Learnings, Musings, And More After The First 100 Posts

Milestones are great time to stop, look back, and reflect. With the publishing of this article, we’ve surpassed the 100 post milestone (faster than I expected). So that’s a good thing. Speaking of good things, so are you – for being a reader and willing to share your time with me and B2Bbloggers. We are extremely thankful.

From the start on Oct 28^th, 2009, the mission of B2Bbloggers has been to shape the future of B2B marketing. Our approach on the web site is to provide you a combination of original content from fellow B2B marketers and aggregated content from over 1,500 B2B marketing blogs (submit your B2B marketing blog).

Using our Twitter account – @B2Bbloggers – we are constantly tweeting links to helpful, useful articles to again make it easy for you to find the information you need to be more successful. Every tweeted article is hand picked and has to pass our filter: “Will this make the job of a B2B marketer easier?” and “Will a B2B marketer learn how to better market their company?”

Our uniqueness lies in our breadth of subject matter – our publication focuses on the whole of B2B marketing and how to integrate the new dimensions of b2b social media and content marketing. To that point, there have been great posts on Print Advertising, Tradeshow Marketing, as well as B2B Video Strategy and Marketing Analytics and Automation.

We are just getting started, we are especially appreciative to each of you that have become our loyal readers, retweeters, and advocates. We look forward to our continued relationship, and as always you are welcome to share your voice and thoughts on the future of b2b marketing by writing for B2Bbloggers. Enjoy the list, it is a summary of learnings, happenings, musings, and some favorite blogs, posts, and eBooks that I’ve discovered over the past 100 posts.

Thoughts On Blogging

1. It’s fun. And hard work.
2. If you enjoy writing, it is a lot easier (luckily I do).
3. It’s changed publishing. We are all publishers now. (You have to take the good with the bad of that statement).
4. It’s more strategic than you first think. At minimum you need goals, well conceived buyer personas, and an editorial plan.
5. The written article is truly just 50% of the job. Copy editing, proofreading, optimizing, finding/creating images, and adding it to the blog platform make up the rest.
6. Thought leadership, “share-ability”, engagement – just three of the benefits of blogging for businesss.
7. Blogging fatigue is real. Be prepared for it.
8. Did I mention fun? And Hard work?

The Guest Bloggers

Fulfilling the vision to be the online B2B marketing magazine for B2B marketers by B2B marketers.

1. Andrew Spoeth
2. Barbra Gago
3. Beth Brindle
4. Billy Mitchell
5. Chris Snell
6. Dan O’Brien
7. David Wiggs
8. Deni Kasrel
9. Elizabeth Sosnow
10. Heather Rast
11. Joan Damico
12. Ksenia Coffman
13. Mark Schaefer
14. Mike Thimmesch
15. Phil Lauterjung
16. Rachel Foster
17. Rodica Buzescu
18. Steven Parker
19. Talmadge Boyd
20. Tom Pick
21. Trey Pennington

The Interviews

I am extremely thankful for the opportunity I’ve had thus far to interview some great marketers.

1. Jeffrey Hayzlett CMO Kodak
2. Stacy Holleran SMC³ Corporate Marketing & Communications Executive
3. David Meerman Scott Best Selling Author, Speaker
4. Eric Fletcher (coming soon) CMO McGlinchey Stafford PLLC

Musings

1. Content Marketing and Inbound Marketing work. Period. In a post back in November, I asked if these terms were synonyms and the leaders of the charge Joe Pulizzi, David Meerman Scott, and Brian Halligan all weighed in. I prefer (and use) the term Content Marketing more so than Inbound Marketing for the reason that (in my view) content marketing takes into account all the channels your content can (and should) be used in to attract, nurture, and engage people.
2. To all the people who are saying, “Why do I need an iPad?” Were your parents the people asking, “Why do I need a microwave?” While you are probably right, you don’t need an iPad right now, in my view this next generation of computing devices will see 50% of us having some form of iPad, HP Slate, Microsoft Courier, or Google Tablet within the next 3-5 years (if the price comes down typical to Moore’s Law that percentage may even be higher).
3. Can someone explain to me how working with a writer to draft blog posts (i.e. Ghost Writing) is any different than having a PR agency write a press release (or any other form of marketing content)? I just don’t understand how on one hand you can preach the benefits of content marketing and then on the other hand (knowing the labor involved) say that to be successful you have to do it yourself.If you give me authenticity/transparency/trust argument, does that mean PR agencies haven’t been that way in the past when writing press releases for clients? I really just struggle with understanding the argument. A good partner will go to whatever lengths necessary to understand your business and ensure your communications are honest, transparent, and authentic. Wouldn’t they?
4. This year will not be the year the content marketing and inbound marketing “cross the chasm“. We will see big leaps forward, but the vast majority remain skeptics. For lots of reasons (generational, time, fear, risk aversion), it is just extremely difficult to get some people to consider the benefits. We’ve all heard, “Twitter, you’re kidding me right?” We have to all remind ourselves on occasion that just because we live, eat, and breathe this stuff, we are still largely ahead of the curve.That said, comfort can be found in the fact that this same phenomena was just experienced 10-15 years ago, “What’s the internet and why would I need a website?” Internet marketing crossed the chasm and so will content marketing … just not this year.
5. In less than two years, B2B marketers will wonder what they ever did without Marketing Automation software (and also be thanking the universe for not to have sort leads in spreadsheets). Here is a comprehensive list of marketing automation systems available today.
6. Google rushed Buzz out. It did them more harm than good. In hindsight it seems rather clear now that they should have followed their normal go to market strategy of: Labs, Beta, Production.

The Books I’ve Read (not affiliate links)

I love to read – it is how I learn. Here are the books I made it through in the last six months. We also started the #B2Bbookclub twitter interview series. Once weekly, but now monthly, I am in the midst of working with Bob Gilbreath (Marketing With Meaning) and Jeffrey Hayzlett (The Mirror Test) to schedule the next dates.

1. Web Content Strategy – Kristina Halvorson
2. eMarketing Strategies For The Complex Sale – Ardath Albee (#B2Bbookclub guest)
3. Trust Agents – Chris Brogran
4. Tribes – Seth Godin
5. Adland – James Othmer (#B2Bbookclub guest)
6. The BuyerSphere Project – Gord Hotchkiss (#B2Bbookclub guest)
7. Engage – Brian Solis
8. Six Pixels of Separation – Mitch Joel
9. Inbound Marketing – Brain Halligan & Dharmesh Shah
10. When Growth Stalls – Steve McKee (#B2Bbookclub guest)
11. Digital Body Language – Steve Woods (#B2Bbookclub guest)
12. The Digital Handshake – Paul Chaney (#B2Bbookclub guest)
13. The New Rules of Marketing And PR (2^nd Edition) – David Meerman Scott
14. A Whole New Mind – Daniel Pink
15. Drive – Daniel Pink (reading)
16. The Next Evolution of Marketing – Bob Gilbreath (reading)
17. The Effective Executive – Getting The Right Things Done – Peter Drucker (always reading)
18. Think and Grow Rich – Napolean Hill (always reading)

Blogs I Read Almost Every Day

1. The Future Buzz
2. Outspoken Media
3. The Conversation Agent
4. Brian Solis
5. Mark Schaefer’s {Grow}
6. Convince and Convert
7. PR² Squared

Blogs Gracious Enough To Have Me As A Contributor

1. Mark Schaefer’s {Grow}
2. Connected Marketer
3. The Social CMO
4. MLT Creative Launch B2B Ideas@Work Blog (coming soon)

My failings

1. I am not meeting my targets I set for my social media activities.
2. I have twice missed the send of the B2Bbloggers newsletter. I’ve justified this by believing that if I can not add enough value, it is better to say nothing, than waste your time.Hopefully that rings right to you.
3. I haven’t been controversial enough. I’ve had some controversial thoughts, but lacked the guts to spit ‘em out and publish them here. Let’s see if that changes in the coming months.
4. The layout of the sidebar is long overdue for the addition of categories, an archive, and popular posts. Unfortunately, it keeps getting bumped down the priority list. (At least my failing is not have a priority list, right?)

10 Most Popular Posts On B2Bbloggers.com

1. Content Marketing. Inbound Marketing. Are These Terms Synonymous?
2. The 7 Things That Will Surprise You Most About Twitter
3. Five Things Every B2B Marketer Should Know About Social Media
4. Humanize Your Marketing With Buyer Personas
5. Three B2B Marketing Trends (To Avoid)
6. The B2B Marketers Guide To A Brilliant Video Strategy
7. New B2B Marcom Tool: Conversation Calendar
8. Where In The World Does Print Advertising Fall In The 2010 B2B Marketing Mix?
9. How Are B2B Marketers Measuring Social Media?
10. Stepping Away From The Social Media B2B Hype

10 Best Posts I’ve Read This Year

1. Fear Nothing
2. The 10 Stages of Social Media Integration in Business
3. All The World’s A Stage In Marketing
4. Five Areas to Focus On for Effective SEO Copywriting
5. 25 Women That Rock Social Media
6. News flash: Social media won’t fix your content problems
7. Advice for Skeptical Execs: What To Do Amid Social Media Hype
8. Does Curated Content Drive Vendor Preference?
9. Can We Calculate “Community Equity?”
10. Content Strategy: Secret to Writing for Buyers Consideration Phase

Best eBooks

1. The Definitive Guide to Social Media (published by Marketo)
2. 2010 Content Marketing Trends and Predictions (published by Click Documents)
3. How To Build Your Inbound Marketing GamePlan(published by PR2020
4. How-to Build a Socially Armed Team eBook (published by Genius)
5. The B2B Content Marketing Workbook (my personal favorite published by Velocity Partners)

#B2Bchat

What a great idea this was by Ksenia Coffman. Just a little over a month ago, she reached out to Kent Huffman and I and suggested we start #B2Bchat. Within a couple of days, we had our first chat and right after that Andrew Spoeth joined us as a fourth moderator. Each week we post the questions and the transcripts. Join us in the coming weeks and read the transcripts of the first couple.

1. #B2Bchat: What’s Your B2B Content Strategy? [transcript]
2. #B2Bchat: B2B Marketing and Facebook [transcript]
3. #B2Bchat – Lead Scoring Best Practices [Transcript]

That’s a wrap for our 101st post. As I mentioned earlier, we are sincerely appreciative of the time you spend here, please keep coming back. I would love to hear your thoughts and ideas for future of the site, so share them in the comments and we’ll consider putting your ideas into practice. Next milestone post will be at 250. Would love to get there by the end of 2010. Wanna help us? The platform is open.  (One final thought on blogging, creating a post with 100  points takes about twice as long as you initially think.)