Wednesday, May 14, 2014

FIR B2B #9: How Hitachi Data Systems Energizes its Brand Ambassador Network

FIR B2BPaul Gillin and Allan Schoenberg host the FIR B2B podcast. In this episode:

News & Trends

McKinsey Quarterly writes on global flows, pointing out that the flow of data, as well as goods and services, across geographic boundaries, is increasingly being tied to economic performance and business success. One-third of goods now cross borders and digital communications are increasingly essential to staying in business. Digital has also becoming a great leveler in the competition between small and large companies, making small firms into “micromultinationals.”

Is Twitter over? There’s been considerable debate over this topic recently but our hosts just aren’t buying it. Twitter still has great value as a listening tool, Allan says, but all social networks are struggling to find their next big act.

Text100 surveyed technology buyers and found that seven execs are involved in the average technology buying decision. Notably, buyers use the same information sources at every stage of the buying funnel, and vendor websites are among them. This makes a compelling argument for why B2B companies should be using digital channels to drive prospects to their websites.

While B2B publishers may not have made the Text100 list of buying influences, recent data from tech media publisher Folio shows that print remain strong as a revenue source. It appears that B2B media are still performing well in their traditional awareness-raising role, even if consideration and vendor selection have moved online.

Despite weak quarterly earnings, LinkedIn continues to show core strength as a research vehicle and a way to sustain business relationships, according to new research. LinkedIn has become a must-use for sales and recruitment professionals to build relationships and research job prospects. From a B2B sales perspective, LinkedIn is still an essential stop on the journey.

Special Guest: Sharon Crost from Hitachi Data Systems

Sharon Crost joins us for a discussion of what Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) is doing to energize its ambassadors, which include employees, partners and fans. HDS created a Social Media Ambassador Club several years ago to help mentor fans in their use of social tools. It’s now creating a steady stream of shareable content that it delivers to its ambassadors in a format that can be easily shared on their social networks of choice. A content, education and nurturing program ensures that ambassadors are comfortable with the tools and the content they share.

HDS wants 80% of the content that’s shared to be industry-related, rather than specific to the company. Everything is tagged by topic and appropriateness to the audience. One of the biggest obstacles the company confronted was fear - fear of saying the wrong thing, of running afoul of policy or of getting the facts wrong. Executive sponsorship, mentoring and an attitude of forgiveness has helped there.

HDS also created five outcome measurements - including buzz, share of voice and leads generated - to measure success. She discusses what the company does to track each critical metric.

Download a PowerPoint presentation that outlines HDS’ ambassador program here.

Follow @SharonHDS on Twitter


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About Your Hosts

Paul GillinPaul Gillin is a veteran technology journalist and a thought leader in new media. Since 2005, he has advised marketers and business executives on strategies to optimize their use of social media and online channels to reach buyers cost-effectively. He is the author or co-author of five books, including Social Marketing to the Business Customer (2011), the first book devoted entirely to B2B social media marketing. He is also a social media trainer and coach at Profitecture, a training firm for B2B companies and their channel partners.

Allan SchoenbergAllan Schoenberg is based in London and responsible for managing the international media relations, issues management and brand communications for CME Group, the world’s leading and most diverse financial marketplace. He was instrumental in launching the company’s social media activity in 2007 and continues to lead its social strategy and online community engagement. He has more than 20 years of experience in B2B communications, including his work for Accenture, Edelman Worldwide and Fleishman Hillard.

FIR Community on Google+Share your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future podcasts, in the online FIR Podcast Community on Google+.

You can also send us instant voicemail via SpeakPipe, right from the FIR website. Or, call the Comment Line at +1 415 895 2971 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments. You can tweet us: @FIRpodcast. And you can email us at fircomments@gmail.com. If you wish, you can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

To receive all podcasts in the FIR Podcast Network, subscribe to the “everything” RSS feed. To stay informed about occasional FIR events (eg, FIR Live), sign up for FIR Update email news.

FIR B2B is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications,serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.

Posted by Paul Gillin on 05/14 at 10:27 AM
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FIR Presents Inside PR 372: Mesh Conference with Mark Evans

FIR Presents Inside PRMark Evans is a co-founder of mesh conference, which is in its ninth year, and will be held in Toronto on May 27-28.

Roving reporter, Martin Waxman, recently caught up with him.

He began the conversation by talking about the biggest surprises Mark has seen since the conference started.

And, as a former journalist, Martin wanted to know what’s been the biggest change in media since he was writing, and why pitches from PR professionals are still terrible.

Mark handles the latter question extremely well, while providing some great feedback on the things PR pros should consider, even with the immense amount of pressure we face from clients.

They talk about the media stream at mesh, which is the brain child and passion of Matthew Ingram, about the trend toward the new media companies introducing newswires to capture citizen journalists, and the y talk about the conference.

What’s most interesting (as I listened to the interview) is Mark’s take on Neil Harbisson, Mark Little, and Stewart Butterfield.

You’ll find what he has to say about each of these speakers really interesting. He talks about how Neil’s cyborg activism will help you think differently about how you live your life and how you do your job because it gives you a different perspective. How Mark, with the help of Storyful – the company he founded – is standing in the social “grayness” to help us determine what is actually news and what is not. And how Stewart salvaged a business from complete failure by doing a strategic pivot.

It’s a good episode you don’t want to miss!

Disclosure: Thornley Fallis is helping out on the PR for this year’s Mesh conference.

Get this podcast:

FIR Community on Google PlusShare your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future podcasts, in the online FIR Podcast Community on Google+.

You can also reach Inside PR’s hosts by email at insideprcomments@gmail.com, or join the InsidePR Google Plus community or Facebook group. InsidePR is on Twitter at @Inside_PR. You can send us an instant voicemail via SpeakPipe, right from the FIR website. Or, call the Comment Line at +1 415 895 2971 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments. You can tweet us: @FIRpodcast. And you can email us at fircomments@gmail.com. If you wish, you can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

Thank you to the people behind Inside PR: Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer. Inside PR is produced by Kristine D’Arbelles and Ashlea LeCompte.

Check the FIR website for information about other FIR podcasts. To receive all podcasts in the FIR Podcast Network, subscribe to the “everything” RSS feed.

FIR presents Inside PR is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.

Posted by shel on 05/14 at 09:37 AM
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Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Thought Leadership with Mitchell Levy and Michael Procopio, Episode 22: May 13, 2014

Thought Leadership with Mitchell and MichaelIn this episode of Thought Leadership with Mitchell and Michael (#TLL) we interview Julio Viskovich. Julio talks about sellarketing, social selling and the use of LinkedIn.

Julio Viskovich (@JulioVisko) is a digital strategy, online video and social selling consultant. He helps develop campaigns and strategies to empower human to human customer engagement, improve customer experience, and grow the lifetime value of each of your customers by turning them into lifelong advocates. Julio has worked with a number of Fortune 500 brands to develop, implement, and build local, national, and global social selling programs, and social communications strategies. Author of Sellarketing – a tweetable book about social selling. He blogs on Marketo, HootSuite, Social Media Today, Nimble, and B2B Community.

Julio Viskovich

Join us 11 am PT / 2 pm ET / 7 pm GMT on Saturday every week. The show blog is Thought Leader Life.

Any comments or suggestions for the show please send them. Thank you for listening and if you like what you hear, please leave a review on iTunes!

This episode was sponsored, in part, by THiNKaha.com, helping experts become thought leaders.

You can connect with Mitchell at MitchellLevy.com, @HappyAbout on Twitter, or join his Thought Leadership Best Practices Group on LinkedIn; and with Michael at MProcopio.com, on Twitter: @MichaelProcopio; or LinkedIn: LinkedIn.com/in/MichaelProcopio.

Get this podcast:

FIR Community on Google+Share your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future podcasts, in the online FIR Podcast Community on Google+.

You can also send us instant voicemail via SpeakPipe, right from the FIR website. Or, call the Comment Line at +1 415 895 2971 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments. You can tweet us: @FIRpodcast. And you can email us at fircomments@gmail.com. If you wish, you can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

To receive all podcasts in the FIR Podcast Network, subscribe to the “everything” RSS feed. To stay informed about occasional FIR events (eg, FIR Live), sign up for FIR Update email news.

FIR presents Thought Leadership with Mitchell and Michael is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.

Posted by Michael Procopio on 05/13 at 05:01 PM
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Monday, May 12, 2014

AMP UP Your Social Media #25: Using Social Media for Events with Ramsey Ksar

AMP UP Your Social MediaRamsey Ksar is the CEO & Chief Product Officer for Blyve, a real-time web and mobile audience engagement platform for today’s leading brands and media companies that brings people closer to the things they love. He recently joined AMP UP Your Social Media’s host Glenn Gaudet to discuss how social media can be a powerful tool for events.

Don’t only think about engagement, think about lead generation!

Ramsey shares a couple of ways that you can use social media to help elevate engagement during an event:

  1. During live events, offer your audience the opportunity to join in on debates. Both your social media audience and your live audience can join in to ask questions to debate candidates and your coordinator can filter them for good ones.
  2. Reserve dedicated times for live interactions with event participants, athletes, etc. For example, after a speaker comes off stage, set them down at a computer for 30 minutes for a live Q&A session with your social media audience.

Ramsey would love to hear from you! Chat with him on Twitter.

About Ramsey Ksar

Ramsey Ksar is an entrepreneur at heart with a passion for consumer focused experiences built around intuitive user interfaces. He is currently the CEO & Chief Product Officer for Blyve, a real-time web and mobile audience engagement platform for today’s leading brands and media companies that brings people closer to the things they love.

Prior to Blyve, he held key product management positions at Yahoo! including Director of Social Platforms (just prior to leaving for Blyve) as well as Group PM for Yahoo!‘s critically important broadband relationships with AT&T, BT, and Verizon. At the Walt Disney Internet Group, he held the position of Sr. Director of Product Management for Search and Directory, a cornerstone position responsible for managing a large team that delivered Infoseek’s search engine and the Go Guides open directory, as well as the launch of the Disney backed GO.com.

He started his career at Silicon Graphics (SGI) in 1995 in global business development where he was quickly thrown into a leadership position presenting to and managing many of SGI’s Fortune 500 customers. The success he realized in this position translated into his first product management role where he created hardware/software bundles targeted at the nascent Internet service provider and web content creator markets.

He holds a degree in Mathematics and Economics from the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he graduated in 1995. Last but not least, with a little research, you will quickly find out that he is also an avid photographer who loves travel and lifestyle photography.

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Tweet about the show using #AUYSM or Tweet at us @AMPUpSocial. AMP Up Your Social Media is a proud member of the FIR Podcast Network.

FIR Community on Google PlusShare your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future podcasts, in the online FIR Podcast Community on Google+.

Join the AMP Up Your Social Media Google Plus community or Facebook group. You can send us an instant voicemail via SpeakPipe, right from the FIR website. Or, call the Comment Line at +1 415 895 2971 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments. You can tweet us: @FIRpodcast. And you can email us at fircomments@gmail.com. If you wish, you can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

Check the FIR website for information about other FIR podcasts. To receive all podcasts in the FIR Podcast Network, subscribe to the “everything” RSS feed.

AMP UP Your Social Media is sponsored by:

  • GaggleAMP - Empower your employees, partners and resellers to amplify your social media.
  • SafeLinks - Know when your links on social media messages fail before you lose out on the people clicking on them.

The FIR Podcast Network is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.

Posted by Glenn Gaudet on 05/12 at 10:09 AM
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The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #755: May 12, 2014

FIRIntro: FIR Book Review coming: ‘The Mobile Mind Shift’ by Ted Schadler, Josh Bernoff and Julie Ask from Forrester;

Quick News: Marketing executives call PR an underutilized strategy; ready or not, the new Twitter profile will roll out to all on May 28; Twitter adds social recruiting to the mix; easyJet’s aviation first with drones, augmented reality, bespoke apps and more; Ragan promo;

News That Fits: Tips for creating a meaningful social media analytics report; Dan York’s Tech Report: FCC network neutrality vote coming up this week, and more; getting hashtags right; the Media Monitoring Minute with CustomScoop; listener comments in audio and in the FIR Podcast Community on Google+; the dire state of the print-news business where the digital cavalry is no saviour; the past week on the FIR Podcast Network; Michael Netzley’s Asia Report: the rise of "Chinglish" on social media, and more; Igloo Software promo; why Vine’s new website is a big deal for marketers;

Music from Col. Bruce Hampton and Aquarium Rescue Unit; and more.

Get FIR:

Messages from our sponsors: FIR is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years, www.ragan.com; Save time with the CustomScoop online clipping service: sign up for your free two-week trial, at www.customscoop.com/fir; Igloo Software, providers of an intranet you’ll actually like, delivered securely with our cloud platform: learn more at www.igloosoftware.com/fir.

For Immediate Release: The Hobson and Holtz Report for May 12, 2014: An 89-minute podcast recorded live from Concord, California, USA, and Wokingham, Berkshire, England.

Links to websites, blog posts and other content we discuss in the show are posted as Delicious bookmarks to facilitate your connection with the discussions and sharing of that content.

FIR Community on Google+Share your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future podcasts, in the online FIR Podcast Community on Google+.

You can also send us instant voicemail via SpeakPipe, right from the FIR website. Or, call the Comment Line at +1 415 895 2971 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments. You can tweet us: @FIRpodcast. And you can email us at fircomments@gmail.com. If you wish, you can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

To receive all podcasts in the FIR Podcast Network, subscribe to the "everything" RSS feed. To stay informed about occasional FIR events (eg, FIR Live), sign up for FIR Update email news.

So, until Monday May 19…

Posted by neville on 05/12 at 12:01 AM
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Friday, May 09, 2014

FIR Live: The 2014 class of IABC Fellows

The Google+ Hangout on Air with four of the five IABC Fellows. The new Fellows participating in the conversation include John Deveney, ABC; George McGrath; Mark Schumann, ABC; and Jennifer Wah, ABC. Brad Whitworth, ABC—a longtime Fellow who had the idea for this session—also joined us.

 

Get FIR:

Messages from our sponsors: FIR is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years, www.ragan.com; Save time with the CustomScoop online clipping service: sign up for your free two-week trial, at www.customscoop.com/fir; Igloo Software, providers of an intranet you’ll actually like, delivered securely with our cloud platform: learn more at www.igloosoftware.com/fir.

FIR Community on Google+Share your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future podcasts, in the online FIR Podcast Community on Google+.

You can also send us instant voicemail via SpeakPipe, right from the FIR website. Or, call the Comment Line at +1 415 895 2971 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments. You can tweet us: @FIRpodcast. And you can email us at fircomments@gmail.com. If you wish, you can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

To receive all podcasts in the FIR Podcast Network, subscribe to the "everything" RSS feed. To stay informed about occasional FIR events (eg, FIR Live), sign up for FIR Update email news.

Posted by shel on 05/09 at 12:13 PM
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FIR Presents Inside PR #371: New makeovers for Google+ and Facebook

FIR Presents Inside PRMartin, Gini, and I are back together again for the first time since we got together in Toronto for the launch of Gini’s new book Spin Sucks. (And by the way, if you haven’t had a chance to get your copy, I recommend that you do. It’s an excellent read.”)

This week, we ask, “Would you care if Google plus disappeared?”

Martin likens Google+ to vitamins. He knows that they are good for him, but he must remind himself to use it. It’s not part of his daily routine.

While agreeing with Martin that Google+ is not her first-choice social network, Gini says that Google plus is a large driver of traffic to the Spin Sucks website. So while it’s not necessarily a preferred site for its consumer experience, Google+ definitely does drive benefits to a content marketer.

As I look at my top four destinations, I see a real differentiation between Twitter and Facebook on one hand and Google+ and Feedly on the other hand. Twitter and Facebook are ideal for awareness. They tell me something has happened quickly after it does happen. Feedly and Google+, on the other hand, provide me with more in-depth and thoughtful analysis and commentary on developments that lead to better understanding.

We also talk about the FB newswire.

Gini sees its content as typical of citizen journalism – delivering reports on what people are seeing or experiencing in real time. Martin suggests it may be a lifestyle feed, not a news feed.

We’d love to hear your thoughts.

Would you care if Google+ disappeared?

What about FB Newswire? Have you looked at it? Do you find it useful?

Get this podcast:

FIR Community on Google PlusShare your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future podcasts, in the online FIR Podcast Community on Google+.

You can also reach Inside PR’s hosts by email at insideprcomments@gmail.com, or join the InsidePR Google Plus community or Facebook group. InsidePR is on Twitter at @Inside_PR. You can send us an instant voicemail via SpeakPipe, right from the FIR website. Or, call the Comment Line at +1 415 895 2971 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments. You can tweet us: @FIRpodcast. And you can email us at fircomments@gmail.com. If you wish, you can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

Thank you to the people behind Inside PR: Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer. Inside PR is produced by Kristine D’Arbelles and Ashlea LeCompte.

Check the FIR website for information about other FIR podcasts. To receive all podcasts in the FIR Podcast Network, subscribe to the “everything” RSS feed.

FIR presents Inside PR is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.

Posted by shel on 05/09 at 09:46 AM
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