“Don't say the old lady screamed—bring her on and let her scream.” In his advice on storytelling, Mark Twain’s timeless wit and wisdom holds true in the discussion of online video. Thanks to advances in Internet technology and increased bandwidth over the last few years, online video has emerged as the fastest growing media platform with an estimated 72% of Web users watching online video clips. In the next three years, Web video consumption is projected to double. The message to marketers? Visitors expect a rich experience when they come to your site. As one of the most powerful tools in the marketer’s arsenal, online video offers a wealth of opportunity for rich storytelling, differentiation, brand building and traffic-generation.

The resurgence of video in storytelling
In the 90’s, corporate capabilities videos were commonplace, but distribution was limited to VHS and DVD.
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Being connected to customer needs and desires should be a key aspect of shaping your B2B brand. But the engine of growth needs to include creativity, something many B2B executives don't spend much time on. Others like Google stake their reputation on creativity. They walk the talk: All engineers are allotted up to 20 percent of their time to work on their own ideas. The result? Products like Gmail and Google News, seeds of which began as personal endeavors.

According to MIT Media Lab, a hotbed of creativity, the secret sauce for business creativity is developing an environment where different people from different areas and disciplines of an enterprise, work together to share ideas to innovate.

Dr.
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Recent posts by Stacy Whisel and Jim Everhart provide good reasons WHY B2B marketers should consider adding social media to their marketing communications programs.

As we engage marketing people about B2B social media, the conversations usually starts with HOW, whether it's externally (the technologies and channels) or internally (the company policy that governs social media participation).

Both of these are important, but what tends to be a secondary conversation is WHAT should be communicated. Maybe that's assumed, although the "wild frontier" nature of social media brings with it a lack of focus, so we don't like to assume away the need for a solid messaging plan. It's an essential part of brand guardianship in the social media arena.

What's more, there isn't much conversation about how to ensure that core messaging is conveyed in an effective manner.
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If you have already read J.Leigh Brown’s post about adapting your thinking regarding social media, but are still not convinced that you should include a social media strategy as part of your 2010 marketing initiatives, please consider the following:

Ten Reasons to develop a social media strategy in 2010

1. Real time search results – Google and other major search engines have incorporated Twitter into the results. You could potentially be bumped in the rankings by an outside party tweeting about your company or products.

2. Reduced marketing spend in 2009 – If budget cuts forced you to go dark in 2009, a social media strategy can help you reconnect with your customers and prospects.
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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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One of the key tenants of strategy is choice. As we recover from this ugly recession, management in virtually every B2B company, large, medium and small faces BIG choices, like how they should position their company for future marketing success. Make no mistake, the consequences of these choices are BIG. They will have a much larger impact than next quarter's sales results.

What will guide decision making for such big choices? Relying on input from the sales force? Good, but not good enough all by itself for getting a true understanding of the market and audience information needed. Secondary Research? Probably some good information can be gleaned, but the information may be too general and, perhaps, not timely. Research done through publications is limiting and often lacks actionable information and insight.

Management needs solid, timely empirical information to guide informed decision making based on the reality of today's
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In my last blog on Creating and Maintaining a B2B Blog I offered some suggestions on who should write your company blog and how often you should post.
In this installment, I’d like to follow up a bit more on the frequency of posting and give some direction on what you should be posting.
The question we are often asked is, “How often should I add new content or post on my company blog?”
The simple answer is: When you have something relevant to say.
When you post and what you post is related. Let’s assume you’ve identified an internal “expert” or core team of employees with the responsibility of managing to your company blog. You now need to determine the frequency of posting and create a realistic schedule.
Let’s start at the top.
1.    Think Strategically
       a.    Does your company have a marketing and communications strategy? What you
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I’m a commuter so I have a couple of hours a day essentially by myself. I have become a big fan of satellite radio – lots of news shows and NPR. Lately the word count on recovery is up. Funny how reluctantly the word recession was muttered but saying recovery comes easily.

Yes, a recovery will eventually come. Sooner for some, later for others. If you are a B2B marketer you need to be thinking about when your markets are going to recover. Economic downturn/recovery history tells us that marketers that survived previous recessions generally had a recession marketing plan. I don’t know this for a fact but I can only imagine that they also had a recovery marketing plan. Have you drafted one yet?

Today might be a good time to start. But take heed, you can’t simply do a find and replace for dates in your pre-recession marcom plan. If you went quiet during this recession you will be surprised how much the B2B marketing landscape has shifted.
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As social media continues to make inroads into the B2B universe, more companies are including blogs as a communications tactic. According to the Society for New Communications Research, 16 percent of Fortune 500 companies support a corporate blog while Forrester Research reports the number is closer to 29 percent. Both reports are one to two years old so I suspect the numbers are much higher today.

As acceptance of blogging continues to grow I thought it might be helpful to give some advice on how to create and maintain a company blog. This is the first of several blogs, each focusing on a specific topic.

Let’s start at the beginning. You’ve decided to create a blog but are faced with two important questions:
1.    Who should write the blog?
2.    How often should you post?

Some companies are fortunate and have an “industry expert” on staff, someone with broad industry
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When a B2B marketer is asked about measuring brand equity, they usually have a pretty good idea about what folks are trying to glean or understand. But, if you dig a little and start asking what makes up this thing we call "brand equity" you might start to get a few puzzled looks. Dig even deeper and ask how they are leveraging what they know about their B2B brand equity that will have meaningful strategic impact on their marketing decisions in 2010 and you might see a little color drain from their face.

Is your company stuck in the old paradigm of brand equity measurement that offers little more than awareness and perception? Are you ready (and is your management) to develop a deeper more meaningful understanding about brand equity measurement that can be used for more effective 2010 planning?

Research that extends beyond knowledge, but through the use of advanced analytics, modeling and simulation, provides valuable real-time insights on how to build better
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