Janet Killen's blog

Writing good content is one thing, but does your B2B agency know how to leverage that content to your greatest benefit?  To my mind, the best purveyors of content are technically astute, full-service B2B marketing firms.  Why?  Because they typically have technically adept account service professionals and writers — and if they’ve been in business long enough, they have undoubtedly developed every type of marcom campaign.  In addition, the best agencies are not only social media savvy but they understand the need for sound

Anything you read on the subject of Content Marketing notes the marketers’ concern that there isn’t ‘enough’ to go around – not enough viable topics, not enough budget and not enough time in the day.

Ideally, thought leadership is about ideas: offering a unique point of view or an especially insightful look into a business issue. There’s a small debate in the industry however about whether or not you can achieve thought leadership in a specific market without offering any real insights.  I guess the purists would say “no,” the not-so-pure would say “yes.”

A great story is a great story — and if you develop the story for your specific audience in an educational and non-promotional way (that also helps you achieve your marketing goals), you have really great ‘content’:  Content can work for your brand on a number of different levels since it can be “sliced and diced” into various formats (written, audio, video) for any number of specific — and measurable — content marketing objectives.  

“Sometimes marketing is hard.  And I think we do it to ourselves.”  At least that’s what I thought when I saw Gartner’s definition of thought leadership marketing:

“The giving – for free or at a nominal charge – of information or advice that a client will value so as to create awareness of the outcome that a company’s product or service can deliver, in order to position and differentiate that offering and stimulate demand for it.”  

I was just about to investigate Quora (probably should have done this before now) when I saw a few comments on Twitter about the recent rollout of “Facebook Questions.” Last I heard, Questions was in beta testing, but then I forgot about it. (Should I even admit that?)  Anyway, if you’re interested in Questions but haven’t yet activated it, you can do so at www.facebook.com/questions.  And here’s what you get:

Recently a colleague expressed doubt about the relevancy of public relations in today’s marketing communications world because “PR does not produce leads.”   As evidence, he cited the fact that traditional metric for PR is typically the number of placements, or “hits,” experienced for a specific item and the number of potential impressions each “hit” represents.  “But, at the end of the day,” he says,” “there is nothing to turn over to the sales force… so what good is a hit?”

I’ve been engaged in social media for a while now and I do my best to read as much relevant material as possible on the topic – limiting myself, for the most part, to input from well-established companies and individuals for fear if being inundated with “noise.”

I admit to having been intrigued by a new service simply by virtue of its name: Unsocial.  At first I thought someone had invented a backlash app to “tone down” social media in some way, but Unsocial is actually very social: it’s what they call “LinkedIn meets Foursquare.”  It’s designed for B2B users and it enables them to meet with people that they don’t know, but whose proximity and acquaintance might be mutually beneficial.

Today, more than ever, B2B marketers must be willing to bring their message to their publics in whatever form works.  Budgets are tight, so it is essential for you to develop marketing communications plans that maximize your reach without straining your coffers.  Your plans can no longer follow the simple IMC model of branding, advertising, PR and direct/email marketing.  Yes it’s important for your tactics to be integrated to each other, but only if they are also fully integrated with and reflective of your objectives.  You have to optimize everything that you do.