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Micro-Celebrities and B-to-B

Every successful conference around blogging, podcasting, social media, RSS and the like seems to bring up the inevitable comment 'why don't you have more B2B examples for us B2B marketers?'

Point taken. In fact, point very well taken. Take, for example, the concept of 'micro-celebrities', which was the recent topic of conversation for Robert Young and for Ed Batista at AttentionTrust.org. i think that we're so attuned as marketers to talking in terms of 'consumers' and thinking only of the B2C folks that we overlook the power of some of these tools within the B2B context.

Micro-celebrities is one of those things that I see as being even more powerful in B2B than on MySpace or anywhere else. Think about it, who are the micro-celebs in your industry? I bet you know them, have met them at a conference or can access them through journals or other industry trade pubs. Granted, often times these folks are either consultants or tied to your competitor, however, that's not always the case.

Let's take the example of 'micro-celebrities' on MySpace and turn it on its head for B2B.

When it comes to advertising in mass media, a big name is required since such campaigns are only effective if the viewer already knows who that celebrity is. But in a social network, micro-celebrities who are well known within their network of micro-communities could prove just as effective and potentially even more so, particularly if such campaigns are able to generate buzz, excitement and a cool-factor.

As for MySpace’s role in all this, they are in the unique position to know better than anyone (as the owner of the platform with all the user data) who the 'brand-safe' users are within its network.

Thus MySpace can effectively play the role of talent agent by aggregating a list of users who would be appropriate for advertisers within various categories. In fact, the incentive 'to be discovered' is likely to spur many users to express themselves in a manner that will position them favorably for consideration.

OK, so we're not going to be doing much B2B on MySpace, but we could leverage professional associations, organizations and conferences to do something like what KI just did with Healthcare Spaces author Roger Yee at the recent NeoCon 2006 show. Who the hell is Roger Yee, you might ask? Well, that's the right response. You probably shouldn't know...he wouldn't be a micro-celebrity if you did! However, for the healthcare furniture market or the American Academy of Healthcare Interior Designers (AAHID), you know exactly who he is and a campaign targeted at your market would likely mean something to you. And you'd give it your attention! (after all, that's really all we have left - attention).

Getting after 'attention data' in B2B might be even less complicated than in B2C, and we could do it through the power of association(s). For example, if I'm a member of the DMA or AMA, and I attend their respective conferences, I am giving my attention to things like direct marketing or marketing research or something of the like. As a potential marketer to those folks, I need only to know a bit about the associations that they run with and the types of events they go to in order to more effectively target my marketing toward what my target base is paying attention to. It's still not the be-all-end-all for getting end-user attention data, but it's getting closer and it would seem easier to do with conference attendance and association membership because your target base is very actively self-selecting and directing their attention patterns.

Of course, smart marketers always want their customers to own their attention data, but I envision that we could see a major impact in B2B attention marketing if some of the larger associations were to promote services like the Attention Recorder.

Technorati Tags: attention, B2B + Marketing, micro+celebrity

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Viral Marketing with a Powerful Twist
Once upon a time, not too long ago in a nearby web land, there was a business owner looking for a way to increase visitors to his website AND a way to increase his subscribers. (Sound familiar?)He and his webmaster came up with a simple but brilliant idea. They had some software developed to help them implement this viral idea, and then they launched the new campaign.
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Clutter Clearing and Your Authentic Self
Marketing a business is like any game. If you know the rules you are much more likely to win. All to often small businesses spend their limited time and money on advertising, networking, making calls, mailings, meeting with prospects, yet only achieve middling results. The problem isn't that they don't know their business or provide high quality products and services, its that they don't know the rules of the marketing game.
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Google uses a new spider to index web pages
Google is using a new bot for their AdWords advertising system that automatically spiders and analyzes the content of advertising landing pages. What does this mean to your organic search engine rankings? What does this mean to your PPC ads and your organic search engine rankings?
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How to react to Google's latest AdWords changes
Google has incorporated a new factor to its Quality Score. If you're advertising on Google AdWords, this new factor might influence the position of your ads and the minimum price you have to pay for your bids. What do you have to do to make the best out of the situation?
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Is cloaking the holy grail of SEO?
Cloaking obviously works. Should you use it for your website and what should you do to get high rankings on Google, Yahoo and other important search engines?
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Can grammar and spelling influence your Google rankings?
There's a new theory that Google might also consider the grammar and spelling mistakes on your web pages. What does this mean to your website?
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Why has your website been dropped from Google?
Has your website been dropped from Google and you don't know why? There are a number of factors that can get your website banned on Google. In this article, we'll tell you why your website can be banned from Google and what you can do to get listed on Google.
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Is Google manually influencing its search results?
Google pays people from all over the world $10 - $20 per hour to check Google search results every day. What does this mean to your website?
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Google's Sitemaps service and your website
Last week, Google released its new Google Sitemaps service. Despite the name, Google Sitemaps is not a tool that creates sitemaps for your website. Google Sitemaps is another way to submit your web pages to Google. How can your website benefit from this service?
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How your firewall can destroy your search engine rankings
Poorly configured firewalls can block search engine spiders. If you use the wrong configuration, Google, Yahoo, MSN Search and others might not index your website.
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What the Google patent means for SEO
We summarize the most important parts of the patent specification in this issue so that you have a quick overview about how Google might rank your website according to this patent.
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Google ranking secrents revealed - Part 3
Google has recently filed a patent that details many points that Google uses to rank web pages. This article series discusses Google ranking secrets that have been revealed in that report. This time: how links to your website and their changes can affect your rankings.
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How long does it take to get listed in Google?
If your website is not listed in Google although Googlebot regularly visits your website, this article can help you.
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How to get out of Google's sandbox
If your website has good rankings on Yahoo, MSN and other search engines but not on Google, it's likely that your website has been put into Google's sandbox. What can you do to get out of it?
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Is your website dependend on Google?
Yahoo and MSN have made significant gains against Google. They can send a considerable amount of targeted visitors to your website. This article helps you to benefit from this search engines trend.
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How to avoid click fraud
Click fraud is becoming a major problem for online advertisers. If you advertise your website on pay per click search engines such as Overture or Google AdWords, chances are that you pay way too much for your clicks.
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How to optimize your Google AdWords campaigns
Learn how to lower your advertising costs while increasing your profit with optimized Google AdWords campaigns.
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How to fake Google PageRank numbers
Recently, a new technique of faking the PageRank number of a website has become popular. For example, a rather dubious adult website managed to get a PageRank of 10.
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Google's link command and better ways to do it
You probably know Google's link command. It's a special search query that allows you to find websites that link to another website. There's a better way to find all pages that point to your website on Google.
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Googlebot came to call
How to automatically get an email message from your website when Google visits your pages.
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The decreasing importance of Google PageRank
Many webmasters are crazy about Google PageRank. But is it really that important to your website?
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Is link popularity really that important?
With the domination of Google and Yahoo on the search engine market, words like 'link popularity', 'link prominence' and 'link reputation' have become buzzwords in the search engine marketing industry.Many webmasters try to get as many links to their website as possible and some companies even offer '1000 links to your website within minutes'. But is link popularity really so important as many people want us to believe?
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How many link partners are there? How many are enough for a link campaign?
Exchanging links with other sites is a promising way to increase your Google PageRank and to draw visitors to your site. Good incoming links have a positive effect on your search engine rankings and they also bring targeted visitors to your website. But how many potential link partners are there, and what is a realistic goal for your linking campaigns? How many link partners should you have?
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The most important search sites for your website success
Many webmasters face the problem that they don't know for which search engine they should optimize their websites. Of course, Google is the most important search engine for most webmasters. But which other search engines are also important for your website success? This article provides the answers.
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How to choose the right keywords for your site
Many businesses recognize that search engines can bring volumes of highly targeted prospects to their website, typically at a fraction of the cost of traditional marketing. Unfortunately, these same companies often overlook the most important part of their search engine marketing campaigns, which is keyphrase selection and evaluation.
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Privileged Card Members of Thomson Medical Centre
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How Does Googlebot Find/Index Hidden FTP Logs?
Google's crawler constantly scours the Internet for pages to index, which is one of the reasons you should run away if someone offers to 'submit your website to Google.' On any page you do not want indexed, it is important...

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Software Industry News
Read the latest issue of Software Marketing News. The latest issue contains information about:

Tucows Chat
The Tipping Point and Malcolm Gladwell
The Long Tail
Google Juice
Web Awards
Advertising Opportunities
Shareware Industry Awards
Shareware Industry Conference
Statistical Information
Google Ads
Alexa, Microsoft and Google

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Software Marketing Resource Advertising Opportunities
In an effort to better serve website visitors we will be removing adsense ads from the web pages. A single 468X60 box (text or graphic) will be sold on each of the directory pages.

Prices are very affordable and only a single slot will be available on each page. Ads are first come first serve!

Purchase Targeted Ad Space on SMR

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AdSense Tips
AdSense allows website publishers to display contextually relevant advertisements on their website. If a web visitor 'clicks' on an advertisement, the web publisher will earn a percentage of the advertising revenue generated as a result of the click. Many webmasters have built content websites around the Google AdSense model. In many cases the specific intent of the webmaster is to profit from Google AdSense.

Other webmasters use Google AdSense to supplement their revenue. Regardless of the webmaster's intent, the following tips will help webmasters looking to profit from AdSense.

AdSense Tips

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Nominate Your Favorite Software Vendors
SoftwareMarketingResource.com has launched the First Annual Software Vendor Awards. The Software Vendor Awards will recognize the top vendors that supply services or products to software developers and micro-isvs. Software Marketing Resource's unique position in the industry, as an independent voice for software developers, make it the perfect place to host the awards.

The awards are designed to recognize those software industry vendors who excel at customer service, overall value and innovative implementation.

Nominations for the top software vendors in fifteen categories, are being accepted until Midnight (EST) January 27, 2006. The nomination categories range from e-commerce providers and software reviewers to software organizations and software publishers. To submit nominations or find out more information visit Software Marketing Resource at: http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com/2006-nominations.htm

Voting begins on February 1, 2006 and ends at Midnight (EST) February 15, 2006. Winners will be announced in the Software Marketing Newsletter due out March 1st. The nominees and winners will also be posted on the Software Marketing Resource website.

The Software Marketing Resource contains a repository of targeted, actionable resources for software developers and marketers. The site is designed specifically for software developers and online marketers it includes a robust, monthly software newsletter, and regular articles specific to software marketing. Software Marketing Resource prides itself on providing unbiased information about industry issues and events.

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eMarketing Blog
Discussion on using opt-in email marketing, search engine promotion, online lead generation techniques, B2B programs and wireless advertising to ensure a positive ROI.
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Interactive Marketing Channels To Watch In 2006
Email and search marketing are now the foundation of most interactive marketing programs. But marketers are also enthusiastic about emerging channels like social networks and RSS. What stops more marketers from testing these and other new channels like games and mobile? They have their hands full optimizing existing channels and worry about limited consumer adoption of emerging media. To help firms determine which new channels are worthy investments, Forrester recommends creating a channel innovation team that focuses exclusively on emerging channels. This team should focus its 2006 efforts on online ad targeting, in-game advertising, and rich media.
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Dissecting a successful direct marketing e-mail
E-mail is the perfect media for direct marketing. Compared to regular mail, it is about hundred times cheaper. Yet, few companies manage to run a truly successful direct marketing campaign, according to Paul Soltoff. Paul has been in business of direct marketing for the past 20 years. Now he is a chief executive officer of SendTec, Inc., the parent company of DirectNet Advertising (DNA) and iFactz
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a sort of a homecoming
Sending Hello! Been a while. Travelled a bit. Visited many places. So now I shall welcome myself back. Back to this conversation creation molecular realignment of meaning making production.

Freedom did get me there a bit Harry. Been battling the Warren Commission. I told them I saw that dude in Dallas on a grassy knoll but they still concluded that JFK died of self inflicted gun shot wounds. So much for bearing witness.

And yes Jeneane, I've first visited Pope Johannes Paulus Secundus in December of 1987 at Cite Du Vatican. I was young and full of dreams and I told him I was going to change the world and work for Peace on Earth. He just smiled. - Ever since then I've been embarassed of my dreams. Dreams don't work. So what works? - Human beings have been engaged in this discourse for a long time. Nice Paradox it is. - Let it be, Let it be - Love

Pope is dead. I see him with a Tralfamadorian dimension. All slices of life. As a side note: Tralfamadorians saw Time in it's entirety. They saw its beginning and end, thus a person's life was seen at all possible points of time of their existence and not only the moment you met them. Nice way to see someone. You could see a killer on TV and weep for he was once an innocent baby. You could see a baby and wonder what kind of Human Being-ness will he have along the way towards death. - Alas we don't see people this way. Too bad. It's a lot of fun.

Seth Godin has a new marketing book and a new website for it. It's completely idiotic. I've read most of his other books. They too are idiotic. But he is having fun. Perhaps duping us, the readers - selling us the Dream. New shapes of Dreams. Marketing the Marketing Dream. I think if I was him I would be too embarassed to constantly write so much Kaka De La Torro and maintain the excitement of continuous innovation. I am not sure that the world needs another marketing book, and from Seth Godin for that matter. I do hope that what the world needs is people teaching other people how to read and write so they can express their grievances to Governments that oppress them and articulate their commitments so that others know what you find worth living for.


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VP on DHL's Need to Re-Brand & Why U.S. Can Handle More Competition

Co-host Brad Forsythe interviews Karen Jones, Vice President of Advertising, Brand and Promotions for DHL.  Karen Jones is Vice President, Advertising, Brand and Promotions for DHL and is responsible for building the DHL brand through advertising, sponsorships and brand identity. Ms. Jones’s expertise and experience lies in global brand building. She joined DHL from Hewlett Packard, where she spent 15 years developing the HP brand, working in a variety of marketing and communications capacities. She created a universally consistent brand image by transforming and unifying HP’s advertising and communications campaigns. Most recently, she served as the director of worldwide brand advertising at HP. Prior to her impressive brand building responsibilities at HP, Ms. Jones held several positions at Compaq Computer Corporation, including Director of Marketing for the iPAQ products. She has also owned her own marketing communications company, Ballast Communications.

For entertaining advice join hosts, Ray Schilens and Brad Forsythe, for a lively and informative discussion.

6-Jul-06 9:00 AM
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BzzAgent Says Word of Mouth Isn't Stealth or Buzz Marketing

Co-host Brad Forsythe interviews Dave Balter, Founder and President of BzzAgent. Dave has over 10 years experience in marketing, previously founding and running two promotional marketing agencies, the most recent being sold in October 2001. He has also spent a number of years working for a variety of corporations, including Kessler Financial Services, where he managed direct marketing and affinity program implementations for Fortune 1000 clients, and Webb & Co., where he analyzed circulation and fulfillment operations, and performed statistical modeling for consumer catalogs. Dave was named to the "40 under 40" by the Advertising Specialty Institute in 2001, and "Top 7 individuals changing the face of beauty" by Women's Wear Daily in 2004. Dave holds a provisional patent in the process and systems of Word-of-Mouth marketing and research. He is also a founding member of the Word-of-Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA), co-chair of WOMMA's Ethics Council, and a frequent speaker to corporations and universities on the subject of Word-of-Mouth and non-traditional media.

For entertaining advice join hosts, Ray Schilens and Brad Forsythe, for a lively and informative discussion.

7-Jun-06 9:00 AM
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Visa Exec Explains New Slogan for Why Life Takes Visa

Co-host Brad Forsythe interviews Susanne Lyons, CMO of Visa USA. Susanne is responsible for all aspects of brand, advertising and marketing services for one of the world’s most successful payments companies, and serves on the company’s Executive Management Committee as Chief Marketing Officer. She has held senior marketing and general management roles at some of the largest financial services companies in America. She also served as Chief Marketing Officer for Charles Schwab & Co., Inc. In her ten year career at Schwab, she held various marketing and general management positions, including Enterprise President of Retail Client Services, where she was responsible for 4000 customer service employees.

For entertaining advice join hosts, Ray Schilens and Brad Forsythe, for a lively and informative two-hour discussion.

23-Apr-06 4:00 PM
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Asian Branding Expert on How to Succeed in the Global Market

Co-host Brad Forsythe interviews Asian branding expert, Jonathan Holburt - CEO of Holburt Consulting.  Jonathan has spent 21 years in advertising after a career start as an English teacher in Tokyo. He has worked on such major accounts as Procter & Gamble, AT&T, Kraft, Hewlett-Packard and Pepsi Foods while at Saatchi & Saatchi, Young & Rubicam and DDB. A native Californian who graduated from UCLA, Jonathan has spent 19 years in Asia, having lived in Singapore, Hong Kong and Tokyo. He started his marketing consulting company, Holburt Consulting, in June 2005 and has clients in Vietnam, China, Taiwan, Malaysia and Singapore. He has written a novel (which is in the process of being “optioned” for the movies) and numerous articles for the Asian Wall Street Journal.

For entertaining advice join hosts, Ray Schilens and Brad Forsythe, for a lively and informative two-hour discussion.

9-Apr-06 4:00 PM
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Wall Street Journal's Ad Columnist Explains Increase in Advertising as Entertainment

Co-host Brad Forsythe interview Brian Steinberg, the advertising columnist for The Wall Street Journal. Prior to being appointed to his current position in 2003, Mr. Steinberg was a special writer and the media business reporter for Dow Jones Newswires, the Company's realtime, electronic news division. As Newswires' lead media reporter, he covered many subjects and companies and edited "The Pitch," a weekly marketing column, which he originated with another reporter in September 1999. Mr. Steinberg joined Newswires in 1997 as a reporter covering the telecommunications industry. Mr. Steinberg was a business reporter and columnist for the Capital in Annapolis, Md., before joining Dow Jones. He has also worked as a news assistant in the Washington bureau of the New York Times and as an editorial assistant for Spy magazine. His freelance articles have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, USA Weekend, Entrepreneur and Entertainment Weekly.

For entertaining advice join hosts, Ray Schilens and Brad Forsythe, for a lively and informative two-hour discussion.

26-Mar-06 4:00 PM
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Hilton Hotels Re-Ignites Brand by Advertising Why Travel Should Take You Places

Co-host Brad Forsythe interviews Jeff Diskin, Senior Vice President of Brand Performance for Hilton Hotels.  In his position, Diskin is responsible for providing strategic brand direction for the Hilton full service brand, targeting market share growth, meeting revenue targets, overall brand positioning, brand marketing, and establishing and maintaining brand standards. Prior to his appointment as Senior Vice President, Diskin served as President, Chief Operating Officer – Hilton HHonors Worldwide, and was responsible for the worldwide marketing and operations of the award-winning Hilton HHonors hotel guest loyalty program. He joined Hilton Hotels Corporation in 1989 as Manager of Business Programs, and later was promoted to Director of Business Programs for the company. Prior to joining Hilton, Diskin held a variety of account service, customer service, and creative management positions at Marketing Performance & Innovation (MPI), a subsidiary of United Airlines.

For entertaining advice join hosts, Ray Schilens and Brad Forsythe, for a lively and informative two-hour discussion.

19-Mar-06 4:00 PM
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Use RSS To Increase Your Traffic Now, Part 1

Online visibility and online traffic are, quite naturally, of paramount importance to everyone and anyone marketing or conducting business online, period.

While RSS will not perform as your key tool to improve online visibility and generate more traffic, its importance for helping you do so cannot be disputed.

It will help you:

• increase your traditional search engine rankings;
• improve your online visibility by making your content available where people are increasingly searching for new content, such as RSS search engines and content aggregation sites;
• drive traffic from other websites covering your topic, by helping you make your content available at these websites more easily.

Deliver Your News to Where It's Searched For: Generate Traffic From RSS Search and Content Aggregation Sites

The fundamental media shift is not only happening between offline and online, but within online itself as well.

Just a few years ago the search engines, the largest portals and news sites, were more or less the central hub of where online users got their online information. They still are today, but are now challenged by the growth of new online search engine and content aggregation website categories.
It's quite simple.

Go to Google, Yahoo! or MSN and do a keyword search. What you get are somewhat the most relevant results for what you're looking for ? but without a timestamp. Search engines provide results based on universal relevancy and not on recentcy.

But what if you're looking for the latest relevant content, instead of just the most relevant content?

Enter the news engines, content aggregation sites and RSS search engines. Instead of providing results by universal relevancy, these sites provide results by actual recentcy, with of course a better or lower level of relevancy.

The point is that these websites are starting to become the central hub of searching for news online and latest content online.

Google and Yahoo! know it too ? their own news engines are among the top of breed.

But what if you don't want to search for specifically the latest news or the latest general content, but just want to search for the latest blog posts pertaining to your topic of interest?

Enter blog search engines, which will only return results from blogs. And Google has one as well, although this one is not on top.

And so on ?

Why this matters to you?

If you want your latest content to be found where people are actually searching for the latest news and other latest content, even video and audio content, you need to start using these new search and aggregation site categories to increase your reach and attract new traffic ? traffic that is interested in what you have to say right now.

And the RSS connection?

Most of these new services, although not all, rely on RSS to receive the latest content just as it becomes available and then offer it to their visitors.

In many cases, RSS is the key tool that will get you indexed and then found and read, being used to get your content from your website to the service, which will then make it available to the world.

And additionally, you can expect to receive extra traffic from RSS directories, used by people who are proactively searching for new RSS feeds to subscribe to.

How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS.

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Behavioral Advertising: Wave of the Future?
If you ve been keeping up with the trends in online marketing you ve probably been hearing about something called behavioral advertising behavioral targeting or behavioral marketing. What is it and how is it different from the kind of online marketing you re already doing Keep reading to find out....

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