Alberta Business Marketing

Marketing First

That was the title I selected as the introduction for a post to launch the new free downloadable e-book: Marketing Right Now. I pondered long and hard on what title might be best. The book deals with the fundamental basics of starting up and growing a business. Almost by default I chose the title Marketing First. My implicit thinking was that any activity is best done if you first cover strategy and then work out the tactics. That is true in waging war and it is also true in growing your business.

An alternative title might have been Marketing Strategy First. When researching that title, I was struck by a website I found that dealt with ’strategic marketing for growing companies’. The strategic marketing expert had assembled a lot of the right stuff. However I was somewhat surprised to find that the blog was buried almost in the footer and the archive of blog posts, shown on the right, suggested this was not a high priority.

Strategy First, Blog Second

Although there are many important principles in the E-Book, Marketing Right Now, if I could choose only one that would have the biggest impact then I think it would be the title of this post: Blogging First And Foremost.

The sad fact is that blogging does not get the respect it should have. Blogging is all about the dialogue you should have with your prospects and clients. Even if that were not sufficient reason, the other important factor is that Google loves blogs. The RSS news feed for your blog is an instant alert to the world that you have something to say.

Nevertheless blogs, like Rodney Dangerfield, get no respect. Of course they most often started off as personal musings or journals, so why would anyone else care. In addition, blog is such an unfortunate and ungainly name. I often recommend that clients use a different name. For example News and Views is an upbeat kind of title. For some websites, Fresh Ideas can be an even better choice.

Dialogue With Your Market-Place

If you are not using your blog to make contact with your market-place at least once per week, you might adopt this discipline. As your week draws to a close, ask yourself the question, “What did my prospects and clients hear from me this week? Of course there is another question you should be keeping in mind. What did my prospects and clients hear from my competitors? With that thought in mind make sure that early each week you have something to say to these important individuals in your marketplace.

If you have nothing to say, are you sure you’re working hard enough to grow your business. At the very least, you may have seen something in the market-place from your radar screens (Google Alerts, RSS News Feed subscriptions) that your contacts will find interesting. Remember every time you write a blog post, you are improving your visibility with Google. That’s where prospects are looking for a supplier just like you.

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Blogging First And Foremost

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Tags: Business, Rodney Dangerfield
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As I’ve written about before, coming out of the first Reboot Alberta event, many individuals (including bloggers) were invited to write on what “being a progressive” means to them.

While there have been a great many posts and white papers written on the subject as a result – I invite you to visit RebootAlberta.org to read as many of them as possible – I wanted to take advantage of the week leading up to Reboot Alberta 2, which begins this Friday in Kananaskis, by offering my own take.

The first Reboot Alberta event was billed as a meeting of progressives before the event. I considered myself to be ‘progressive’ in my thinking (or at the very least not ‘regressive’), so off I went to Red Deer. But it didn’t take long before I, and others, started asking “what does it mean to be ‘progressive’ anyway?”. It’s amazing how sometimes we simply label ourselves as something and do not bother to delve into it to find out what it really means. We’re far too often to simply sit back and be comfortable with a superficial label.

So for me it seemed only natural that the first group discussion of the day I would attend would be “What is a Progressive?”. I’m glad I did, as that very first conversation helped frame the rest of my Reboot experience and the outcomes of it came up several times throughout the weekend.

In that group we came up with the following traits that we believe ‘progressive’ is about:

1. Interconnectedness
2. Understanding
3. Adaptability

It was shortly after the first Reboot Alberta conference that I came across this post by Tyler Shandro, who, while it is true did not attend the event, still hit the nail on the head. “Progressive” isn’t a left or right thing and it should not be the domain of any single political faction. The definition of progressive my group came up with can easily be applied to ANY political party. (And, in my opinion, should be applied by all parties and by all individuals in their personal lives to.)

I, unlike several of the individuals who have written on the topic over the past couple months, do not see progressive as the opposite of anything or any other political ideology. Instead I see progressivism as a principle – a tool to help create wise decisions built on the best knowledge available. With this in mind, progressive policies – policies that are built on interconnectedness, understanding and adaptability – could just as easily be created by self-styled conservatives or liberals. Hence progressivism should not be the domain of one party to the exclusion of another.

There are many ways to for Albertans to be progressive within their community. I think this is why all four “ways forward” discussion groups at the first Reboot Alberta were so heavily populated. No one group dominated. Some thought “progress” can happen via the current parties we have, others wanted a new party option. Some thought “progressive” ideals could be best pursued by them on their own, others thought it best to happen as part of a non-political movement.

I felt – and still feel – it was a shame the “news” being heard by those not at the initial Reboot Alberta was so focused on the new party option, because focusing on that alone is to ignore 3/4 of the discussion.

But, I digress.

I think it is healthy that Tyler and others question what “progressive” means. I know I did, and still do. Every person who subscribes to an ideology, principle or policy, should always dig deeper into what it means, what its causal architecture is, why it is the way it is, and what cognitive dissonance might be at play in both the presenter and ourselves. It is through our recognition of how these various facets are interconnected that we may gain better understanding and we can become adaptable and change our ways and minds based on the evidence we may find. This is something I think – and hope – every individual and political party would want to do. (And you’ll just happen to note, those are all three of the ‘pillars’ of our group’s definition of ‘progressive’.)

So, during this upcoming week, I plan on writing a series of posts exploring what it means to be ‘progressive’ and what ‘progress’ actually means. I plan on doing this by going dedicating some time to each of the three ‘pillars’ as well as one extra post on what I believe to be a key feedback tool to ensure the pillars are possible: openness and transparency.

Tomorrow I will begin with a little more on ‘progress’ and what the term itself means and where it comes from. I hope you’ll take the time to follow along as I explore this rabbit hole in anticipation of Reboot Alberta 2.

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Tags: Politics, progress, progressive, Reboot Alberta, Tyler S. Shando, Uncategorized
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This morning in my Google mail inbox and Hootsuite account was a very interesting post from Chris Brogan (I get Chris’ blog posts emailed to me each morning) entitled “When all this gets cool“.  If you don’t know who Chris is, well you need to check him out.  He is one of the thought leaders in the Social Media space worldwide and has some pretty good concepts around how to use these tools to do some cool stuff.

The article from Chris talks about social media and the cool factor, what we can do online today is amazing and yes extremely cool.  This article really nails what we can do with social media tools.  Over the past few days I have been putting together a theoretical framework for Ulsitic on the entire social media landscape, this helps.

I agree with what Chris has to say about when what you can do with Social Media tools becomes cool.

Social Media is not about the tools.  Just like when I was an IT guy in Calgary, it wasn’t about the Windows 2003 server that was cool, deep down inside it wasn’t cool at all.  What was cool was how my clients could do cool things when they used the technology I set up for that or later in my IT career sold them.  I never sold a solution that didn’t fit into their business model, that wasn’t cool at all.  At the end of the day it was about the masterpieces of design they created, the ability to find petroleum products several kilometres beneath the surface of the earth or the fact that our clients could send out a press release to thousand with a click of a button.

In the Social Media world it is exactly the same thing.  Twitter, blogging, Facebook are not cool at all (well they can be a little), it is what we can do with these tools that are cool and remarkable.  The people we meet, the ideas we share and the concepts we can leverage are very cool.  On Chris’ blog he has a pretty good list on some items we can do each day to help out our community and others.  The biggest challenge I can see is finding the time or making it a priority in my day and then just doing it.

Here are just a few of them. Again I recommend you read his post at http://www.chrisbrogan.com/.

Start a public list of Twitter accounts from local businesses. Point everyone in your community to it.

Start small mastermind groups on Google Wave (I have an incredible group going. Very small. Very useful.)

Donate four hours a week to a charity, giving them more promotion and exposure for their causes, equipping them with more ways to find what they need.

Connect to 10 people every day. Make it a blend of 5 people you’ve been in touch with, and 5 people you need to stay fresh with. Ask for nothing. Offer everything. ( Tim Sanders does this well.)

On a side note, Chris is scheduled to be our guest on Ulistic’s Social Media podcast in April, visit “The Orange Files, Social Media in Canada podcast” for additional information.

What can you do today to make a difference in your community and make what you are doing online “cool”.  I guess it is time for me to finish what I start with my SW Calgary church blog site.

Tags: BeanCast, Blog hosting services, Business/Finance, Calgary, canada, Chris Brogan, church blog site, Cool, Cultural appropriation, Facebook, Facebook Inc, Google Inc., media tools, my IT career, Online social networking, online today, petroleum products, Popular culture, Social information processing, social media, Technology/Internet, Twitter, Twitter Inc, web 2.0, Windows 2003 server, World Wide Web
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Our most recent b-to-b social media survey examined a wide range of issues, including strategy, budget, tactics and measurement. While social media appears to have moved past the “shiny new toy” phase, clear goals are still evolving. Companies must understand opportunities and limitations as they move beyond trials to integrate social media with more established marketing functions

During the past 24 months, SiriusDecisions has collected data and insight about the evolution of social media in b-to-b as related to awareness, adoption, measurement and much more. In this post, we review a few findings from our 2009 Social Media in Business survey.

A cross-section of b-to-b organizations that sell complex, enterprise b-to-b products and services participated in the quantitative portion of the survey, which was co-sponsored by social media vendor Visible Technologies. Appropriate data and insight from SiriusDecisions benchmarking activities, consulting engagements and client inquiries were added to the sample as appropriate. As observed in prior surveys, all phases of marketing – including reputation initiatives – are now being more closely evaluated to determine return on investment. While there is a general understanding that social media is not necessarily the most efficient direct demand creation engine (especially in the short term), leading-edge organizations are increasingly testing new ways of integrating social media initiatives with other key marketing activities. Once organizations have gained working knowledge of how various social media activities can impact their prospects and customers at which particular points in the buying cycle, they can better align social media content to demand creation and sales enablement.

Our survey tracked the behaviors of b-to-b organizations around a number of social media activities. Specific observations in two areas include:

One: Usage and Objectives. We asked organizations to rank order how they are using social media, with the most important objectives listed first. While there was no dominant consensus, generating awareness ranked highest (26% of respondents) followed by engaging with customers to promote loyalty and retention (18%), and interfacing with analysts and other influencers (16%). Marketing specific products finished fourth in the rankings (15%). Each of the top four responses points to active, information-to-the-market type activities; monitoring and responding to customer support issues finished immediately behind the group. Perhaps this information feedback use is assumed to be part of all social media initiatives; however, the value of social media to constantly take the pulse of the market and its perception of your organization’s reputation should not be underestimated. Without a formal process or dedicated resources to monitor market perception, a company can be easily overwhelmed by misunderstandings or misinformation, hindering its ability to make any headway in the social media space at all.

Two: Demand Generation Support and Alignment. Studies by SiriusDecisions of broader reputation activities during the past 24 months have revealed a growing trend toward integrating reputation and demand creation. In our last survey, 33% of organizations reported that more than half the time, they linked their reputation with demand creation activities. In our social media survey, only 15% of respondents reported that more than half the time, they use social media to support their demand creation efforts. More than two-thirds of respondents reported that 25% of the time or less, they align social media with their demand creation activities. Clearly, organizations are still in need of a strategy to best leverage social media within the demand creation process. Organizations must begin to consider the ways that social media tactics can be applied beyond the top of the demand waterfall, such as for pipeline acceleration efforts and more comprehensive, just-in-time sales readiness.

Slowly but surely, social media technologies and systems are emerging from their initial perception as just a shiny new toy to be played with, then discarded. As organizations identify and recognize the risks and rewards of social media, they have begun to clarify best usages and objectives for specific initiatives, as well as to learn both the nuances and positioning of various social media properties such as Twitter and Facebook. Knowing which watering holes are frequented by which audiences – and what types of content can best influence them – can help marketing and sales organizations better customize messages. All of this guidance and information helps organizations understand the optimal role of social media for supporting broader demand creation and sales initiatives.

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