commbasics

Information changes every day. What we “know” as true today will be a lie tomorrow based on changing individual perspective. Real power is in relationship. Real power is in people. When people trust you, you become powerful. In last week’s post we discussed the difference between customer relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation (MA) on a high level. Today we want to drill down into why the distinction is important for sales. Made ya look. It isn’t that obvious to most sales executives that we come across because, as we pointed out last week, most people don’t really know the difference between CRM and MA, but also because most sales people are still stuck in the mindset that they need a lot of potential leads before they find a few that turn into sales. In the 21st century, content marketing changes that paradigm. Here’s why… The conventional wisdom about content is that information is power. Many people say that but they have no idea what it means. It means nothing. ...

In the past, I’ve advised several business on how to deal with negative reviews on Yelp and the damage can be fixed with proper content and engagement, but based on what I’ve seen, I can’t advise any business to engage with them. Yelp ’s recent court victory is was the worst possible outcome for the company.  I’m not sure it’s going to survive.  (Wait! But they won!  How can that be bad?)  Glad you asked.  There were three potential outcomes for this trial.  The best outcome would be the judges finding that Yelp does not, in fact, alter reviews to favor advertisers.  But that didn’t happen.  The second best would have been a finding that they actually did and were guilty of extortion for advertising.  The worst possible outcome would be what was actually ruled: that there is nothing wrong giving advertisers an edge on the site.  The court said, tacitly, that it was pretty obvious that is what was happening but there is nothing...

In the last couple of posts, I’ve focused on how the social audience is demanding trustworthy content and how the media is largely failing to meet that demand.  Today I want to focus on where they are actually starting to get it: The corporations that used to be advertisers. Yes, the very organizations that are accused of perverting journalism are actually the source of salvation for journalism, currently in the B2B tech world primarily, but it will expand.  I’ve written about this process for several years now, but here’s a recap of how it happened. The world wide web made it possible for corporations to distribute press releases and marketing material to the customer base through email and websites, bypassing traditional media.  Advertising revenue was diverted in the budgets for those purposes. The drop in revenue caused the media to start cutting editorial staff making comprehensive coverage of industries very difficult if not impossible. The audience for the media...

Good content has to be about something you know, and that cuts out 99 percent of the stuff in social media. My last post on content as the driver of successful online programs got a relatively lively discussion over on my Facebook page and young Anton Molodetskiy (rhymes with "my broken jet ski") at the Hoffman Agency suggested I follow up with a post on what makes content "sharable."  Then a long time compatriot, Don Tuite (the analog guru at Electronic Design magazine ) tossed out a bunch of questions. "What about content nobody can find because it only shows up on page 10 of the search results? What about content that isn't true, but is truthy? If content is crowd-sourced, is it true? What makes for a 'trusted source.'?" So, at the risk of giving away the store, because helping companies do this is my business, it's probably a good idea to get into this.  Let's start with Don's last question. First, good content has t...

Last Friday I dropped a flash-bang into the room saying search engine optimization (SEO) isn’t what you should be concerned about.  I got one comment from a SEO person pointing out, very nicely, that I didn’t know what I was talking about because SEO is still very important.  I don’t disagree with that statement because SEO is important... especially if you’re selling ink cartridges and boner pills.  That still doesn’t take away from my original statement.  SEO is not what you should be concerned about, especially if your business is about anything other than commodities. When Google got going in the mid double-oughts, search was THE thing.  People were still getting used to this interwebs thing and it was kinda fascinating being able to find all kinds of stuff that normally took a dozen phone books and a lot of shoe leather.  It also turned the garden hose of information in our lives into a viaduct.  People started applying subjective filters ...

I've been considering and reading about all the changes in the data-eating industry that Google, Facebook, et al are enacting and one big theme is starting to arise in my head: Search and search engine optimization are virtually worthless now.  (That's gonna piss some people off.) It used to be that people kept their browser start-up page on Google because they went on the interweb tubes to look for stuff; sometimes with a purpose but most of the time just to do it.  That's not the case anymore.  I know very few people that fire up their laptops, tablets and smart phones and immediately go to the browser.  now they got to Facebook, Twitter, Linked-in, Flipboard or any other application that allows them to get input from their social circle.  I know I'm one of them.  My browers (I use several) are set to open on publication sites like The Economist, SFGate and Electronic Products .  That, too, is not unsual as I see many people re...