Online Marketing Blog

Here’s the second in our series of Content Marketing World interviews. This time we’ve uncovered a secret stash of worldly wisdom from one of the most sought after global content marketing experts, Pam Didner, Global Integrated Marketing Manager at Intel.  Pam will be presenting at Content Marketing World on managing global, multi-lingual content on a large scale that will be a must see session for anyone involved with content marketing internationally.

Let’s dive right into our interview with Pam where she shares her secrets on the evolution of content marketing, where it fits in the B2B marketing mix, her session on global content management and how large enterprise organizations can scale long term content creation. Enjoy! But shhhhh, remember: It’s a secret.

At BlogWorld New Media Expo in New York, John P. and Cali Lewis had me on their GeekBeat.tv show where we talked about a mix of digital marketing topics including “walk the talk” marketing consulting, the power of word of mouth, the value of influence, common marketing challenges for companies, ROI vs. the promise of ROI, budget limitations vs. culture, the “must do” of getting started with social media.

Those companies that take the time to understand who their audiences and influencers are can dig into optimal means of information discovery, what target audience preferences are for media type and format, and how to inspire action whether it’s a referral or a sale.  With that insight, marketers can work to develop a plan to continuously optimize the brand’s effectivenss at connecting content with customers all across the lifecycle: awareness, interest, consideration, purchase, retention, advocacy.

At TopRank Online Marketing, we are fortunate to provide consulting to quite a few innovative B2B companies that serve other marketers. An example of that is PRWeb and parent company, Vocus, both long standing clients.

In late 2011 Vocus welcomed Jason Jue as Chief Marketing Officer. As Vocus & PRWeb’s Account Manager at TopRank, I was keenly interested in getting to know Jason better and learning his plans for the future – and what better way than through an interview for all readers of Online Marketing Blog to see?

In this interview Jason talks about the undeniable convergence of PR and marketing, what social media metric is most undervalued by many PR and marketing professionals, where marketers should invest for 2013 and his vision for Vocus.

Earlier this week Frank J. Kenny did a Skype interview with me about small business blogging and why or why not it makes sense. Frank’s audience is the network of Chambers of Commerce across the U.S..  I think it’s a timely question considering the ongoing “blogging is dead“, “no it’s not“ debate that’s been going on for the past 5 years or so.

As a small business owner myself, I’ve been blogging here at Online Marketing Blog for over 8 years and can testify as to the pros and cons like few others can. In our case, we’ve had great success with our blog as a way to achieve industry awareness and credibility, attract new business, employees, media coverage, speaking opportunities and many other benefits.

At the recent Online Marketing Summit in San Diego I caught up with Charlotte Blank, Manager of Social Media at General Motors to talk about digital marketing.  In this short interview I asked Charlotte a few fundamental questions about digital and social media marketing related to customers:

1. How does GM segment digital marketing activities between customer acquisition and retention?

Follow up: Does GM follow a social media editorial calendar according to customer buying cycles and personas?

2. With all the shiny objects of social media in the world, how do you go about deciding what to test and what to implement?

Take a look at the video and I think you’ll be interested in the customer-centric approach GM takes with social media and how time is allocated towards new customers, activating current customers as evangelists and their approach to filtering shiny social objects.

Interview Screen Grab from the 2011 Vocus Users Conference

When I was at a client’s User Conference earlier this year, Steve Farnsworth caught up with me and asked a question about using analytics to refine content for increased sales. I’m a big fan of repurposing content and I’ve paraphrased the transcription and shared below.

When people look at analytics from their website while developing content plans, what kinds of things should they look for to help improve online sales?

To start with, a company can do some research to start developing personas that reflect the kinds of customer segments they’re after. That information can get things going in terms of an Editorial Plan and keywords used to optimize content and attract links, resulting in content that ranks well on search engines and drives traffic to product and services pages. As you attract that traffic from search engines, there’s some data to work with – to analyze and refine.

If you’re looking for one of the most influential and “wicked smart” voices in online marketing, Ann Handley is an easy conclusion. Add a sense of humor and brilliant writing skills and she’s easily #1 in my book. A journalist and co-founder of ClickZ, you’re more likely to know Ann as the Chief Content Officer for the wildly popular MarketingProfs which boasts over 388,000 subscribers. Ann is also co-author with C. C. Chapman of one of my favorite marketing books, Content Rules.

A perk I enjoy most from blogging and working in this industry is getting to meet and know smart marketers. Smart + funny just takes it to another level and you can count on Ann for plenty of both. Along with the accomplishments, contributions, influence and energy she brings to our industry, Ann is genuine and grounded, plus she’s not afraid to “tell it like it is”. I appreciate those qualities a great deal.

As a long time and trusted marketing agency, TopRank Online Marketing gets to work with some amazing B2B technology and SaaS companies. One of those companies is StrongMail.  Today Kristin Hersant, VP of Corporate Marketing joins an esteemed group of marketers and thought leaders ranging from Guy Kawasaki to David Meerman Scott interviewed here at Online Marketing Blog.

Kristin is a firecracker of smarts and energy towards online marketing. Her company StrongMail is the leader in an array of email marketing and social media marketing services. Read on to learn more about the future of Email Marketing and its intersection with Social Media:

Please share a bit about your marketing background and StrongMail. What types of companies do you serve?

While at OMS and SES Accelerator this week, I bumped into (literally) my friend Jay Baer who has just published a new book with co-author Amber Naslund called The Now Revolution. I am reading it now and may do a full review, but I asked Jay about a few core principles or shifts from the book that I think are essential for helping organizations transform.

The first deals with the notion of companies “doing social” vs. “being social”.  Having personally provided social media marketing advice to a variety of companies ranging from startups to a $100 billion corporation, questions often center around “How do we do social media right?”. In other words, social media and the social web are viewed as a tactic.

I’ve been connected via the social web with Brent Payne for several years and we finally met in person at SES Hong Kong. Working for the Tribune companies as Director of Search Engine Optimization, Brent has been able to make a significant impact on news web sites like the Chicago Tribune and the LA Times.

In this interview, Brent shares his experiences with how optimizing news content for search engines works as well as the challenges and results from training journalists on how to use keywords to improve traffic to news content.

If you work with a media company or online publisher, do you train writers, reporters, editors and journalists on how to optimize content with keywords? Have you tried and had great results? Have you tried and met strong resistance?

The opening keynote presentation at SES Hong Kong featured none other than Avinash Kaushik, co-Founder of Market Motive Inc and the Analytics Evangelist for Google.

In this video interview, Avinash talks about the value of communicating analytics information in more meaningful ways. He gives examples of metaphors he’s used to present important analytics information that helps others better understand the meaning and implications of the data. There are lessons here for companies that report tabular data with no insight and little creativity in communicating insight.

What creative ways have you found to communicate web analytics insights? Have you had nightmare experiences with web analytics reports?

Check out Avinash’s “must-read” web analytics blog, Occam’s Razor, here.

Spotlight on Search Interview: Mel Carson of Microsoft Advertising on How Microsoft Does Social Media and the Yahoo Bing Search Alliance

If you attend Search Marketing industry conferences, you’ve no doubt run into the ever optimistic and charming Mel Carson from Microsoft.  When I was last in London, Mel connected me with an excellent Fish n Chips that the pubs around Trafalgar Square couldn’t get close to.  Mel is active as an advocate of Microsoft Advertising , especially via social media channels and at conferences to the Webmaster and search marketing community. His work is global and very interesting. With the Bing and Yahoo convergence, I thought it was time we did an interview – and he agreed.