Google's I/O conference kicked off yesterday. While the conference is billed as a developer's event, it really is a showcase for all things Google. During a massive 3 hour presentation various presenters showed all kinds of things we'll be seeing in the near future pertaining to mobile, search, education, maps and on and on. I've taken a quick look to see how it might affect B2B.

As a B2B marketing pro, you have a lot to keep up with.  We’re right there with you.  Now we’re right here with you, too, offering our take on some of the week’s most interesting news and powerful insights in the world of business-to-business marketing and communications.  As we work out the schedule and topics I hope you’ll leave comments to let us know how to improve.  Out of the gate, we’re committed to covering Search, Analytics, Social Media and Content Marketing and providing an anchor Digital Trend Watch.  We know you’re busy.  We hope this helps by giving you a quick handle on the relevant trends.  Your feedback will help us do that better.  Thanks, and welcome.

Making web content accessible across screen sizes and mobile devices is a necessity for b2b marketers. But what if there's a stakeholder you need to convince?

What does it cost to build a mobile app? It depends. Get the quick answers to common cost questions.

As the myriad of interface displays and mobile devices grows, responsive web design can help design a website for the future---but it means you have to let go of how you approached the design process in the past.

It's been hard to miss all the co-mingling of marketing and IT that has been taking place over the past few years. As the volume of work shared between the groups increases and the pace accelerates here are a few things to keep in mind to ease the integration.

There are plenty of statistics and information available on the growing trend of smartphone use. But some of the more recent moves from Google in the mobile space put a greater emphasis on its importance, particularly in the Search and SEO world. Here are five Google announcements worth noting.

Email marketing includes mobile email users. Are you meeting their needs or making these common email mobile marketing mistakes?

A visit to a large B2B company’s headquarters inspired the above question. Find out if your company has their headquarters on straight.

When writing website content for your global audience, consider the language you’re using. Make it easy to understand and translate by the international users. Here are some things to consider.

I was pretty blown away by South by Southwest. While it would be foolish to try and cram a week's worth of discovery into one blog post there are a couple of quick observations to be made. 

Training for and completing an Ironman triathlon bares a lot of resemblance to the development and execution of a website project.

Why are you investing in a mobile app? Will this one offering make a difference with your target audience? Maybe you are expecting too much.

Who is winning the smartphone wars? Apple? Android? Blackberry? With all the conflicting news about market shares of smartphones, what matters to marketers is what your customers and prospects are using and what they experience on your digital properties on their platform(s) of choice.

2011 was a whirlwind year for the world of digital marketing and communications. And through it all, B2B Insights was reporting live on the scene.

You need a business website with a content management system (CMS). Where do you start?

You can't create a custom digital solution for every new mobile device. But you can create one design that will respond to them all. Could responsive web design work for your B2B website?

Web page speed and performance is very important when it comes to user experience and search results, and should be part of your search engine optimization strategy.

What does it cost to build a mobile app? It depends. Get the quick answers to common cost questions.

One of the things I truly love about what I do is that what I do is never the same. As an art director, I have to remember all my training—not forget it, and then put that all aside. If you can’t do this, you can’t keep up with all the changes in technology, and you will box yourself in, becoming stagnant.

Have you been considering the need for a mobile app, or better yet, a mobile website? Here are some thoughts and statistics that could change the way you look at your audience and their interactions with mobile devices.

How I learned to stop delaying and love the Chrome.

Content strategy — perhaps the latest buzzword — has taken the marketing world by storm. So what’s with all the hype?

A recent study by the Pew Research Center reinforces the idea that for a growing number of people, there is no such thing as a mobile Internet.

Do you own,  operate or plan on browsing a web site in the next 12 months? If you answered yes then there are some new privacy regulations coming out of the European Union which will affect you. We're still in the early stages of this but there are a few basic things you can do now to start preparing.

When your company CEO tells you to build an iPad app and your best customers want a web app, what's a B2B marketer to do?

If “B2B Branding” was a company, it would have a branding problem. Too many business-to-business marketers and senior managements think branding means logos, taglines, business cards and letterhead. It’s a lot more than that today.

Help visitors find and understand your content with semantic tagging. With just a little bit of extra effort and added support from all the major search engines you have another tool to make sure your content is getting out in front of your audience.

Understanding your target audience and their goals is the first part of designing B2B mobile experiences. But even when users are at the center of your design, assumptions can weaken your approach.

You know you need to optimize your B2B website for mobile, but what exactly does that mean? And how do you start?

These statistics will convince you--and your B2B marketing stakeholders--that designing experiences for mobile is a must.

Of course there is Wikipedia, the all-knowing Britannica killer whose crowd-sourced volumes we all cautiously adore. But clever developments in social media have opened the flood gates to the namesake of a humble Honolulu shuttle bus.

The iPad 2 is here and Apple apps are hotter than ever. Now B2B marketers are starting to want their own custom apps and are making room for these gems in their budgets. There are lots of facets to this issue. Here are five ways to rethink the iPad.

Ever have a salesperson talk your ear off, but never quite answer your questions? Don’t you hate that? So does Google.

A Regular Roundup of Social Media Musings
by Anna Gerz & Mike Wilt

This month’s collection of all things Social Media speaks to when the biz’s big names break, the B2B marketing version of Terminator and a unique approach to targeting you and I as B2B professionals.

I got an e-news alert the other day informing me that a reputable consulting and research firm was identifying the four technologies that  B2B CMOs should be watching. I am not a CMO but I deal with them so I believe I should be paying attention to what they are watching.

B2B marketers know mobile matters. But how do you start creating mobile experiences as part of a B2B strategy? There's one thing you must know.

Based on what I think I know today, here’s what we can expect to see in the year ahead:

B2B marketers often fail at successfully executing an effective online content strategy.  Avoid these common content missteps.

You just released your b2b iPhone app, and now you’re ready to charge ahead with the iPad. You're excited, but first consider these tips on how designing for the iPad is different from the iPhone.

I love analyzing user behavior on websites and looking at outcomes through analytics. I think regularly about what does the user want to do when they get to a page on your site? And did they complete the task that they intended to do? Or more importantly, did they complete the task that YOU wanted them to do?

Whether you have been blogging for years or are just getting started, these writing tips can instantly improve your B2B blog.

Based on smartphone market growth it’s clear that B2B marketing needs to include mobile. You may be thinking about a mobile web site, app, or both. But with limited budgets and resources, maybe you are feeling pressure to pick one. But which?

BtoB Magazine reported that the popularity of B-to-B corporate blogging was waning, drawing on new information from Forrester Research’s report "How to Derive Value from B2B Blogging.”  53% of marketers surveyed said that blogs were irrelevant or marginal in their current marketing strategy.