Forrester’s B2B profile tool gives an interesting perspective on how different categories of buyer currently use social media (based on over 1,200 business technology decision-makers in the US and Europe; filter by organisation size or type of purchase to see how behaviour varies).

There may not be any particularly pronounced differences across categories – but the overall numbers show yet again how clearly the case for leveraging social media is growing. Consider that less than a quarter are completely inactive (i.e. not making any use of social media), and sizeable proportions are active in the various different categories (anything from just having a profile on LinkedIn or reading information on a blog through to creating their own content).

Having acknowledged that the buyers are out there, the question becomes how to engage and then nurture their interest in the way most likely to achieve your business objectives (for a starting point, see our B2B web 2.0 marketing campaign planner).

Few people would argue about the power of ‘content marketing’ (or whatever you choose to call it): the importance of sharing the right insight, with the right people, in the right way, at the right time, for the right purpose.

A couple of recent blog posts shed some interesting light on why content marketing can be such a challenge – and, living up to the theory behind the approach, some of the conversations going on in blog comments are as interesting as the posts themselves.

Chris Koch has a great call to arms around the need for a marketing transformation – part of which is about building the ability to plan, create, disseminate and leverage truly insightful content.

Chris believes that there’s an element of fear that is preventing marketers from putting all their energy into making this the success it should be: “I think it’s fear that the hardest aspect of marketing, content development, is ascending to become marketing’s most important role, as advertising, traditional PR, and events shrink and fall away.”

I think there’s an argument that actually all successful marketing should now be thought of as ‘content marketing’. Yes, content can be some great research, or a video, or a podcast, or an interview with a customer, or a new model for understanding a complex problem… But I believe that exactly the same thinking is also at the heart of great events, for example. Like any other content, they need a story, detailed thought on what value they add to which audience, and how that audience best wants to receive that value.

When I made this point in a comment to Chris, he came back with the view that “Buyers aren’t interested in information anymore–they can get that anywhere. They are interested in insights.” I think this is the test we should be applying to all marketing activity – and whether we offer this insight at a face to face event, or online via twitter, it can all be part of a valid plan – but the core challenge of creating great content is still there. As Chris puts it, “Marketing departments are going to have to transform themselves into content development engines.”

So how do you go about building a content engine?

That’s one of the questions we wanted to answer (for the digital world, anyway) in our overview for planning great online content programmes. Paul Dunay also had some strong advice in a post I came across recently. Paul was talking about how important sharing great content is to building brands and relationships – and he raised the point that it’s essential to keep up the momentum once you start. In response to a comment asking how to create a plan for sustained content creation around a blog, he had 6 specific steps to offer:

“1) you need to start thinking like a publisher – what are you going to produce each month
2) once you have that in your mind – now make a publishing calendar out of it – so you have a plan
3) stop asking thought leaders to write stuff for you – get a writer and have the writer interview them and “suck it out of their head”
4) then send them the resulting paper for comments and approval
5) you write up the blog post and get the web page done
6) then launch blog post and send out the email to a data dip of those that have downloaded similar types of content

and bingo you have the makings of a content factory”

The point is that having big content ideas is all well and good – but these need to be supported by doing the basics well. We’ll have more on the different elements you can build into a ‘content factory’ – and how to sustain insightful conversations with customers – in some upcoming posts in the Marketing after the Watershed series…

Recent research by ITSMA (the IT Services Marketing Assoc.) has looked into the C-suite’s use of social media and been surprised by the findings.

Writing on his blog, ITSMA spokesman Chris Koch said that ITSMA’s annual survey of buyers of complex IT solutions (entitled How Customers Choose Solution Providers, 2009: The Importance of Personalization, Epiphanies, and Social Media), “shows that the door to the C-suite is opening up”. You can download a free summary of the research here but the full piece costs.

The research Chris quotes found that usage of social media among IT and business buyers of technology rose 50% over last year. Now 55% of respondents said they use social media as part of the technology buying process in 2009 versus just 37% in 2008.

The research also found that C-suite executives used social media more than their lower-level buying peers. Just 15% of CEOs and directors said they did not use any form of social media at all, while 34% of manager/directors and 26% of VPs/Assistant vice presidents said they do not use it.

Commenting on these findings, Chris says “This has big implications for marketers. It means that social media is taking hold within your biggest, most valuable accounts at the highest levels. Sounds like a business case for investment to me.”

My stance on this would be that any social media strategy has to be woven into a wider business case for C-level contact.

Are C-suite execs using LinkedIn or Facebook to keep in touch with peers and ask for advice – yes, they are. Are they making decisions solely on the basis of this information? Our experience suggests that’s simply not the case. Designing a business case for social media investment on a standalone basis is pretty risky – you are in danger of embarking on a non-integrated programme that very likely cannot survive without supporting communications. Think instead, what do you want to say to these execs, and how can social media be used to best effect in the series of communications you’re going create over the long-term.

Such has been the success of Cisco’s recent proactive social media strategy that the FT’s Tech blog has felt compelled to write about it.

Cisco have been piloting a social media strategy around its new Unified Computing System. The broad approach is to use social media channels to test-run messaging and potential feedback, then use that feedback to tailor the message to different stakeholders before the formal launch.

The FT blog states, “By the time the Unified Computing System launched, Cisco had drummed up considerable interest in the new product. It had had more than 53,000 interactions with customers, and honed its message to near perfection. “It’s about anticipating the issue, getting feedback from customers, then adjusting our message,” said Ms Gibson.

“All this advance work paid off, says Ms Gibson. Upon the official launch, the UCS was met with wide applause. The new product attracted enormous media attention, and 98 per cent of the stories were positive, according to the company.

“Ms Gibson says the effort was a success, and Cisco will be incorporating the strategy in the future. “The idea of using social media for market conditioning is going to inform our launches going forward,” she said.”

The FT’s major thrust here is that the value of social media marketing here has come from its proactivity; using social media tools as a kind of giant, virtual market research panel.

If you’ve ever considered the impact social media might have on your marketing team’s organisation, or indeed the setup you will need to accommodate a successful social media strategy in the first place, then Forrester’s Marketing blog has suggested a few options.

Designed to cover questions such as “which roles do we need?” and “which department should be in charge of it?”, Forrester has developed a three-pronged model as follows (with Forrester favouring the hub and spoke method as the most sopisticated of the three):

1. The Tire (Distributed): Where each business unit or group may create its own social media programs without a centralized approach. We call this approach the “tire,” as it originates at the edges of the company.
2. The Tower (Centralized): We refer to this centralization as the “tower” – a standalone group within a company that’s responsible for social media programs, often within corporate marketing or corporate communicaitons.
3. The Hub and Spoke (Cross Functional): Like the hub on a bicycle wheel, a cross-functional group that represents multiple stakeholders across the company assembles in the middle of the organization. The hub facilitates resource sharing and cross-functional communications (via the “spokes” in the wheel) to those at the edge of the organization (or the “tire”)

As per my previous post on Barack Obama’s marketing campaign chief’s approach, message and strategy should always get the lion’s share of attention over channel and tehnology. Thus the people you hire for these positions and the structure of the team delivering social media marketing should be right at the top of the agenda of any social media programme. For insight into the planning of social media campaigns, download our popular B2B web 2.0 marketing campaign planner.

Insight into Asos’s approach (in this earlier blog post “A Tale of Two Retailers” also gives insight into how Asos is driving their strategy from the top.)

The man credited with masterminding Barack Obama’s marketing campaign has been airing rather surprising views at Cannes. David Plouffe’s comments were reported in the Financial Times’ Tech blog, where he talks about the value of “old school” marketing techniques that focus on the message being delivered by channels such as email and television, and supported by social media tools as “part of the arsenal” in Obama’s campaign. He stresses it was the unconventional way in which channels were used, rather than the use of the channels themselves, that delivered the results.

“The real drivers for us were old school – they were email and they were web,” he said. The legacy of that email campaign is that the Obama administration can still communicate with 10m Americans – “directly, not through a media filter”, said Plouffe, at a time when people trust media less and value personal recommendations more. “That may not be as sexy as a TV ad or a press conference, but I can’t think of anything more valuable than [staying in email contact with supporters],” he said. “There is nothing more valuable than a human being talking to a human being.”

This is eminently applicable to B2B comms, where the channel choice can often be overstressed in its importance versus the message. In the same way, Plouffe highlights the importance of the supporters being able to “move the message” through any channel of their choosing (Twitter, web, Facebook, email) but the overriding factor in the campaign design being the message itself.  Definitely a consideration for campaign design at the moment: consider how the message might be “moved” by its recipients, and how you can facilitate that process through the way the information is delivered in the first instance.