B2B Marketing Blog - TopRank®

B2B Marketing views, news and interviews.

Jay Baer on Content Marketing, Youtility and Why Inbound Marketing Just Isn’t Enough #NMX

Jay Baer talks about content marketing and Youtility at NMX Las VegasHelping beats selling. If you sell someone, you can make a customer today. If you help someone, you can make a customer for life. So says social media speaker, author and coach Jay Baer, in the opening of his “Youtility” presentation at NMX Las Vegas.

What is Youtility and why do marketers need to get on board? Audiences have become fragmented, there is far more competition for their attention, he says. Frame of mind awareness is all about inbound marketing, but this doesn’t create demand; it fulfills it. It’s half the cake – it’s a great thing for consumers for already know what they want. In 2004, 83% of people used search engines to find websites, but in 2012, it fell to 2011. The funnel of knowledge is fragmenting; there are so many more places for people to go to find information. We have Siri, Angie’s List, Cha Cha, etc.


Jay Baer on Content Marketing, Youtility and Why Inbound Marketing Just Isn’t Enough #NMX

Lee Odden’s War of Words: Myth-Busting Social, Content Marketing & SEO at NMX

Lee Odden answers audience questions about content marketing, social media and SEO.Our CEO at TopRank Online Marketing, Lee Odden (@leeodden), shared his War of Words: Myth-Busting Social, Content Marketing and SEO yesterday at NMX Las Vegas.

The premise of Lee’s presentation was actually crowdsourced; the title War of Words comes from H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds, which was turned into a radio program by Orson Wells and spawned a mass fear that Mars aliens were on their way to take over Earth. There is much misinformation in content marketing, social media and SEO that the hype spreads much like the alien myths of days gone by, says Lee.


Lee Odden’s War of Words: Myth-Busting Social, Content Marketing & SEO at NMX

Social Influence and Why Brands Need to Care #NMX

The panel from Social Influence for Brands at NMX Las Vegas on stage.Do brands care whether they have influence in social media? They certainly should, said members of the three-person panel on social influence at NMX Monday.

Jonathan Dick, Director of Business Development at Klout,  kicked off the conversation with his thoughts that brands do care, though they may struggle to understand or measure their influence.

Andy Levey, Senior Manager of New Media & Analytics at Cirque du Soleil, believes social influence is incredibly important for brands to connect with and engage fans. “It’s all about them; if we don’t have fans talking about us, we’re not in business,” he said. Cirque du Soleil are lucky, Levey admits. Their brand is creative and entertaining; many businesses lack this stroke of good fortune. What can you do if your brand isn’t inherently entertaining or you’re not in the media space and therefore informative by nature?


Social Influence and Why Brands Need to Care #NMX

Fireside Chat with Guy Kawasaki: Self Publishing & Marketing Your Own Book – #NMX

Guy Kawasaki NMX Las Vegas“I love Las Vegas.  I love New Media.  What’s not to love?” – Guy Kawasaki

Day two of NMX Las Vegas kicked off with a fireside chat between Mark Fidelman (@markfidelman) and Guy Kawasaki (@guykawasaki).  Guy is well known for his work at Apple, as founder of Alltop, as well as his books and speaking.

In the interview Guy discussed everything from the devices he uses to what he’d like to change about social platforms.  However, the highlight of the conversation was surrounding Guy’s new book APE: How to Publish a Book.

What Is APE?
APE is a book for authors looking to stray from traditional publishing in favor of self-publishing.


Fireside Chat with Guy Kawasaki: Self Publishing & Marketing Your Own Book – #NMX

Productivity Power Panel: Tools, Tactics, & Workflows of Highly Productive Bloggers – #NMX

Productivity Power PanelI arrived early to Monday’s Productivity Power Panel and it was standing room only.  I quickly snapped my picture (as you can see the panelists were doing the same of the packed room) and found my spot in the back of the room, on the floor.  This panel discussion features Moderator Craig Jarrow (@TMNinja) and speakers Leo Widrich (@LeoWid), Brett Kelly (@inkedmn), and Mike Vardy (@MikeVardy).

In this session the speakers covered 3 different elements to becoming a highly productive blogger:

– Techniques and Tools

– Social Media and Sharing

– Gadgets and Gear

Techniques For Picking Blog Topics

Craig: One of the first things we get asked about is how do we generate so much content, or how do you write so many posts on the same topic?


Productivity Power Panel: Tools, Tactics, & Workflows of Highly Productive Bloggers – #NMX

Social Media Marketing UFC Style with Dana White at #NMX

Social media tips for businesses from Dana white, onstage at NMX Las VegasIf you had to put a value on the UFC, what would it be? You wouldn’t be remiss to put it in the hundreds of millions, or even billions. Dana White got into the UFC for $2 million and people thought he and his partners were out of their minds for paying even that much. Yet today, UFC is a multi-million dollar business, with over 9 million fans on Facebook and 800,000 Twitter followers. This is a highly engaged community White has built; currently, there are over 400,000 people talking about UFC on Facebook alone.

They had an uphill battle from the start; porn was allowed on pay-per-view TV, yet ultimate fighting wasn’t, he points out. White joined Forbes Managing Editor Bruce Upbin on stage for the second keynote Monday morning at NMX Las Vegas to share the story of his organization’s incredible rise from little more than an idea, to an international on and offline cash machine.


Social Media Marketing UFC Style with Dana White at #NMX

Scott Monty on How Ford Empowers Customer Storytelling & Lessons Learned

As marketers we all know that storytelling is an essential part of connecting with prospects and customers.  Scott Monty (@scottmonty) and his team at Ford have taken the art of storytelling a step further.

In his moving (yes I said moving) keynote, Scott walked the audience through some of Ford’s most recent and innovative campaigns.   In many of these campaigns the story is told not from the perspective of Ford, but from that of the consumer.  Below you’ll find more about the stories of these campaigns, the people who told them, and the lessons learned.

Let Your Customers Tell The Story

The Car: Ford Fiesta

The Buyer: Millennium’s


Scott Monty on How Ford Empowers Customer Storytelling & Lessons Learned

7 Ways To Spice Up Your Online Marketing Using Photography with C.C. Chapman

Believe it or not an image can help make or break a piece of content, once your visitors reach the page.  C.C. Chapman (@cc_chapman) shared sound advice and lots of laughs with his opening session on day one of the New Media Expo with a session entitled “How To Add Photography Into Your Marketing Mix”.

Whether you’re sprinkling your content marketing with imagery or looking to make it a larger part of your strategy, C.C. suggests some best practices for letting your images shine.

#1 – Always Create An Emotional Response
When someone looks at the images that you use to help tell the story of your content, it should illicit a response or reaction.  If a follower takes a look at your photo and then stifles a yawn it’s time to go back to the camera lens and find another image that is more suited.


7 Ways To Spice Up Your Online Marketing Using Photography with C.C. Chapman