Every Friday, beginning today, B2B Memes will feature notable posts of the week from around the B2B blogosphere. The picks are strictly my own (though suggestions are welcome) and reflect my particular interests in and perspective on trends in B2B media.
The Death of Print: “Will Content Marketing Kill Trade Publications?” Tom Pick, The WebMarket Central Blog, 11/9/09.
Clearly the meme-maker of the week, Tom Pick did an impressive job of summarizing how the rise of social media tends to favor content marketing over trade publishing. Though his perspective is that of a marketer, he has a clear-eyed and accurate understanding of how trade publishing works.
Updating Middle-Aged Media: “Are Your PDFs Social Media Friendly?” Galen De Young, B2B Marketing Blog, 11/11/09.
As noted elsewhere in B2B Memes, there is a whole class of “middle-aged media” like e-mail and webinars that can benefit from integration with newer social-media tools. De Young offers some simple but powerful tips for bringing PDFs into the 21st century.
Good Surveys: “3 B2B Social Media Takeaways from the Business.Com Social Media Survey,” Kipp Bodnar, Social Media B2B, 11/12/09.
Anyone involved in B2B media needs to know how B2B companies actually regard and use social media. A new survey from Business.com, as covered by Kipp Bodnar among many others, offers useful new data. As Bodnar suggests, it appears that businesses are still a bit behind on the new-media learning curve.
Bad Surveys: “If ‘advertising’ is your middle name, your surveys will always suggest the solution is …,” Rex Hammock, RexBlog, 11/12/09.
If you’ve ever been amused or irritated by the way surveys commissioned by publishing groups always seem self-serving, particularly when it involves the value of advertising, you’ll appreciate Rex Hammock’s take on a new study from the Interactive Advertising Bureau. Of course, Hammock has his own axe to grind, but his is a useful reminder always to regard survey results with a skeptical eye.
Face the Social Media Facts: “The 7 Harsh Realities of Social Media Marketing,” Sonia Simone, Copyblogger, 11/13/09.
So much of what we read about B2B social media makes it sound easy and unrelentingly positive. Simone offers a refreshingly and constructively critical take on the challenges to succeeding in the new-media world.
Straight Outta Left Field: “Make Everything Your Own,” Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson and Robert Green, Huffington Post, 11/13/09.
OK, it’s a little weird to include 50 Cent in a collection of B2B posts, but in the following quote, he and co-author Green underscore the disruptive impact of the Internet on business:
We are living through an entrepreneurial revolution, on a global scale. The old power centers are breaking up. Individuals everywhere want more control over their destiny and have much less respect for an authority that is not based on merit but on mere power. We have all naturally come to question why someone should rule over us, why our source of information should depend on the mainstream media, and on and on. We do not accept what we accepted in the past.
The rise of social media favors the entrepreneur and the individual over the company and the group. Increasingly, B2B means P2P—person to person.