Well it’s official, this year’s Online Marketing Summit (OMS) has officially wrapped up in San Diego. I had a chance to meet a lot of fellow marketers and learn from some of the industry’s best. And now I’m back at the office with a pile of notes, hand full of business cards, and a head full of ideas. Congratulations to Aaron Kahlow and his team for putting together an inspiring event!
How do you communicate the essence of a conference like this? Was there a single buzz word? I thought it would be interesting to capture the #OMS09 Twitter chatter and plug it into one of my favorite tools, Wordle.
Michael Stelzner is one of the leading authorities on the topic of writing and marketing white papers. He has written more than 130 white papers for many of the world’s most recognized companies, including Microsoft, Dow Jones, FedEx, Motorola, Monster, Hewlett-Packard and SAP.
In this 17 minute interview, you’ll hear me ask Michael about white paper promotion from a b2b marketing perspective, including:
What prompted the book Writing White Papers?
Which promotional channels work best for white papers?
What is the life span of a white paper?
Should companies charge for white papers?
What about white paper registration forms?
What options are out there for white paper syndication?
Where is white paper publishing and promotion headed?
Michael is also the author of the bestselling book, Writing White Papers: How to Capture Readers and Keep Them Engaged. His work is used as required reading at major universities such as MIT and Johns Hopkins. You can find him on Twitter at @mike_stelzner.
You’ve got to hand it to LinkedIn, the professional network which keeps on growing and improving. LinkedIn’s company directory, which is still in beta, has individual company pages so well optimized for SEO that they often come up number one in Google for a fitting search. For the sales manager quickly wanting to qualify a lead, all they have to do is use the query <company name> company size. When Google lists the LinkedIn page result, the description automatically includes the company’s industry, type (public/private), company size, age, and website. Now that’s convenient!
I wanted to share this recent Guy Kawasaki interview conducted by Robert Scoble (@scobleizer, FastCompany.tv). In it, Guy tells us the story behind his latest book, Reality Check.
I recently had a chance to catch up with Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer at MarketingProfs. Ann has developed a successful online presence for MarketingProfs on popular social networking site, Twitter (see twitter.com/marketingprofs). In the interview, she shares her thoughts and personal experiences on Twitter as it relates to her role as a B2B marketer and promoter of the MarketingProfs brand.
In my daily online travels, there will be the occasional site, blog post, or tweet which will fall out of the ordinary, which is worth “re-marking”. Marketing Finger Finds is a way for me to share some of them with you. Here are four of the more interesting things that have crossed my path in the last couple of days.
I start with Chris Hebert, who writes a “blog about marketing and social media that matters in the B2B space.” He has recently posted brief but insightful video clips with the likes of Tom Peters and Seth Godin in a category which he calls ’90 second views’
My second find is actually an old post by Chris Brogan titled “50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business.” Even though it is from August of this year, which seems like an eternity in my short Twitter life, his points are just as relevant today.
This week I did a bit of research for a client on b2b landing page conversion rate benchmarks. Even though we work with a lot of B2B clients at Enquiro, I wanted to see what the rest of the industry has to say. And although an absolutely clear answer is impossible, as conversion rates will depend on so many factors, I think marketers will find Fireclick’s Index interesting. It has real time average conversion rate data fed from its index of sites. You’ll also find conversion rates segmented into categories like electronics, specialty and fashion and apparel. It’s interesting to see how conversion rates vary by day of the week, and holidays.
The fourth find of the week belongs to another analytics related site. Quantcast is a new media measurement service that enables advertisers to view audience reports for sites. To give you an example of what Quantcast can deliver, take a look at their audience profile for twitter.com. The Twitter information includes traffic data, demographic profiles and audience lifestyles. So as a Twitter user, I supposedly have an affinity for politics… ok, technology… check, and science & technology… check.
“By tactics, I mean specific things you can do to engage people, to build community and identity, to create connections and participation. Online or offline,” says Godin.
To add to the 218 page slide deck on Seth Godin’s new book Tribes which I posted nearly a month ago, here is the video where Seth presents the thinking behind new latest book. The event took place in front of an invited audience in New York on October 21, 2008. The presentation is nearly two hours long, but well worth the time.
Greetings! I'm Andrew Spoeth, and here you'll find a mix-match of gems on B2B marketing, social media, PR and technology. My day job has me working with the marketing team at Marketo, one of the hottest SaaS companies in Silicon Valley. You'll also occasionally find me speaking at industry events, and co-moderating a weekly chat on Twitter for marketers called #B2Bchat.
