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Roundtable Wrap-Up: Network the World
Editor's Note: Today we have a guest blogger, David Berkowitz, Director of Emerging Media & Client Strategy at 360i, a leading digital marketing agency.
Last week at kasina's Fall e-Business Roundtable I facilitated a discussion about the future of e-Business and online networking tools. There were two big questions that came out of the session that I thought might be valuable to post up here on the blog.
The first was a question about communication in the B2B environment, specifically which method I would recommend firms invest to get the most bang for their buck:
First I'll go with the easiest answer: listening and buzz monitoring. It's the easiest thing to do, and it's what needs to come before everything else. Try searching Twitter for your company name, a competitor, a stock symbol, or a hot topic in your industry. Look at FriendFeed's public timeline to see what early adopters are posting all around the Web. Run searches on social media sites such as digg, YouTube, and Facebook, and on buzz monitoring and measurement sites like HiveSight, Blogpulse, and Google Insights for Search. Any and all of this can provide valuable information about your customers, competitors, and business, and then you can figure out how to take action on those findings.
As far as communication, I'd start with blogging. It takes time to do it well, and it requires a commitment, but it can also develop into a valuable communication channel. It's also a great way to give a business a more personal voice, even if written in a professional manner. With the tone, you want to write like you're talking to a client over coffee - you still will want to watch what you say and how you say it, but you're treating the listener as a human being, someone you want to engage and build a relationship with. Blogging is also a gateway into an entire community of other bloggers, so it can lead to deeper relationships on a number of levels.
The second question was whether marketing dollars will shift from off-line executions (i.e. magazine ads, direct mail) and into social networks in 2009.
I see marketing dollars will shift more from offline to online media as marketers demand better targeting and more accountability from their advertising. Social networks should have a mixed bag of success in the year ahead. On one hand, much of the flow to online in 2009 will go toward the most efficient direct marketing channels, including search engine marketing and various forms of behavioral targeting. The recession will add to the pressure to demonstrate ROI next year, so search engines will benefit even more from this. Yet social network marketing will continue to grow for a number of reasons:
- Most marketers still include it as part of an experimental budget, so there's a lot of room for growth, even among entertainment marketers and others who have flocked to it early.
- Usage of social networks continues to rise, and it's now a major driver of Internet usage. Reports now say social networks are even more popular than porn. Ad dollars need to start shifting to where the users are; they're not always searching, and advertisers need to create demand at earlier stages of the funnel.
- Ad targeting options keep improving on the major social networks (MySpace and Facebook), along with other social media sites and networks such as YouTube, BuzzLogic, Meebo, and SocialMedia.com. There are many businesses out there seeking to improve on and better demonstrate the value of social media as a marketing channel.