Sporting Brain

It's event season for most B2B companies, particularly in the technology world. In the next six weeks I'll be going to a bunch of shows for BreakingPoint, mainly to demo our cyber simulation capabilities to folks. As you prep for your upcoming schedule of events how are you telling your community that you will be out and about? Couple of suggestions:

• Blog about the events you are attending, why and what you will be doing at the event.
• Set up Twitter searches for the show names or hashtags, connect with people talking about the event.
• Post events to LinkedIn (groups and their actual event feature).
• Send out an email to segments who may be attending certain shows with an offer (we have a super cool t-shirt).

If you don't tell people you are going to be someplace, don't be surprised if they fail to show up.

The other day I got an email from Pam O'Neal (my Vice President of Marketing, for those of you new to our adventures here) telling me to check out an article in Washington Technology on using social media to connect to the top contractors, agencies and influential companies in the government space. Not only was Pam pointing out the article as a resource for us at BreakingPoint, but also how the author used LinkedIn at the end of his article. Mark Amtower, the author, is a B2G marketing consultant and his resolution for 2010 was to be connected to at least one person, preferably three, at each of the top companies listed by Washington Technology by the end of March. Aggressive, most certainly. But Mark is a smart man obviously because he understands how to harness the interconnectedness of social media. Just head to the end of the article and presto, a hyperlink to Mark's LinkedIn profile. Nothing amazing at this point though, right? The magic actually didn't happen until I connected with Mark on LinkedIn, that is when the addition of resourceful content, as usual, made it's mark. Within minutes of connecting with Mark there was a personalized response to me in my inbox. How do I know it was personal and not a really great form response? Pam had connected with Mark about an hour before and the emails were completely different. Nice touch. But here comes the move that I found to be brilliant; two invites to join groups that Mark had set up on LinkedIn, both extremely focused and full of resources. Mark had gone from a random contact to a source of information in minutes and someone I was really looking forward to talking with and probably talking with about his services. Ultimately that was his goal through his resolution and he is making it happen by using some of the social media principles we have discussed here on the blog. But let's rehash:

1. Be Accessible--Include links to where people can find you.
2. Integrate Social Media--Make sure you are integrating social into your byline articles, events, emails, etc.
3. Be Personable--There is a strong connection built quickly with personal communication.
4. Provide Resources, Not Promotions--Mark didn't push me to a website that touted his skills, he introduced me to groups that can help me with my job.

Content is king and social media is the way to spread the word. Let's all use Mark's example as a social media best practice, whether for B2C, B2B or B2G. Oh, and you can connect with me on LinkedIn too.

Last night it finally happened, the Dell Inspirion that I had been using for the past six years (not to mention three house moves) gave up the fight. First off, this was a solid computer. Used for nearly every facet of my life during the past six years including:

• Partitioned web server when I started my own consulting business in 2004.
• File server for 100+ GB of pictures, music and video, including a huge growth in files with the births of two sons ('06 and '08).
• Accounting system for the entire family.
• Gaming system before I bought a Wii. My wife and I spent many an hour playing Civilization I, II and III on this piece of hardware.
• Home office computer part deux when my wife started to work from home after our move to Austin.
• Learning platform as I played around with education myself on the innards of computers, programming, HTML/CSS and networking.

Alas, all good things come to an end. The research towards a new computer begins today, but I'm looking for suggestions from all of you, who know me fairly well at this point. Tell me what computer would work best for my family, here are some critical points:

1. I use a MacBook Pro for work and love it.
2. My wife has a separate Dell for work now and she loves it.
3. We need a central computer in the house to serve as a primary system to hold all of pictures, videos and music for networking throughout the house.
4. The computer does not necessarily need any "Office" applications.
5. I need the computer to be partially partitioned as a web server to host my blogs, including this one and several family blogs.
6. I would like to start doing the family video editing on the home computer, whereas today I use FinalCut on my 15" MacBook Pro.

What say you loyal reader?

Hat tip to Pam O'Neal who found what seems to be a new advertising opportunity for Google search? Notice how when you start to put search terms in you get the regular drop down of results, but the first one is in instant link. Is this paid?

What is the one habit you can't kick? You have one; at LEAST one. Want to know one of mine? I have to drink two cups of coffee in the morning and then one diet Coke with lunch and then one more coffee at 4pm. There you go, I've included a habit with my obsessive compulsive disorder. Habits come in a variety of flavors, ranging from innocent to life-threatening. Habits are often placed in a negative light, and in most cases rightfully so. Yet as a B2B marketer one of your goals is to create habit-forming campaigns in order to lead generation and cultivation. Why do you use drip email? Why do you execute webcasts on a monthly basis? Why are advertising buys predicated on daily, weekly or monthly runs? The list goes on and on, but ultimately you should be planning out your activities so that you can take advantage of the natural habit behaviors of humans, which I assume your customers are ultimately, until the robots take over. The first time I came across this concept was after reading Habit: The 95% of Behavior Marketers Ignore , a terrific look at how marketers ignore this natural human instinct. Using habit-based marketing techniques is more than simply throwing out materials on a regular basis. Let's look at five keys to creating habits through your marketing in order to generate more and more qualified leads.

1. Be Regular--put out content on a regular basis.
2. Be Different--use different platforms to put out the content, not everyone likes eMail and not everyone knows what RSS can do.
3. Be Consistent--your company voice should have a consistency throughout the different content and throughout the year.
4. Be Creative--encourage resourceful design to make emails easier to read, use audio/video to make more personable, etc.
5. Be Useful--don't put our content for the sake of the first four points above. Before you send anything out ask, "Will this help my customers?".

It's time to introduce habitually good marketing to your audience.

The two tools I could not live without, or at least when it comes to my Twitter, are TweetDeck and Seesmic. Both appeal to me for different functionality and I use TweetDeck for @kyleflaherty and Seesmic for @breakingpoint. The main reason I like both applications are their ability to help me build personalized lists of people I follow, even before Twitter lists became a Twitter web UI feature. For example, in TweetDeck you will find six lists I have built:

1. Good Friends
2. Marketers I Trust
3. Colleagues
4. Boston Sports
5. Foodies
6. Austin Peeps

Building these lists allows me to follow more people and focus on certain topics, but it has also expelled any thought of visiting the main Twitter site. Nor will I check my full list of people that I follow since I don't like to give up that real estate in TweetDeck. And herein lies one of the pitfalls of lists (whether within Twitter or in an app), because once I build those lists I rarely add new people, since I'm only looking, well, at those lists. I love my lists, they are full of great information and great people. But with your lists you don't know what you don't know.  My lists were missing people. People that I knew. It finally hit me during a run. Yesterday as I was hitting my stride on a long distance jaunt I actually started thinking about Dave Fleet. Now, I've never met Dave personally, but we have had several conversations on Twitter and our respective blogs over the years. I've always liked the way Dave thinks and how he challenges people consistently, but in a productive method. Dave is a self-described "running nut", hence why the run jogged my memory (sorry, had to), and I realized at that moment that I had forgotten to add Dave onto any of my lists in TweetDeck! As soon as I was back at the house I remedied this egregious error and realized I needed to go through my lists closely to make sure I'm not missing other folks like Dave. People who I have enjoyed talking with over the years and who teach me a great deal. Here is how I'm going to do it:

1. Batch review my mentions (people who used @kyleflaherty) from 2007 and 2008.
2. Analyze trends to determine frequency of communications in order to find those I talked to the most.
3. Cross-reference this with my lists in Tweetdeck (now that they are interlinked with lists in the API).
4. Find the other Dave Fleet's I've been missing.

Is this problem simply an element of my own lack of vision or something inherent in list building? Oh, and hey Dave, I have a few questions about stretching after a long run for you ;)

Folks have been discussing recently how important it is for speakers to monitor the live chatter during a presentation, in order to make shifts that will help the audience. This is the wrong approach because it makes the speaker/panelist pull their attention from the people who have devoted their time to listening, leading to a much poorer presentation. Ultimately I created a personal principle I would follow when speaking: Thou shalt not check social networks during a presentation or as a member of a panel! However, I had started wondering if we all felt forced to be checking our own laptops because the audience wasn't looking at the speakers any longer, instead their own heads were buried in laptops and smart phones. Having just gotten home from speaking at the DMA's NCDM show, my hypothesis was seemingly affirmed and I now add a corollary to the list of speaking principles: Audience, thou shalt put away the laptops and the smart phones and listen to thy speakers! The best part? The rule became apparent to me because the vast majority of the audience (I was fortunate enough to present with my good friend Aaron Strout, more on that tomorrow) did not have laptops, or at least didn't take them out during the session. Smart phones, or even dumb phones, were also kept in their pockets for the most part. This lasted the entire session...150 MINUTES! Part of my brain is dying to say it was due to the riveting content, but I think that was only part of the equation. Instead, I think this audience was  trying to learn and engage with us during the session. To get the most out of our time they had committed to listening, asking questions and making comments throughout. Rather than worry about broadcasting their thoughts about our session to social networks, they instead were telling us directly. It, I hope, made for a great session for the audience, but it also created a much more enjoyable experience for Aaron and myself. The presentation and conversation between speakers and audience was the most important element during our time together. There was a visual commitment from both parties to put away the laptops (and phones) in order to listen and learn from each other. Thank you to everyone who attended the NCDM session, you provided a valuable lesson. Tomorrow I'm going to post the slides and some additional thoughts on our session, "B2B Social Media Marketing Techniques: Measuring the Impact from Creation to Closed Deal".

Conversation is defined, in many dictionaries, as the "informal interchange of thoughts, information, etc., by spoken words; oral communication between persons; talk; colloquy". Communication is defined, in many dictionaries, as the "imparting or exchanging of information or news". Let's agree that the definition of Conversation should change a bit, to at least include "written words" along side those that are spoken. Now, a question for you. On Twitter, do you have Conversations or Communications with people? On Facebook, do you have Conversations or Communications with people? On eMail, do you have Conversations or Communications with people? On the phone, do you have Conversations or Communications with people?

Last month, when you told me how many Twitter followers you had by simply inserting it into the conversation, much like you would tell someone about the weather during your vacation, I ignored the cry for validation. A few weeks ago during another awkward social media "tweetup", when you casually dropped your Hubspot Twitter Grade when talking up the waitress, I swallowed my retort since it actually looked like you would get her number. Last Monday, on a chain of emails that was supposed to be about a possible fantasy football league trade, you actually typed the words "The way Frank Gore is running the ball this season reminds me of how I created that series of Posterous posts on graffitti and linked it to my Flickr group on urban art." I didn't even reply. And last night, over a beer, you mapped out in avid detail your penultimate plan for aligning your 20,000th Tweet with your 10,000th follower, your 1,000th Facebook Friend, your 500th FriendFeed subscriber and 50th FourSquare badge. I drank. You have been my friend for a long time so let me just tell you this as straight forward as I can. Nobody cares about your personal social media numbers. Nobody wants to know how many follower/friends/subscriber/badges you have "collected" or what you plan to do during an artificial social media milestone. Most people won't tell you this, but I know that deep down, below your glazed over eyes from staring at your TweetDeck columns, my old friend is still in there. Remember the numbers you used to care about? No? Let me remind you.

The night before my wedding you told me about how you came up with that killer marketing campaign that increased recognized revenue by 285% in one quarter. While I was on a business trip in Europe you sent me an email, excitedly detailing for me a new blog post you were writing that would kick off an online resource center for your community of 500 app engineers. The day I introduced you to my second son we spent a lunch where you used approximately 15 napkins to illustrate for me how you were going to use SalesForce.com, WebEx and some homebuilt application to launch a fully integrated online demo system, with the goal being to reduce your company's current sales cycle by three months.

I miss my old friend. The one who knew which numbers mattered.

This past Friday at around 9am I was sitting in the passenger seat of our car while my wife did her best Mario Andretti through the curvy roads of the Texas Hill Country. Our mission was to reach the ER since I had suddenly come down with a very bad allergic reaction to antibiotics I was on and it felt as if my throat was constricting along with the rest of my body. Fortunately for me nothing serious did happen and once they stuck that Epi into my left arm and filled my IV up with a bunch of steroids I was on my way back to normal. By the time we were driving back home, this time obeying the speed limits, I was just annoyed at how I had lost most of my day and the fact that my mind was so cloudy that doing work in the afternoon seemed impossible. The latter part proved to be true. The mix of anti-histamine, epinephrine and steroids created this odd sense of being tired, but every time you close your eyes all you see is bright flashing lights. Thus sleep was not an option and I sat downstairs in my new favorite chair while my wife worked out of her home office upstairs. Little did I know she was about to give me a terrific reminder of how our jobs have shifted in marketing. Phone call after phone call I listened to her tell folks about a job opportunity within her company. The details don't truly matter, rather it's the fact that the people who do this job perform it basically at no pay, have to look after teenage students from foreign countries and deal with host parents. Sounds really great huh? Well after you listen to my wife tell the story of this position you might be submitting an application immediately. Marketing, and selling, is about telling a story. It is not about regurgitating a messaging platform or a tagline (although those serve as building blocks). They story you tell about your product or service must be entertaining, personalized, seemingly original everytime and easily weave in the paing points you are feeling every minute of every day. Sitting downstairs I must have heard my wife make eight phone calls, each one had a different yet similar story, but there were always some common traits:

1. A measured cadence.
2. Inserting key pain points throughout the story, not simply at the beginning.
3. No reliance on a script.
4. Ability to recognize when to stop talking and start listening.
5. You tell the story from your own perspective, not the company's.
6. Sound bites throughout which are ideal for the audience to write down for later review.
7. Confidence in each and every word.
8. Accurate use of analogies in order to ensure your story is understood.
9. Admitting when you don't know the answer, but assuring the person they will have that answer immediately after the story is done.
10. Ending the story by leaving them wanting more of the story.

Great marketers and sales personnel, no matter the industry, are good at their jobs because they most likely had all of the skills listed above, plus more. As a B2B marketer you need to be an even better story teller than the sales force, since your job is to generate leads for the sales force. By the time you pass the lead into the funnel they have bought into the story, now they want to get into the product details and negotiation. Have you listened to different people inside your company tell the story? Besides other marketers? Besides sales? No? Get up and go talk to the engineers that designed the product, your CTO who co-founded the company, the CEO who has to tell the story each quarter to the Board, the COO, accounting and more. Each of these folks have been told what the tagline and the value proposition is for the company, but how do they actually tell the story? You'll be surprised how much you will learn and how must stronger a storyteller it will make you.