Author: Dave J.

Snips from my Twitter stream while at the #BMA09 conference last Thursday (edited for blog-reading clarity):

• Does Linked-In benefit companies like mine? No. Me personally? Could.
• @Thor_Harris Linked-In … Maybe for local sales reps, I’ll consider that.
• I wonder … Industrial marketing = business marketing?
• For B2B Experience Economy, I think we have to target the “real-real” place.
• Google presentation: search usage much more pervasive … web content has to be efficient, then let face-to-face work efficiently.
• Sessions at #bma09 feel like a twitter stream about social media.
• @lrh actually most people in the room have ‘company blogs’, but not many admitted they suck.
• The web-presence session undersold the message from Getty Images about adding visual content. How do we look authentic?
• @amylillard Outlaw marketing! Management lesson most actionable so far today!
• Social-community session scares me about the top-down use of blogging. It’s about numbers- users, posts, $$. Ugh.
• @jaymce Will social media “automation” just pollute? Each site/media has a different context.
• @b2bcommunicate glad my vibe came thru. At #bma09 authenticity repeatedly came up. Johnny Cash is certainly a great example! (cues iTunes.)

What’s it all mean? Well that’s part of the fun of Twitter. Big hint in bold above. Hopefully I can discuss here at length later this week.

This was my first event using Twitter. It was fun to see what others thought or observed, and gave a reason to meet people in person. Beats whispering to the person sitting next to you.

(More Twitter and actual session summaries are posted by the BMA.)

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

For any readers out there going to the BMA Conference in Chicago this week who’d like to meet-up with me:

• I’ll be at the awards banquet Wednesday night.
• My panel discussion starts at 11am Thursday.
• I’ll be attending the BizBash event Thursday night.
• I’ll tape a B2Blog logo on my attendee badge.

I’ll be using Twitter @b2btw to post anything worthwhile, or to communicate with attendees. Drop me a line if you’ll be there, or when you are there.

My last business-blog example before heading off to BMA Conference in Chicago this week.

A likely excuse for not blogging about your business may be ‘my product is too boring. Who wants to read a blog about it?’

Actually I probably fall into that camp. And it’s probably a poor excuse.

Well, in the rather boring-sounding market of material handling (conveyors, warehouse racks), QC Industries has been blogging along rather well. With a mix of product info, company news, and application discussions, their blog strikes a good balance of readability for the folks who are interested.

I think what makes it work is that you get a sense that there is a human, and company insider, posting on the blog—Chris Thompson and Chris Round are the guys. And his activity commenting on blogs like mine, and posting regularly at Twitter (@QCIndustries) gets that vibe across, as well.

Here’s a sample post talking about an upcoming show, ATX East – NY “Excited and nervous”:

“I asked Albert Sabbah, Group Sales Manager for Canon Communications, for his thoughts. “Excited and nervous” were his two quick words of choice. “Since the show is wide spread through many industries from medical to automation to green, really many of the companies are having good years.” Albert was quick to show the numbers as well and they are up and down, depending on the show. I quickly summarized and noticed medical (MD&M), packaging (EastPack), and automation (ATX) are good; plastics industry, questionable.”

The net result is a sense of scope, direction, and activity at QC Industries. And that this is a brand with an authentic voice.

While I don’t expect their blog has a ton of followers, I do think that prospects involved in considering their QC can look at their blog, and get a sense of the brand. While many smaller B2B companies struggle to communicate their brand at all, or just throw money at ads and PR hoping it helps, I think a blog like this shows an alternate way of building a brand efficiently and effectively.

It doesn’t have to be hard, just a willingness to communicate.

I saw someone last week on Twitter complaining that getting their new site listed on DMOZ was taking forever.

Um, DMOZ was slow to list, and basically useless, ten years ago. Except for a little link-love, I don’t see the point.

Now here is something useful: From a post at Bumblebee Marketing’s “Notes from the Hive”: Protect and Promote

“Well, for safety reasons go to the Google local business add page and make doubly sure that your business is listed and if it is, start the claim process. If it is not listed, start the claim process! It is easy and fast and if you are a single practitioner of yoga or a multi-million dollar tech firm, you should still take this step. And if you have multiple locations, don’t stop at your headquarters, do this for each and every location.”

Doesn’t matter if you are a ‘local’ business or not. People are going to Google you, or Google-Map you to get basic contact info, ala Yellow Pages.

As a consumer, I just used this data-feature today on my iPod Touch to find out the hours of a local appliance-parts dealer via Google Maps. Slick!

I claimed & updated my company’s listing, uploaded a picture of our building, a link to my YouTube video, and added our office hours. I need to go back and figure out what to do about two other listings for our company that are erroneous–if I link those, will they go away, or can I fix them? (They call your main phone number and give you a PIN number to confirm ownership, so warn your receptionist.)

As Mardy says to end that post: “So stop whatever it is that you are doing, spend 5 minutes and protect and promote yourself. This is a critical step in securing your Google listing and promoting your company and web site search engine ranking improvements.”

Yellow Pages finally dead? Discuss amongst yourselves.

Here’s my second question to Gary Slack about the BMA Conference (PDF brochure)

B2Blog:
What’s the scoop about BMA’s theme of UNlearning? The conference’s banner shows a voltmeter at zero, does this mean we have to wipe out everything we know? What are we supposed to be relearning?

Gary Slack:
Dave, the entire conference is going to be one hell of a discussion on these questions, with many opinions to be shared.

Ralph Oliva, executive director of the Institute for the Study of Business Markets, our profession’s “think tank” or “research department,” will kick off the conference with 30 minutes of scene-setting remarks on certain things he believes b-to-b marketers have learned and take to the bank, some things we may need to relearn and some things he feels we need to unlearn.

I don’t want to steal Ralph’s thunder (nor could I copy his thunderous voice), but I will offer up one thing I personally think b-to-b marketers may need to relearn—and that is the importance of investing in early-stage marketplace familiarity with your company, brand, and products and services.

That’s the message, of course, of McGraw-Hill’s classic “Man-in-the-Chair ad (click for jpeg), created in 1958, where the gruff buyer responds to a hapless (and unseen) sales person by saying in so many words, “I don’t know who in the hell you or your company area.”

This message is important to relearn, as, in my opinion, we’re in an era in which way too many marketers (or the c-level execs they report to) think they can go from no or low awareness to a sale in just a few touches or sometimes even one, only to see their demand generation efforts under-perform or fail miserably trying to do the impossible.

With McGraw-Hill’s permission, we’re actually going to bring the “Man in the Chair” to life on stage during Ralph’s kickoff remarks on Wednesday, June 10. Without letting the entire cat out of the bag, don’t be surprised if there isn’t a second, modern-day but equally gruff buyer who might just say something (again to a hapless sales person) about how he Googled the sales person and his company in advance.

Sounds like the kick-in-the-pants us marketers, isolated from the day-to-day struggle of our salespeople, need. I submit my behind for some sorely needed kicking. 🙂

Well, based on their ad campaign for the conference, It looks like brains are what is going to get zapped. I’m a little less sure about being UNlearned, now!

What do you think? Are we too focused on the low-hanging, response-driven leads, and giving up on that early nurturing Gary thinks we need to tend to?

Rick Short (who will be joining me to talk about blogging at the upcoming BMA conference) asks Are magazines dead?

Maybe not dead yet, but if you read my last post, some trade publications are in a scary place. While they still hold a unique position as a content delivery system, their revenue model is broken. Rick tackles this problem:

“So, let’s rattle the traditional model. The question for advertisers, clients, and media to each ask themselves is, ‘Is what I’m purveying valuable enough to my target audience to get them to pay for it?’ And the very same question (altered slightly) should be asked of our target audience. ‘What content are you willing to purchase?’ After all, shouldn’t the party that derives value do (some of) the paying???”

Not just a good read, an important blog post to ponder. We’re left with two problems:

• Publications need to crank up the value of their content.
• Subscribers need to be willing to pay for the value of the content.

Go read Are magazines dead?

… you can tell the page count is down.

I received an automotive engineering trade publication today with a stapled binding. I’ve seen this during other recessions, and that means ads, and content, are cut back.

As I flipped thru it, I started noticing how articles were on facing pages. Hmmm. Now fully aware, I noticed the only ads were by supporting groups. I got to the back of the magazine, and the advertiser’s list showed just six companies. SIX.

(Four of those were cover/premium positions, meaning only two ads in the actual meat of the publication.)

That’s almost as scary as taking a drive thru the city of Flint, here in Michigan.

Okay, I’m going to be a part of a panel discussion about B2B blogging at next month’s national BMA event. So I had a couple burning questions to ask the man who invited me, Gary Slack, to find out his ideas and expectations.

Here’s the cream-puff question and answer. The much meatier one I’ll post next.

B2Blog:
I’m happy the event isn’t rolling blogging in with a ‘’social media’’ session. Do you see blogging as a different medium? Or is the hype of of social media something B2B folks aren’t interested in?

Gary Slack:
I don’t know if blogging is or isn’t a different medium or even a “medium” (I’ll leave that question to experts like you, your fellow panelist Rick Short and session moderator Bob Pearson), but I do believe and know this: blogging is an important and big enough topic to b-to-b marketers to warrant its own breakout session at the national BMA conference.

I’m sure blogging will come up in a number of other sessions, including the one being led by Bill Furlong about building b-to-b online communities and the one being led by Robin Fray Carey on business uses of social media. But we needed one session just on blogging alone. And, with Bob Pearson, former vice president of communities and conversations at Dell and now president of The Blog Council, leading your session along with Rick Short, yourself, and Obama America blogger Kevin Flynn as panelists, I know we’ll do the subject justice!

Hopefully we can dispel some of the myths about blogging that will come up during the event, and talk about reality.