Topic "Blogs in B2B"

The ultimate lists of business marketing blogs

Hans De Keulenaer — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 19:40:43 +0100

Thanks to Jon and Joe, we now have 2 'ultimate lists' of business marketing blogs, which complement each other very nicely.

Many of you will already know Jon Miller (Marketo)'s big list of b2b marketing blogs. With its recent addition of 50, it lists 138 b2b blogs. But best of all, Jon also offers an up-to-date OPML file allowing you to subscribe to this list in your reader with a few clicks.

Big List of B2B Marketing Blogs | Modern B2B Marketing Blog | Marketo
50 New B2B Marketing Blogs | Modern B2B Marketing Blog | Marketo

How much time does blogging really take?

Hans De Keulenaer — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 11:07:57 +0100

Another year’s gone, and the time-sheets are processed. Hereby a few benchmarks for the blogs we run at Leonardo ENERGY.

The length of our posts varies between 100 and 500 words, and takes us between 0.5 and 6 hours, depending on the amount of fact checking needed (as well as insight checking) and how straightforward it is to structure the story. Taking a median of 2 hours per post and 2 weekly posts consumes half a day per week for content.

Where are the social media for business marketing practitioners?

Hans De Keulenaer — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 12:59:28 +0100

B2Bridge aims to connect business marketeers. Which other web communities do you use to ask questions and have online discussions?

MarketingProfs.com has a forum. It targets USA, and focusses on B2C, and is active on a daily basis.
An internet search yields the link b2bhub.org, which appears promising. Unfortunately, activity level appears very low.
Facebook, Orkut and Xing all have marketing discussion groups. But most do not cover business marketing, or target professionals.
The closest I can find to match the needs for the business marketing professional is LinkedIn Answers.

read more

Should a blog be controlled by Corporate Communications?

Bruno De Wachter — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 13:54:20 +0100

As a general rule I believe that an external blog that is bound by a "corporate message" and a "corporate tone-of-voice" is a dead blog. The nature of a blog is close to that of a real life conversation. Professional people want to talk with professional people, real people of flesh and blood that radiate competence, not ready-made messages. Real people are less one-dimensional, more subtle, less easy to see through, less easy to laugh at.

The blogger is the message

So a blogger should not be told to express a corporate message, he should be your corporate message. Instead of picking out some assistant that happens to have some time and moulding her/him to the wishes of Corporate Communications, a better idea would be to choose a blogger that you can give free play in all confidence. And if you can’t find people like that in your organisation, my advice would be to forget about starting an external blog. But if that is the case, who do you send to your clients?

B2B Marketing Carnival #4

Hans De Keulenaer — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 12:19:13 +0100

Welcome to the November edition of this carnival. This month, we've received 56 contributions demonstrating the breadth and depth of our topic. Fourty of these are presented below in 6 themes:

Market intelligence, knowledge management, surveys, networking, ... All business marketing starts from what you know, and who you know. (2 contributions)
Production, i.e. converting intelligence in collateral materials to support marketing and sales campaigns. (1 contribution)
Marketing & Communications (including media relations and public relations) (13 contributions)
Sales & after-sales support (18 contributions)
Impact appraisal, usual return on investment, but not always (1 contribution)
Other topics (5 contributions)

This time round, I would appreciate some feedback on this carnival. What expectations do you have? What themes would you like to see covered more? What other themes need to be included?

Issue #5 of the carnival is planned for early December. Contributions welcome from now.

Are marketing scientists being over-protective about bringing unfinished research in the open?

Jan Lagast — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 13:56:22 +0200

The past year, I have noticed that a lot of marketing scientists appreciate to openly discuss their field of research with marketing practicioners -- many of them even mention they want a more intense collaboration with the business arena for the sake of their own research. Vice versa, discussing marketing topics with scientists is often an eye-opening and knowledge deepening experience to me, and I hear similar voices from many colleagues. So far for the good news.

B2B Marketing Carnival #3

Hans De Keulenaer — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 19:10:16 +0200

Welcome to the third edition of B2B Marketing Carnival. New submissions remain welcome and I’ll post a new digest once in a while (approximately monthly). As long as contributions are related to business marketing, meet a minimum standard (language, novelty) and do not use abrasive language, they’re likely to be included. A few fringe topics may be listed in the ‘other topics’ section. Use at your own discretion.

This month, the carnival received 39 submissions, but management practice, productivity, network marketing, franchises, SEO, home business, personal relationships or graphic design are not business marketing subjects. 75% off-topic submissions is a bit much. So again, only contributions related to industrial or business marketing please. For definitions, see b2bridge.

Also, I'd be interested for candidates to host the 4th edition of the carnival early November. Please contact me.

The Dark Side of the Social Media

Hans De Keulenaer — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 17:56:11 +0200

We all appreciate the power of social media, i.e. the use of collective intelligence to come up with a good approximation of 'the truth'.

And the successes are there. Wikipedia, a flagship of the social media, has the experts running out of their ivory towers or else become irrelevant. Certainly, information is becoming more open and democratic, which is not a bad thing.

But sometimes social media fail spectacularly. For example, take digg. I've entered the term for my field (electricity), and organised the search for the most popular articles (i.e. the most dugg), only to be amazed by the result:

Engaging the blogosphere

Hans De Keulenaer — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 01:04:03 +0200

Via the Schubert Communications Blog comes a story from High Context Consulting about 4 levels of engagement in the blogosphere:

0: Unengaged
1: Listening
2: Commenting and Connecting
3: Fully Engaged

The Schubert Blog adds a fifth level 0.5, a very populated one at that.

But that's still not the full story. There are also a few below zero levels, at least a -1, of professionals not just unengaged but averse. In Web 2.0: Democracy or Anarchy?, a highly skeptical voice on blogs and web 2.0 surfaces.

A quote, 10 blogging tips, and 10 more tips

Hans De Keulenaer — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 10:38:05 +0200

"There are 93.8 million blogs worldwide," says SEO-PR president and co-founder Greg Jarboe. "Getting excited about getting a blog is like getting excited when the phone book arrives."

Greg Jarboe, SEO-PR

Above priceless quote comes from Jason Miller's post in WebProNews on 10 Ways To Optimize Your Blog. While I've grown a bit weary on top 10 posts, this one can be interesting if you're ready to make the step from 'accomplished blogger' to 'advanced blogger'.