A recent Business Week article reports that AOL plans to create the "newsroom of the future" by using high-powered technology to revolutionize the business of gathering and presenting news.

At a time when print giants like former AOL sister company Time magazine and virtually every major daily in the U.S. are struggling to cope with the new media landscape, AOL has hired more than 500 full-time journalists and buys contributions from more than 3,000 freelancers.

Quoting CEO Tim Armstrong, the article goes on to say that AOL is using advanced analytics to measure reader interest and engagement in stories those journalists create, and may even share profits with writers whose stories earn the most page views.
As a former journalist, I understand how earth-shattering that approach really is.
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In the late 90s, The Cluetrain Manifesto, one of the more incendiary books on the new media, made the statement, “markets are conversations.” The truth of that observation has become apparent in the rise of social media in this decade.

Perhaps more importantly for B2B marketing strategy, B2B social media (yes, it was necessary to repeat “B2B”) are quickly becoming the medium where thought leadership is established.

There’s one important reason why social communities are displacing brochures, PR articles, and white papers as the medium of choice for B2B thought leadership messaging: as lawyers put it, you can’t cross-examine a piece of paper.

Social media give readers a chance to talk back, ask questions and start a conversation. And it is in those conversations where B2B thought leadership is now being established.

So how can a B2B marketer use B2B social media to establish thought leadership? We recommend
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Thought leadership has always been an important element of B2B marketing communications strategy. The reason is simple: most B2B products and services are considered purchases. The selling cycle is normally months or even years, and requires that the customer be educated in the technology or other issues.

Most B2B marketers we talk with understand the need and have some area where they can be thought leaders. In the past, much of the burden for presenting a B2B marketer’s thought leadership message fell on the shoulders of the sales person. However, a host of factors have changed the rules for delivering these messages. Sales reps no longer have the time they once had with customers, let alone prospects. Buying committees have sometimes separated the reps from the real decision makers. And more buyers are doing their preliminary product research online. So you’re increasingly faced with the need to deliver the message when you’re not in the room.
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Bing, Microsoft’s new search engine, has been supported by a generous advertising budget and drawn some interest from a variety of sources. But how does it affect business-to-business?

Do we have to create new pages or even entirely new sites, as some have suggested?
We may not know the definitive answers for some time. But right now, it looks as if the answer is no.

Microsoft own position is that good content, appropriately coded, will do well in Bing.
Assuming then, that B2B marketers will not need to take extra programming or content steps to take advantage of Bing, how will B2B audiences react? Will they be lured away from Google by Bing’s nifty new features, including categorized search, quick tabs and related searches?
The jury is still out on that point.
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What Search Can – and Can’t – Do

Our friends at Enquiro recently published an article making some cogent points about search. 

On the one hand, it’s exciting to see search, including SEO (search engine optimization) and SEM (search engine marketing) flourishing as a marketing option. On the other, it’s alarming to see so many people jumping into an admittedly-sturdy lifeboat in a raging sea.

Rather than seeing search as a marketing channel, Enquiro suggests, we should view it as a connector, connecting interested prospects and customers with your place in cyberspace.

A similar article in Ad Age compares search to trade or in-store promotion.
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It’s always been an article of faith here at Godfrey that B-to-B search is fundamentally different than the “normal” or B-to-C variety. Almost every day I find yet another illustration of just how different things are.

I recently read an article published by search consultant Enquiro, entitled “B2B Keyword Research When You’re in a Niche Market/Industry.” It was filled with the research-laden information Enquiro dependably provides in its many publications about search.

One comment stuck out at me, however: under issue No. 2, describing things to avoid, the company wrote, “Using industry jargon that people may not be aware of. Marketers are the worst for this are they not? We continue to see this all of the time.
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We were recently contacted by Elisabeth A. Sullivan, a staff writer for Marketing News, a publication of the American Marketing Association. She asked if we had noticed a decline in interest in corporate or B-to-B blogging, and wondered if this Web 2.0 phenomenon would prove to be another flash in the pan, disappearing from sight by the time we emerge from our current economic woes. (Read the story.)

We responded that blogging is more than just one thing. As with any other use of a medium, new or old, it depends on your objectives, your market, and your marketing communications strategy.

Specifically, we’ve seen a number of different uses of blogging technology, all of which have a different role in today’s marketing mix:

• As an exercise in executive vanity, they are definitely on the wane.
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According to a study reported in the online edition of B-to-B magazine, display ads on the web have a positive impact on search activity, improving clicks for organic and paid search by 155% on average, depending on the industry.

The study by Specific Media, an online media distribution company, analyzed comScore Ad Effectiveness data over a 12-month period.  While the study was largely consumer-focused, there’s no reason to believe the results would be different for b-to-b or industrial marketing.

And while not conclusive, it gives credence to the theory that online display advertising has a branding impact.

In our experience, search, both organic and paid, routinely enjoys significantly better performance than other online media, as measured by click-through rate, time on site, pages viewed, bounce rate,
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Much has been noted recently about the now-official recession we’re in, and its effect on the Web 2.0 technologies. There is precedent for that, of course. Dot-com mania turned into a dot-com depression in the early part of this decade, as the sober realities of a post-9/11 world brought “irrational exuberance” down to earth.

Unfortunately, a few good companies and concepts took the fall with the pets.com of the Internet world. Fortunately, though, most companies saw the value of the Internet and the promise of interactive communications in general. And, after a brief lull, more rational enthusiasm returned.

We can expect much the same thing in this recession. However, it’s a little different this time around in that the various elements of the media offering haven’t departed from reality to the extent that was common then.

Search, for instance, is here to stay, or at least as long as there’s an Internet.
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You hear all the time about the tricks some companies employ to gain higher Google rankings: link farms, white text, and so on. But it’s clear that the bright folks at Google are working overtime those who are trying to beat the system.

Some people thus criticize Google for the influence (some might say, “control”) the Googleplex exercises over what happens on the Internet.

I, on the other hand, believe they have made a major contribution in one very important regard. Because of their unswerving dedication to the accuracy and success of a user’s search, they have forced marketers to pay attention to content.

They’ve made search engine optimization a very simple proposition: content is the one “trick” that will always work. And, because it can stay on your site forever (or at least until it’s overtaken by new developments), content is the gift that keeps on giving.
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