Web Ink Now

Video on the Web to reach your buyers

Organizations that deliver products or services that naturally lend themselves to video have been among the first to actively use the medium to market and deliver messages about their offerings. For example, many churches routinely shoot video of weekly services and offer it online for anybody to watch, drawing more people into the congregation. Amateur and professional sports teams, musicians, and theater groups also use video as a marketing and PR tool.

The idea of companies using video for Web marketing is still new. Video follows both blogs and podcasting on the adoption curve at organizations that don’t have a service that naturally lends itself to video. Some companies are certainly experimenting, typically by imbedding video (typically hosted at YouTube) into their existing blogs. I’m starting to see video snippets of CEO speeches and quick product demonstrations on corporate blogs, but this is still quite rare. For example, Guy Kawasaki, managing director of Garage Technology Ventures uses occasional video clips on his blog to great effect.

Whether they're new to the game or have been offering Web video for years, organizations get their video content onto the computer screens (and video iPods) of buyers in several different ways:

> Posting to Video-Sharing Sites. YouTube is the most popular video-sharing site on the Web, although there are others. Organizations post video content on YouTube and send people a link to the content (or hope that it goes viral). Creating a simple video is easy—all you need is a digital video camera or even a mobile phone and a YouTube account. There are all sorts of enhancements and editing techniques you can use to make the video more professional. Two examples of compelling video contributed by a company and available on YouTube:
1) The Smirnoff "teapartay" video, which features old money New Englanders rapping. It reminds me of people I went to college with, so I’ve watched it a bunch of times. And the viral component of this video is clearly working because here I am sharing it with you.

2) A fantastic "mocumentary" about enterprise salespeople by IBM.

> Developing an online video channel. Companies that take online video programming seriously develop their own channel, often with a unique URL. Examples include Weber Grills’ Weber Nation Web site, which features video grilling classes, and Ford Bold Moves, a site with a weekly video documentary series that takes visitors inside Ford Motor Company as it attempts one of the largest corporate turnarounds in history.

> Attempting stealth insertions to YouTube. Some companies try to sneak corporate-sponsored video onto YouTube in a way that makes it seem like it is consumer-generated. The YouTube community is remarkably skilled at ratting out inauthentic video, so this approach is fraught with danger.

> Vlogging. Short for "video blogging," this term refers to when people imbed video content into a blog. The text part of the blog adds context to each video and aids with search engine marketing.

> Vodcasting. A vodcast is like a podcast but with video—a video series tied to a syndication component with iTunes and RSS feeds. For example, BMW offers a weekly vodcast series of two-to-three minute videos about what’s going on at BMW. The company uses the vodcasts to publicize the cool things it’s doing around the world.

> Inviting your customer communities to submit video. This technique is how some companies, including Mentos and Converse, try to generate viral marketing interest. These companies sponsor contests where customers submit short videos. The best are usually showcased on the company site, and the winners often get prizes. In some cases, the winning videos are also played on TV as "real" commercials.

Video is cool. An your competitors are probably not doing it.

Online viral thought leadership marketing works – here is the proof

I am a huge fan of online thought leadership.

Rather than the old crap about "branding" with slick and expensive advertising that people ignore anyway or being being "on message" with the media hoping some journalist throws you a bone, thought leadership based marketing delivers valuable information that people want to consume, reaching your buyers directly and branding your organization as one to do business with.

Alert readers of this blog may recall that six months ago I published thought leadership content of my own called "The Gobbledygook Manifesto". You may recall that I worked with Dow Jones Factiva to analyze 9 months worth of press releases (380,000 of them!) for meaningless, overused, hype-laden words like "mission-critical" and "cutting-edge."

The Gobbledygook Manifesto was published on my blog and I also issued a press release about it.

Now that six months have passed, I want to report back with some interesting metrics:
> 8 bloggers tracked back to my original post
> 18 comments were left on my original post
> As of this writing, there are 753 hits on Google for the exact phrase “gobbledygook manifesto” (which I made up). There were zero hits the day before my original post so I can safely say that I introduced this phrase to the Web and those hits are a result of my work. The many bloggers and media people who have written about my original work created all of the hits.

> I am particularly intrigued that The Gobbledygook Manifesto secured a mention on Wikipedia under the entry for "mission-critical." It is not only cool that someone mentioned my stuff in this entry, but excellent marketing for me too. Each day I receive traffic to my blog from this Wikipedia entry.

OK, what about ROI? I can definitely track inquiries from companies and conference organizers back to my thought leadership content and I have booked many a bunch of speaking gigs, new consulting clients, and corporate seminars as a result. I do absolutely no "traditional marketing" for my business—it is all thought leadership based in the form of my blog, my books, my magazine articles, and my site.

The best way to reach your buyers directly is through online thought leadership strategies including blogs, Web news releases, ebooks, and viral marketing. Imagine if people learn about you on the Web first, so when they to contact you, the sale is already partly done.

Here is a post I wrote from several months ago on thought leadership including eight tips on how to develop thoughtful content.

GrokDotCom and the future of Web content

I've been reading the GrokDotCom site regularly for a while now and find the way that the smart Web site conversion experts at Future Now Inc., the producers of GrokDotCom, put this site together. GrokDotCom represents the future of a content rich marketing site and provides a model for marketers in other industries to aspire to. In fact, this site is better organized than most "content company" sites such as magazines and newspapers.

On the GrokDotCom site you find featured content by Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg, co-founders of Future Now and authors of the bestselling book Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? This is good stuff and well worth a read, but not that unusual in the world of blogs and content rich web sites.

What is unique and highly valuable is over on the right of the homepage -- aggregated blog and site content from other marketing and communications authors, categorized as "A Day in the Life of a Persuasion Architect".

I had a chance to speak with Bryan Eisenberg about how Future Now puts this site together. "We go through and hand select some of the best blog feeds out there related to marketing, advertising, web technology, word of mouth – everything that a persuasion architect would be interested in," he says. "We work on a publishing schedule with best of the week stories that are brought back by a proprietary scoring algorithm. This content levels the playing field and helps people sort out the signal to noise ratio with blogs."

On The Future Today page, you can see the best of the week and best of the month articles. I really like that GrokDotCom links to other bloggers who write about similar topics. This form of cooperation among content creators is great. Many bloggers and site owners resist linking to others that they see as potential competition.

You can also sign up for GrokDotCom content as an email newsletter (my preferred method of receiving this valuable content, especially when I am on the road and pressed for time).

Thanks Bryan, Jeffrey and team – keep up the good work.

Social media style book event with Michael Raynor for The Strategy Paradox

Deloitte Consulting LLP is cleverly hosting a meet up and social media style book launch in Boston on Tuesday, March 27 for Michael Raynor, author of The Strategy Paradox. Raynor will be at Vintage Lounge amid free drinks and snacks, happy to share his thoughts on the book and engage in any conversation participants would like.

I really like the idea of using online media in the form of a Wiki to market a book and offer an offline event as an opportunity for mere mortals to have very casual access to a business guru. What other offline events could be marketed this way?

Unfortunately, I will be speaking at a conference in Scottsdale AZ and unable to attend myself. But if you are in the Boston area, sign-up for the free event on the wiki.

Here is a review of The Strategy Paradox from the Financial Times.

Attention PR people: Please speak like human beings

I recently had an exchange with an agency PR person pitching me about their client: Esker. The PR person wanted me to write a profile of an Esker employee for one of my EContent Magazine columns.

As much as I tried, I just couldn't figure out what Esker does.

So I ask: Is it just me? Am I thickheaded? I've included parts of the conversation here:

Agency PR person: "In case you're not familiar, Esker is the global business document delivery company. Their flagship products are DeliveryWare, a comprehensive electronic document management platform that automates information delivery quickly and accurately, and FlyDoc, a web-based, hosted document delivery service."

Huh?

Me: "Can you please tell me what 'comprehensive electronic document management platform that automates information delivery' means?? What problems does Esker solve for clients and how do they use technology to do it?"

Agency PR person: "In response to your question, in a nutshell, Esker helps organizations simplify their business processes. Their customers save time and money-- by keeping documents electronic, companies are able to streamline processes, simplify their IT infrastructure, and increase productivity. The need to run back and forth from your desk to a printer, stand by the fax machine or stuff and label envelopes is eliminated. Other common problems that organizations experience related to their business communication — manual handling errors, increasing IT complexity, slow processes, high postage costs and competitive pressures are handled."

I still wasn’t sure exactly what Esker does or what problems they solve for clients.

I went to the Esker site and found this: "Esker enables organizations to realize all the business advantages and financial benefits of effective document management through intelligent delivery of vital business information. Esker’s customers benefit from streamlined business processes, reduced costs, simplified IT infrastructure, enhanced customer satisfaction, and quality assurance."

Ugh.

I actually agreed to an interview with someone from Esker, partly because I wanted to get to the bottom of this mystery. The PR person was also on the call. Guess what? After a half hour on the telephone, I still don’t know what the company does!

Yikes.

Attention PR people: Please eliminate the gobbledygook and try to speak like human beings. If your mother doesn't know what the company does, neither will the media that you are trying to pitch.

Note: It will be interesting to see if a representative from Esker's PR agency jumps in and comments to let us know what the company does (in English).

Branding is for cattle

Marketers are a bunch of flaky wimps.

I have been speaking with many technology company CEOs recently—something like 50 in the past three months while on the speaking circuit and as part of research I am doing into how great technology companies build products and develop go-to-market strategies. Many CEOs tell me that the way marketing tends to happen in technology companies is ineffective. Some CEOs say that within the management teams and employees at companies they have worked in, marketers are focused on the wrong things. They are not aligned with the goals of the business. Yes, some CEOs tell me that marketers are a bunch of flaky wimps.

Hold on there. Why is that?

Branding.

When I see "brand" as a focus of technology company marketers I want to puke. A brand is what is burned into the side of a cow's butt. As a marketing term branding is a misunderstood and over emphasized concept in technology businesses. Marketers prattling on about the brand confuse the CEO so its no wonder marketing doesn't command respect in these companies. While the rest of the organization is focused on metrics and revenue and ROI and reaching buyers, these ineffective marketers are worried about how the T-shirts look.

Marketers who obsess about brand usually focus on aesthetics over buyers. They are more interested in the color scheme of the Web site than in meeting their buyers' needs with a content marketing strategy. They care about logos not buyers. They research color schemes instead of the market. Countless marketers got their knickers in a twist about the outward manifestation of an organization's brand--including logos, image ads, and tchotchkes--all at the expense of buyers and what they need to understand the company -- especially the content found on the company’s site. Well, they are flaky wimps if that's what they do.

What's really at stake—in fact what branding's really about—is a focus on the buyer. As each buyer builds an emotional response to a company, that emotion becomes the brand-image for that person. Fortunately, some great marketers understand that the provision of quality Web content does more to build brand than pretty logos, cool Web design, and hip color choice.

Our challenge as marketers becomes taking that understanding and selling it to the CEO and the management team in terms that they understand, like ROI and dollars and cents.