Paul Gillin

JANUARY 16, 2012

When building a collaborative workplace, a “build it and they will come” attitude is a recipe for disappointment. Personal networks are formed by users for other users and generally relate to non-professional topics. They cluster around topics of professional expertise.

Peer-to-peer 50

Peer-to-peer Wiki Enterprise Management Communities 50

Paul Gillin

APRIL 27, 2012

So when IBM began to introduce the concept of “social selling,” it chose a test base of a few hundred salespeople and their managers to build a set of integrated systems that improved productivity and reduced administrative overhead. The only person who could answer a question was the representative on the account.

Process 50

Process Word of Mouth Forecasting Lock-In 50

Paul Gillin

MAY 27, 2010

Spiceworks builds the community into every facet of its operations, even asking members to vote on proposed new features. It has learned, for example, that personal prestige is a huge motivator for community participation and that members will give generously of their time with no promise of reward other than helping a peer.

Communities 50

Communities B2B Work Management Marketing Management 50

Paul Gillin

APRIL 18, 2012

Both are based upon a foundation of personal profiles and “friends,” which LinkedIn calls “connections.” This means that a compelling message can be spread far and wide by the members themselves without investment or active involvement by the person or organization creating the message. Good content sells itself.

Twitter 50

Twitter Linkedin Facebook Social Networks 50

Paul Gillin

OCTOBER 7, 2010

CRM is a well-established discipline that presumes that the more information we can capture about a customer’s interactions with our company, the better we can deliver products and services that the person wants to buy. It seems only natural that online social interactions should be part of this profile.

CRM 50

CRM B to B Marketing Management Eye-Tracking 50

Paul Gillin

JULY 15, 2011

The whole concept of enabling negativity to appear on your own website rubs a lot of marketers the wrong way, but I’d argue that it’s great for building integrity. Expertise shouldn’t be concentrated in one person or department. Because a little negativity reinforces the validity of the positive comments you publish.

Case Studies 50

Case Studies Case Study Studies BtoB 50

Paul Gillin

AUGUST 4, 2011

Salesforce also post lots of photos of people, which reinforces the image that this is a company with a personal touch. Be personable and distinctive. This not only makes the Salesforce.com fan page a resource but builds goodwill with the sources it links to. Desperately Seeking People. Here are some of my takeaways: Have fun.

Facebook 50

Facebook B2B Marketing Rules Salesforce.com 50

Paul Gillin

FEBRUARY 7, 2011

A recently launched video series called Financially Fit TV interviews personal finance experts. A full-time four-person social media team manages the community and other social media programs, responding to questions, correcting misstatements and encouraging lurkers to come forth. The experts are compensated for their time.

Communities 50

Communities Cost per Acquisition Peer-to-peer Work Management 50

Paul Gillin

OCTOBER 31, 2011

Example: “The first person mentioned by name in ‘The Man in the Iron Mask’ is this hero of a previous book by the same author.” We had to build many different ways to combine them. The end goal was to get smarter about processing a language that humans use to detect intended meanings. The answer is D’Artagnan. Watson Architecture.

Ad Building 50

Ad Building Buzz Domain FAQ 50

Paul Gillin

OCTOBER 31, 2011

A third thing is to make sure that information is available always from every corpus, whether it’s your personal information, information in books or information that’s on the Web. If we can build robotic tools that help people, we can get incredible productivity. How many times have you searched for something and you can’t find it?

Barriers 50

Barriers Google Differentiation Research 50

Paul Gillin

FEBRUARY 14, 2012

He asked my business unit to build a computer lab that employees could use at any time to play and experiment. For example, a sales rep trying to close a deal with a German company can discover an accounting employee who speaks fluent German and leverage that person’s skill to help get the business.

Enterprise Management 50

Enterprise Management Social Networks Webcast Paid Search Agency 50

Paul Gillin

OCTOBER 5, 2011

Last week I got two letters in the mail that appeared to be personally addressed to me in a feminine hand (right). If you want access to my inbox and to my network, help me build my professional profile by making it easier for me to help my friends and contacts. And if so, were they serious buyers in the first place?

Direct Marketing 50

Direct Marketing BtoB Word of Mouth Conference 50

Paul Gillin

AUGUST 26, 2010

During the 75-minute drive, I listened to the girls talk excitedly about the people they would soon meet in person for the first time. Thanks to Facebook, they had been building connections with future classmates since the late spring. They already knew many of them, of course.

Multi-Channel 50

Multi-Channel Facebook Communities Course 50

Paul Gillin

DECEMBER 1, 2010

Google’s Eric Schmidt made an interesting point : smart phones are actually more useful than PCs because they know more about the user, including location, and can deliver a more personal level of utility. Consider Cisco’s myPlanNet , a game that challenges players to build a business as the CEO of an Internet service provider.

Web 2.0 50

Web 2.0 Internet Marketing Mobile Marketing Marketing Proposals 50

Paul Gillin

AUGUST 29, 2012

Building on early charges that P&G had failed to adequately disclose changes in the product, members began complaining of leakage and flimsy construction. P&G knows better than any company that people treat their personal care products like an old friend.

Paid Search Agency 50

Paid Search Agency Advertising Agencies Facebook Customer Satisfaction 50

Paul Gillin

OCTOBER 12, 2011

Will new tools make analytics accessible to the common business person in the same way that spreadsheets made forecasting, accessible? Can one person know it all? ” Now the customer is saying “Here’s what I want and you build it for me.”. We are living in a much less tolerant society. At BP, that was not the case.

Enterprise Management 50

Enterprise Management Work Management Forecasting Burn Rate 50

Paul Gillin

JANUARY 24, 2013

This new book comes from Mike Lewis, who is head of marketing at Awareness Networks, a personal friend and one of the nicest guys I know. An accompanying website provides bonus information that builds on many of the points raised in the book.

Social Marketing 50

Social Marketing Marketing Management Social Media Youtube 50

Paul Gillin

JUNE 9, 2010

Friends and Fame The great innovation in online communities came in 1998, when Classmates.com introduced the concept of personal profiles and friends. Profiles are a member’s personal homepage. The more active the member is, the higher his visibility and the greater the value of the network to his personal success.

Social Networks 50

Social Networks Work Management B2B Marketing Management 50

Paul Gillin

FEBRUARY 16, 2012

A list of tips for building a quality business Twitter following that I recently contributed to The CMO Site mentioned the value of being the eyes and ears of your followers. People don’t like it when their newsfeed is crammed with messages from one person. Building new cell towers? Building new cell towers?

Marketing Proposals 50

Marketing Proposals Storytelling Advertising Mediums Tagging 50

Paul Gillin

JUNE 24, 2010

In the case of the sales rep, we must be able to predict with reasonable certainty that the person can generate $2 million in incremental business in year one. They can even trigger customized e-mails or tweets when a person’s behavior matches certain predefined patterns. For many companies, that’s far from simple.

ROI 50

ROI Paid Content Social Marketing Webcast 50

Paul Gillin

FEBRUARY 15, 2014

And I advised linking generously to influential bloggers as a way of generating reciprocal links that build search visibility. He also tweaks the practice of content curation if it’s done simply to build one’s social profile on the back of others’ work. Today I would recommend none of those things.

Social Networks 50

Social Networks Ideal Customer Profiles Blogger Social Media 50