Web Ink Now

CEO blogger reaches a global audience including the media and employees

Last week I sat down with Paul Levy, President and CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) to learn about how he uses his blog.

I'm fascinated by CEOs who blog and who are active on Twitter @PaulFlevy, especially those from large organizations like BIDMC (7,000 people work there).

See below for a ten minute video discussion I had with Paul.

Paul has been blogging since August 2006. His Running a Hospital blog is popular with healthcare professionals around the world, with BIDMC employees, and with people who work at competing hospitals in the Boston area.

My favorite quote was when I asked Paul for his advice for CEOs about starting a blog:

"It has to be in your voice," Paul says. "It cannot be written by your press and media department, it cannot be overwritten by your lawyers. There has to be a single author for a blog to be effective... Readers want to feel that they know you."

Video may take a few moments to load.
Direct link to video here.

BIDMC in Boston is an academic medical center affiliated with Harvard Medical School. It is a large organization, with 7,000 people who work there. They see half a million people a year, about 40,000 of them emergency room visits.

Here are some video highlights of our conversation.

0:30 – 1: 30 - How Paul got started blogging

1:30 - 3:40 - A little about Paul’s large global audience including healthcare professionals, employees, and people who work in competitors at other Boston hospitals.

3:40 - 5:20 - How the blog provides transparency and using actual data to provide an inside view into what goes on at the hospital which leads to accountability

5:20 - 6:50 - What about blogging in a regulated industry?

6:50 – 8:00 - How blog posts lead to instant corrections (vs. print news) and how reporters use the blog for stories

8:00 – 9:30 Advice to other CEOs about blogging.

I first met Paul two years ago when we spoke on a panel together and have been following his blog since. It was great to get together again in person.

Great web sites mix art and science

The more I research Web sites—and I've checked out many thousands—the more I realize that the best ones unite many important factors in a way that is difficult to describe.

They just feel right—as if the creator of the site cares a great deal and wants that enthusiasm to shine through.

Like a sprinkling of fairy dust, the effect is important but indescribable but it most certainly includes a mix of both art and science.

Here are the five important elements that you must artfully bring together to create a great Web site:

Strategy: I'm convinced that the key to all marketing is to understand buyer personas. (Buyer personas also include those who may donate, subscribe, join, or vote). Armed with a) information about buyer personas and b) your marketing goals will reveal your strategy.

Content: The content you offer (text, images, video, research reports, webinars, ebooks, white papers, charts, graphs, and more) is the most critical (and most frequently downplayed) element of your site.

Design: As you think about design, consider your organization's personality and how design works to enhance your image.

Technology: Obviously an essential element is what technologies will be used at the back end.

Measurement: Once you launch your site you need to measure and make improvements. It is best to build measurement capabilities into the new site from the start.

A well-executed Web site, like a classical music concert, is an effective combination of many elements.

But on the Web, many organizations spend much more effort on the design and technology aspects than on the content itself. Don't fall into that trap.

Perfecting that critical mix of strategy, content, design, technology, and measurement is where the art comes in.

If you're considering working with agencies to help build your site, make certain that you know where their bias lies. If you are planning to use an advertising agency, then you need to know about digital masturbation. Is your agency a design agency? Then you need to assert the strategy and content elements as being critical because your agency will drive everything based on design.

Adding personality and authenticity and reaching particular buyer personas makes the challenge even more daunting.

Just remember, there is no absolute right or wrong way to create a Web site; each organization has an individual and important story to tell.

Image: Shutterstock / Ana del Castillo

Contests encourage people to shoot videos promoting your product

How cool is it when you have a product or service that lends itself to people shooting videos for you! As a marketer or business owner, how amazing is it when people are eager to spread your ideas and share stories for you.

One of my favorite examples is Queensland Australia's Best Job in the World contest which generated 30,000 videos submitted by people all over the world.

I recently spoke with Jon Slaughter, Marketing Director at Boreal Mountain Resort near Lake Tahoe about how he worked with young filmmakers to create and post videos of competitors at the Jibassic Pro Invitational ski and snowboard competitions. Jon set up a video contest that also got people talking up skiing and snowboarding early in the 2009-2010 season driving people to the resort.

Team Moment Skis won the contest. Direct link to their entry here.

Here's how Jon set up the contest:

Fifteen teams signed up to film the JPi.5 weekend and after filming had just 36 hours to create their video edit and post to Vimeo. The videos were also embedded onto the Boreal Blog.

After a ten-day judging period the winners were announced during a follow-up "Red Carpet" awards party. The winner walked home with $2,000 provided by FUEL TV and the most viewed video won $500 from Boreal.

Here are some of the metrics from this contest:

• The Video Contest was only promoted via the web (website, blog Facebook, MySpace, newschoolers.com, snowboard-mag.com) at $0 cost
• Team registration opened at 6pm on October 1, 2009. 45 seconds later the 15 spots were filled.
• Over a ten-day period the 15 videos were viewed over 72,000 times
• Teams were promoting their video (and Boreal too) via twitter, Facebook and other social and industry sites in hopes of winning the $500 prize.

Check out more about the contest, the Red Carpet awards and view the other winners on the Boreal blog.

"Hosting the video contest was a new and exciting adventure for the marketing team here at Boreal," Jon says. "The biggest benefit we saw was the kids out 'hustling' their own videos and in-turn getting thousands of views each. One team, bHappy Films, was able to get their video posted on Transworld Snowboarding's website, which has been a white whale for my marketing efforts. bHappy's video received about 3,000 views with-in a few hours after getting posted on Transworld. The video contest showcased what Boreal has to offer early season and presented it to a previously unreached audience."

What a great way to get people interested in skiing and snowboarding early in the 2009-2010 season!

Have you run a video contest? Do you have other ways to encourage video sharing?

Disclosure: Earlier this year, I delivered a presentation to executive management and marketing staff from Powdr Corporation, owners of Boreal Mountain Resort.

Making stuff up

How do you market your company, products, and services?

Are you sitting around your comfortable offices with your colleagues just making stuff up? Or do you really understand your buyer personas and what problems they have that you can solve?

I share my thoughts on making "stuff" up in this short video.

Thanks to Stacy Melillo Spognardi at Cisco for asking the question that prompted this answer. I spoke with Stacy in my office (yes that's my junk you see in the background of the video).

The six-part series resulting from our discussions called “Social Media Marketing for Telcos” will be posted on the Cisco SP360: Service Provider blog over the next several weeks.

Disclosure: I have done work for Cisco including speaking at several Cisco conferences.

A surprisingly fun and interesting B2B ebook from CareerBuilder

Most B2B communications is dry and boring. Most B2B content offers send buyers to a squeeze page requiring an email address. As a result most buyers just can’t be bothered.

I really enjoy when I find a B2B ebook that surprises me by its originality. Here's one from CareerBuilder. Once you get to the landing page, you can punch that big, sweet Download Now button to get the ebook right away.

Better Recruitment Starts with Better Search

CareerBuilder's Search Smart eBook: The insider's guide to better resume database search (with tips and tricks for finding the best resumes)

The purpose of this eBook is to teach HR people the tips and tricks for easier, faster and more effective resume database search so they can find that perfect candidate.

Download the ebook here.

Have you got a great B2B ebook to share?

Thanks to Jason Ferrara for sending me this.

Online video as lead generation

Video has been available on the Web for years and with YouTube it is simple for anyone to create and post a video online.

However, a legitimate criticism of video (especially from B2B marketers) has been that it is tough to do lead generation. Sure you can have a URL mention at the end of a video or you can embed a video within a landing page with some lead offers, but that's not fully integrated.

My friends at VisibleGains have developed a video application that solves this problem. Here is an example program we created from the four videos I shot at GM a few weeks ago.

The VisibleGains application makes it easy to include links and offers as part of the video experience. Best of all, the links at the bottom of the video player to the Twitter feeds and blogs of me and the GM people speaking in the interviews are non-intrusive and can be ignored if you're not interested.

Did you notice the link near the end that points you to see the complete footage of the interview I had with Fritz Henderson, CEO of GM? These are welcome and valuable ways to offer additional content yet not in any way annoying. And notice how the video pauses when you click on a link.

Of course, these links could easily have gone to offers for lead generation purposes (such as to sign up for a Webinar). Also notice the simple form at the end of the video for people interested in learning more (in this case about VisibleGains services.

Brand Journalism becomes lead generation

I've frequently said how great online video interviews are as brand journalism. They are so darned easy to do. Any organization can shoot an interview with a customer or partner or analyst or author or someone else within a market space and become a thought leader. I use my Flip video to shoot interviews nearly every week and it’s so easy!

Now you can make those videos interactive and use them to generate leads. How cool is that?

Imagine your organization producing a regular interview show that combines brand journalism with lead generation. I'm sure you can think of subjects for shows.

Thanks to VisibleGains for turning nearly an hour of video I shot at General Motors into a compelling 4 minute video and then putting it into their player so I can share it with you.

What do you think?

Are you a marketer using video as brand journalism?

Do you have other ways of generating leads from those videos?

Please share your thoughts.

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UPDATE: Shortly after I posted this, Matt Shaw tweeted and commented that video players similar to the one from VisibleGains have been around for years. I commented back to Matt. I also removed the word "Finally" from the posts title. The original post was called "Finally! Online video as lead generation." Thanks Matt.

Hey B2B marketers: It's okay to have fun!

Why is so much business-to-business marketing dreadfully boring?

I think it's because the marketers involved think "business" as in "I am marketing to a business" and this results in an overly serious tone. After all, if you are marketing to, say, technology companies that’s different than consumer marketing, right?

Wrong.

B2B marketers seem to forget that what all marketers need to do is communicate to people. People want to do business with people and the companies that understand that in the B2B world develop a following.

National Instruments is a B2B supplier of measurement and automation equipment used by engineers and scientists. The tried-and-true marketing from companies like National Instruments is to focus on feeds-and-speeds, technical data sheets, specs, and so on. After all its the engineering community, right?

While National Instruments does provide product specs, they also realize that their buyers are human.

"We've always had the motto, both internally and externally, that 'It's OK to have fun," says John M. Graff, VP, Marketing & Customer Operations at National Instruments. That fun-loving attitude has produced many ways to communicate with the technical audience that buys NI products.

For example a video blog done by Todd Sierer, an engineer at NI, called an An Engineering Mind is really great. In the episode I chose below, he talks about the meaning of the word "Marketecture." Direct link here.

"We first debuted these videos two years ago at our annual user conference held in Austin, TX where over 3000 engineers and scientists gather to see and discuss latest technologies for measurement and automation," John says.

"In addition to the usual technical product demonstrations, we also try to have some fun, including inviting an engineer from the Spike TV show, Deadliest Warriors to the stage. We've found that our audience greatly appreciates this approach to communication (as they get plenty of examples of the drab, "speeds and feeds" technical fire hose). We believe it's greatly enhanced our reputation."

Are you a B2B marketer? Are you treating your buyers like humans? Are you having some fun?

Really, it's okay to have some fun. I dare you.

Eugene Mirman is on television, is very nice, and likes seafood

"There is no middleman between me and an audience," says Comedian Eugene Mirman, known for his work in Flight of the Choncords, his book of satire The Will to Whatevs: A Guide to Modern Life, and appearances on Comedy Central and Late Night shows.

He has a blog, a Facebook page and is on Twitter.

"I want to be entertaining on the web," he says. "That's what's fun for me. While there is a store on my Web site, the push is to provide things to entertain people."

And entertain he does, Eugene's Twitter bio reads: "I am television's Eugene Mirman. I am very nice and like seafood." Sample tweet: "I started a tortilla fire in my toaster oven. Last time I leave to watch a preview of the new Green Lantern movie." And he even included a link to a photo of the evidence.

Eugene uses Facebook and Twitter as ways to get his information out to multiple audiences very quickly.

For example, immediately after he delivered the 2009 commencement address at Lexington, MA High School, he posted the video on YouTube and then pointed to it from his blog, twitter and Facebook. The video got 100,000 views in just one week.

"I don't obsess with the statistics," Eugene says. "I'd like to think of a funny tweet or blog post, but mostly I am doing a lot of things and seeing what happens. I write things that I think are funny as a tweet, in 140 characters, and then push it out there. I don't think, 'I have to do a blog post today'."

Eugene says that he just writes what's interesting to him at the time and he doesn't worry about his productivity.

"I want to do things are funny and I want a lot of people to see it, but I do what I think is good and funny and then hope that others pass it on," he says. "It's easier for me to do what I like, and if it attracts fans then that's great. And I'm lucky that it has been effective over the years to do it this way. I talk to a lot of people who want to be writers. With social media, you can tell a story. If you have a special interest, like cooking, then you can get an audience."

Alert readers of this blog may recall my metaphor of the web as a city and social media as a cocktail party. Cocktail parties are fun. You go because you want to be there. And while the possibility of meeting someone who could become a customer is a distinct possibility, that’s a by-product of good conversation.

Like Eugene, it is best if you have the right attitude going into social networking sites. While he is a comedian, all sorts of people are interesting company at a cocktail party (including you).

Image credits:
Top: Eugene Mirman
Bottom: Shutterstock / Argunova

To gate or not to gate? Data from an ebook offer

At my keynote speeches, one of the most frequent questions I get is around my position that it is almost always best to make valuable content (such as white papers and ebooks) totally free vs requiring an email address to download.

The essence of this raging debate is that with a gate, each person downloading becomes a valuable sales lead, however making the content totally free with no registration required means many more people will download and spread your content via email, Twitter, blogs, and the like.

Frequent readers of this blog know that I write about this topic from time to time, most recently in a post called Say NO to squeezing your buyers.

I'm always interested in metrics to support the various positions in this debate and am excited that John Mancini, President of AIIM has agreed to share his experience with us. AIIM is a non-profit organization representing the users and suppliers of document, content and records management technologies.

On October 1, 2009 Mancini released the organization's first e-book 8 Reasons You Need a Strategy for Managing Information -- Before It's Too Late. They made the ebook totally free, with no registration required.

In just one month (October 2009) the ebook was downloaded 5,138 times. In addition, AIIM also created a presentation version of the book and posted that, also with no registration, on SlideShare. This version has had 3,353 downloads for a total of 8,491 downloads in the month. Pretty darned good result, for the first month of an ebook, I’d say.

"Making the e-book available for free and totally without registration was a new approach for us," Mancini says. "These results for unfettered access are particularly impressive when considered against a couple of more traditional examples (i.e., content requiring a registration on our web site)."

Mancini says one of the most popular pieces of content are AIIM Industry Watch research papers. "We require registration for these papers because they are also used as a lead generation program for the sponsors," he says. "During roughly the same period as the e-book, there were 1,282 page views of the research, which translated into 513 actual downloads."

So this data suggests that unlocking content at AIIM means more than a sixteen-fold increase in the number of downloads.

Mancini is convinced that the more forward looking of their sponsors will start to realize that the future lies in creating as much visibility as possible for their content rather than viewing this through the prism of name acquisition and lead generation.

"We have learned some production things along the way," Mancini says. "For example, it is not an easy process to simply produce the book in multiple formats. We learned that most people seem to want PDF. And we learned that to get a screen-readable version that also minimizes page count, it is better to format horizontally (landscape) than vertically so we'll be republishing in a landscape format in the next few weeks."

The actual content of AIIM's e-book was built in an unconventional fashion, tapping into its network of experts to solicit contributions for the book through its Digital Landfill blog and through Twitter rather than through a more traditional authoring process.

"Based on the success of the past month, we plan to launch 3 more e-books in the next few months," Mancini says. "We are convinced that providing easy access to content like this is key to our evangelical mission."

Thanks for sharing your experience John!

How about you? Do you have any gate vs. no gate metrics to share?

Grateful Dead at the forefront of marketing technology

This week I had a chance to hang out with Jay Blakesberg, long-time Grateful Dead tour photographer, in his San Francisco studio.

We discussed how the band (now called The Dead) is at the forefront of using technology for marketing. This video is about 9 minutes and includes highlights from the discussions. Please take the time to hear Jay describe what a true marketing powerhouse of a band is doing more than 45 years after they originally formed.

I suggest letting the video load before watching.
Direct link to the video here.

Details of what we discussed in the video:

:00 - 1:50 Through a partnership with Blurb, Jay Blakesberg created an official tour book for each city of the tour. At each stop, a collectible book featuring backstage and rehearsal shots is made available. A few days after the show, you go to Blurb.com and place an order and the book will include photos from the show that you attended.

1:50 - 4:00 You can get recordings of any of the tour's shows by buying from the official Dead site as a download or purchasing a CD set at the show itself which is available just 30 minutes after the end of the show.

Jay worked on an iPhone application called The Dead Tour 2009 – ALL ACCESS includes streaming audio from all the shows on the tour, streaming video, blogs, and photomosaic images. Jay also live tweeted the set lists as each concert was happening.

5:30 - 9:00 On The Dead being on the forefront of marketing technology. 45 years into their career, they are still cutting edge.

Jay has some great photography books that you can order on his site. Of course, I scored signed copies of them when I was at Jay’s studio!

Between the Dark and Light: The Grateful Dead photography of Jay Blakesberg

More than 900 classic photos lead you on a journey through the colorful world of the Grateful Dead. Most of these images, shot from 1978 – 2002 have never been published before. With Jay’s back-stories, a foreword by Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh, and historical essays, Between the Dark and Light is an irresistible 25-year journey through the Grateful Dead experience.

Traveling on a High Frequency: Jay Blakesberg photographs 1978–2008

A 30-year retrospective with 304 pages featuring over 1,200 photographs from the archive of Jay Blakesberg.

Top image: Jay Blakesberg photo of Bob Weir via blog.blurb.com
Second image: Tour book from the Worcester, MA shows
Third image: The Dead iPhone app