Blogs & Beyond: Digital Marketing Workshop Highlights

Here are some highlights from The IT Services Marketing Association’s (ITSMA) recent “Blogs & Beyond” digital marketing workshop, held at Babson College. I had the pleasure to be a speaker along with Rob Leavitt, ITSMA’s vice president of marketing and member community; Paul Dunay, director of global financial services marketing for BearingPoint; Siobhan Dullea, vice president of community consulting for Communispace, and Cinny Little of the Digital Influence Group.

Workshop participants said their greatest digital marketing challenges are:

• Understanding the optimal mix of digital tactics to accomplish goals

• Reallocation of budgets: what traditional marketing approaches should be cut to fund digital marketing approaches

• Overcoming pushback from legal, particularly around online communities and blogging

• Figuring out how to measure new approaches

Listening to the digital conversation (Lois Kelly, Foghound)

If marketing is a conversation, half of the work is listening to customers and what’s being talked about in the market. Listening is as important – maybe more so – than talking (blogging, podcasts, etc.)

The value of listening to the digital conversation:

• Making customers feel heard, key to building trust and relationships

• Boarder understanding of relevant issues, players

• Early warning on new ideas, concerns, competitors

• Deeper insight into emerging influencers

• Better tracking of “real conversations.

The three levels of active listening to be successful in the “marketing as a conversation” world:

• Recognition: recognize the person’s view. Practically, this means providing easy ways for customers to share ideas or even complain.

• Acknowledgement: acknowledging what a person feels or thinks. Providing a personalized, relevant response shows that your company hears and appreciates the idea.

• Endorsement: accepting another person’s thoughts or point of view as valid and legitimate: this is where real dialogue kicks in.

Tools for passively listening to the marketing conversation, helping us to see where we can add to the conversation or glean insights.

• Technorati: see who is blogging about a topic or a company; view by “authority of blogger, by language, how recent

• Del.icio.us: easy way to see most saved Web page links on a topic, highlighting influence, value

• Blogpulse: free way to analyst trends and monitor a conversation string among bloggers

• Google Trends: see search volume on a topic comparing it to news volume. Also get search volume by article

• Flickr: shows photos tagged by keywords, photos associated with your company name; hints at sentiment, metaphors

• Touchgraph mapping: shows relationships among and between topics or companies and what issues are closely connected

• Netrocity: Situational Awareness Mapping tool identifies conversation volume and relationship between topics and d companies

• Consumer generated media analysis services: thorough way to identify and track online consumers, opinion leaders, key issues, trends, competitive threats and opportunities. Leading service providers include Nielsen/Buzz Metrics, Cymfony, Biz 360, and Umbria.

Microsites and Podcasts (Paul Dunay, BearingPoint)

Why microsites are useful:

• Isolates content you want to showcase to a particular audience

• Don’t have to crawl though your website to find content

• Direct traffic there using a Vanity URL (ex:www.bearingpoint.com/risk)

• Easy to direct search engines there (using keyword or SEO)

How microsites fit into marketing mix

• Promotion of thought leadership

• Interactive self-assessment

• New product launches

• Resource centers

Tips on using microsites

• Don’t clutter up the page

• Use a strong call to action

• You don’t have to go it alone – use a media partner

• Aim for highly-interactive content

• Decide on what actions you want to track before hand

• Optimize microsites for search engines

Tips on podcasting

• No shovelware

• No direct selling

• Transparency is the key

• Formats: multiple article format, blog-like rant, radio show with guest interviews

• Use strong call to action

• Commit to a series – you can’t “eat” just one podcast

• Frequency: weekly

• Keep it short: 5 to 7 minutes

• Copywrite the title carefully

• Costs: $0-$1,000 – quality varies

Private Online Communities (Siobhan Dullea, Communispace)

What Customers Do in Online Communities

• Talk about competitors

• Brainstorm ideas for revamping customer website

• React to marketing campaigns

• Give advice (solicited and unsolicited) about positioning

• Chat about work challenges and suggest how the sponsoring company could address unmet needs

• Give testimonials

• Review white paper drafts and give feedback

• Generate hypotheses that serve as basis for other research

Private online community best practices

• Narrow the focus

• Invite the right people

• View members as advisors

• Work at building the community

• Be genuine, encourage candor

• Just plain ask

• Pay more attention to what members initiate

• Don’t squelch the negative

• Don’t ask too much too often

• Use the right mix of methodologies and technologies

Blogs (Lois Kelly, Foghound)

Blog marketing strategies

• Gather market intelligence

• Comment on the conversation

• Sponsor the conversation

• Start your own conversation

• Manage crises and misperceptions

Commenting on blogs and responding to TalkBacks

• Be genuine and real

• Someone from company vs. agency

• Acknowledge, respect others’ views

• Share facts and ideas that contribute to conversations vs. just opinions or rants

Publishing your own blog

• Who is it for?

• Theme? Do the posts add up to a grater whole? Connect to your business?

• Your points of view, advice, expertise, personality, “humanness”

• Commitment and skill: ideas, writing, responding thoughtfully to comments

• Use a linking strategy

• Add visuals to help convey views

• Use RSS syndication, tag your posts,

• Measure and learn

• Frequency doesn’t rule; quality does

Organizational Challenges (Lois Kelly, Foghound)

Common organizational obstacles and tips for overcoming

• Fraidy cat syndrome: use data to show why digital channels are popular, valuable to your audiences; show data and studies on the value of allowing and correctly responding to negative comments; show how you can convey points of view and advice that are not material to company; make friends with legal to create a plan on what can and can’t be talked about.

• Oops, we forget the communications experts: Write to be said vs. read; learn broadcast-like interviewing skills; be prescriptive vs. descriptive; ideas should be valuable and interesting to the audience; be causal and conversational.

• How do you measure?: Some ideas:

• Track and show value of consumer insights from online market listening (to product development, customer communications, sales intelligence and communications, positioning, etc.)

• Use awareness measures for digital

• Viral marketing effect: use data to demonstrate speed efficiency

• Search engine lift: show stats on how company brands, are more “findable”

• Session quality: use increases in content viewed

• Opt-in activity: track online registrations, requests for information

Ideas for getting started organizationally

• Make passive and active listening someone’s job

• Earn customer and prospect trust by giving away valuable advice

• Start with an internal blog by an influential exec to show pent up interest and value of blogging

• Start with tactics that fit your corporate culture. Podcasts better for “talking” cultures, blogs for cultures where written communications rule, communities for CRM-focused companies

• Change your style: conversational communications based on providing value to others in language of people vs. pushing one-way messages. Use throughout ALL communications, digital and traditional

digital marketing lessons Blogs and Beyond conference Web 2.0 techniques