It boggles the mind and makes one try to find some sense in it. What does it mean?

Well, it certainly proved the tremendous reliance we all have on the content that comes from Twitter. Some would say investors rely too much on automated trades based on tweets.

It also proved the great value our society places on Twitter as a provider of content and information.

Yesterday Yahoo announced that it was taking Twitter very seriously indeed.

In her blog, Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo stated, “Tweets have become an important information source for many of our users, so we are thrilled to announce our partnership with Twitter to bring Tweets directly into the Yahoo! newsfeed.”

She went on to say that over the next few days users would begin to see Tweets “personalized to their interests and preferences” appear in their content stream, delivering on earlier promises that the search and new aggregation giant would move toward more personalization of content for its users.

[An interesting side note is that the title of Mayer’s blog post “@Yahoo delivers #bestoftheweb” is really not very tweetable. Oops. To start a tweet with a Twitter name is a mistake unless you are talking ‘at’ that person/account. It will not appear as a normal tweet.]

Yahoo’s big search competitor, Google wasn’t able to keep its former relationship with the microblogging giant. Twitter results disappeared from Google some time back, making this quite a win for Yahoo.

But what does this move mean for communicators?

While few details have been revealed, it’s probably safe to assume that Yahoo will feature tweets that are popular, influential and of course meet certain criteria for authenticity and newsworthiness.

As communicators we should be prepared and simply take this as a reminder of some best practices for content creation:

1)  Create share-worthy content with tweetable headlines and by highlighting crunchy, interesting facts in bold font or in bulleted lists.
2)  Cultivate social networks. Build credibility for your content and your brand.
3)  Build relationships with influencers.
4)  Calibrate your team for rapid response to current events.

Perhaps your content will make it to the Yahoo news page along with relevant content from trusted news sources which Yahoo customizes based on user interest.

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Originally posted on BeyondPR by Victoria Harres on May 17, 2013. 

Until now, pins acted simply as a link to the original website. Now, Pinterest is working with dozens of popular brands to show more information — such as recipes, movie reviews, product availability and pricing — on pins. A small icon that appears below the picture in a pin will indicate when a pin includes more information.

This change will make it easier for users to get the information they need, and it will make branding more effective for organizations using Pinterest for marketing purposes. And with pricing and availability information included as part of some pins, participating vendors are also likely to see an increase in sales from Pinterest. Pinterest itself will also likely see a nice boost as keeping users on its site instead of directing them elsewhere will increase its stickiness.

Participating retailers include — but are not limited to, by a long shot — eBay, Home Depot, Target and Walmart. Sources for recipes include Better Homes and Gardens, Martha Stewart Living, Skinny Taste and Whole Foods Market. Movie sources include Flixster, Netflix and Rotten Tomatoes. (For a full list of participating vendors, see Pinterest’s blog post on the new pins.)

Pinterest has also announced that it is making its Pin It button available in mobile apps.

What value do you think the new pins will bring? Please let us know in the comments section below.

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Originally posted on InformationWeek Social Business by Deb Donston-Miller on May 22, 2013.

Welcome to the visual social web. Photos, images and infographics now generate more user engagement, sharing activity and traffic than a tweet, blog post or other written content. According to ROI Research, social media users prefer pictures over jokes, status updates, or other types of content, and they are also more likely to engage with posts from brands when the status update involves a picture.

Content may be king, but today, a picture really is worth a thousand words.

Does this trend toward visual social networking really apply to tech marketers and the business-to-business market in general? What are the savviest tech companies doing on platforms like Pinterest or Instagram—and what can you learn from them?

In this white paper, we’ll take a look at the visual social media revolution and how it applies to tech marketing—and offer 5 tips on how your brand can boost its connection with customers by going visual.

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Visual Social Media
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To lead in this century requires different steps than in the last. You must use your social strategy to enhance the mindset of your senior leadership and your board of directors.

This involves three tasks:

• Broadening your base.
• Assembling and aligning the critical mass of talent in your organization to achieve your growth priorities.
• Winning mindshare among all your key constituencies.

I’m writing this as a follow up to my recent post on the Relationship Economics blog, “Use Your Social Strategy for Return on Impact,” about how to lead in the age of connected relationships.

Here is how to execute on those three tasks:

Broaden Your Base

World-class organizations create engagement by focusing their market outreach on delighting customers. Your most profitable members, sponsors or customers all have strong emotional bonds with your organization. You must consistently recognize and strengthen these bonds. How do you emotionally engage and build a trusting relationship with individuals you cannot interact with in person? You have to think differently about engagement. You know your individual buyers are smart and getting smarter — they’re engaged in social networks where they are learning from every interaction that delivers recommendations.

Each buyer draws on that network to interact, form relationships, make decisions and buy products and services — all to solve the problems that keep them from doing what they want to do.

To broaden your base, find groups of individuals who have problems that are driving them crazy, and who are willing and able to pay for solutions to solve those problems. Engage them on social platforms. How? With compelling content. Your customers/members lean in to the conversations that promise to connect them with interesting people and ideas. Daily, low-cost interactivity gives them compelling reasons to come back frequently, become engaged and involved.

Deliver real value to people looking for “who can I meet?” and “what can I learn?” Become a student of your market’s problems, and bring your leaders and board into the conversation so they can engage with the members, partners and external knowledge assets. Leaders listen and learn.

Assemble And Align Critical Talent To Achieve Growth Priorities

In your organization, regardless of its size or governance structure, you have growth strategies. Approaches vary by industry, business segment and circumstances. Organizations achieve growth either by offering its existing value to new members/customers, or through offering new value to existing members/customers.

What most consumers don’t want is more of the same. Over time, existing offerings lose their attraction and become commoditized. Any organization that isn’t broadening its base must find new value to offer that base, or it will lose ground. Any organization that offers existing value to new customers will broaden its base, but find it difficult to hold the ground it gains unless it can also develop innovations that bring new value to that base consistently over time.

In Return on Impact: Leadership Strategies for the Age of Connected Relationships (ASAE, 2012) I used the example of the Wisconsin Institute of Certified Public Accountants (WICPA). The group’s critical differentiator is the depth and scope of its educational offerings — far greater than any of its competitors. However, about 50% of its members are dispersed geographically outside the population-dense Madison/Milwaukee/Green Bay areas, so providing greater access to educational programming is a challenge and a key priority.

WICPA sought member feedback and learned that it could add a great deal of value by compacting and customizing its programming. Today, subject areas such as nonprofits, tax accounting or specific industries organize WICPA’s conferences. It is expanding its online educational offerings to serve its distributed population.

WICPA listened to its market, then aligned its talent around the growth opportunity it discovered — solving its members’ problem of access to education. That strategy is generating new value for the existing base, and a compelling value proposition for new members to join WICPA.

Which goal is your strategic priority? Does your organization now include the talent you need to execute on that? You must assemble a critical mass of talent at the board and senior leadership ranks, and align them with the responsibilities and skills required for your growth strategy.

To succeed in the 21st century, social must be a component of your growth strategy, regardless of your approach. Social can be a unique and effective enabler of growth. Give your board and leaders a role in your social strategy. Let them hear directly what the market conversation is saying.

Win Mindshare Among All Key Constituencies

So you’ve got your leadership team listening, leaning in and driving innovation that creates new value and reaches new markets. Or do you? To be sure you’re winning their mindshare, you need a means to measure it. Social analytics are the barometer of how well you’re doing. Metrics should measure against agreed-upon objectives and values to help create course corrections along the way. Social analytics should reveal how well you’ve aligned objectives with strategy, the effectiveness of your implementation process, and how well you’re moving your members or customers to their next logical decision point.

Your social strategy must include meaningful metrics. As social media took off, a cottage industry of vendors and platforms for social media measurement appeared — but too often the tail wagged the dog. Organizations allowed the tools to dictate what they would measure. Only when the organization understands what data is needed can it assess the right class of tools to use. Do your due diligence to put in place the metrics you need to monitor your mindshare among your key constituencies — customers, the market, employees, key competitors, the media. Share your analytics with your leadership and board, in brief, actionable insights that make key insights stick.

Broadening your base, aligning the right players around the right goals, and winning mindshare are the steps through which your social strategy will enhance the mindset of your senior leadership and your board of directors. Develop a strong listening platform for your leaders and board that gives them clear visibility into the social conversation about your organization and brand. This isn’t a suggestion. It’s a critical business strategy without which you can expect to fail.

Takeaways:

– Broaden your base by finding customer niches with problems they are willing and able to pay to solve; engage them on social platforms with your compelling content.

– Specify your growth priorities; assemble and align the critical talent you need to achieve them.

– Win mindshare among key constituencies; measure and share insights about mindshare with your leaders and board.

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Originally posted on InformationWeek Social Business by David Nour on May 17, 2013.

SAN FRANCISCO, May 20, 2013 – 4G World, the only conference and expo covering the entire next-generation 4G mobile broadband ecosystem, produced by UBM Tech, today announced that the event will collocate with CTIA 2014™ Super Mobility Week. UBM Tech also brings Tower & Small Cell Summit to the collocation, creating the only event of its kind to host the entire range of 4G, mobile and wireless infrastructure technologies under the same roof. 4G World, Tower & Small Cell Summit and CTIA are happening September 9-11, 2014 at the Sands Expo and Convention Center in Las Vegas for Super Mobility Week.

For nearly a decade, 4G World has been the industry’s premier event focused on helping 4G executives and IT managers discover emerging trends and strategies for creating profitable 4G networks and services. 4G World will collocate with CTIA 2014™ Super Mobility Week and Tower & Small Cell Summit to provide distinct attendee experiences within the 4G, wireless, and mobile broadband ecosystem. The partnership provides show participants the unparalleled opportunity to delve further into the business models, technology, services and devices driving mobility including network infrastructure, advanced devices, applications and content.

“By collocating 4G World and Tower & Small Cell Summit with CTIA, we’re creating the only opportunity for sponsors, exhibitors, and attendees to connect with entire wireless industry,” said Marco Pardi, President of Events, UBM Tech. “We’re bringing together the people at the forefront of 4G infrastructure, services and devices. The combination of 4G World, Tower & Small Cell Summit and CTIA 2014 is the only conference and expo in the US to showcase the entire spectrum of wireless solutions.”

“The addition of 4G World makes it even more important for any business, regardless of sector, to attend Super Mobility Week and to learn from and network with the best wireless companies and executives. For companies looking to migrate their networks to 4G, CTIA 2014 will be the place to see all of the technologies, services and devices available,” said CTIA Vice President and Show Director Robert Mesirow. “As more international companies begin to deploy 4G networks, they look to the U.S. to learn from our experts and influencers throughout the mobile ecosystem.”

4G World will be a conference and expo complete with in-depth educational programs, workshops, case studies, demonstrations, real-world technology implementations and valuable networking opportunities. The premier industry event offers complete professional training programs as well as the largest number of 4G product and service providers assembled in North America.

Follow 4G World on Twitter @4GWorld

Like 4G World on Facebook

Connect with 4G World on LinkedIn

InformationWeek gauges IT project priorities in the enterprise, and gives tech marketers an idea of their prospects and customers’ mindset for the rest of the year. This year’s study shows that technology professionals want to deliver business value, but have a hard time breaking out of the vicious circle of underfunding and playing catch-up. The good news is that more than 39% of survey respondents are reporting an IT budget increase for this year, and say the increase will be between 10% and 14%.

We heard from 513 business technology professionals in our InformationWeek 2013 IT Spending Priorities Survey. All participants are involved with setting, managing, or have a working knowledge of at least some part of their organizations’ IT budgets. Our new report includes insight and data on:

• 2013 IT Budget
• 2013 Business Technology Priorities
• Centralized vs. Business Unit Technology Spending
• Scrutiny of IT Project Spending
• 2013 IT Initiatives
• Top IT Projects for 2013

Download the full report today and see where your technologies fall on the priority and spending list.

2013 IT Spending Priorities Report
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B2B media and marketing professionals have to rethink how we serve professionals to attract new customers and create new products and revenue streams.  One of the most effective ways to make this happen is through customer modeling: using data, insights and targeted marketing techniques to unlock new opportunities.

There are many variations and interpretations of data-driven customer modeling.  My colleagues and I at UBM Tech defined customer modeling in a few ways (often these can overlap):

• Discover new customers – “find me more of these types of professionals”
• Develop new products – “uncover unmet customer needs”
• Improve customer engagement – “deliver targeted content and offers”

Our effort to gain deeper insights and apply customer modeling started with overhauling our technology and processes.  We needed the tools and techniques to capitalize on the data, draw business and customer insights and act on them in our media and marketing programs.  This is a work in progress as technologies evolve and techniques are mastered (you are never done building and iterating).

The first step was to consolidate our databases, from roughly 23 databases to one, providing a single, 360-degree view of our customers (audience).  We also deployed a marketing automation system (Eloqua) to automate our customer communications processes as well as our ability to capture and integrate online and offline behaviors and preferences.

At the same time, we began to deploy techniques to convert organic web traffic from passive visitors to active registered users.  We did this by leveraging both existing high-value content and creating specific types and formats of content (special reports, research, infographics, slides shows, etc.) targeted to specific visitors. Then, we applied analytics and gathered data to set benchmarks to understand what was working so we could deploy similar approaches on a larger scale.

The data we aggregated over time allowed us to segment customers, providing both a way to identify the best methods to engage and convert prospects to customers and to set customer valuation, what we call ARPU (average revenue per user).

Frictionless Engagement

Another important piece of the puzzle was to make the customer/user experience frictionless and easy to engage with brands, content and products.  This includes the ability for the user to control preferences for how they are communicated with and what they want to receive, and when.  This effort is ongoing; because of many disparate legacy systems, we still have a ways to go.

As these key pieces were implemented, we were able to yield positive results.  Here are some ways in which we are utilizing customer modeling to drive new customers and revenue:

• Customer segmentation:  We segmented our database into five unique profiles based on past behavior and engagement.  This guided us on how to communicate with customers/prospects in unique ways.  For example, nearly 50% of the database records were “fading” – meaning these users had not engaged with us in the last 12 months.  Instead of sending more product offers, we targeted them with “we want you back” communications, offering unique content based on past behaviors. The content included special reports and career-oriented information.  This effort resulted in more than 53,000 re-engaged, reactivated customers, a large number for B2B media.  With ARPU at approximately $150, you can see the potential for revenue growth.
• Identify untapped or non-core audiences: Our core audience is information technology (IT) professionals.  However, through regression analysis to identify patterns, we found that there were non-IT people (lawyers and professors, for example) who were paying to come to our educational conferences. We are now able to develop new content tracks for these types of non-IT pros and tailor our communications to their needs, making the content much more relevant.
• Cross-sell and up-sell products:  It would make sense that somebody who downloaded white papers or reports on cloud security, for example, would also be interested in attending events on the same general topic.  Over a 12-month period, we were able to cross-sell using this technique, yielding nearly $2.5 million in identifiable revenue we can attribute to these efforts.

Creating A Data-Driven Culture

These results don’t happen overnight.  Organizations must begin to create a data-driven culture to support these efforts.  Here are some things you can do to make build a strong foundation for data-driven marketing and customer modeling:

• Build a blueprint and then achieve quick wins. Like any successful project, define what success looks like, create a blueprint, go at it and adapt along the way.
• Start with a business/brand that has the most upside. Avoid “big bang” projects that require deployment across the entire organization.
• Create a culture of measurement, metrics and analytics. Using data to drive insights can eliminate guess work and back and forth.  Just as importantly, using data builds trust with stakeholders and can enable more funding to create even bigger results.
• Develop data-driven talent. This is one of the most underestimated areas.  You can accelerate your impact by both developing/training existing team members and bringing in outside talent with expertise and a “make it happen” attitude.

We believe we are just scratching the surface of what is possible and, by no means, have we unlocked the “holy grail” yet.   We are developing our blueprint, looking for quick wins and sharing our learnings along the way.

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Originally published in eMedia Vitals on May 1, 2013.