Nobody reads your content. They dug deeper and created original content. Press releases are not substitutes for real content. The process of getting subject matter experts placed in publications or other third-party content channels is awful for everyone involved. Among the many interesting ideas thrown around at ITSMA’s annual conference this week was that the era of PR is over. As in dead. Don’t do it anymore. First, let’s define what PR means from the perspective of the customer (i.e., a journalist) and the customer’s customer (i.e., Guard dog PR. Placement PR. MORE >>

This cartoon making the rounds online captures the frustration journalists have with their online plight--and reveals the opportunity B2B marketers have to fill the content gap. That drives publishers to produce a lot of short content designed to reach the broadest possible audience (at least one online story about Apple per day for a technology pub, for example). Meanwhile, B2B buyers still hunger for good, specific content just as they always have. Providers have the opportunity to fill the content gap themselves. Marketers always struggle with what to do next. MORE >>

In fact, our most recent thought leadership survey found that few marketers are measuring much besides consumption of their marketing content. Too much of our content just tries to look and sound smart—great focus on ideas, but no real connection to how our companies can solve the problem. If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know that I’m constantly beating the drum of integrating content with an automated lead management process. lead management process gives you the ability to get the right content to the right people at the time they need it. MORE >>

So I think B2B businesses should have a Facebook page that shares whatever content the company is already producing. It’s yet another channel for reaching customers and the effort required to set up a Facebook page and create RSS feeds of your content to update it is pretty small. If the only way to get people interested in your content is by giving them stuff instead of wisdom, how are you supposed to sustain that connection over the long term? Recently, I was preparing a workshop on social media for an ITSMA client. think every company should be on Facebook. Why not? MORE >>

Rarely do those links lead to paid content. Those who make their content freely available will have many more readers than those who don’t. 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. After all, the tools themselves are dead simple. You need a second hand on your watch to track how long it takes to set up a Twitter account, for example. But developing a social media voice is a more complicated proposition. d love to hear your additions, comments, rants. MORE >>