commbasics

Brian Fuller reveals some really interesting research on social media and how it may NOT be all that and a bag of chips.  Essentially, new studies are showing that social media may not be as influential as everyone claims. The studies show that only 3 of 10 people on social media sites trust their piers.  On the other hand, only one in 10 trust advertisements.  Even though it's less than 50 percent it's still a 3-1 advantage over advertising. But this busts another myth about media and the engineering crowd.  We've seen several comments over the past year from engineers and high-tech marketing types that say they don't need traditional media because engineers talk to each other at trade shows, blogs, bulletin boards, etc.  But the studies show that out of all that personal interaction, you still only get less than one-third positive response. Seems to me that this makes sense. Think about it. Out of all the people you know, hang out with, work with, etc., do you really ...

Over the years I've developed a few favorite industry influencers and IdaRose Sylvester is one of them.   She's just a fun person on top of being very smart.   IdaRose was most recently a senior analyst for the semi industry at IDC and got caught in the Spring layoff cycle at the organization.   That's a big loss for everyone.   Now she's out in the world trying to figure out what she wants to do when she grows up and is doing some custom work for the Telecomm industry in the mean time. We specifically got together to talk about Jeremiah Owyang's recent post regarding what he perceives is the morphing of analysts into reporters, reporters into analysts and everyone doing it on the blogosphere.   As usual, she had her own opinions and I think they make the entire conversation more interesting.   Check it my podcast with her.   There are some moments in the conversation where she's probably glad I didn't video tape this.  Her expression answered the question...

John Ford at the DFTDigest blog asked a question about the EE Times Edge , like, what is it?   He figured it out, but for the rest of you who might have missed a big change in the electronics media, the EE Times newspaper we have enjoyed for many years has gone away.  It has been replaced by the Edge, a magazine format analysis publication.  You won't find product announcements and news anywhere but online at EETimes.com and their associated DesignLine sites.  In fact, pretty much the only news you will find are your rewritten news releases. It costs less because there is less paper so TechInsights will make more profit off the publication.  The editors are not going to be taking meetings with you to discuss your product announcements and little victories because they are going to be looking at the big picture now.  You're going to have to demonstrate how you fit if you want to talk to them.  Personally, I think the 'zine is dynamite.  Especially check out Loring Wirbel...

Was just looking at this week's EE Times Edge and caught this video interview that Loring Wirbel did.  Dynamite stuff.  Glad to see EE Times evolving in the right way.

Ron Ploof had an interesting reply to my post on a marketing veep's revelation about the death of B2B media.  He posited the well-known premise that the news media really isn't necessary anymore because engineers talk to each other through email, blogging, forums and trade shows.  He said, "These are all valuable channels for objective third-party research. I replied that he had a point, but that the engineers that use the tools and technologies are not actually the ones the buy them.  Their bosses buy them and only with the blessing of the bean counters, and those guys don't get their information by talking with people at other companies. But that exchange bothered me over the weekend and I awoke at 4 a.m. today with my own wait-a-minute moment (a WAM moment?) that came out as a question I just posted on Twitter.  If engineers really do talk to each other about technology, then why are so many surprised when they come across something really cool that works? See, I...

By Joe Basques I was reading Lou's post about the marketing guy finally getting it and it made me think about another conversation I had with a potential client. We were contacted by this new company recently to talk about working on a PR / Marketing program. They contacted us because they were impressed with the level of success we brought to a previous client. In their own words our previous client “was able to sell their simple technology for a huge sum of money because of the image VitalCom created for them.” When the talk turned to budget… well, let’s just say it was nowhere near the budget of our previous client who was so successful even though that budget was the smallest VitalCom had ever worked with. I had to explain that our previous client was successful because he made an appropriate investment in marketing and public relations. That investment got him noticed. That investment and attention paid off big time when he was able to sell his small company for million...

It's amazing how some things just start coming together.  A couple of days ago Brian Fuller posited a position that the reading public just doesn't seem to care if what they are reading, watching or listening to is objective.  That same day I had a conversation with a young man who doesn't believe anything in the media is objective... period.  Yesterday, however, I met with two companies who now see the lack of objectivity as a real problem because their self-serving contributed articles are no longer making any impact on their marketing and sales efforts ... which means their entire marketing and sales effort is pretty much useless because they don't do advertising, they have no press to talk to and their news releases suck because they have no one who can write to help them. So, my Austin partner, Joe Basques and I sat down yesterday to have a conversation about it.  We're also opening the discussion on the Marketing like it's 199 9 Facebook Group.  Let's ...

I think a light bulb went on in the head of a marketing VP I was talking with today.  He's started implementing measurement of his marketing programs (now THERE's a great idea) and started talking about how they are going to track how well their programs are doing by seeing how many more articles (as opposed to news release postings) they are getting.  "If we do our jobs well, then we should be able to see coverage increase." Hold on, I told him.  "The number of publications covering your industry are shrinking as are the number of journalists they employ to cover your industry. That means you will see less coverage of the industry and, as a result less coverage of your company" "Wait a minute." he said.  "What?" So I again explained the history of the death of media since 1999.  "That means we can't expect better coverage in the near future?"  No, I explained, that means you can expect to see less coverage generally, even i...

Ozzie, my bizdev homeboy, has been busting my chops for a few weeks over making some comment on our experience at the Design Automation Conference (DAC), so I'm giving in and talking about it. For the past year I've been talking about some new models for journalism that include the adoption of video/audio podcasts, social media, a variation on pay-for-play coverage (that we call objective advocacy™) and cooperative reporting. We've been working on developing video interviews and have one currently running on YouTube, not to mention the interviews I've done on this blog for the past year.   We've had some enormous initial success with text articles as well … all outside of the electronic design automation (EDA) world.   We went to DAC reluctantly with a lot of pressure from several marketers and PR folks to create video podcasts of four or five companies. I say reluctantly because we all know that EDA marketers don't believe in supporting the information infrastr...

OK, so I'm reading this opinion piece by a guy who says what's really wrong are entrepreneurs and VCs in SiliconValley are not willing to take any risks anymore; that the way out of the problem is to find more risk takers.  This guy makes his living advising small companies and helping them find funding.  I go, "OK.  This guy seems to understand the problem."  So I send him an e-mail asking him what he's willing to risk to help start-up companies with disruptive approaches. He says, "Oh I'm not involved in that anymore.  You should go talk to some guys in Silicon Valley." Can we make a rule that before you are allowed to start to rant about a problem, that you'd at least be willing to make some effort to resolve the problem?  What's that?  No? Alright.  Just thought I'd ask.

Ron Ploof  chimed in with a post on brevity today.  It was like a cool breeze to me.  The hardest task in communications counsel is teaching clients to be succinct.  The writing style of the real journalist requires paragraphs of no more than two sentences, no more than 25 words long each.  It is the best way of getting an idea across.  That's how most people talk.  That also means you have to keep the superlatives at a minimum and THAT is really hard for most marketing people and CEOs. Had breakfast with Shel Israel yesterday who explained one of the reasons he left PR was pressure from client's boards who believed adding adjectives increased "buzz" for news release.  The more said, however, the more obscure.  Get to the point.  That's all I'm sayin'.

We're entering into the budget dance for 2009.  You know the steps: 1.  We'd like to talk with you about your services (spring) 2.  Let's schedule a meeting (summer) 2.  We're out of budget for this year.  We'll need to talk next year after we've determined our budgets (fall) 3.  We're right in the middle of our program and don't have time to talk (winter) And back to step 1. Here's a hint for all you marketers who are considering exploring the world of social media and alternative marketing approaches:  Leave yourself some leeway in your budget to experiment down the road.  If you spend the same amount on news releases, trade shows and collateral material that you did last year, the best you can hope for is the same result as last year.  The definition of insanity, etc.

We've been doing some research at Footwasher Media (that includes VC Comm, VitalCom and New Tech Press) to find what industries are doing well in their communications efforts and where the real technology interest is.  We've discovered the wonder and surprise of Google Trends. One of the things we've discovered is the steady decline of interest, at least in the form of searches and in the form of both REAL and MANUFACTURED news for semiconductor and design automation industries and niches.  We haven't looked into embedded systems closely but will soon. Let me define the difference between real and manufactured news.  Real news are articles or podcasts created by third parties, either bloggers or traditional journalists.  Manufactured news is contributed articles and news releases.  The latter is always written with a blatant bias and is seen as such. Now what I've been hearing for several years is that technology companies are relying more and more on manufactured n...

Picked up the SFExaminer in my driveway to check on some local news and read that the Daily News, another local throwaway, is making cuts. Here's some history.  The tabloid Daily News started out about a decade ago in Palo Alto, and had such success it started expanding.  Redwood City, San Carlos, San Mateo... all of them making money hand over fist.  It was so successful that it spawned a competitor in the San Mateo Daily Journal and the SF Examiner, after Hearst sold it, changed it's format and distribution model to match.  All these pubs were making money during the big media downturn. Then the Daily News organization got bought by Knight Ridder, making the founders incredibly rich ... and things started going south almost immediately.  See the thing about the Daily News is it was a LOCAL daily on the Peninsula covering LOCAL news.  Something we didn't have.  They sold ads locally and ... here's the best part ... the website didn't have the local news.  They said...

The internet is a fun place to get lost in.  More often than not, I find something really interesting that has nothing to do with what I originally started search for.  e.g.... I'm reading  Chris Edwards post on the feud between Shel Israel (who I know) and Loren Feldman (who I don't know.  I start searching around for Loren and Shel through Google and other search engines and really don't find anything about the feud, but then I run across this piece by Israel a little over a year ago  on why static websites are still valuable.  I think I passed an entire tuna sandwich through my nose on point 5. 1.  Environmental purposes . The web site replaces the tripfold, full-bleed corporate broachure that no one ever read.  Entire forests have been saved by the move to websites.  Now no one can read what companies have written in a much more eco friendly way, 2.  Historic Value .  Now you can take a trip down memory lane and see the state of last decade's internet technology fr...