Is B2B Content "Likeable"?

With all the discussion about Facebook's new "Like" (or "Recommend") button for the web, I thought it would be worthwhile running a small experiment to answer the following question:

Do the readers of B2B content share more on Twitter or Facebook?

I will admit that I have certain biases, and I don't think that the human brain is very well adapted to truly merging business and social relationships as I wrote previously. However, in the interest of science, I thought the experiment was worthwhile.

I have reduced the automatic "sharing" options on each post to two - one that shares on Facebook, and one that shares on Twitter. I have historically been sharing content only on Twitter, so it has a bit of an advantage, so in order to somewhat compensate for that, I have added the Facebook sharing bar to the top of the post.

I could be proven wrong, but I suspect that, when I tally the counts a month or so from now, we'll see very little activity on Facebook in comparison to Twitter.

What have you seen for B2B content? Does it become shareable on Facebook?

The Flywheel Effect

I'm back to blogging after a rather spontaneous, two-week hiatus. My wife were expecting our daughter to arrive at the end of April, but were surprised and thrilled to welcome a happy and healthy Sejal Anya Woods, to the world on April 2nd, a full four weeks early.

As I return to the world of work, now two weeks later, I realized that Sejal's surprising arrival gave me an accidental test-bed for one of the interesting aspects of social media, the fly-wheel effect. Normally, I've been very consistently active in social media, contributing two posts a week to the Digital Body Language blog, tweeting about each post, joining discussions on LinkedIn, and in general working to build awareness for the blog and its topics.

This is "pushing the flywheel" in order to get more traffic to the blog, and as everyone involved in social media knows, you push a lot before you begin to see real results in terms of awareness, traffic, and interest. After almost 18 months, I'm happy to report that the Digital Body Language blog is doing very well, but that leads to an interesting question:

What happens if you stop pushing the flywheel for a while?

Unlike typical marketing campaigns that really only generate results when they are "active", social media investments have a momentum that lasts for a long time as the articles are read, shared, discovered, searched for, and linked to.

I looked at the analysis of blog traffic for the two weeks that I was inactive, I saw an interesting result. (Eloqua users, here's how to track your own blogs this way). The chart shows blog traffic over the past few months, and you can see fairly steady numbers in terms of total, new, and existing visitors. I've eyeballed a red line at the top of the graph to give you a rough, non-scientific trend for total visitors, and a purple line for new visitors.

In the last two weeks, with no new posts, no tweets (by me), no discussions, on forums or on LinkedIn, you can see a drop in traffic - but only by a little bit. Interestingly, while the total traffic drops off by about 30%, the new visitors traffic only drops off by 10%, showing that the awareness, links, and search rankings that the blog has built up over time are just as effective at driving new visitors.

Investments in social media tend to have this "flywheel effect" where each effort gets things spinning just a little faster, but a well spinning flywheel can keep going on its own momentum for quite some time.

The Buzz about Google Buzz – 6 things relevant to B2B

Yesterday, Google announced their next major foray into social media, with the launch of Google Buzz. While the main concepts behind Buzz are very familiar with anyone who is at all familiar with social media – friends, status updates, photo sharing – the way that Google brings it all together, and their sheer weigh in the market, means that this may be quite interesting.

As a B2B marketer, what does this mean?

It’s always challenging to gaze into the proverbial crystal ball, and in a market this dynamic, many things can change, but here are 6 things worth paying close attention to as Google Buzz rolls out:

1) Shift to the Main Stream:

Historically, social media has been somewhat separate from other parts of our world. You had to deliberately set up a new social service, whether Twitter or Facebook, and then actively make it part of your daily routine. It actually took an effort (albeit small) to get involve. This meant that social media was less adopted by the business mainstream, but was mostly adopted by the writers and bloggers within a business context. Therefore, social media as a marketing strategy in B2B was often used to influence influencers, rather than connecting directly with end prospects.

Now, Google has integrated all of the elements of social media much more tightly together – your email contacts automatically are your friends/followers, Buzz updates are right next to your Inbox, and a message blurs the boundary between an email and direct message. This means that, rather quickly, a significantly higher percentage of the mainstream audience will find themselves involved – actively or passively – in social media.


2) Reducing Business/Personal Boundaries:
With this steady integration of email, status updates, photos, and friends into one realm, it continues the trend of blurring the boundaries between business and social relationships, and between work and home life. Whereas I do believe that, in many ways, our brains are hard wired to see a clear difference (hence why it would feel extremely awkward to offer to pay your mother-in-law for Thanksgiving dinner), I do see the evolution of Google Buzz as reducing those boundaries.

What this means for B2B Marketers is that your buyers will have more personal stakes on the table when they get involved with your organization. Regardless of whether you are the cheapest or best, the encroachment of business on personal space will mean that strong emotional factors will be at play. If you are not a company with whom they feel a level of trust, a personal relationship, and a pride about doing business with, you may not be selected. Intangible factors, to be sure, but personal space is more about emotional factors than rational business decisions.


3) Small Groups, Waves, and Influence:
Google appears to be adding a focus on the “small group” that is less emphasized in many current social platforms. By adding an interim step between one-to-one and one-to-world, and providing a new way for these groups to interact (and be observed) online with Google Wave, they now have a much richer ability to understand how influence manifests itself in small groups.

This shift from large influencers to many smaller influencers is a key dynamic in today’s world, and by focusing on the small groups, Google has positioned themselves to be a key part of it.


4) Location-Based Social Connections Increase in Importance:
With a tight tie to the iPhone, and its location-based features, Google Buzz has moved location-based thinking one step closer to prominence in today’s market. Buzz has many features that are tied to both where you are, and more importantly, who is near you. With a human, face-to-face relationship still being highly relevant in building trust, these location-based features may increase the importance of classic off-line events like major shows and conferences.

Rather than being about the content, events will continue to shift towards being about who is there, and how to orchestrate face-to-face meetings. Location-based social networks will be one of the most powerful contributors to this shift in the dynamic of off-line events.


5) Google Knows the Influencers:

One of the most powerful insights that Google gains is knowledge of who the actual influencers are in any given market. Seeing exactly who is followed, what topics are discussed in small groups (and with whom), and what links are clicked on in shared status updates, gives Google tremendous insights into who is interesting and relevant in any given topic area.

This understanding of influence by subject is not just a powerful data set, but as Google progresses further into real-time search, the ability to rank a result highly because a key influencer on that topic area suggested it will allow much more accurate search results. For those B2B marketers still focused exclusively on content and links as a driver of search ranking, this will be a trend to pay attention to.


6) Google Knows Your Interests:

Conversely, Google will also begin to build an understanding of each person’s interests based on their friends, the topics of their discussions, and what they share and respond to. As Google does this, they will be able to move from only being able to present relevant information when it is actively sought (via search), to presenting information that is passively sought (through general indications of interest). A “recommended” posts concept will allow Google to continually tune these algorithms.

This is a powerful transformation for B2B marketers, as many of the ideas and concepts we need to communicate and have buyers discover are not always actively sought. Being able to present a message to someone who displays certain indicators of intent, but may not have explicitly searched, is a powerful arrow in the B2B marketer’s quiver.



How Google Buzz truly ends up effecting us as B2B marketers is obviously determined by many factors. However, Google is clearly a major player in the market for finding and discovering information, and as they make a major new foray into social media with Buzz, these six trends are well worth watching.

What do you think? What will your organization be watching for as Google Buzz rolls out?

We ALL Use Twitter - Short Term Memory, Long Term Memory, and the Consciousness of the Internet

We all use Twitter. So do all our prospects and customers.

I made that argument to our CFO and CEO the other day and was met with a rousing chorus of guffaws and comments about teenagers and people with too much time on their hands.

But it turns out, that is the critical importance of Twitter, we are all users, just not in the way you might think.

First, let’s look at how Twitter is used by those who use it directly. To be honest, the main users (in my limited sampling) seem to be lots of journalists, PR people, Twitteratti, and bloggers. Ideas are discussed and commented on, links are shared and re-tweeted, and relationships are built. Anything that is more than a day old is extremely outdated news on Twitter.

Twitter functions, in many ways, as the short term memory of the Internet.

However, what happens on Twitter does not stay on Twitter. A significant segment of the audience on Twitter is in the segment that Nielson identifies as the heaviest content contributors. Based on their 90/9/1 rule, only 1% of the audience are heavy content contributors, responsible for around 90% of the content.
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/participation_inequality.html

This contribution of content is not limited to Twitter, much of it is contributions of content on blogs, journals, and discussions. The relationships, links, topics, and opinions that were formed and shared on Twitter are written down in longer form and discussed on these blogs and other online sites, which remain relevant for many months, or even years in some cases.

Blogs, and similar forums, form the long term memory of the Internet, and due to Participation Inequality, much of the input to this long
term memory comes from the short term memory of Twitter.

Then, as any of us involved in SEO are familiar with, Google indexes and ranks all of this content, pushing to the top the ideas and discussions that are most popular with, and linked by, the rest of the audience. This is where the vast majority of internet users interact with Twitter; through their Google search box. They are not aware that behind the scenes, the ideas shared on Twitter, and blogged about by the 1% who are active content contributors have formed a major factor in the selection of results they see, but it is nonetheless critical.

Google, as the consciousness of the Internet, indexes the long term memory, and ranks results based on their popularity in that forum. This is where the largest audience becomes exposed to those ideas.

If, as execs, we discount Twitter as unimportant because its direct users are not our peers, or our prospects, we are missing the point. We are all users of Twitter, either directly or indirectly, and if our marketing strategies discount that fact we do so at our own peril.

Kadient: Blogging About Internal Processes Connects With Buyers

Transparency is a great approach to marketing, even when you might think that the internal workings of your organization might not be of any interest to your audience. Heather Stokes and Heather Margolis at Kadient found this out when leading bloggers took note of their internal efforts to develop user personas. The personas were being used to best focus their development efforts for their Sales Enablement products, but the effort Kadient had put in to understand their users (including life sized cardboard cutouts of Anya and Luke, two of the personas) won them recognition, awareness, and credibility with potential buyers in the social media sphere of influence.

The effort resulted in traffic to the Kadient site and an increase in credibility for their products and company. As with many investments of this nature though, it can be hard to measure the economic return. What are your thoughts as B2B marketers? Are these "inner-workings" efforts worth doing? Have you measured them successfully?

Here's the case study from Digital Body Language:

Kadient: Blogging About Internal Processes Connects With Buyers

Kadient’s move into Software as a Service (SaaS) brought with it a fundamental shift in their marketing to connect more deeply with their buyer and user audience. A company-wide effort to develop and use buyer and user personas sparked numerous discussions on exactly how “Luke” or “Anya”, and several other personas, would use the product in his or her daily life, and how it should be built, marketed, and sold in order to best connect with him or her.

As they focused more on connecting with their buyers, Kadient fleshed out the personalities with increasing detail. Hobbies, personality traits, and even cardboard cutouts were created to provide insights into Anya and Luke. When a development or marketing meeting was held to discuss the market, the discussion would always focus around their buyer and user personas.

This effort was then noticed by David Meerman Scott, an influential industry blogger and writer, who highlighted Kadient’s efforts in his online forum. Although the main topic of the writing was the use of buyer and user personas, Kadient was identified as a leader in their field. Anya and Luke were highlighted in detail, allowing any reader of the blog to identify with their goals and challenges.

Two other industry bloggers, Charles Brown and Scott Sehlhorst of Tyner Blain, quickly picked up the story, and added their own commentary, further establishing Kadient as a company intently focused on the success of their customers. A Google blog search for Kadient shows these blogs highlighted at the top of the results, adding credibility to any buyer considering Kadient’s solutions. The combined traffic of these blogs was estimated at more than 20,000 regular viewers.

A 37% spike in web traffic to the Kadient site corresponding to this discussion on the blogs highlighted to the Kadient marketing team the importance to their prospective buyers of a company dedicated to continual understanding of the buyers’ needs. Although this was not an effort that generated direct sales leads, the value it provided in awareness and credibility was tremendous, and the cost was essentially zero.

Decorative Cakes and Social Media Policy

I just happened upon a friend of mine's blog. She does incredibly ornate, customized cakes for special occasions. Fun stuff like Mini Coopers, McDonald's Happy Meals, cowboy hats, etc.

The thing that got me thinking though was that her blog was there, live, with great content that's relevant to those interested in customized cakes - tips for cake decorators, tips for lighting and air conditioning in venues where cakes are on display, etc. And I know for a fact that she does not have dedicated web team creating content.

So why is it that getting into social media is so difficult for many companies. Most B2B marketers are in a similar situation to Juanita Koo at Sweet Things; they have a niche product with associated content that is unique or interesting to their target audience. The next steps should be simple; create content, get it out there, and stimulate excitement and interest in the audience.

That effort seems to stumble in mid sized or larger companies more times than not. I'm not convinced that it is a lack of enthusiasm or passion either, as every company has a few folks of the right personality to want to be the passionate advocate for your space.

More often than not, overly heavy guidance on policy, brand use, messaging, content, and topics, stifles the creativity of the content creators and convinces them to expend their creative energy in other places.

Luckily, we've seen recent leadership by Intel and Cisco among others, with some great examples of social media policies. Minimal rules, just guardrails. No approvals, just training. If you're considering diving into social media, or thinking about marketing "getting involved" with existing bloggers at your company, read these policy statements first.

Intel's social media guidelines: http://www.intel.com/sites/sitewide/en_US/social-media.htm

Cisco's social media guidelines (a bit tougher, but still fairly open): http://blogs.cisco.com/news/comments/ciscos_internet_postings_policy/

It's a bit more than the official policy though. Culture has a lot to do with it, and if people are worried about needing executive blessing for every piece of content, it will have the same stifling effect, regardless of the official policy. Make sure your team is able to create content with the same level of enthusiasm as Juanita Koo does for her cake decorating blog and you'll be set up for success. And of course, if you're in Toronto and in need of a custom cake... http://sweetthings-toronto.blogspot.com/