Koroberi Blog

As the New Year rolls around, everyone inevitably compiles the usual list of resolutions: lose weight, eat better, Tweet more often, watch TV less, etc. Here at Koroberi, we’ve compiled a short list of resolutions that we feel will bring more value to our clients in 2010. Below are my media and marketing resolutions for the New Year.

1. Don’t let clients engage in social media without them knowing why.

Too often, B2B companies see social media as simply creating a Facebook page, adding a Twitter account or uploading videos to YouTube. It’s our job to help them see the big picture. Identifying key objectives, understanding customer behavior and devising a detailed strategy are paramount to any successful marketing initiative, so why shouldn’t that apply to a social media campaign?

2. Create measurable metrics for all social media activities.

Once upon a time, social media was seen as the “immeasurable medium” that offered no identifiable metrics, therefore making it impossible to calculate ROI. Those days are history. With tightened budgets and uneasy executives making marketing decisions, creating quantifiable metrics and demonstrating ROI can make the difference between a successful social media campaign and one that never gets off the ground.

3. Move beyond email marketing.

I won’t go as far as saying that email is dead, but there is an oversaturation of email marketing in the B2B space. What was once an affordable, fairly simple form of advertising has deteriorated into a spam-ridden vehicle utilized by many and read by few. So what’s next? SMS advertising? Social search marketing? Online video sponsorship? How about a return to direct mail now that the receipt of a letter has become a rarity?

It’s that important. Go. Read. Share.

Now more than ever, I think it is safe to say that Open Source frameworks have become a necessity for our complex web development needs in these less than favorable economic times. That being said, many web developers have a hard time choosing a framework or CMS that will be able to scale to any type of challenge that we face, without having to delve into core modifications and hacks. There are great solutions for all ends of the spectrum — WordPress for the more content-oriented user versus CakePHP or Zend for the straight up programmer, but it is rare that you can find something that takes the best features of these frameworks and can wrap them all up in one package. Drupal is a framework that aims to encapsulate everything from a fully customizable, user friendly CMS to low level code access to your database ORM. Not to mention that Drupal’s massive user base can provide for you through its incredibly vast (and rapidly growing) community.

There are all sorts of meetups and conferences (including last week’s DrupalCon in Washington, DC) taking place all over the world. Any aspiring developer can simply register with the community at groups.drupal.org to take full advantage of a universe of shared code.

Dave Novelli and I, of Koroberi’s partner web development company Ashe Avenue Development, attended DrupalCampNYC 6 on Saturday, Feb 28th. In what was described as the largest turnout in the New York group’s history, we were able to help dictate the course of the day as soon as we arrived. In fact, even the New York Times was in attendance for the entire seminar. Here we could attend lectures and classes about everything from installing your first Drupal instance to managing your CDN with the Memcache module. We opted for talks on module development, mobile applications with transcoded templates, and some top level workshops on templating and block scripting.

With Drupal 6 (the most current version available now) developers have been given greater control to create and share anything from personal blog sites to massive online media architecture. With a seemingly endless pool of resource provided by a large portion of the community, it is no wonder that companies such as MTV/Viacom choose to base their major enterprise applications in Drupal.

We have established a Koroberi Twitter account to promote our brand on the web’s fast-growing social network. Follow us at @koroberi for our updates on B2B marketing, advertising, public relations, agency process and other things going in our world.

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We recently interviewed George Wright, VP of Marketing, and Kels Goodman, Video Producer, of Blendtec. They are the creators of the popular YouTube videos series, Will It Blend?, which has generated over 200 million views. They spoke to us about the inspiration for the series, the goals behind the campaign, the keys to social media, and how it relates to B2B marketing and corporate culture. They even gave a shout out to Koroberi. It is our video after all.

Watch the video here and share with your friends and colleagues. We have also posted this on YouTube so you can embed the video in your own blog if you want.

With the recent bushfires in Australia, the worst in the nation’s history, social media tools like Twitter, Facebook and Flickr has kept people informed and in touch. According to an article from the Australian newspaper, The Age, “Mainstream news outlets, battling to provide comprehensive coverage of the tragedy, have incorporated accounts published on the social networking sites extensively in their reports.”

The people on the ground had better access to the tragedy happening around them, and mobile and web tools gave them the outlets to get this information out to the rest of the world. Even the Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, used his Twitter account to talk to his 7,000 followers to provide links to emergency government assistance and ways to donate.

More and more people are tapped into these social networks, and the outpouring of content continues to grow with every major event. Tragedies feel bigger because we can put a human face on them. We read the words and we see the pictures as they happen. And acts of heroism get magnified for the same reason.

Lots of companies in the B2B space offer webinars about marketing, public relations and social media, among other topics. The purpose of these is two-fold. The first is to present useful information to participants who have signed up to learn about the topic. The second is to promote the company running the webinar. If the material is well presented and offers real insight into the topic, participants leave with a good feeling about the company. That’s a positive brand experience. But if you feel like you just wasted an hour out of your busy day, that does not reflect well on the presenting, or sponsoring, company.

I recently sat in on two webinars from two companies and had two very different experiences, mainly due to their incorporation of web conversational tools into the presentations. Based on these two examples, here is a list of five things to look for at the beginning of a webinar to determine if it is worth your time. If you are planning a webinar, keep these things in mind to provide a better experience to your customers and potential customers.

1. Provide Twitter address for questions and comments
If the webinar leaders do not announce a way to interact with the presenters during the seminar, this is a broadcast not a conversation. Twitter is the most common way to take questions during a live presentation. If you can’t ask questions, this will limit your involvement in the presentation. Sometimes presenters’ points need to be clarified, and if there’s no way to do that during the webinar, you are left shaking your head.

2. Hashtag to follow conversation on Twitter
A hashtag is a keyword or abbreviation placed anywhere in a tweet, or twitter message, that tags the message as part of a larger conversation. There may be an official hashtag for a webinar or event, or sometimes participants agree on hashtags as they go. This is one of the strongest benefits of an online presentation. Participants can connect and communicate about the topics being presented. It is also a great way to share information and knowledge that expands the presented information. By following the Twitter backchannel of a webinar, you can engage with new contacts who are also interested in the subject of the webinar. From the presenters’ side, it generates Twitter buzz as lots of people tweet the company’s name (if that’s the hashtag).

3. Contact information for presenters
Whether the webinar offers a means to ask live questions during the presentation or not, you need to be able to contact the presenters after the webinar. Questions might come up after the presentation and you will want to follow up. Again, there might have been a good point in the webinar, but if you can’t clarify the details, the point is not made.

4. Way to get presentations later
Just like you might want to contact the presenters after the webinar, you might also want to get a copy of their presentation. Slide Share is a common option for posting presentations. These presentations allow you to easily share ideas and concepts with colleagues and clients who were unable to participate in the webinar.

5. Video
And finally, more companies are using video to present their ideas. It is a much more engaging medium than audio. Sometimes it is just easier to follow a talk if you can see the speaker and watch their facial expressions. This is not a dealbreaker for a successful webinar, but as people get more comfortable with video, this will become a requirement.

Really breakthrough stuff in bringing the look and feel of Flash to the iPhone, although we all know iPhones don’t (and in the near future, won’t) support Flash. Read on…

According to a recent online survey of 400 senior marketing and media executives, two-thirds of them expect 2009 to be the year they embrace online video as an important part of their marketing strategies. Nearly three-quarters of those plan to use video to expand their brand awareness. And this trend will certainly be part of B2B marketing in the upcoming year.

Video is a more engaging medium than text on a screen, and as people become more comfortable with web video in their daily lives, this will flow through to the business arena. While there are several different approaches to generating video content for the web, companies will succeed when videos are created as part of a campaign with a clear goal in mind, and are developed within the context of the brand.

1. Develop your own videos
Cisco is a well known brand and a leader in the technology industry. As part of a product launch for the ASR 9000 router, they created a campaign around a bumbling tech reporter who is assigned to break the story of the new product. Even CEO John Chambers shows he can play along. The initial video was combined with a blog, facebook group, twitter account, youtube and a preview launch site to build awareness of the product launch. Read more about the success of the campaign and the importance of cross-promoting video content on Dianna Huff’s B2B Marcom blog.

Marketing software and service provider Hubspot created this video to explain what they can do for their clients. Again they cross-promote this, and other video content, through their blog, facebook, twitter and youtube.

2. Call for user-generated content
Software company iRise has a slew of informational corporate videos, product demos and customer testimonial videos on their website, but according to this blog post by Tom Humbarger, the company CMO wanted to host a user-generated video contest to build awareness for the company’s products and give its customers the opportunity to share their passion.

By offering a $15,000 first prize, the company generated 44 entries to the contest. This was the result of posting in over 100 online forums and groups for film and video makers. While he calls the campaign a success with over 16,000 visitors to the contest website, 57,000 page views, and more than 30,000 video views on YouTube, I would point back to the goals of the campaign. No videos were created by iRise customers, including the 3000 members of their user community, but only by creative types competing for a cash prize. And the winning entry is not even included in the video section of their web site. The announcement of the winner was on the company blog, and the contest site is still live for your perusal.

Since the creator of the contest no longer works at the company, we may never know how this user-generated contest affected the brand, but this is a good example of a B2B video contest.

3. Embrace existing user-generated content
And the final example of video marketing is to seek out and embrace video content that is being created. This example may be less relevant to B2B marketers, but people are passionate about their favorite brands and talk about them online. As video continues to be more widely used for online conversations, marketers and pr professionals need to be comfortable reaching out to video bloggers and be receptive when they reach out to them. Below is a video interview I did with Lynn Williams, Community Relations Representative of Mt Olive Pickle Company. I contacted her as a blogger interested in their New Year’s Eve event (a pickle drop) for my site NewYearsDrop.com
http://www.vimeo.com/2691396

So, in summary, video will be an important part of marketing in 2009, but like all components of a marketing campaign, it must be developed with a clear goal for success, be consistent with your brand, and be part of a larger promotional strategy. If you have other examples of B2B video, or any comments to add, please leave them below.

I sat down this morning to write about ideas for B2B marketing during the holidays. It was already a little late, but the freshness of great marketing ideas should hold up through the holidays. As the day was passing by, I realized that this would be a great chance to find other Business to Business marketing blogs and do a wrap up of what they were saying. After several searches I discovered that there is not a lot out there about marketing during the holidays, but I did find some good suggestions.

The Integrated Marcom blog suggested offering holiday gifts through emails and newsletters. These include free downloads, animated greeeting cards, or even a Starbucks gift card.

The Email Marketing Reports site ran a four-part series on holiday email marketing that dealt with planning, frequency, and tips for the days around shipping deadlines, but it is the final post that is relevant to B2B marketers whose business is not seasonal. It suggests continuing to publish newsletters on a regular schedule, even if it is just to send a holiday greeting, or a customer reward.

The Funnelholic blog takes a different approach and provides a list of gifts marketers could hope to receive in their stockings, including a lead-nurturing system, a marketing plan, and even a marketing budget. None of these are a given in our current business environment.

The Woman Partner blog offers 10 ways to cross market your products or services with an appropriate partner to expand your audience in the coming year.

And finally, Brand Flakes for Breakfast showcases a unique holiday video produced for RMI Direct Marketing. This video helps customers relate to their reps at the company by showing them at work, and has a lot of fun doing it. You may recognize the style and the tone from a hit TV show.  The company has a small promo button on their site, which links to a custom landing page (rmiextremecaroling.com) to host the video.

Happy holidays from all of us at Koroberi, and if you have any last minute shopping to do, you better get going.