by the nearly 3000 blog entries about it on Tecnhorati, the 2,000,000 viewers of their video on YouTube and you will see that they got the blogosphere humming about an ad campaign. Now I am not professing you drop everything and just do some clever video with your ad campaign, I do applaud the use of video to make their campaign more viral. What can we learn from this as technology marketers? Take a look at my next example.

Now compare this to the “Greg the Architect” campaign from TIBCO. Here is a B2B example that took a very different approach to making their technology funny, and engaging. What they have done is told the TIBCO story through a series of episodic vignettes and allows the viral component to kick in. Viewers are bound to have an opinion on these videos and so is the blogosphere. Also they have given the audience something to react to for better or worse rather than say “we do SOA better than the next guy”. Also don’t forget about the reaction internally to these videos and how that helps give everyone in the organization a conversation starter for the next meeting.

So why is this good news for technology companies? Because for the first time ever, technology companies specifically in B2B can lead the way using technology tools to get their message out to the masses for very little money. Just one tactic like using a video on YouTube can reach 325,000 viewers and engage them with your brand but more importantly with a message that they have sought out. But how to you take something so tactical like a video and make it part of an overall approach to your brand?

Here is the secret.

First, the brand manager needs to architect a single theme that can be used across all media traditional or otherwise. Notice here I didn’t say command and control at all – just to create a theme that is broad enough to use across every aspect of your media plan and “invite” customers and prospects to “engage” with it.

Next, you need to give your customers and prospects the digital tools to comment, to interact, and to add to the conversation. Then you add in more traditional elements of a media plan that all point to the online conversation and you will end up supercharging your media plan!

The bottom line for technology firms is your customers and prospects are perhaps the most savvy engaged technology users of any buyer in any industry. You can’t expect to reach them with traditional media only any more, you need to deliver your message in a way that is targeted to their exact interests. So why not get out there where they talking about your product or service, and give them a conversation starter along with the permission to start a dialog with your brand!