Popular Web 2.0 Tools for B2B Marketers?

von | Juli 30, 2007 | Blog, Digital Marketing, Digital News, Marketing, Marketing Trends, Social Media Marketing

This is a headline I read at marketinvox.com. And this is the info you get there:

B2B marketers have adopted blogs and RSS more than other Web 2.0 tools such as wikis, according to the report; moreover, smaller marketers – the Davids among the Goliaths – are at the forefront: Some three-quarters of surveyed marketers that have deployed Web 2.0 tools are in companies of 10,000 or fewer people.

Some other findings from „The B2B Web 2.0 Tools Report“:

  • Nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of respondents use blogs, 58 percent use RSS feeds, followed by podcasts (54 percent), videocasts (43 percent), social networks and communities (42 percent) and wikis (19 percent).
  • The most frequently noted blogging services were WordPress (35 percent) and Blogger (30 percent), followed by TypePad (19 percent).
  • Users‘ favorite RSS readers are those offered by Mozilla Firefox (23 percent), MyYahoo (20 percent) and Bloglines (17 percent).

Fascinating news. So I went to the website of the tools report. On this site you get the results, and you can also participiate in the survey:

Tools are ranked according to the number of mentions by qualified B2B marketers. The number of ‘Votes’ is tallied in the second last column of the table.

If you sum up the votes, you can see that there are only 61 votes sofar. In my opinion this is hardly a solid number for issuing such a press release! Don’t get me wrong: the findings will be interesting, once there is a substantial number of participants. But don’t start with such a bold headline on such a small number of findings!

Regarding the statement „qualified B2B marketers“: the survey can be filled in by anyone. There are qualification questions, but you can fill in anything you want. I am sure there will be quite a few people filling in this survey in any random way, only because they are interested in receiving a full copy of the results.

Let’s wait and see what the results will be in a few weeks.

„Users“ as a target group are dead. Everyone „uses“ the web.

von | Juli 27, 2007 | Blog, Digital Culture, Digital Marketing, Digital News, Marketing, Marketing Trends, Social Media Marketing

Max Kalehoff writes about „the death of the user„. The user as such is „dead“ because all people are users now. In the US it’s 80%, and even in Germany, where I am from, the majority of 62% of the population are „users“.

Let’s just call people what they are: people. The problem is that inaccurate buzzwords and overused vernacular, like users, distance us from our true intentions and interactions with customers and each other. Not just in technology, but in marketing, media, advertising and the Web — everywhere, really.

Interesting thought. If you start thinking not about users, but people who use your site, your web application, your whatever tool/marketing gadget, you’re instantly led to think about uses and different usage of things. That should help you thinking more in favour of different target groups and their needs.

One benefit that came from focusing on the person and not the user has been being able to easily see that people have different desired uses and reuses for the data, information, media, etc.

(Joe Jaffe, btw, has been saying that for a while in his podcasts.)

Entropia with Crytek Engine – how realistic will graphics get?

von | Juli 27, 2007 | Blog, Digital Culture, Digital News

Now this might well unsettle Second Life: Entropia has licensed the Crytek 2 Engine. I have already written about Crytek 2 in March, it offers the most fascinating graphics I have seen in a computer game! You can click through to golem.de to see what I mean.

Funnily enough I wrote back then:

I wish second life was only nearly as realistic as anything the new cryengine can show!

Well, it looks like Entropia made the race…

Music Genius Prince and his newspapers CD giveaway coup

von | Juli 25, 2007 | Blog, Digital Culture, Digital News

Here is a good summary of the latest coup of Prince, the artist formerly known as a symbol. He just released his new album by attaching it to a newspaper in the UK. Meaning: everyone who bought the paper, also bought the CD. That should instantly catapult him into the top 10 charts. He did so before, by giving CDs to everyone who visited his concerts.

The music industry, of course doesn’t like this. But hey – do we like what the music industry does? Charging us for the inefficient logistics of carrying heavy plastic disks to a store near us, when all we want is to download a song via iTunes right in front of us?

What should brands do about web 2.0?

von | Juli 25, 2007 | Ad News, Blog, Digital Marketing, Digital News, Marketing

Brandweek features a good, summarising, article of what brand marketers should take into account when dealing with all stuff „web 2.0“.

The user-generated content upheaval—manifested in blogs, podcasts, videocasts and wikis—is quite real, and so is the revolution of consumer empowerment. But despite the resultant chaos, brand managers simply must learn to maintain a balanced perspective. Yes, the digital media environment is being democratized, but that doesn’t mean that you have to turn the keys to your brand over to the digital inmates of the Web 2.0 asylum.

That is a bit harsh. „Digital inmates of the web 2.0 asylum“! But in a way he’s right. Brands do not have to respond to every web 2.0 challenge, just because someone thinks it could be fun if the brand did. Just like you, yes you, dear reader, wouldn’t just jump of any bridge, just because someone else thinks it’s fun. Brands need to engage with their target audience in a way that is true to their core brand personality. That implies that some brands might actually engage more carefully and less openly than others.

Brands might also take very different approaches in the way the open up the conversation with their target audience. But to some degree, they will all have to:

If you’re to have any hope of maintaining your brand equity in the Web 2.0 world, you must begin by assuming that while your happy customers will remain silent, your critics will be all too happy to denounce you online. So you might as well provide the place for discussion and retain some control of how the dialogue develops. An invitation to the public to air its views need not, however, be a free-for-all. You should take a hard-line on obscenity, vulgarity, hate speech and intolerance. You may even want to curb anonymity to raise the overall civility of the discourse.

Regard this as an opportunity: you never had the chance to learn so much about your customers. Providing an open platform for your customers gives you the ultimate opportunity to learn about the opinions of your target audience – you can even find out about the tonality they prefer, which in turn can help you (or rather your agency) write better advertising pieces.

Engage your customer, ignore the hype and don’t fear the revolution—whether it’s downloaded from iTunes, read from blogs or stolen from YouTube.

Funny! This reminds me of:

  • „The revolution will not be televised“ – Gill Scott Heron
  • „The Television will not be revolutionised“ – (I think it was Joseph Jaffe, who said that in one of his podcasts)

But the quote I find the most useful – and it is also something I keep telling everyone:

there’s also no single ‚right way‘ to manage in the reality of the Web 2.0 world. Be prepared to experiment.