Spread The Word, This Is The Way To Do It!

April 22, 2011

content michael kane ceekue b2b marketing

Michael's E-book

I may sometimes sound like an old man whining all the time about businesses hiding their content or asking all kind of questions before they give you access to their whitepapers and e-books. But I am really not that old and I just feel that today’s marketing should be about giving and not about receiving.

Therefore I was quite surprised and happy today to find Michael T. Kane’s e-book Gaining Mindshare with the Analysts. Not only because of the quality of this e-book, but especially because of the note on the first page of Michael’s e-book.

On the first page Michael says, “Please feel free to post this e-book on your blog and email it to whomever you believe would benefit from reading it.”

So let me help Micahel a bit and spread the word for him.

Download Michael T. Kane’s e-book here: GAINING MINDSHARE WITH THE ANALYSTS.

There are no forms or whatsoever. You can download the e-book right away.

Marketing

Off course Michael’s e-book is marketing. He is telling you (technology firms) about the importance of connecting with analysts. His #10 advise is to Find An Experienced Guide and this guide may well be Michael himself because he is the CEO of AxisAR, an analyst relations and media relations consulting firm.

There is nothing wrong with that.

Special 

What is special about this, is that Michael understands how it works. He is giving you his e-book without first asking you to fill in a form and send him your name, email address and all the other information a lot of companies ask for before you get anything. 

Michael understands that if you want to spread your message you must make it as easy as possible for people to get your message and at the same time encourage them to forward it. He also understands that if you – after reading his e-book - think you are in need of assistance connecting with analysts, you will know how to contact him.

And above all Michael understands that forms and asking questions are barriers between his potential customers and his business.

Therefore let us all help Michael spreading his message;  Tweet or link to this post (and at the same time help me a little bit too).

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Cut The Crap And Try To Act Like A Human Being

April 21, 2011

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Don't Lock Away Your Content

Chris Rand published a great post on Business Marketing Online about  automatically inserted legal jargon at the end of emails. You probably know them. Three, four or sometimes even more lines of text telling you what you are allowed to do and what not.

Chris is right; you cannot impose a contractual obligation on somebody if you haven’t negotiated it. So the legal crap that some companies add to their standard email layout is useless.

And it is not only useless, it is also contra productive because it can intimidate or annoy your customers and it makes you look like a business. While today you should try everything you can to make your company look as human as possible.

Paranoid

A lot of businesses – especially in the B2B sphere (?) – are still overly protective. It looks like they are afraid and sometimes even paranoid.

And it is not only the legal crap in emails. I also quite often hear people saying things like ‘don’t publish that information, competition may use it against us’ or ‘you can publish that, but try to hide it because we don’t want to make it too easy for our competitors to find this information’.

It sometimes looks like not only the competitor, but also the customer is looked upon as an enemy.

Remember

There are a few things you should never forget

  • If competition wants to get your information, they will get it. One way or another.
  • Make all the information available that may benefit your customers. As easy as possible.
  • Encourage others to use your information. Let them distribute it and publish it. Let them spread the word for you.
  • Your customer is your friend. Don’t scare or annoy him.

Free

Don’t raise legal or other barriers to get access to your information. I have written about it before. Make information available for free. Really free. Not in exchange for all kind of – often useless – customer details that you may want to collect.

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The Headline Fable And Why You Need Great Content

April 20, 2011

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A Great Headline, But What Is Inside?

Let me start with saying I (think I) am not very good in writing headlines. I don’t know why. Maybe it has to do with the fact that English is not my native language.

I often see headlines that make me jealous. And many times  I think I wish I had written that headline.

Let’s say writing great headlines is an art.

But …

The Headline Fable

Some time ago Copyblogger Brian Clark – who writes great headlines – wrote in his post 5 Landing Page Mistakes that Crush Conversion Rates about the importance of headlines.

It’s your two-second chance to overcome the swift and brutal attention filters we’ve developed due to information overload and poorly-matched promises, says Brian.

He may be right about the filters due to information overload and – especially – poorly-matched promises. But I don’t think we need to get too nervous about these two seconds. If you are in the B2B marketing business I am sure you have more time than that.

More Time

In B2B – or at least in the technical B2B that I am active in, but it may well be valid for many more markets  - people are much more focused on content than they are on headlines.

There is generally a high brand awareness and people often know what quality of content to find when they see your logo or read your company’s name in a link or above an article. That – and not the headline alone – makes them wanting to read or view your content.

Of course, a great headline may bring you a few extra readers, but you don’t depend on your headlines alone to get attention. People are prepared to give you a lot more than two seconds to decide whether they are interested in your content or not.

More Important

Much more important in this case is what Brian calls the poorly-matched promises.

Every day I come across highly promising headlines and in many cases the quality of the content turns out to be very disappointing. This works very counter-productive and the negative effects may well be much greater than when your headlines are not superb.

I have stopped following several businesses and people because of their great headlines and disappointing content.

Therefore I think all the attention that is given on the Internet to writing headlines is good, but we should much more worry about writing great content.

Nice

And do you know what is so nice? As soon as you have created great content it is much easier to produce a great headline.

So don’t break your head over a headline. A strong headline is great, but high quality content is much more important.

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Why Content Curation Is What You Really Need

April 18, 2011

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Is Content Curation Possible Too?

My grandmother – she was born in 1895 – could not believe people would ever be able to land on the moon. She was convinced it was impossible and it would never happen.

My grandmother turned out to be wrong. On July 21, 1969 Neil Armstrong was the first man to set foot on the moon. And others followed.

So I may have to be a little bit careful with what I am going to say now: Google (and search engines in general) will never be able to deliver you the content you are really looking for.

Not Possible

Getting the information you are looking for from a search engine is often troublesome. There are a few reasons for this.

  • Too much
    Whatever you are searching for, there are often vast amounts of information available. That means you have to search through the hundreds (or even thousands) of search results presented to you by the search engine to find what you are really looking for.
  • No relevancy or credibility
    If it is ever possible for search engines to determine the relevancy of information (and I doubt that) then the credibility of information will always remain the next problem to solve.
  • Not found
    People may publish the best content you can imagine. But if they don’t take care of their SEO, it may well be you never get to know their content. Because they are not liked by the search engines.
  • Don’t know
    People often don’t know exactly what you are looking for. Making it very difficult to find something. Because if you don’t know, how should the search engines know.
  • More
    There may be content out there that is very much of interest to you. But you don’t know about it, so you are not searching for it.

Content Curators

A few days ago  Steven Farnsworth (@Steveology) asked the question Are Content curators the power behind social media influence? I misunderstood his question and answered that there is no content curation without content creation. Making content creation at least as important as content curation.

I think that is true – without content no curation – but that was not what Steven meant. He was thinking about how the flow of information works today and how we are going forward with this dynamic.

Looking at it from that perspective, content curation may well be the most important issue in future. With content curators keeping up with business for you.

And of course, issues like credibility play a role also when content curators take care of the job. But in that case you can always sack your content curator and start looking at an alternative source of information.

The point is that content curation is a craft. You need to be an expert in your field to be able to curate content and you need to know what is going on and what is important for the people you curate the content for. And that is something search engines will never be able to do. Okay, not the search engines as we know them today.

Serendipity

But there is more.

Talking about content curation, the magic word is serendipity. Serendipity denotes the property of making fortunate discoveries while looking for something unrelated, or the occurrence of such a discovery during such a search (Wikipedia).

In other words, you are looking for something but you find something else that is at least as interesting for you as what you were looking for in the first place.

The strength of a content curator will not only be to present you with the best possible content. But also to surprise you with content that you may never have thought about.

Yes

Content curators will play an increasingly important role in future. Search engines will not be able to help you. They are only able to get you started. As soon as it gets serious you really need a reliable content curator who knows what he is talking about.

The answer to Steven’s question is yes. Content curators are the power behind social media influence!

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