McBru’s James McIntyre, Brandon Wick and I were recently interviewed by Marketingprofs.com about our agency’s work using social media on behalf of business-to-business technology clients. As a result, some of the LinkedIn aspects of McBru’s social media projects for the Itanium Solutions Alliance are featured in Marketingprofs’s new report on Linkedin. If you’re not a “pro member” of the marketing industry site, you’ll need to purchase the LinkedIn report to learn everything, but here’s an excerpt to whet your appetite.

Centralized micro-targeting on a global scale makes it easier to locate well-qualified people.

Company/Marketer: Based in Portland, Ore., McClenahan Bruer Communications (McBru) provides integrated advertising and public relations
services for B2B technology companies.

Among other clients, McBru represents the Itanium Solutions Alliance, a global community of hardware, operating system, and application vendors dedicated to accelerating the adoption and ongoing development of solutions based on Intel’s Itanium microprocessors.

Business Lessons Learned
• Use LinkedIn groups to reach a centralized network of internationally
based contacts.
• Identify groups based on your specific goals, and don’t simply assume
the largest groups are best. McBru says some of its best responses
came from smaller targeted groups and that often the members of
those groups were more willing to help out.
• Take the time to listen to what’s happening within the group
Take the time to listen to what’s happening within the group and
figure out what they deem relevant before you begin posting.
• Use personal one-to-one communications for extending invitations
that are credible and apt to be received well.

This week marked the home stretch in an extremely rigorous media buying process for one of McBru’s electronics industry clients.  McBru’s approach to media buying is complex, robust and a lot of work for all involved (just ask the publishers who have worked feverishly on round after round of proposals over the past few weeks).  But ultimately it results in rock-solid programs that push us, our clients and our publishing partners to take our 2010 programs to the next level.

One of the things I was struck by this year was how committed publishers around the globe are to stepping up their collective game in the area of delivering not just guaranteed contacts (some call them leads) but to delivering high quality contacts who have the potential to be meaningful additions to a nurturing program.  It has hit home to all that with the advent of many channels of direct engagement with potential customers now available to marketers  - from eDM to social media - publishers must deliver on the promise of their greatest asset (audience) to stay relevant.

This is great news for marketers.  As always, McBru advocates multi-pronged activities to engage customers and prospects, leveraging as many different communications disciplines as make sense for any given program.  Coming off the Great Recession of 2009, there is heightened urgency around delivering marketing programs that have top line impact.  It’s great to see publishers claiming their role in contributing high-quality contacts who have demonstrated interest in engaging with our clients.

Our week began with a lengthy positioning and messaging exercise with an IT industry client. A few minutes into it, our client exclaimed, “I am so glad to finally do this, to step back and really think about what we’re doing.”

That got me to thinking: with the rapid pace in technology markets, how many of us are too busy just doing to enjoy the luxury of thinking?

This challenge is worse today because the recession has placed pressure on many technology marketers to do more with less staff and fewer resources. Some days it seems impossible just to get all your action items done.

Add to that the increasing importance of measurement. Being uber-busy may result in more programs, more meetings, more content, more technology – all of which can lead to bigger numbers in your metrics. But are they the right numbers? Or are we in danger of succumbing to the short-term vision of Wall Street, where the next quarter is all that really matters?

Now throw social media marketing on top of the pile. What matters here is what people are saying on Twitter, LinkedIn, major blogs and other services right now. We monitor conversations around the world, analyze, perhaps respond, make a note and go on to the next one. What does that stream of activity do to our ability to keep our eye on the longer game?

I don’t have the answers to these questions. But I think it’s important to raise them, and to strive to keep a balance between strategy and tactics, between long-term brand value and meeting short-term numbers.

Now stop and think about that for a minute.

McBru is packing up and Monday starts in its new offices. While this building contains memories of many challenges and successes, the new space holds an exciting promise. After the forge of the economic downturn, the agency is once again very busy and looking ahead to helping clients, new and familiar, expand their marketing reach in 2010.

Here are a few lessons that I’m taking with me to the new space:

• Persistence is one of the most important characteristics of any company.
• Belief in what you’re doing is the key to persistence.
• That belief helped us stay true to our mission, and not pursue every available opportunity – which resulted in us welcoming several new clients who fit our experience and outlook.
• Adding new services helped all our clients, and our team, to look at the agency afresh. They also raise the level the excitement for next year.
• Cliché alert: change is the only thing that doesn’t change. Hard times generally lead to better days, during which you can prepare for more difficult times that will doubtlessly come down the road.

So good bye 1500 SW 12^th Avenue! Thanks for the generous office space, downtown parking lot, noisy HVAC and interesting neighbors.

5331 S.W. Macadam Avenue, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Over here at McBru, we work hard with our clients to produce all kinds of marketing programs. From blogging to lead nurturing, from banner advertising to influencer relations, the success often pivots on producing information that is important to the target audience. That’s why content marketing - using information to engage with customers - is so important in B2B, especially high technology.

Over on Copyblogger, Sonia Simone unveils the secret to content marketing in the post “The First Rule of Copyblogger.” Ready?

Do not publish content that sucks.

The wrong thing to do, Sonia explains, is put out “Spamducation” - “A white paper, special report, video, podcast or manifesto that claims to solve a pressing reader problem, but is in fact a thinly disguised ad.”

While Copyblogger speaks more to the B2C crowd, we feel this advice is doubly important to high-tech B2B marketers. Your customers have long sales cycles and long memories. Don’t disappoint them at any step, and leave an opening for a competitor to come in with better G2.

Take the time to give them good content, and they’ll be more inclined to give you good business.

Some say content is king. I say, it’s also ambassador. New research from PostRank suggests how your best content is enjoying a longer life outside the borders of your blog.

Postrank’s services track how content filters out to readers through comments, bookmarks, tweets, and other forms of interaction in social media networks, helping companies gauge influence and reach. The company reported trends in overall user interaction with content (“engagement”) that suggests how social media networks are changing where and how long your content is digested. While the results may be skewed towards B2C, they are still important for technology marketers to consider.

• Content sharing and discussion has left the blog – Sharing and discussion about content are increasingly happening away from the publisher’s site. According to PostRank’s sampling of the top 1000 feeds it monitors, on-site engagement (such as commenting) has dropped by over 50% from 2007 to 2009. Off-site engagement has skyrocketed, driven by the share, like and retweet functions now commonly used in Facebook, Twitter and most other social networks.

Percentage of engagement with content, on and off the publisher’s Web site. (PostRank)

• The effective life-span of content is growing - In 2007, PostRank recorded that 94% of all the engagement happened on first day of publishing. Not surprising, but here’s where it gets interesting: in 2007, 98% of the first-day engagement occurred within the first hour. That number is now steadily dropping: to 83% in 2008, and 64% in 2009. More and more people find the content after the first hour. In other words, social media is increasing the life-span of content by providing more chances for a wider audience to find it over a longer time.

So, technology marketers, the impact of your great content is likely to increase as your audiences get more active on social media networks. To gauge the impact of the content, prepare to start monitoring discussions wherever your audience, and your content, happen to go.

Over on the Copyblogger blog, Sonia Simone has written another insightful post about what social media means for businesses. Called “The 7 Harsh Realities of Social Media Marketing,” the post may be discouraging for technology marketers. With everything else on your plate, do you really want to take this on?

In our experience, careful planning and a little focused effort can smooth out the seven points. Let’s work together to make Sonia’s realities a bit less harsh.

1. No one is reading your blog. You’ve got important things to say, or you wouldn’t be a viable business. We help clients find their in-house experts and produce great content. Then we use all the other marcom channels to attract attention. It works!
2. You’ve got to give (some of) your best stuff away. Think of it this way: share your knowledge and then sell your product or service to an educated customer.
3. It will eat your life (if you let it). Don’t worry, you can build a schedule and keep to it. We can monitor what the marketplace is saying about you and help you pipe in. Relax.
4. Social media hates selling. You don’t HAVE to sell on social media. Just consider it another means to build awareness, make connections and invite people to the sales channels that already work for you (like an online demo).
5. What they say is a million times more important than what you say. Yes, customer opinion is more important than yours. But remember that, while it can’t overcome a shoddy product, honest, service-oriented marcom CAN improve a customer’s impression of your company.
6. A blog is not a marketing plan. ‘Nuf said.
7. You don’t get to opt out. The party has already started. Even if you’re shy, just put one foot in front of the other. We can show you around.

If you’re working with social media, you’re probably on Twitter, which means you’ve been hearing a lot about Lists.

This new feature helps you place the people you follow — or not — into groups, just as you may do with TweetDeck (which has announced it will integrate with Lists). The big difference: you can make Twitter Lists public on your profile, where anyone may peruse and follow them.

So what do technology marketers need to do with Twitter Lists? Not much for now.

Lists are great for people whose business is solely influence, like Robert Scoble. For the rest of us who build, sell and support goods and services, lists provide a little more organization, and complexity, to life on Twitter. Until the frenzy dies down, here are some suggestions:

1. Organize the many people you follow: Lists are an easy way to keep track of tweeters who are most important to you. Create a list of your Top Customers, another for Top Bloggers in your market. Keep the lists private. Extreme transparency proponents may disagree, but why make it easy for your competitors to leverage your Twitter network?
2. Research others’ lists: Look at the Twitter accounts of others: journalists, influencers, customers, shareholders and competitors. If you see a valuable list, check out the people on it or just follow it outright. Looks like someone’s done the footwork for you.
3. Use lists as a gauge of influence. The number of lists a person appears on is becoming another indicator of influence.

Once, long ago (months and months, it seems) the number of followers was the measure of Twitter stature. Then the spammers made that number moot. The question today is “how many lists are you on?” Tomorrow it will be something else. So don’t get too worried about lists. And just keep in mind that the quality of a person’s content and interaction remains the most important attribute on Twitter.

Where was social media marketing when virtual events really needed it?

I had that thought when I was reading remarks by Sandy Carter, IBM’s VP, Software Group Channels, in B2B Magazine. In answering questions about IBM’s social media programs, Carter provided some practical insights – don’t get into social media if your customers aren’t there, and have an “insight champion” spend time on the various networks to understand what people are talking about.

Surprisingly, Carter said that what she is most excited about are virtual events, “not just podcasts or webcasts, but truly replicating the experience that you have at an event—but online.” IBM is experimenting with online events complete with an online keynote session, breakout sessions, demo centers and chat rooms. Why do it? She says a virtual event cuts costs “between 85% and 95%” compared to a live one.” Even better, she reports “conversion rates for validated lead revenue that ranges from 10% to 25%,” nearly the same as the results from in-person shows.

I feel like I’m in a time warp. Wasn’t it ten years ago that virtual trade shows were going to sweep the industry? That every company would need an island in Second Life where customer avatars would enjoy pixel-spiked coffee and text chats? That didn’t happen. So what is different now?

I believe that the rise of social media networking has as much to do as the poor economy does in preparing deep tech markets for virtual events. Today’s technologists are more familiar with going to an online destination to make contacts and share information. Whether it’s LinkedIn or IBM’s own developerWorks, engineers are building their personal networks, exchanging ideas, asking questions and providing answers in online communities. Carter herself mentions IBM uses Twitter and LinkedIn to drive attendance to its online shows.

What do you think? Is the increasing use of social media networking going to make virtual conferences more compelling to technical audiences?

What came first the shortened URL or the tweet? That is a question I ask myself. Was there a need for a URL shortener before we had character limitations? I don’t know the answer, but I do know that there are many services that have popped up to meet this shortening demand. From Tinyurl.com to Bit.ly to Shorturl.com, these are just a few of hundreds of sites performing this service today.

But when deciding which one to use, how does one decide? Well, I came across a good post from FriedBeef’s Tech that highlights their top-5. These sites all offer something a little different – from ones that allow you to define your own page name – Doiop.com, to ones that create mnemonic words that are easy to pronounce, but mean nothing – MemURL.com.

I also found a great article written by Danny Sullivan over at Searchengineland.com. Danny takes the time to review countless URL shortening services as well as providing analysis of each site’s features.

Personally, I am loyal to Bit.ly because it tracks clicks so that I can see how popular my link was with my Facebook friends or Twitter followers. I guess it is helpful that there are different sites to choose from so that URLs can stay small. If everyone were to only use TinyURL, the continuation of adding characters to the link would eventually make the URLs from that domain not so small.

As the average lifespan of use for a shortened URL is only five minutes, enjoy your custom link for as long as it is clicked. Your URL may quickly be forgotten, but the created link will never go away for as long as the hosting service is live, thus adding to the vast Internet landfill of disposable URLs.