Janet Lee Johnson | The Art of Marketing

I had a cup of tea today with a marketing colleague who was new to Portland. We found we had much in common, especially when discussing shared interests in social media, new marketing paradigms and the growing intersection between the IT and marketing departments.

These are two departments with many common goals, dependencies and business alignments and (at the same time) few common languages.

I am lucky enough to be able to bridge the two worlds - knowing just enough about IT to be dangerous, but able to find (or fake) my way around with willing compatriots. It’s like going to Paris and making an attempt at speaking French - trying will get you a long way…

Hence, I try to use this forum to speak to both worlds about trends marketers should be aware of AND be able to speak to, and marketing needs the IT department can fill.

Here’s my latest flog at the state of information overload, which is only getting worse (but at the same time it can be so much better through the use of smart tools). I hope the marketers and IT guys are ‘getting’ this. Share this with your favorite “other department” compatriot - you’ll be doing both of you a favor…

Managing and Measuring Attention Across the Enterprise

As any regular reader knows, I’m a big fan of RSS, a protocol web sites use to deliver information to you when it appears. (It’s that good old fashioned notion of having a magazine delivered to your home, vs. going out and searching through the newsstands for the latest issue.)

The problem with RSS?

While it gives you great access to information, RSS dramatically increases the amount of information presented to you (depending on your search parameters) and in itself contributes to information overload. (When I fire up my Attensa feed reader I generally can have more than 700 articles waiting for me. Full disclosure: Attensa is a client of mine; and a tool I use daily for online news, research, monitoring client mentions and competitive information.)

Just like I am, enterprise 2.0 knowledge workers are beginning to understand the value of RSS; and are bringing their personal readers (which are all free, by the way) into their work environment. Suddenly, there are desktops with ALL SORTS of little RSS applications running.

Suddenly, There’s a Problem for IT

It drives IT’s support and service costs through the roof when unapproved, (sometimes poorly written) applications start interacting and mucking with other apps, network services, etc. That’s a bad thing.

The good news? There are enterprise-class, managed RSS systems available now that are not only secure, scalable and reliable (which speaks to our friends in IT); they track a wealth of information that’s invaluable to the business (which speaks to our friends in marketing).

Imagine the possibilities of this kind of understanding within your organization:

• As users interact with information, their behaviors provide clues as to what is important to them, and what is not important.
• Attensa can monitor these behaviors and create a smart profile of each user’s attention.
• These individual profiles drive intelligent filters / views that each user can use to consume relevant information.

As a result, I can focus my attention on information that matters - and not have to wade through the 700 pieces of information it makes possible.

It’s like my iPhone figuring out how I type, and fixing my fat thumb mistakes for me.

It’s amazing to me that a tool can ‘watch’ hundreds of factors and learn reading behaviors and content preferences as readers interact with information. For an entire enterprise full of users, it will watch:

• Which subscriptions are read most frequently?
• How many articles are being read, given the number available?
• How long does each user spend reading an article, given its length?
• Is the information being forwarded to others?
• Is it being tagged or republished?
• Or, is being ignored completely or deleted instantly?

Then, individual reading behaviors are matched to content cues in the articles themselves including:

• Content keywords
• Authors that are read frequently
• Search terms being tracked

As user behaviors change, the “attention analytics” will evolve with them. I am training my RSS reader to prioritize my information for me, and serve it to me in a unique, personal manner. Smart.

Better yet, though, when you add the Feed Server™ , individual profiles are aggregated across workgroups, product teams, even the entire enterprise; delivering rich reporting and analytics that drive a collaborative, more intelligent understanding of how knowledge spreads across the enterprise.

This is waaay more powerful than web analytics. This is attention analytics. Now we’re getting closer to getting inside the heads of our employees; being able to watch what grabs their attention, what keeps it, and what isn’t cutting it. As a marketer, if I could have that insight, I’d be tuned to that channel. Perhaps that’s why RSS is coming soon to televisions…

And for knowledge workers, suddenly the glut of information they’re facing is more manageable - because it’s served up based on their individual preferences.

I had a burst of organizational energy yesterday, and went through two boxes of work stuff I’ve hoarded over the past few years. I recycled the majority of the paper, and (miraculously and fairly virtuously) filed a bunch of information away - including a new “blog it” folder. What a great start to the New Year!

I had saved a copy of a Forrester Trends report published in March of 2007 called “Interactive Marketing Channels to Watch In 2007″ which noted (- JJ: my summary of each point called out):

“Experimentation Still Makes Marketers Skittish”

• Email and search still dominate the mix. - JJ: 97% use email marketing , 91% search marketing…
• Online advertising takes second place. - JJ: 75% place online advertising with little behavioral targeting (38%)…
• Social media is the biggest up-and-comer. - JJ: RSS pilots grew from 10% in 2006 to 40% in early 2007; blog pilots grew from 13% in 2006 to 34% in early 2007…
• Mobile and game marketing still get no love. - JJ: 13% marketers tried mobile text messages, 11% created wireless application protocol (WAP) sites. 24% tried ‘advergames’, 10% in-game placements, and 7% experimented in virtual worlds like Second Life…
• Marketer budgets demonstrate marketer reluctance. - JJ: marketers relied on traditional budget dollars redirected from print, TV and direct mail to fund the emerging channels - email and search marketing budgets were kept intact…

Forrester’s recommendation in March were to:

“Adopt Advanced Targeting, RSS and Blogs Now”

• Start behavioral and contextual targeting immediately. - JJ: buy online ads from TACODA (behavioral ad network) or 24/7 Real Media or BlueLithium (generalist ad networks who integrate contextual / behavioral targeting into regular / geographical buys).
• Make your first strides into social media with RSS and blogs. - JJ: RSS is recommended as a ’simple first step for marketers… initial RSS feeds can consist of repurposed email content.’ Further, RSS content can be used as initial blog posts.

I hope Forrester will reproduce the research this year to see how far marketers have moved.

My predictions?

Mobile will be the top priority for B2C marketers. Blogs will be second for B2C, third for B2B. RSS deployment will be the top priority for B2B marketers, third for B2C.

Why?

Mobile: Interactive marketers for B2C companies would have to be asleep at the switch not to realize what a force smartphones have become. And testing is relatively inexpensive and immediate. Over the holiday break I found a great new resource for mobile marketing tips and hints, Kim Dushinsky’s Mobile Marketing Profits.

RSS: B2B marketers should be clamoring for this additional channel to be added to their marketing suite. Engage your IT resources to download a virtual RSS server (a 1-5 user server license is free from Attensa) and test it. You’ll gain competitive insights, productivity, and a new channel of distribution (Forrester’s point) that’s better than a “double 0pt-in” engagement in email marketing.

Blogs: This one continues to amaze me in terms of business’ adoption rates being so dismal. In four years of blogging for business, I’ve found the blogosphere to be a rich, engaging, self-cleansing and increasingly civilized place to exchange opinions and information with customers, prospects, vendors and competitors. The technology is cheap, the advantages are many, and the time you spend blogging can be the most personally fulfilling time you spend as a marketer.

I’ll report back in a few months to see whether my crystal ball is any better than others’ when it comes to predicting marketers’ behaviors.

If not, hello TACODA. I could really use some behavioral targeting help.

Here’s a glimpse inside how British Telecom has adopted enterprise 2.0 technologies like blogging, wikis, enterprise RSS and podcasts to power their intranet and engage their knowledge workers. Fascinating case study, and well worth scrolling through the slides. Thanks for sharing, Richard Dennison.

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I’ve been thinking and talking a lot about seamless connectivity lately - and so have other, way more influential people in the IT space, thank goodness. From a CIO’s perspective, I should think that seamless connectivity for their users should be key. Knowledgeworkers shouldn’t have to suffer from partial solutions or difficult integrations from their vendors or IT department.

Apparently, there’s a conversation bubbling up about Microsoft’s Feedsync announcement earlier this month. It astounded Mike Gotta, and I’m glad. Mike’s an analyst with the Burton Group, and I believe he has influence as well as obvious insight - at least, I hope so. In his Dec. 6 post, Mike said:

“Microsoft has not articulated any coherent vision on feeds in general so my initial reaction is that this announcement strikes me as somewhat of a “one off”.”

James Dellow, another smart, enthusiastic enterprise 2.0 blogger I follow over at ChiefTech riffed:

“is it also a failure in the enterprise IT camp itself for failing to recognise why this important piece of messaging and computing architecture is so important? i.e. if they don’t ask for, they won’t build it”

I couldn’t agree more with both fellows. I only hope they have more pull with the CIOs in the world. I sometimes get frustrated that I approach the IT equation from a relative position of powerlessness. I’m a user. A marketer who relies on IT for my information. I know the business benefits of an interlinked, powerful IT organization. And I know the power of a secure, robust, enterprise RSS system - because of my relationship with Attensa, not Microsoft. Go figure.

I just hope the ears and eyes of CIOs are open and listening to James and Mike. I am a firm believer that customer requests are what drive business decisions.

It must be hard to be customers of Microsoft sometimes.

I love the end of a year/beginning of a New Year. It always gives me the opportunity to look back over the past 360+ days and note what I’ve loved, and what I want to do differently in my life. I’m starting to think about that now - and here’s what I’ve loved from a work perspective. (Don’t worry, you’re not missing out on much, those who really know me understand I put most of my energy these days into work.)

1. Yoga. As a business tool, a healthy body is essential. As a bonus, somehow twisting, stretching and standing on your head a few times a week really helps your thinking. I discovered yoga as I watched my sweetie blossom by practicing, and now I’m hooked. It has truly given me more energy, more creativity and more perspective.
2. Apple. With my Mac and iPhone, I have complete connectivity and control over my schedule where ever I am during a day. Critical for a consultant, I had no idea how hard I had to work at my Blackberry to get it to work halfway (fine for email, poor at everything else). I was an Apple Business Development Manager in the late 80’s; and was sucked back into the Wintel platform once I got into the Internet startup/telecom world. The iPhone hoopla was lost on me when it came out. It took a stint at a client, Chockstone, who used Macs prolifically around the office, to get me back to the Mac. And the commercials are hilarious.
3. USB Drives. In conjunction with my iPhone, I’m able to be a self-contained unit wherever I go as long as I have my files on my thumb drive. And for someone who has schlepped her laptop around the country, there’s nothing that feels more free than tucking a drive into my purse and walking, hands-free, to the train into a client.
4. RSS. I write about RSS a ton, and have a client, Attensa, who’s developed the most secure enterprise RSS platform available. But as a small consultancy, I’ve found RSS to be an integral tool to keeping up with client coverage, watching trends, and reacting quickly to competitive announcements, etc. News and information comes to me. I’m pretty lazy - so having something with a much greater reach and awareness watch for me is a kick.
5. iGoogle. Having an iGoogle account this year saved my bacon many times. My workaround for getting to my calendar anytime, anywhere (except from my Blackberry - where it was one-way communication only) was Google calendar. It was brilliant - sending alerts and reminders to me (on my Blackberry) of meetings and locations. I was able to log on from any client or Starbucks, and get a full view of my day/week/month. And the Docs and Spreadsheets were fantastic for capturing client meeting notes and sharing information collaboratively with teams of people. I used them regularly for one client, OpenMake, who has people all over the country who need to collaborate and capture information.
6. Smartbrief. Okay, so here’s a bonus - since I wonder how many people will really give me credit for the Yoga tool - I love Smartbriefs. They’re daily compilations of news about a whole bunch of subjects. I subscribe to the IAB Smartbrief to keep up with news about online marketing trends and such. When I worked for Chockstone, they served the restaurant industry - so I found a NRA Smartbrief that served up information about restaurant trends. The quality of the content is excellent, and Smartbriefs are free.