Janet Lee Johnson | The Art of Marketing

Interesting post today from Steve Rubel over at Micropersuasion - it seems McKinsey has released some research about the enterprise CxO’s fear of adopting new Web 2.0 /  “Enterprise 2.0” technology in organizations.

McKinsey study author Jacques Bughin was surprised at the reaction to collaborative tools that my baby boomer counterparts - at the ALI Conference last week some of my sharp conference participants called them “aging white men” - feared most:

“The reason why blogs and wikis, in particular, aren’t well used is that companies are still afraid,” he posits. “How do you basically regulate how to contribute?” - Source: BusinessWeek

Forget about regulating how to contribute… 65% are missing the boat for funding initiatives like Enterprise RSS - which is one of the most compelling resources for knowledge workers available.

Steve made a wise observation:

“The marketing environment has changed, without a doubt. However, it has not done so enough to force everyone yet to adapt how they communicate. Over time they will. It just is going to take longer than we would all like.”

Tap… tap… tap… sigh.

Wake up! And if you’re afraid, start simply - improve your enterprise’s ability to find, gather and process information.

A workforce armed with knowledge will need much less regulation and oversight.

Michael Rudnick created a space for all of the presentations given at the ALI Social Media 2007 Summit, held last week in Chicago. I posted my pre-conference workshop (three hours on the basics of blogging) there.

Thanks so much, Michael!

There was a compelling article recently in ClickZ by Pete Blackshaw, called “Repeat After Me: We’re Still In Control!”

Smart marketers realize consumers are increasingly in control of their messages. Especially those who get their information delivered to them in RSS feeds (define).

People turn to RSS to help them filter information and make it convenient to read - news and information is delivered to their PDA’s, to their Outlook inboxes and online.

The sheer amount of information available to the common consumer is stunning. Gone are the days of simplicity in finding relevant information. (As much as I know about improving “find-ability” online, I’m guilty of making it hard for people to find smart, relevant keywords in my own posts…)

Pete’s point in the article:

Consumers have ultimate control over their attention, but we have the power to drive retention.

How? By being thoughtful and by making everything we create be relevant to both people and search engines:

• Create interesting, useful information - write well, write to the point
• Tag (categorize) your posts thoughtfully - this post will be tagged using my categories:
• RSS - really simple syndication - a technology that allows people to subscribe to your information
• Attensa (they provide RSS feed servers and readers, and they’re a customer of mine)
• Search Engine Marketing (or SEM)
• Marketing Technology (a general category that I really should break out and be more specific about)
• Use smart, relevant keywords (so when people search for your topic, they’ll find your posts)
• Finally, help people know why they might rely on you with a simple positioning statement that describes what you write about the most - mine is “the art of marketing” although I think I should refine it to be “the art and science of marketing…” (what do you think?)

Consider this: if a search engine spider can’t easily categorize what you’re writing about, how will people who subscribe to RSS feeds find you?

I’m in the Hyatt Regency Chicago on the 27th floor, getting ready to give a three-hour presentation on blogging for business for the ALI Social Media Conference.

My presentation is ready, and I’m poking around online for some last-minute inspiration. In my search, I ran across an excellent article in BusinessWeek by David Armano, called: Its the Conversation Economy, Stupid.

My sweet five year old friend Alice would tell you “stupid is not a nice word,” and I agree with her.

But I am increasingly frustrated with business leaders who are afraid to enter the world of online conversations. And in that frustration, I am likely to call the whole lot of them stupid, especially as time goes on.

How do I get around it? By continuing to teach and preach.

One of my pre-conference workshop attendees asked to learn “how to make a case for blogging inside an organization?”

I now have some extra ammunition and inspiration, thanks to David Armano, who blogs at Logic+Emotion.

I had a friend ask me about quantifying social media metrics. Here’s my answer - most specifically about blogging:

Awareness -

1) Brand awareness online can be enhanced. Marqui improved from 2000 Google results to 248,000 within two weeks of launch of our “paybloggers” promotion, and climbed to more than 600,000 results while I was there.

We achieved greater brand awareness for a 24-person software company than many larger, longer established companies.

2) Thought leadership - web sites with lots of activity and inbound links are immediately valued as having ‘more authority’ than other sites. Blogging - in particular - drives activity (fresh content) and inbound links. (If you do it well).

3) Word of Mouth (WOM) - consumers trust each other more than media, and the internet is the only medium in which trust is rising, according to Forrester. If you’re having active, transparent conversations online with customers, prospects and influencers, you can generate positive WOM - or diffuse negative WOM by being publicly and immediately responsive.

Product / Market Research -

Ask your customers and prospects to give you feedback, and (because of the simplicity commenting online) you’ll gain immediate qualitative insight into your product/market expectations.

Leads and Sales -

1) Companies have built themselves and marketed themselves entirely around a blog (Clip-N-Seal) or leveraged bloggers to get the word out about their products (Stormhoek wines, etc.) in a relatively low-cost, viral manner.

2) As a result of our “paybloggers” program, we were able to establish ourselves as thought leaders in the blogosphere + “marketing 2.0″ space, and routinely generated 1500-5000 leads / month (via whitepapers and web-based presentations) for Marqui’s sales team.

3) As mentioned above, links and fresh content improve your ‘find-ability’ online significantly. As people increasingly go online to research products before they buy (online and in brick and mortar stores) your company/products need to be coming up into the top of search engine results. A blog is a great way to augment (or spend fewer) SEM dollars - because you get twice the buzz.

Customer Satisfation

Satisfied customers are given a voice, and dissatisfied customers are also given a forum to speak - and (when handled well) companies will benefit from transparency and honestly handling potentially volatile situations - it’s like the Tylenol scare. When issues crop up, you can hit them head on, instantly, and create more goodwill by being honest and straightforward.