It wasn’t a best practice research report. It was Michael. He shared his story, his advice and his knowledge.  We learned through his experiences.

Well, this week, in my interview Eloqua’s Director of Content, Joe Chernov (@jchernov), you’ll benefit from the same thing.

We cover marketing automation, the recent consolidation in the industry, and of course, b2b social media, content marketing and ROI. I promise, you are going to like Joe. He is a smart marketer, a great person, and one of the people forging a new way of marketing to today’s digital B2B buyers.

Jeremy: Tell me a little bit about yourself, your role at Eloqua, and the size of the team that is responsible for social media, content marketing, and online communities.

Joe: I joined Eloqua in November – the same week my son was born, incidentally – in a PR and social media role.  Over time, CMO Brian Kardon and I realized that there was a broader opportunity, beyond traditional communications. So I sketched out what that role might look like, and eventually that “job description” turned into our first infographic, The Content Grid.

At Eloqua the entire company is responsible for social media.  That said, one person is most accountable for it.  I suppose that’s me.

Jeremy: As a follow up to that actually, can you explain the structure of your marketing organization?

Joe: Our marketing organization is a collection of really strong specialists – data analysts, marketing operations, demand gen, partner programs, public relations – who, conveniently, work great together.   I think these disparate skills are really coming together right now.  We just launched a campaign that fused social media distribution (free, viral content) with demand gen (gated content).  I just haven’t seen companies tear down the fence that tends to separate those two camps.  This notion of “social content … with a purpose” is what I am most excited about.

Jeremy: Tell me about Eloqua’s market position.

Joe: It’s generally accepted that Eloqua built the marketing automation industry.  It’s also generally accepted that some great competitors have come along in recent years.  Competition is raising everyone’s game.  Eloqua is pioneering a new category, dubbed Revenue Performance Management.  We see a huge opportunity for marketers to connect our tools to complementary solutions to arrive at a single view of their sales pipeline, and make more intelligent sales and marketing decisions based on a live data feed.  That’s our vision.  You are going to hear much more on this topic from us in the weeks to follow.

Jeremy: Recent weeks have brought IBM and Oracle into the playing field. How is that impacting Eloqua?

Joe: There’s a lot more focus on us now.  On everyone in the industry.  M&A is fun stuff to talk about, so a lot of the questions we get now have to do with the future of the space, consolidation, who’s next to get acquired.  That sort of thing.  Honestly though, we have this Revenue Performance Management category to establish and a major launch on the horizon, so we are focusing on our core business.

Jeremy: What is marketing automation? How would you describe it to your neighbor? i.e. a layperson

Joe: It’s a systematic way to read a prospect’s digital body language and match content and offers based on the buying signals being sent.

Jeremy: Got it, now that said, how do you keep your marketing automation from being too “automated” and impersonal?

Joe: While the process itself is automated, and much of the back-end components (like lead scoring, progressive profiling, etc.) are automated, the content itself is created and curated by real people.  We work very hard to make sure we are matching the right messages to the right prospects.  A manager in the financial services sector would receive very different content than, say, a VP for a manufacturing firm.  The challenge, of course, is that this model requires us to generate massive amounts of content.

Jeremy: ROI – What’s the ROI on an investment in marketing automation software?

Joe: Here’s the thing about marketing automation software: technology alone isn’t the full solution. To truly maximize impact, behavioral changes are often needed. Sales and marketing teams need to align – agree on lead definitions, priorities, measurement methodologies, and share goals.  That’s when ROI is maximized. The degree of alignment, the quality of content, the industry … all of these attributes affect return.  We have published a number of third-party studies that look at how all of these aspects come together to produce best-in-class results.  Your readers can find the resources here.

Jeremy: It’s really evident that Eloqua and your team understand the transition web is going through – evolving into a much more sophisticated communication network and social place. How long have you embraced B2B social media and content marketing? How does that translate into the impact on your revenue?

Joe: Eloqua has been active of the social Web for quite some time. Well before I got here, leaders like Steve Woods, Chad Horenfeldt and Mike MacFarlane were blogging, tweeting, creating LinkedIn groups.  So the channels aren’t new per se, it’s just that we’ve doubled down on the model recently.  There is so much noise out there, and it’s incredibly difficult to get noticed.  Even if you create great content – from a substance perspective – if you release it into a vacuum, what impact will it have on the business?

Our content model has two basic tenets: 1. “aestheticize” content so that it compels people to consume it, 2. don’t expect the world to come and find it on our Website. The first tenet speaks to some of the work we are doing with a-list designers JESS3, the second can be seen in our branded social media outposts, like “The Revenue Hub” on SlideShare and “The Revenue Stream” on Twitter.  They are stylistically more consistent with a digital agency than a B2B marketing automation firm, but that’s by design. We need this next generation of marketers to know that we “speak their language” too.

Jeremy: I think the number is five, correct me if I’m wrong, but Eloqua has five different blogs – a mix of corporate and individual written blogs. How did you get there?

Joe: It’s a hub-and-spoke model.  Our primary blog is called It’s All About Revenue, and that’s essentially the corporate hub. As you mention, there are several spokes, one of which is Steve’s Digital Body Language blog.  “Thought leader” has become a hackneyed term, but Steve Woods truly is one.  His blog, which we refer to internally as “DBL,” is his platform to share his expertise with the world.

Sometimes it’s better for credibility to allow an executive to have his own platform, unadulterated by a corporate brand. That’s DBL. It’s Steve’s blog, but Eloqua benefits indirectly from the glow of his credibility.  Like I said earlier, everyone in the company is responsible for social media.  I am happy to support executive blogs.  I just hope they share their perspective on the corporate blog from time to time as well.

Jeremy: How do you manage that from a brand personality and voice perspective?

Joe: When I first started here, Steve Woods gave me the single best piece of advice imaginable.  He said, “If the social media guy is the only one talking, the social media guy failed.”  A company is the people.  We have some very basic rules – don’t flame, don’t spread rumor … basic netiquette – when it comes to employees expressing their personal voice online, but I want to build highways, not roadblocks.

Jeremy: Fun and B2B. Eloqua’s definitely bringing it. From the comics, to Juan Eloqua, what’s behind that?

Joe: A lot of very funny meetings with the marketing team and CMO Brian Kardon, that’s what.  Gosh we had so many crazy ideas when it came to this promotion.  It started from a content standpoint.  That is, we asked, “How can we take something that’s perceived to be complex – like lead scoring – and make people want to read about it?”

The answer to the question was: make it short, simplify the language, and wrap it in fun.  Short and simple became the Grande Guide series, fun became the design of the Guide, the nuanced microsite and, of course, our dear friend Juan.

Jeremy: How are you measuring the success of your B2B social media and content marketing initiatives? Who is accountable for their successful or failure? What metrics are most important to you?

Joe: Every marketer in the world is asking himself these questions.  For us it depends on the campaign. The Content Grid infographic was about becoming relevant in the “marketing 2.0” conversation, the Social Media Playbook was about providing value to our community, and Juan Eloqua is about generating demand. In the end, what matters most?  Everything.  Reputation, awareness, lead generation, SEO, buzz, happy clients (through social support) … it all matters.  To measure solely by ROI is to undervalue the discipline.

Jeremy: What advice do you have for other B2B marketers who are in the process of shaping their company’s social media efforts?

Joe: Beware of the ROI trap.  Paul Dunay nailed it when he wrote, “Social media is not a campaign, it’s a commitment.”  Chasing ROI will trick you into thinking of social media in campaign terms.  That is, reducing the broader vision to isolated, serial campaigns, because it’s easier to calculate the ROI of an isolated campaign – say a Facebook contest – than it is to measure how many customers you retained by providing instant, remarkable service on Twitter.

Jeremy: If there was one myth you could dispel about B2B social media and content marketing, what would it be?

Joe: That it should be measured exclusively in ROI terms.

Jeremy: Finally, SOX playoffs? How many wins for the Pats?  Sox playoffs?

Joe: They’ve been 5 ½ back forever, and with like 30 games to go. I just don’t see it happening, not with the Yankees’ payroll and Tampa’s pitching.  Pats wins.  Tough schedule, but I am not as obsessed with the J-E-T-S as everyone else seems to be.  That said, they’re getting a little long in the tooth.  I’ll give them 10.

Jeremy: Thanks Joe.

If these interviews are teaching us anything, it’s that the people (the Joe’s, Michaels, Staceys, Jefferys, and Gords of the world), are making the difference, not b2b social media and content marketing.

Will you be one of those people?

You should be.

By nature, I am an analytical person. Growing up, I was that kid in class that was constantly raising his hand, asking more questions and wanting to understand why. I haven’t changed.

Lee Odden of TopRank (a personal favorite blog), wrote a great article this week titled, Why Do So Many Companies Suck at Social Media?

It really got me thinking. It brought back to mind a wonderful metaphor I learned over 10 years ago during Franklin Covey’s Helping Clients Succeed™ Consultative Sales Training program. It goes something like this.

In helping clients, before providing a solution, you need to discover the core of the problem. It’s typically something that is most shielded from view or not yet revealed (the core). As you peeling away each layer (by continually asking, “Why?”), you learn each of the surface issues until ultimately you are led to the deeper truth revealed at the core. The root cause of the problem.

In Lee’s article, Why Do So Many Companies Suck at Social Media?, he identified a number of the issues (layers of the onion):

• Part of the problem is that most companies are not inherently “social” to begin with.
• Marketing on the social web is less about the tradition of packaging and distributing information.
• Companies that are trying to understand how the social web can work for them are looking for specific formulas.
• Copy cat techniques don’t always prove successful, “Cisco’s attempt to leverage their take on the Old Spice campaign didn’t work so well(6,900 views).  However, Brigham Young University did a parody of the Old Spice campaign and nailed it (1.8 million views).

And Lee touched on what I see as the deeper truth (the core) in this statement, “Companies need to figure out what works best for the social channels, media and content that best resonates with their customers.”

But I think it can be said more simply.  The core of this onion is:

Most B2B companies don’t know their customers. Period.

Let’s be honest, they don’t, at least not at the level necessary to get and keep their customer’s attention and stand out. But to me, that is ok, it’s great actually. Because you can’t fix something until you first understand what the real problem is (the core).

That’s our focus at Make Good Media. Helping you through the process of intimately learning your customers and developing strategies to effectively reach them in all the channels they consume media, including the social web.

Tell me what you think. Do you agree me with me? Is that the root of the problem?

• Humanize Your Marketing With Buyer Personas
• Buyer Personas: Where (and How!) to Start

Photocredit: Genbug - Flickr Creative Commons

Common wisdom suggests that:

publishing conversational posts

engaging with your audience

cross-promoting on all the relevant social media channels

having a professional blog theme

and working with keywords and search engine optimization

will give you the best shot at success.

But at the end of the day success in the B2B sphere isn’t about conversations and engagement: it’s about sales.

Don’t Let Your Focus Wander

The “engage, start a conversation” mantra that seems to be doing the rounds at the moment might be a bit misleading from a B2B perspective. Especially when studies suggest that the overwhelming majority of visitors to a B2B blog are first timers.

If that’s the case, then to kick start your B2B blog and improve your conversion rates you need to stop thinking less about conversation and engagement for a moment, and more about:

• generating targeted traffic
• ensuring your site has awesome call-to-actions
• and easily navigated links to well-constructed squeeze pages.

Targeted Traffic

One way to go about this is arguably to spend some of that marketing budget on Google’s sponsored links. This is particularly useful if your business is targeting local traffic because it keep those wasteful (and potentially expensive!) clicks down.

The more common approach, and one I personally recommend, is search engine optimization coupled with a well thought out keyword phrase campaign. And here I don’t mean guessing what your target audience might be clicking for but really investing time and energy into working out just what the most profitable and attainable keyword phrases really are.

Once you’ve got this sorted, you can set about planning your blog schedule for the coming month around those keywords and then figuring out how to make those posts engaging and appealing to your audience.

Call-to-Actions

If, as Marketo’s study (PDF) from earlier this year suggests, that 92% of buyers use search to begin the buying process then it’s probably worthwhile to think of blogs as a storefront:

The visitor clicks through from Google (or an integrated social media campaign, say, from a link on Twitter) giving you a few moments to capture their attention and funnel them to your squeeze page.

Because the design of blogs hasn’t really developed that much from their first appearance on the scene, that means you’ve only really have the sidebar, header or post content to grab your audience’s attention.

This is where A/B testing is an imperative part of your B2B blog’s first steps towards success. It’s not just about producing great blog posts; it’s also about ensuring that your call-to-actions are seen and acted upon.

So What’s the Best Approach for B2B blog success?

Before continuing to put energy and resources into building B2B blog conversations and engagement, figure out the best way to maximise targeted traffic to your site. Spend time and resources discovering well-chosen keyword phrases and make sure your website is optimized for SEO.

Then ensure that you’ve got a process in place that assesses the conversions you’re getting from that traffic, running A/B tests over a period of time to tweak your site.

Takeaways

With targeted traffic and optimised call-to-actions all wrapped up in some great site design, finally integrated with an engaging, conversational tone of writing and a social media strategy to cross-promote your posts, you should be firmly on track to B2B blog success!

an online content marketing agency

The chat revolved around several topics like scenarios where B2B videos can go viral, the advantages between slick or raw production styles, the differences between in-house and out-sourced content, techniques and “secret” recipes, etc.

This is a summary adapted from the complete transcript and if you want to read it you can just drop by here. Here are some highlights.

When and where do we use video for B2B marketing?

@billrobbSAP : My gripe is that u can’t “create a viral video”. u create a compelling video that hopefully ur community makes viral.

@martinehunter : training, testimonials, factory tours, case studies, product demos, production schematics, should be short, concise

@fearlesscomp : I believe customer videos need to be front and center on websites

@asuthosh : when video tells a compelling story, when customers are willing to be featured. When authenticity is key

In-house development versus out-sourcing … what works best for video content?

@prdreamer : Depends on style. Slick corp. video should be outsourced to co. w/ skill set. Quick testimonials can B done in-house w/ Flip.

@chevypham : outsource for creative content, editing, production, but in-house editorial for appropriateness and relevancy.

@billymitchell1: Production value is driven by type of result desired – and budget limitations. Some of the best B2B video is very basic

Are there any secret recipes that fuel B2B video content?

@jeffery_toh: Good story telling is key! #b2bchat

@fearlesscomp: Don’t be boring. Don’t be slick. Don’t preach. Be real. Be fun. Be surprising.

@billrobbSAP: Reveal the funny, cool, juice immediately. Doing the trad buildup to punchline like in a TV ad doesn’t work.

@BrennerMichael: Sex sells!

@jeremyvictor:  Same as with any other content – connect with your buyer personas rationally, emotionally and logically

What are the tools and techniques that you use or can suggest for pre and post production?

@SpideyJo : Tools – can be as simple as using Windows Movie Maker up to Adobe Premiere. Techniques : Good planning

@billymitchell1 : Voice, personality, humor, passion, sincerity, knowledge of subject and confidence. Video camera sees all.

Where can you post your B2B videos? White label hosting … YouTube … etc. And why there?

@prdreamer: Post em where the ppl are. I say YouTube. It’s easy and free for the video hosting. #b2bchat

@fearlesscomp: TubeMogul.com is a good site that posts to all, including YouTube

@b2bento: YouTube embed in webpage – pump up the SEO

To round it all up, it was a nice session as expected. Thanks to all who participated. Join us for next week’s #B2Bchat, Thursday, July 22, at 8pm Eastern (5pm Pacific). Follow @B2B_chat for updates.

Editor’s Note: While we are on the topic of videos, why not join the discussion on whether or not to Give Old Spice (and P&G) The Credit It Deserves?

About the B2Bblogger:

Anol is one of the key contributors at B2Bento.com and has had his articles published in various media in the region.

Will the Old Spice viral video campaign sell more Old Spice? Yes or No?

Here was my response:

Of course it will. As consumers we may not realize it consciously.

But, when standing in the aisle in front of all the brands – even if you are loyal to another brand – you will see Old Spice. Don’t think for a second that this is not a coordinated retail effort.

Pay close attention to product placement in the next few weeks – Is there more end cap placements for Old Spice, more Signage, etc. What may seem like a social only event – is certainly tied to a set of specific retailing strategies at the store level. The brand owner of OLD Spice is a former Proctor and Gamble exec. More will be sold. Lots more. ·

Correction: At the time, I posted the comment, I failed to remember that OLD Spice is a Proctor and Gamble brand.  – So better said:

Remember, the brand of owner of Old Spice IS a Proctor and Gamble executive. What does P&G do? BUILD BRANDS.

An effort that started with a commercials during in the Super Bowl,

Old Spice Super Bowl Ad

is much more thought through than the blogosphere is giving Old Spice credit for. This is a well planned, coordinated, measured effort to increase revenue.

Remember, this is P&G we are talking about!

What does P&G do?

BUILD BRANDS.

There are a lot of super smart, creative, innovative and intelligent marketers in this world. Nothing that is happening with Old Spice brand right now is happening by chance. Nothing. Market share, and more importantly, MIND share is be gained every day.

I’m thinking this was dreamed up in late 2008, early 2009. Read this Fast Company article about Old Spice’s Brand Manager, Alex Keith, and you will see why.

BY: EVAN WEST May 1, 2009

In a few short months, we will see the same come true in B2B marketing. My bet is that SAP has some super things in the works. Have you seen SAP’s Facebook Friend Optimizer? I bet they have much more on the way. Watch them. Here is an interesting interview with William Robb, Director, Social Media Marketing for SAP. SAP will be a B2B brand that continues making waves in the social web.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Remember, the recession slowed everything down. The creative juices are following everywhere. I am excited for the future of B2B marketing, are you?

Editor’s Note: Please join Andrew, Ksenia and I as we welcome Anol Bhattacharya (@B2Bbento) as a new co-moderator to #B2BChat. Anol is one of the leading B2B marketers in Asia and serves as the CEO of GetIT in Singapore. We look forward to his international perspective and leadership on our moderating team. Anol takes Kent’s place who plans to be joining us frequently each Thursday, but has stepped away to focus on other exciting endeavors like, Social Media Marketing (SMM) Magazine.

Recipes for Great Viral B2B Videos

Social media is littered with countless “close encounters of the viral kind”, with most of these encounters being videos that transcend cultural barriers and achieve both cult and pop status. B2C businesses have exploited this for several years now and reaped mostly positive results.

Which leads us to ask, can B2B video achieve the same impact as their B2C counterparts? And if so, then how can we make our videos go on to become viral hits – the Old Spice man being the most recent wild success?

In this week’s #B2BChat, we will attempt to answer those questions and more. Our conversation will delve into why B2C videos go viral and how can we adapt these aspects to our B2B content.

Here are some snapshots of our topics at hand:

• When and where to use video for B2B marketing?
• The pros and cons of in-house development versus out-sourcing
• Are there any “secret recipes” that fuel successful B2B content?
• Tools and techniques for pre and post production
• Tapping the right distribution channels: answering “where” and “why”

Bring your opinions, experiences and questions for a lively discussion with other B2B marketers.

Join us for this week’s #B2Bchat on B2B Podcasting and Video, Thursday, July 22nd, at 8pm Eastern (5pm Pacific). Follow @B2B_chat for updates.

About the B2Bblogger:

Anol is one of the key contributors at B2Bento.com and has had his articles published in various media in the region.

"Really bud, you just need to be yourself."

One of the most common questions that comes up in any initial Twitter related conversation is, “how should I act on Twitter?” My advice:

1.     Be Kind

2.     Be Generous

3.     Be Thoughtful

4.     Be Open

5.     Be Caring

6.     Be Creative

7.     Be Understanding

8.     Be Attentive

9.     Be Inspiring

10. Be Candid

11. Be In A Good Mood

How else should we *be*?

A related post:

• The 7 Things That Will Surprise You Most About Twitter

Jeremy: Hi, My name is Jeremy and I’m a social network addict.

Group: Welcome, Jeremy.

Jeremy: In May of 2009, I opened an account on Twitter and shortly thereafter I found myself launching a business. The barriers to entry and costs were so low; I was just going crazy getting started up. After 13 months, I realized I was using social networking sites 43% more than I used to. I discovered how easy it was to connect with people I hadn’t talked to in years. And I was like “connecting” with them, becoming “friends” again. I know crazy, right. Even learning things like how many kids they have (and seeing pictures of them), the businesses they were starting and running.

From a business side of things, I even connected with a CMO of a major corporation via of Twitter. I interviewed him. I became part of a community of B2B marketing executives contributing to advancing the discipline of marketing. I have established thousands of online connections and hundreds of in real life meetings.

But like I said, 43% more than I used to. That was when I found you, SNA (social networkers anonymous). You helped me see the error of my ways. Now, it’s me, my newspapers, and land line. Thank you.

Group: Thanks for sharing. Keep coming back, it works if you work it.

Completely ridiculous, right?

That was the thought going through my mind this morning when I read, Steve Rubel’s Stream and his recent post, Study: 43% of Online Americans Addicted to Social Networking.

And well, frankly it just frustrated the heck out of me! I really, really struggle with the label of “Addiction” on the increased usage of social networking technology. Here’s a passage:

Experian Simmons is out with a new package of stats that document the incredible growth of social networking in the US. (Experian is an Edelman client.) Here are some of the notable highlights…

First, some 66% of online Americans use social networking sites today, up from just 20% in 2007. This has been covered a lot before. However, what’s notable is that it’s an increasingly additive activity – 43% visit multiple times each day.

source: Experian Simmons

Advancements in technology have ALWAYS improved the lives of Americans. It’s never been easier to connect with, stay up to date with, and communicate with people. It’s never been easier to meet, find, and start relationships with new people. Using social networking technology to do this is a problem? An addiction? A dependency? Because I do it multiple times a day?

As more people discover the ease of use of the social web, as broadband and wireless reach more people, as new devices, (someone released something called an iPad, no?), and as Moore’s law continues to make it more affordable, is it right to use a term like “Addiction?” Isn’t doing so going to make the end result far more likely to turn people off to it, rather then having them embrace it?

Wouldn’t it be better to focus on the greater impact the social web is having on our society – like bringing us closer together, improving our economy, helping us quickly respond in times of crisis, and bettering our position in the global marketplace.

I wonder if back in the 1930’s they were saying, “43% Americans Addicted To Driving – Going to more places, getting further away from their homes”.

What do you think? Am I off my rocker? And simply justifying my social networking addiction in my own mind? Or is it time to stop with the “Addiction” label?

B2B companies who invest in using Twitter for business marketing and use it more frequently, experience greater success and satisfaction with Twitter.

Reminds me of growing up on the Gulf Coast of southern Alabama. Back when the beach sand was white and the water crystal blue, our family would go to the beach on the weekends. We’d often go to the “still water” side where the fresh water lakes were. Dad would launch our boat, attach the ski lines, toss out the flotation devices, and splash the skis in the water to the waiting skier.

The first time I clamped the skis to my feet, gripped the ski rope, and leaned back in the water waiting for the boat engine to roar to life, I was scared to death. Any second the 185hp Evinrude motor would jump from idle to full power in just a few seconds. When it did, all of that power would flow into the ski rope and into my 11-year old body, violently yanking me to the surface.

To successfully ski, I would have to focus that energy away from what felt natural—my upper body, arms and hands, which were clinging to the ski rope for dear life—and toward what felt quite awkward—my feet. I had watched many other beginning skiers go through the same routine. They’d get in the appropriate posture, signal they were ready, the boat engine with roar, thrusting the boat forward and yanking the ski rope out of the would-be athlete’s hands.

The boat would circle around and we’d go through the process all over again. Eventually, the skier would transfer the energy, rise up out of the water, briefly. They’d look like a catapult springing to fire but never releasing its payload. Just as the catapult would smash the unlaunched projectile straight into the ground, the sudden force of the boat engine would propel the skier face-first into the water.

It’d make my story better to tell you I went through the same thing. However, because I studied other newbie skiers from the time I was six, just waiting (and begging) for my chance to ski, I was determined to get up the first time. When my chance finally came, I leaned back against the natural flow of energy and refocused it into my feet. At first it was unbelievably awkward. It was far from natural. I didn’t know if it would rip my arms out of their sockets or simply drag me through the water.

After the few eternal seconds of awkward resistance, I came up out of the water and was soon gliding effortlessly along the surface.

Many B2B companies jump into the Twitter water right away. Though they may have watched a few other firms jump in, they probably haven’t seen too many succeed. They’ll try out Twitter just long enough to have the rope jerked out of their hands—maybe they’ll experience a Twitter storm of angry customers posting negative tweets or links to embarrassing content about the company. When they quit Twitter, they’ll say, “Twitter is a waste of time,” or “Twitter just doesn’t make sense for our company.”

Those that hang in there longer maintain their grip on the rope but begin to feel the unnatural energy of social media pulling them along. The natural energy for them has always flowed out from the marketing department into a mass market. That’s the way they’ve done things for generations. It’s the way the PhD professor in grad school told them (and still tells them, sadly) the world works. (Don’t believe me? Watch any political campaign, for example. Count the number of times a candidate says, “We just need to get our message out.”) Because the friction of the water is so intense, and the movement through the water feels so unnatural, many first time skiers and Twitter newbies purposefully let go before they reach the surface.

Successful skiers hold onto the rope and keep the tremendous energy of the boat engine focused on their feet—the leading edge of contact with the water. The resistance is intense and feels like it won’t go away. I remember feeling that if my arms did stay in their sockets, then my legs would probably snap in two. Eventually all the energy and forces of nature aligned and I enjoyed the exhilarating sensation of water skiing.

BtoB’s B2B Twitter Research Report suggests companies who hold on long enough, and stay focused on giving value to recipients, not only experience greater satisfaction with Twitter, they also get new customers and make money!

If you want to be successful with Twitter for business:

• put more into it
• stay with it longer
• focus on your audience and away from yourself.

If you do, you’ll:

• get more out of it
• enjoy it more
• be more successful.

It really is just that simple.

[The learning to ski story is adapted from my upcoming book Spitball Marketing: Using what you’ve got to get more of what you want.]

His book, Spitball Marketing: Using What You’ve Got to Get More of What You Want is due out in 2010. You can read more from Trey now at his blog www.treypennington.com.

image source: Ines Hegedus-Garcia Creative Commons

Caffeine – something I use to give myself a boost quite regularly

Seem like harmless words that have nothing in the world to do with B2B social media and content marketing, right? Think again.

In recent weeks, Google completed two rather significant changes; one, Mayday, is related to how Google handles search queries and the other, Caffeine, deals with how Google indexes the web. If you are outside the world of search engines, the only Google changes you may have noticed over the past couple of weeks were either the Google Pacman doodle or the day Google choose to be like Bing.

However, Mayday and Caffeine have meaningful impacts on search results, both from a relevance and real-time perspective that in my mind further solidify the need for you to begin participating in B2B social media and content marketing.

The question is no longer, “if we should get started?” but, “when will our B2B social media and content marketing strategy be completed and ready for execution?”

Without getting technical, I’ll do my best to highlight the changes and why this is important to you as a B2B marketer, who may be either struggling with the B2B social media decision yourself, or working to gain executive buy-in for your B2B social media strategy.

MAYDAY

Think; search quality. Think; provide users a better search experience by improving results through better matching of websites with user’s search queries.

The project was completed by Google’s search quality team and is independent of Caffeine. A wee bit of technical talk – it is a change to Google’s algorithm – i.e. the code that determines the relevance and ranking of a page. It was rolled out April 28^th – May 3^rd (around May 1^st – hence the name – credit to Webmasterworld).

It’s been tested, and there is no turning back. This is a permanent change.

Here’s Google’s Matt Cutts with an explanation:

Click here to view the embedded video.

CAFFIENE

Think; search timeliness. Think; provide users a better search experience by improving results through providing the freshest, most recently published content about the user’s search query.

Source: The Official Google Blog

This project was completed in an effort to better enable Google to handle the increasing amount of content (video, images, news, blog posts, etc) that is being published every minute and make more of it available as close to possible when it is published.

An excerpt, from the June 8^th article, Our new search index: Caffeine on The Official Google Blog.

Today, we’re announcing the completion of a new web indexing system called Caffeine. Caffeine provides 50 percent fresher results for web searches than our last index, and it’s the largest collection of web content we’ve offered. Whether it’s a news story, a blog or a forum post, you can now find links to relevant content much sooner after it is published than was possible ever before.

Why it matters to you as a B2B marketer

Mayday and Caffeine is Google’s way of telling us that quality, relevant, real-time content is what matters to their users (and your buyers) and content published today is far more meaningful to their users (and your buyers) then content published months if not years ago.

Kinda makes you think about your static HTML website that was last updated a few years ago, no? Adds a bunch of weight to the need to be producing regular, ongoing content too, right?

If or When

That’s the question. I think you know my answer, what’s yours?