Conversational Media Marketing

I've noticed a thread that seems to run through the social web -- an emphasis on the use of personal branding as a way to build the associated company brand.

There are a number of examples:

• Paul Dunay, Director of Global Field Marketing at BearingPoint (see conversation I had with Paul below)
• Chris Brogan, VP of Strategy and Technology at CrossTech Media
• Jason Falls, Director of Social Media at Doe-Anderson, a leading Louisville, KY advertising agency
• Jeremiah Owyang, Peter Kim, Charlene Li of Forrester fame (Peter and Charlene are no longer associated with Forrester, but you get my point)

Perhaps the way to think of these people is as spokespersons for their company.

My company Bizzuka sent two press releases today via PRWeb, one at the Media Visibility level and one at the SEO Visibility level. If you google the phrase you'll notice that one is already on the front page just beneath the returns linking to our Website.

My latest article on Practical Ecommerce...

Trust in word-of-mouth recommendations is at an all-time high. Public relations firm Edleman says in its 2008 Trust Barometer study that “a person like me” is still the most trusted source for information about a company and its services or products.

While the most influential form of word of mouth recommendations come from those you know personally, such as family and friends, online ratings and reviews can have significant influence as well.

Read article>>

I finished reading Groundswell last night, the book co-authored by Forrester analyst Josh Bernoff and former analyst Charlene Li. I have to say it's one of the most important books on the subject of social media that I've read this year.

Research - The opinions shared, suggestions made and advice given are based on solid research. What else would you expect from Forrester, right? Everything is well-documented and appended.

Case studies - Charlene and Josh support the research with real world examples showing how organizations both in the for-profit and non-profit sectors are using the tools of social media to accomplish marketing and business communication purposes. They showcase larger organizations like Dell, Best Buy and M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, but do include a few references to small business.

Writing - The book is very well-written. Again, you'd expect no less from Forrester analysts.

For years I've regarded MarketingProfs as one of the two best marketing resource sites on the web, the other being Marketing Sherpa. As such, I attribute immediate credibility to content published there as well as to the contributors who write the articles.

Recently, I received what we in Acadiana refer to as lagniappe. Ann Handley, MarketingProfs Chief Content Officer requested that I contribute an article on the topic of content marketing. She read a blog post I'd written and asked me to expand on it.

Well, I did, then waited to see what Ann might do with it, if anything. How pleasantly surprised I was to find it listed as this week's marketing how-to...and included as premium content as well!

Needless to say I'm extremely grateful to have something I penned included in a resource site that I hold in such high esteem. I'm honored...and humbled.

BTW, the article is entitled How to Acquire and Retain Customers via Content Marketing.

I was reading a blog post from email marketing platform company Vertical Response recently which talked about the importance of using Web site video.

There is no question that, thanks to sites like YouTube, , Yahoo!, Kyte, NewTeeVee. Vimeo and many others, the use of online video is growing fast. You, too, can get in on the trend. In fact, you should.

Read the rest of this post at the Bizzuka blog.

(The post includes information about uploading video to the Bizzuka CMS, but you can disregard that portion. It contains information for general use as well.)

Something my boss said recently in regard to a weekly Internet radio show we started for Bizzuka got me thinking. "What you're doing (in terms of the show) will not just help us create greater awareness among prospects, but among those considering coming to work for us," he said.

It caused me to realize that marketing, especially social media marketing, is not just about building a prospect list. Sometimes, whether intentional or not, it's also about attracting quality talent and/or wealthy investors.

Last Friday, I had the opportunity to participate in an interview with Natalie Myers, a reporter with MarketingSherpa, one of the leading marketing resource information sites on the planet, to discuss the topic of real estate blogging.

Fielding Natalie's questions reignited a desire to once again get involved with the real estate industry, even if it's nothing more than blogging about RE.net here at CMM. This week I plan to share some insights from several Realtors on how the use of blogs and other forms of social media has worked to serve the purposes of SEO and lead generation.

I also want to share some pertinent insights of my own, not only to Realtors, but anyone who's thinking about using a blog for marketing. Anyway, look for a series of posts later this week.

The more I understand marketing, the more I see the need for an integrated approach which spans a wide range of tactics. I've commented on the use of , but that's only one way. The kind of integration I'm referring to is something like that provided by companies like Eloqua. Truly sophisticated stuff.

Today, B2B magazine posted two articles with almost the same title, which is what got me to thinking about this:

• Businesses embrace blogging
• Businesses embrace integrated marketing

If I had my druthers I'd focus only on the blogging/new media side of marketing, for that's the new fangled stuff. But, more traditional, tried-and-true approaches like email, Webinars, whitepapers and microsites, while less sexy, are necessary to get the job done.

In my case, getting the job done means generating leads for our salesforce. And it's best done when the right hand knows what the left is doing (i.e. Information from all sources is integrated via a single database.).

So, while blogs, social networking, podcasting and video are all tactics we're putting to use at Bizzuka, I'm disciplining myself to make use of the other stuff too...then blog about how successful I am at doing so. :-)

I received this friend request from a member of a social network site...

Hello Paul, ____________  here from _________,Va, and I would like to connect to you as a business connection. Also would you be open minded to hearing about a business if it could potentially add substantially to your income, without jeopardizing what you do now?

I've removed the person's name and location information as I'm not trying to make an example of him. I am using his request, however, for the purpose of teaching a lesson on social media marketing.