I attended a presentation by Clara Shih CEO of Hearsay Social, and author of the 2007 bestselling book The Facebook Era. Here are some highlights from her presentation about success factors for Facebook marketers. Facebook: the rise of personalization in online experiences On Facebook, you are asked when you sign up to share a lot of information: political views, [...]

Recent research by Constant Contact and Chadwick Martin Bailey shows that Facebook Fans are more likely to recommend a brand to their friends, or buy products than blog visitors. The study analyzed the behavior of nearly 1,500 consumers ages 18 and older throughout the US. The findings of this study on consumer behavior highlights the need for small businesses [...]

  I attended the Inbound Marketing Summit in Boston and had a chance to listen to Brian Halligan, founder and CEO of HubSpot, and author of best-selling book “Inbound Marketing”. I tried to capture the essence of his vision for inbound marketing at a 2015 horizon. The marketing funnel is shifting: the buyer is in control In the old [...]

Marketing teams in B2B are different from marketing teams in B2C. In B2C, you mostly find employees who studied marketing, have worked in marketing for other brands, and have the marketing knowledge needed to run a B2C marketing department. In B2B, you often meet marketers who came from engineering, product development or sales. They lack formal marketing education and [...]

Jean-Marie Bonthous The name of James Bond is not used often to make serious marketing points. I will try… Photo courtesy of jhecking via Flickr’s Creative Commons The James Bond brand is stronger and more valuable than ever. Created in 1952 by Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels, the Secret Agent has been used in the longest running [...]

Jean-Marie Bonthous Facebook recently formulated a set of best practices for marketing on their platform. I will attempt summarize the essential points in this document. Photo courtesy of Thom Watson, via Flickr Creative Commons Facebook makes it possible for marketers to remain connected with people 24/7, whether they are at home or at work, and at their computers or on [...]

Jean-Marie Bonthous 80% of executives watch more online videos than a year ago According to a white paper about online video in the C-suite recently released by Forbes, “executives are transforming their habits to be more open to video as a highly reliable and trusted source for gathering and filtering business information.” Photo courtesy of Beate Firlinger via Flickr Creative [...]

Photo courtesy of istargazer via Clickr Creative Commons.   Customize your account Even with the “Free basic” account, you can add your logo, your location and industry, your website address, phone number and an “About” description. That is a lot. Here too make sure that whatever words you enter are aligned with your SEO strategy and use this valuable [...]

    Photo courtesy of Billgrog2 via Flickr Creative Commons   Marketing automation systems assist marketers with email marketing, for the purpose of managing campaigns aimed at improving lead generation, lead scoring, sales and campaign management. Marketing automation systems align the efforts of marketing and sales throughout the sales cycle. Some offer social media integration. Some offer integration with [...]

      For B2B marketers, the new, improved version of SlideShare has a wealth of features which make it an indispensable complement to a blog. According to Interactive Agency Jesse3 (quote posted on the SlideShare site): “SlideShare Pro is very close to a silver bullet solution”.   SlideShare has 45 million monthly visitors and 90 million page views. [...]

  All day long, all over the internet, people are talking every day about events, places, brands…. But the proliferation of social media content online makes it difficult to aggregate and display content about specific events or places in a unified, visual space on the web. For people hosting a multi-day event, creating a social newsroom around a company announcement, [...]

  At the Web 2.0 Expo & Conference in San Francisco, Kevin Kelly, co-founder and Editor-At-Large for Wired Magazine, delivered a brilliant keynote outlining his vision for the future of the web. I was impressed by his clarity and by how simply and succinctly he was able to simplify complex concepts to share his vision.   Kelly described six [...]

    In a recent article called “The Coming Wave of Social Apponomics,” Matt Anderson, Henning Hagen, and Gregor Harter, three very senior consultants with global consulting firm Booz & Company, present an approach to profitability on the internet which they call “Social Apponomics.” This approach will be of interest mainly to consumer goods companies and retailers.   I [...]

    There has been a lot of debate about the merits and shortcomings of Klout and PeerIndex–two tools for assessing the influence of account holders on Twitter, Facebook, and now LinkedIn. Klout claims to be “The Standard for Influence” while PeerIndex’s slogan is “Understand Your Social Capital.” In a recent post, I have provided more insights about the [...]

    Having a clean reputation online is important in order to assert your influence and thought leadership. If you intend to become a social business, you need to be able to show a trail of positive comments by your customers. If you are looking for innovative ways to keep your online feedback in good standing, here are two [...]