Andy Beal Archives - B2B Marketing Blog

If you’ve been following the Best-of-2010 series here, you’ve seen collections of some of the best articles and blog posts from last year in neatly organized categories including market research, cool social media and web tools, social media marketing guides and tips, WordPress hacks, Twitter marketing techniques and resources, guides to effective email marketing, content marketing, local SEO and more.

In this penultimate best-of-last-year post you’ll find a compendium of interesting, informative and valuable but difficult-to-categorize marketing-related articles and blog posts from 2010. The pieces presented here range from an extensive list of marketing cliches to avoid and tips to shorten the B2B buying cycle to guidance on branding, presentation skills, freelancing, job hunting and more.

Next week will feature the must-see Best-of-2010 season finale post here, then it’s on to new ideas and putting 2010 in the rearview mirror. Enjoy!

B2B Marketing Tips, Insights and Resources

101 B2B Marketing Cliches

Looking for inspiration for an original B2B marketing campaign? You won’t find it here! What you will find however are an extensive and insightful list of 101 over-used ideas to avoid, from the lightbulb (bright idea! Not.) and the baton pass to the mountain climber, the Post-It note and of course the ubiquitous handshake.

27 Marketing Lessons B2B Marketers Should Know by HubSpot Blog

Kipp Bodnar shares more than two dozen marketing lessons gleaned from the MarketingProfs B2B Forum event, among them: repackage expensive content (such as white paper content) into different formats—blog posts, webinars, bylined articles—to get the most out of your investment. Marketers are now publishers, and almost all content can be optimized for search. And one of my favorites, “Social media thought leadership is built by empowering employees to talk about your company and industry.”

The Business of B2B Social Media by Brian Solis

Brian Solis reports that social media is that area getting the biggest increase in B2B marketing budgets, explains why B2B vendors are embracing social media, and identifies which social networks are viewed as most effective in the business world.

5 Steps To Shorten The B2B Buying Cycle by Search Engine Land

Kerry Spellman shows how customer understanding, keyword research and content tailored to each stage of the buying decision process can be used together to shorten the buying cycle and bring revenue in the door more quickly.

Just how connected are the world’s top 5 IT services companies? by Earnest about B2B

If you work for a small to midsized company and are concerned that your company hasn’t quite perfected its use of social media yet—relax. Many large companies haven’t either. This post compares the social media activities of IBM, Fujitsu, HP, CSC and Accenture. While most are active to some degree on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and blogging, none exhibit a truly consistent, integrated social media presence. Efforts of the big five seem most mature in video, not surprising considering that as this post points out, “47% of IT professionals watch videos to research technology solutions on YouTube.”

The Top 7 Organizations & Events Every Agency Marketer Should Know by Business.com’s B2B Online Marketing Blog

Details on five associations that can help online marketers keep current as well as possibly connect with future clients, including the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), Business Marketing Association (BMA), and local interactive marketing association chapters.

Is Traditional B2B Marketing Dead? by Everything Technology Marketing

Presenting “an overview of the key dimensions of B2B marketing that I see changing…very dimension (including balance of power, audience focus and presence) has significant implications on the way we plan, organize, and execute B2B marketing going forward,” Holger Schulze contends that in the new world of B2B marketing, buyers have the power; messages must be more focused than ever before; a vendor’s primary marketing presence is digital; and key marketing skills have shifted from creative to analytical, among other changes.

Social Media for B2B Technology Companies by MarketPlane

In this Slideshare presentation, Ronnie Ray and Alison O’Brien share stats on B2B use of social media, show how to align different social media tools with marketing objectives, review several B2B social media success stories, and outline a phased approach to building a social media strategy.

5 Must Watch B2B Videos by Modern B2B Blogs

Maria Pergolino highlights five entertaining and informative videos for B2B marketers on the state of the Internet, social media, changes in business buyer behavior and B2B branding.

A Simple B2B Marketing Framework by Everything Technology Marketing

Another noteworthy post from Holger Schulze, again focused on the B2B marketing process but from a different angle. Building upon the Pragmatic Marketing framework and the RocketWatcher framework, Holger presents his own elegant 4-layer model, with marketing knowledge at the base and progressing through business strategy and tools & content to the marketing tactics layer at the top.

Seven Ways to Convert Online Contacts Into Sales by Entrepreneur Magazine

Starr Hall outline seven “marketing strategies you should add to your daily practice to set yourself apart and turn your online communities into profitable business transactions…these activities will increase the ROI for your online efforts without looking or sounding sales pitchy.” Her recommendations include sharing your knowledge and expertise willingly and generously online, build your “social proof” (testimonials and recommendations), and don’t ask for the business too soon—but don’t shy away from asking for it at the proper time.

The 10 Best Infographics for Internet Marketing Pros by Marketing Pilgrim
***** 5 Stars
Opening this post by writing “Look, we both know that this is linkbait—a top ten list combined with infographics, c’mon!—but you have to admit, it’s worth bookmarking or tweeting. Right?,” Andy Beal proceeds to deliver just that: a list of infographics worth bookmarketing and passing along, sharing 10 outstanding infographics for marketers, covering topics ranging from the history of search to Google’s failed social media forays to the CMO’s guide to the social media landscape.

Presentation skills: 5 secrets of the pros by iMedia Connection

Judging by some of the presentations I’ve seen recently, a lot of people need to read this post. Bronwyn Saglimbeni highlights several techniques for making presentations more dynamic and useful, such as focusing on the needs of your audience, involving them in the discussion, and fearlessly being yourself.

35 Most Useful Tools and Resources which helping Freelancers by Dzinepress

The English here isn’t perfect (“Today we are helping Freelancers for maintain design tasks using famous tools and resources for make better performance even track work”), but the list of online tools for freelancers and consultants is outstanding, ranging from time tracking tools like Slim Timer and timepost2 to apps for SEO, social media management, accounting, promotion and design.

5 ways to turn company slide decks into marketing weapons by iMedia Connnection

Heidi Jackman explains how to use social tools to make any live or web-based presentation more interactive and engaging for the audience. For example, before the presentation, “Online community tools like MeetUp and Ning, as well Twitter hashtags or a dedicated Facebook page, allow you to spread the word about your upcoming presentation.” During the presentation, invite feedback through Twitter (though Heidi acknowledges this can also potentially lead to “disaster if the audience begins posting negative or inappropriate comments while you are speaking”), and after the event, get additional mileage out of the presentation by posting it to YouTube, Slideshare and your company’s Facebook page.

Job Hunting and Careers

Cut Your Job Search Time in Half by CBS MoneyWatch

Eilene Zimmerman offers five tips for standing out from other candidates in today’s tough job climate, such as using social media and phone calls to conduct research on the company through customers and former employees.

Top 100 Niche Job Sites by New Grad Life

While the big job boards like Monster and CareerBuilder offer volume and convenience, they are also highly competitive; recruiters and HR managers may receive hundreds or even thousands of resumes for a particular position, making it extremely challenging to make yours stand out. Chad Bauer recommends an alternative—or rather 100 of them—niche job sites. This outstanding compilation lists niche sites for career opportunities in fields like accounting, advertising, banking, design, engineering, health care, higher education, IT, pharmaceuticals, public relations and more.

7 Ways to Find a Job Using Social Media by U Stand Out

Noting that “employers are looking for their next all-stars on social media channels,” HubSpot’s Diana Freedman shares tips for using social media to help find your next career opportunity, such as following individuals from a company you’d like to work on Twitter, watching their posts for news of job openings, and leaving insightful comments on the company blog.

Uncategorizable

Philip Zimbardo: The Secret Powers of Time by RSAnimate

This time-lapsed video presentation on differing perceptions of time is difficult to categorize, but fascinating. Factors like where you live, what religious beliefs you hold and how stable your family life has been all contribute to your perception of time, e.g. living in the moment vs. being future-oriented.

Originally published on the WebMarketCentral blog in May 2008.

Google is screwed up. I say that not to be in any way disparaging of the world’s most important search engine and online advertising platform (after all, it’s a major source of my blog traffic!), but rather out of sincere, heartfelt concern. SEOs and online advertisers can no longer dismiss the search giant’s recent acting up as “just a phase,” or a bit of eccentricity; it’s time for some tough love. Yes, our friend Google is in need of…an intervention. Things have reached the point where anyone involved in interactive marketing can recognize the classic signs of a serious abuse problem:

Wild Mood Swings and Erratic Behavior

The search position held by any particular page for any specific term has always fluctuated somewhat over time, but lately the ranking swings have become unusually unstable and pronounced. For example, on one site that I do SEO work for, I watched one page go from 49th position for a particular term, to the #9 spot, then back to page five in a matter of weeks—with no changes made to the page.

That experience is by no means unique. As Jaan Kanellis recently wrote in Google Previous Query Reason For Crazy Google Rankings? on SiteProNews, “I swear I must answer these types of questions two dozen times on forums/blogs every week. ‘Where did my rankings go?’ ‘Why do I rank #4 one hour and then #44 the next hour?'”

Difficulty Getting Along with Others

While search results of course vary across the different engines as each uses its own unique algorithms, one nevertheless expects similarity in results when the search phrase being used has a clear market leader. For example, on a search for “free credit report,” Experian’s FreeCreditReport.com shows up within the top three results on almost any search engine.

To an increasing degree over the last couple of months, however, Google returns very different results than the other leading search engines, even when the others agree. For example, on a series of similar phrases, MSN and Yahoo consistently displayed one particular company’s website on the first page of their results, while Google seemed to have a much more difficult time finding it:

Results like this seem to suggest either that Google’s algorithm is no longer as accurate as MSN’s or Yahoo’s, or an explanation even more sinister, as suggested in The Google Voice: Free Speech in Search, a recent post from StraightUpSearch.

Confusion and Disorientation

Now, one might argue that Google’s results differ from other search engines because its algorithms are actually better than Yahoo’s or MSN’s. Perhaps, and Google certainly has no requirement to return results similar to other search engines—but it should at least agree with itself. But it doesn’t; it’s not unusual for Google to return wildly different results for arcane and extremely similar search terms.

For example, this is how one website showed up in search results across the three largest engines for searches on five very similar phrases. Note that Yahoo and MSN display results that are not only very similar to each other, but internally consistent as well, while Google’s results for this site are all over the place:

There are also instances where the same SEO techniques applied to different pages on a single website produce dramatically different results on Google. Disturbing.

Problems Performing Simple Tasks

The search giant has experiences reporting glitches across it’s AdWords and Analytics toolsets as reported by Ian Lurie in Google Analytics Is Losing E-commerce Data: Don’t Panic?!! on the Conversation Marketing blog. Here’s Google’s acknowledgment of the issue:

And the problems are not only on the reporting side; FTP publishing failed and spit back error messages on Blogger for four days before Google Support finally corrected the glitch. That’s a heck of a bender.

Changing Its Story

It’s not uncommon for someone with “a problem” to tell different stories to different people, or change details over time. This is apparently another warning sign for Google—are external links important or not? They still certainly appear to be, though Google has changed its tune on the issue, as reported on a Marketing Pilgrim post from Andy Beal, Google Officially Removes Link Building from “SEO?”. Why?

And Finally…Denial

The first step is getting help is of course admitting one has a problem. Unfortunately, there have been no signs of that yet from our friend. In Introduction to Search Quality on the Official Google Blog, Google VP Engineering – Search Quality Udi Manber, (a clearly brilliant and no doubt quite decent guy), defends the company’s secrecy, writing that “We are, to be honest, quite secretive about what we do. There are two reasons for it: competition and abuse.” Fair enough, and no one should expect Google to give away its most valuable secrets. But given all of the above—wild rankings swings, inconsistency, glitches in simple functions—is it too much to ask for an explanation of this bizarre behavior?

Roger Janik tries to sort this all out in What’s Important to Know About the Google “Dewey” Algorithm Update on PromotionWorld, writing:

“This past update which came roaring in during March and April wreaking havoc to all SEO’s deserves a name like a great storm- this one named ‘Dewey’…For most SEOs and general web surfers Dewey was extremely easy to spot. It only took a few searches to realize that something was off kilter and to many SEOs totally out of whack…One of the first alarm bells that went off was that many of the quality old sites that we love and nurture suddenly disappeared from the top ranking positions to pages in the tens or twenties of the index. This very unfortunate fact sent many SEOs into panic mode. Many web surfers and SEOs noticed that searches were not nearly as relevant as before. For many, it seemed that Google was tipsy, spewing out half baked results for straight forward queries.”

Given how freakish the last couple of months have been on Google search, perhaps Doozey would have been a better code name. Or Britney.

Therapy Needed

Google is too important to be allowed to slip through the cracks into dysfunction and disrepute. Every day, millions of marketers and tens of millions of searchers turn to Google to provide reliable, accurate search results. Maybe counseling is required, maybe a 12-step program, perhaps even forced commitment. Because, as we’ve all bee told repeatedly, friends don’t let friends drive (web traffic) drunk.

Google Drinks Fighting Problem

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