Chris Koch

FEBRUARY 18, 2011

Social media are growing up. Clearly, there’s a growing hunger for thought leadership in social media. Our prospects and customers want us to cut through the noise of social media just as they’ve wanted us to cut through the noise of every other communications channel that came before. Relevant experience.

Peer-to-peer 100

Peer-to-peer Thought Leadership Social Media Storytelling 100

Chris Koch

NOVEMBER 13, 2009

Despite all the breathless hype about social media these days, what I hear most from B2B marketers is frustration. For these marketers, the pool of customers and prospects is small and many of them do not want to engage publicly in social media or are simply ignoring it altogether. I think that’s the right decision—up to a point.

Social Media 100

Social Media Allocation Media Marketing & Strategy 100

Chris Koch

NOVEMBER 13, 2009

Despite all the breathless hype about social media these days, what I hear most from B2B marketers is frustration. For these marketers, the pool of customers and prospects is small and many of them do not want to engage publicly in social media or are simply ignoring it altogether. I think that’s the right decision—up to a point.

Social Media 100

Social Media Allocation Media Marketing & Strategy 100

Chris Koch

MAY 14, 2010

Social media creates the need for marketing to lead within the organization. At least that’s the conclusion we reached at ITSMA recently when we did our social media survey (there’s a free summary if you’re interested). We mean that within the organization the leadership of social media is falling to marketing.

Organic Leads 100

Organic Leads Social Media Social Marketing Organization 100

Chris Koch

OCTOBER 30, 2009

We just wrapped up our ITSMA Annual Marketing Conference this week and the strongest current driving the river of conversation was social media. Specifically, frustration over how to use social media to reach the C-suite. In fact, it’s hard for most of us to imagine these people using social media at all. What do you think?

Social Media 100

Social Media Peer-to-peer Enterprise Management Media 100

Chris Koch

DECEMBER 18, 2009

In a recent post, I offered some hard research data to support the growing importance of social media to B2B. But this time I want to address the legitimate concerns that ITSMA clients give us when we talk about the wonders of social media. What’s really different with social media? Social media is different.

Social Media 100

Social Media Peer-to-peer Social Marketing B2B Marketing 100

Chris Koch

AUGUST 13, 2010

But we’re in the era of social media now, so there are breadcrumbs in the forest that lead us to a fuller explanation of who Slater is and why he did what he did. Social media fills in the background to the blowup. And in the wake of his firing, that’s exactly what journalists and their audiences were interested in knowing.

Social Media 100

Social Media Media B2B SME 100

Chris Koch

JULY 22, 2011

Here’s the kind of pressure that social media puts on us: After not posting anything to my blog in nearly six weeks, I feel compelled to offer an explanation. Social media are like a school of sharks; keep moving forward or sink lifelessly to the bottom. Segment your audience. In B2B we pride ourselves on knowing our audience.

Work Management 100

Work Management Marketing Management Social Media B2B Marketing 100

Chris Koch

OCTOBER 12, 2009

We’ve all heard a lot of debate lately about whether social media is an evolution or a revolution. Look at it this way and social media inevitably becomes evolution, as social media researcher Josh Chasin convincingly argues here. But I think we lose sight of the revolution by looking at social media in isolation.

Social Media 100

Social Media Media Paid Search Agency Viral Marketing 100

Chris Koch

OCTOBER 16, 2009

It can takes years to build enough word-of-mouth to build a marketing worthy audience for a blog. Meanwhile, social media technology is changing constantly. Corporate-hosted blogs won’t be able to take advantage of the latest social tools that complement blogs without going to IT and getting some custom coding. Life sentence.

B2B Thought Leadership 100

B2B Thought Leadership Blogger Thought Leadership Word of Mouth 100

Chris Koch

JANUARY 22, 2010

I wish I could say that social media leads to sales. So when we think about social media ROI, we need to make a leap of faith. To make ourselves feel a little more comfortable with this idea, we may need to categorize social media with something whose hazy ROI we’re more familiar and comfortable with: PR. I really do.

Social Media 100

Social Media ROI Lead Ranking RSS 100

Chris Koch

JULY 16, 2009

Use the customer council to feed an executive education program/forum whereby the content developed within the customer council is presented to a larger audience. Integrate the council into other activities, such as conferences, social media, and reference programs. Offer access to something that customers can get nowhere else.

Peer-to-peer 100

Peer-to-peer Practices Thought Leadership Best Practices 100

Chris Koch

JULY 16, 2009

Use the customer council to feed an executive education program/forum whereby the content developed within the customer council is presented to a larger audience. Integrate the council into other activities, such as conferences, social media, and reference programs. Offer access to something that customers can get nowhere else.

Peer-to-peer 100

Peer-to-peer Thought Leadership Practices Best Practices 100

Chris Koch

SEPTEMBER 17, 2010

And they’re linking this content to their social media management strategies. But it straddles the issue of green in a way that seems to show knowledge of the target audience and the kinds of ideas they might be open to receiving through such a campaign. But that’s only part of the answer.

Thought Leadership 100

Thought Leadership B2B Thought Leadership Advertising Agencies Paid Search Agency 100

Chris Koch

JANUARY 28, 2011

If you follow social media, you probably know most of the story already. I wish I had the numbers to prove it, but my sense based on my own experience in social media is that Owyang’s personal brand won that battle. Testing the popularity of content. First you found Forrester, and then you found Owyang.

Personalization 100

Personalization Forrester Brand Identity Branding 100

Chris Koch

NOVEMBER 5, 2010

This usually means an avalanche of poorly written, completely untargeted press releases, and interview pitches that show no understanding of the target influencer’s publication or audience. They understood my publication, my audience, and my needs. Metrics that favor activity over results. What do you think? Tweet This Post.

PR 100

PR Press Paid Search Agency Lead Ranking 100

Chris Koch

AUGUST 3, 2010

When people ask about how to use social media tools like Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook, I suspect that they are really asking about how they should sound in those tools. But developing a social media voice is a more complicated proposition. A good starting point is to create a social media policy for the organization.

Social Media 100

Social Media Media B2B Thought Leadership Peer-to-peer 100

Chris Koch

AUGUST 3, 2010

When people ask about how to use social media tools like Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook, I suspect that they are really asking about how they should sound in those tools. But developing a social media voice is a more complicated proposition. A good starting point is to create a social media policy for the organization.

Social Media 100

Social Media Media B2B Thought Leadership Peer-to-peer 100

Chris Koch

FEBRUARY 5, 2010

It is about selling a point of view that educates the audience. What types of vehicles (councils, conferences, white papers, social media, etc.) Marketers must become publishers, with a process for refining and presenting content through various vehicles (such as conference presentations, white papers, social media, etc.).

Thought Leadership 100

Thought Leadership B2B Thought Leadership Gartner Planning 100

Chris Koch

NOVEMBER 20, 2009

We’re all getting constant advice—hectoring, even—about how we need to make social media a key part of our B2B marketing strategies right now. Two main threads underpin the logic behind these urgings: Your customers are becoming more active in social media, so you’d better get with it. How strong do you think the arguments are?

Social Media 100

Social Media Social Marketing B2B Marketing Work Management 100

Chris Koch

JULY 29, 2011

McKinsey recently learned a difficult lesson about what happens when the world takes your thought leadership marketing seriously—and when you lack the ability to respond in the moment through social media. Despite its prowess in thought leadership—McKinsey is simply the best—the firm is falling dangerously behind in social media.

Social Media 100

Social Media Thought Leadership Paid Search Agency Companies 100