Koroberi Blog

N&O Photo by Robert Willett

Last week I was interviewed and photographed by the Raleigh News and Observer about the Future of the Internet, mobile devices and living a connected life. The article was to coincide with the release of a new study from the Pew Internet Project. It appeared today on the front page of the print edition (pdf) and was the lead story on the web (screenshot) this morning. I thought the article did a great job summarizing my connected life, and quotes me about the importance of putting your life online.

“People will feel a stronger connection to you in a business environment if you put yourself out there personally.”

Here’s a link to the complete article on the News and Observer website.

Last week I attended the ConvergeSouth Blogger Conference in Greensboro, North Carolina. This gathering of technology professionals, personal bloggers and business marketers had a decidedly political tone to it. Many bloggers are charged up over the upcoming election and are using Social Media to get their message out and connect with like-minded people. This is the core of Social Media, but the same principles apply to business marketing.

You start with a goal that you would like to reach, whether it is more sales, more customers, greater brand awareness, and you develop a strategy to reach it. Blogging is a tool that can help you reach your goal. It is just another form of communicating, according to keynote speaker Chris Rabb. The first blogger was Thomas Paine, whose pamphlet Common Sense advocated independence from England. Another form of proto-blogging was the use of quilt patterns to guide people through the Underground Railroad.

As the day progressed, there was lot of talk about the coming revolutions in Social Media. The biggest Social Media sites, MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn, were compared by speaker Anil Dash, to the days of the big three networks (ABC, NBC and CBS for you kids). These companies have too much control over our web experience and how people interact with their own data and information. Revolutions will occur from both the inside and the outside. Technology changes and improvements will allow people to control their information across the web. At the same time, people will demand more control, and get that control by going to other sites.

The lesson for business marketers is to understand your target audience. If you don’t give your customers what they want, they will not be your customers for long. In the early stages of a customer relationship, many things are overlooked, but as time passes, it is critical to provide exactly what customers need. If you can’t do it, your competitor is waiting in the wings.

And finally, internet superstar Robert Scoble spoke about how video can enhance the content of any web site. It is easy to get started with simple tools, but make sure you can record good audio. People will suffer through bad video if they can hear what is being said. And like with any business marketing campaign, the key is to have a plan. If you start a project without knowing where you are going, it is difficult to get there.

David Armano is the VP of Experience Design with Critical Mass in Chicago. He describes his blog, Logic+Emotion, as existing at the intersection of business + experience design—where passive consumers become active participants. His posts are also shared with the audience of Advertising Age, both in print and online. This week’s post examines the difference between starting a personal blog and embarking on a large corporate marketing campaign. He was able to take an unconventional approach to his blog that would not have been appropriate in many marketing organizations.

As an individual, my blog is one of the most effective manifestations of “marketing” I could have produced for myself. I have a respectable audience that comes back as opposed to visiting it once, never to return again. People participate through comments and the content is distributable. But imagine if I started it the same way many large organizations launch conventional marketing initiatives. What would that have looked like?

Continue reading David Armano’s post on Advertising Age

His message is clear. Sometimes marketers get so handcuffed by planning, focus groups, ROI and process that they never leave the gate, and the project never gets off the ground. He wisely states that sometimes the development of the project itself and the skills learned along the way are the ROI.

And his title is very appropriate. In these unconventional times, marketers need to look at projects in new and unconventional ways.

As the team member with the most blogging experience, and now the owner of this blog, I was asked to create a blogroll. A blogroll is a list of blogs that we think are worth reading. It should appear at the right, either above or below this post, depending when you are reading this. On my personal blog my blogroll is a list of blogs that I read, or things that I want to share. Share is the Web 2.0 term for promote, since we are all marketers at heart, and we want to let people know what captures our attention.

So once I switched into marketing mode, and this is a business marketing blog, I began asking the strategic questions about the blogroll. Who is reading this? What do they want to read? What is the benefit to us? Should we connect to other agencies? Who are the thought leaders in the B2B marketing space? And then I took a deep breath. This is only a blogroll. And it’s the web, so it can continue to change.

Rather than answer the questions in depth, I started with the blogroll from B2B magazine. This seemed like a good authoritative source. And we all want authoritative links to improve SEO, right? As I clicked through the links, some of the blogs are six or more months out of date. With the web, and the world, changing on a daily basis, I chose not to include those older blogs. I also discovered that this will be an on-going project as I discover new and relevant blogs.

I decided to start with some blog aggregators for now, like the Ad Age Power 150 and Guy Kawasaki’s Marketing.Alltop.com, part of Alltop.com, which shows all the top sites in a category, in this case, marketing. I will continue to seek out business marketing blogs, especially in the B2B space, so this roll can grow over time. Please add any suggestions to the comments below.