Chris Koch

JANUARY 15, 2010

But it was clear that he had no concept of how difficult it is to write clear, compelling content about complex subjects. Marketers today are in the same position I was with that sales guy in 1995: Wondering how to explain the value and difficulty of creating clear, compelling content about a complex subject. The content engine.

Social Media 100

Social Media Work Management Marketing Management Marketing Automation Services 100

Chris Koch

JULY 16, 2009

Consider pairing one of your top executives with a top executive from a customer to build relationship and shepherd participation in various customer programs. 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.

Peer-to-peer 100

Peer-to-peer Thought Leadership Practices Best Practices 100

Chris Koch

JULY 16, 2009

Consider pairing one of your top executives with a top executive from a customer to build relationship and shepherd participation in various customer programs. 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.

Peer-to-peer 100

Peer-to-peer Practices Thought Leadership Best Practices 100

Chris Koch

FEBRUARY 24, 2010

B2B marketing lays the path to a sales discussion and supports relationships with existing customers. Social media is another channel—one of many—for making the connection and building the relationship with customers. The trust leads to a more personal relationship and hopefully, a purchase. Social media is no silver bullet.

Social Media 100

Social Media Marketing Strategy Marketing & Strategy B2B Thought Leadership 100

Chris Koch

OCTOBER 22, 2010

This is where we as marketers need to provide more content—but not sales content. This content must be like what the press used to provide, objective, idea-based, and educational—not selling. Put another way, we have to use content to establish a relationship with buyers where our salespeople can’t.

Lead Management 100

Lead Management Marketing Management Automation Marketing Automation Services 100

Chris Koch

AUGUST 23, 2011

It’s easier for tweets to flow across all the various social networks because of their short nature and the fact that they usually contain links to longer content that can show up on Facebook and G+. There are only two types of relationships in social networking. G+’s relationship model mix of the two is a little bit complicated.

Social Media 100

Social Media Media Social Networks B2B Thought Leadership 100

Chris Koch

AUGUST 23, 2011

It’s easier for tweets to flow across all the various social networks because of their short nature and the fact that they usually contain links to longer content that can show up on Facebook and G+. There are only two types of relationships in social networking. G+’s relationship model mix of the two is a little bit complicated.

Social Media 100

Social Media Media Social Networks B2B Thought Leadership 100

Chris Koch

AUGUST 5, 2011

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. Relationships, right? Contests/giveaways/games.

Facebook 100

Facebook B2B Marketing B2B Thought Leadership B2B 100

Chris Koch

OCTOBER 12, 2009

We’re all looking for the revolution to happen within the tools, but where the revolution is occurring is in the content that feeds those tools. In tracking B2B marketing through Twitter, I find a ton of great content being shared through blogs whose creators have already swamped the output of trade magazines.

Social Media 100

Social Media Media Paid Search Agency Viral Marketing 100

Chris Koch

DECEMBER 29, 2009

According to Razorfish, 44% of respondents said they were looking for exclusive deals or offers, while 24% said they followed the brand because they were customers and 23% said they followed in the hopes of getting interesting or entertaining content. At the heart of the relationship is the expectation of continuing value.

Enterprise Management 100

Enterprise Management B2B Marketing B2B Thought Leadership Marketing Management 100

Chris Koch

DECEMBER 2, 2011

I’m a content guy and I think thought leadership is the best way to build nurturing relationships with contacts in B2B marketing. Or will the campaigns just distract us from the need to do the hard work of a consistent relationship building strategy? I’m not a slut, I’m a snob. Actually, I’m not a slut. I’m more of a snob.

Social Media 100

Social Media Campaigns B2B Thought Leadership Media 100

Chris Koch

DECEMBER 2, 2011

I’m a content guy and I think thought leadership is the best way to build nurturing relationships with contacts in B2B marketing. Or will the campaigns just distract us from the need to do the hard work of a consistent relationship building strategy? I’m not a slut, I’m a snob. Actually, I’m not a slut. I’m more of a snob.

Social Media 100

Social Media Campaigns B2B Thought Leadership Media 100

Chris Koch

NOVEMBER 6, 2009

Like most marketers, I spend most of my time desperately seeking to understand my target audience (B2B marketers) and delivering content that they find relevant and engaging. For us, it’s an opportunity to build a closer relationship with the winners and generate some great thought leadership. It’s a struggle. Tweet This Post.

B2B Thought Leadership 100

B2B Thought Leadership Thought Leadership Budget Programs Business 100

Chris Koch

SEPTEMBER 9, 2011

We need to create a mix of these two types of thought leadership content to maintain strong relationships with their target audiences. Marketing and sales must agree on the alignment of content to the various buying stages so that sales will get the right signals about when and how to approach customers for a sale.

Thought Leadership 100

Thought Leadership Peer-to-peer Loyalty Case Study 100

Chris Koch

SEPTEMBER 9, 2011

We need to create a mix of these two types of thought leadership content to maintain strong relationships with their target audiences. Marketing and sales must agree on the alignment of content to the various buying stages so that sales will get the right signals about when and how to approach customers for a sale.

Thought Leadership 100

Thought Leadership Peer-to-peer Loyalty Case Study 100

Chris Koch

MARCH 19, 2010

Social media are repositories for discussions and content on every possible topic. Asking for information helps deepen social media relationships. Social media is all about sharing—whether that be pointing to good content (yours and others’), or sharing expertise and experience. Gather research. Promote other types of marketing.

Social Media 100

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

Chris Koch

JUNE 16, 2009

To someone her age, the concept of following immediately conjures up the issue of personal relationships—who you hate and who you like—and status—who is popular and who isn’t. Thankfully, adults have another context for developing relationships: communities of learning. Follow to learn. Nobody knows but me.

Twitter 100

Twitter Web 2.0 Social Media Communities 100

Chris Koch

NOVEMBER 11, 2011

Or have these companies decided that they are going to stop trying to sell themselves in a couple of hackneyed words and instead do it through relationships and experience? Are the marketers at these companies not doing their jobs? I predict that we’re going to see a lot more B2B companies moving in this direction in the coming year.

Social Marketing 100

Social Marketing Tactics B2B Thought Leadership Enterprise Management 100

Chris Koch

NOVEMBER 11, 2011

Or have these companies decided that they are going to stop trying to sell themselves in a couple of hackneyed words and instead do it through relationships and experience? Are the marketers at these companies not doing their jobs? I predict that we’re going to see a lot more B2B companies moving in this direction in the coming year.

Social Marketing 100

Social Marketing Tactics B2B Thought Leadership Enterprise Management 100

Chris Koch

MARCH 26, 2010

One of the biggest challenges for B2B social media marketers isn’t creating content, it’s helping others create content. And while marketers can create some social media content, they can (and should) rely on their subject matter experts (SMEs) to create most of the stuff that’s going to build trust and relationships with customers.

B2B Thought Leadership 100

B2B Thought Leadership RSS Enterprise Management Thought Leadership 100

Chris Koch

JANUARY 21, 2011

All through 2010, marketers have been telling us that they are having a harder time getting their content noticed. The characteristic that stands out is that these channels are all more personal than more traditional content. The social media noise is personal. But let’s look at the social media noise more carefully.

Social Media 100

Social Media Budget Programs Paper PR 100

Chris Koch

SEPTEMBER 17, 2010

For centuries, publishers had an uneasy, co-dependent relationship with advertisers. Marketers, meanwhile, didn’t have a wall, so they filled their content with self-aggrandizing references to their own products and services that pissed off readers and sent them to other sources for advice. Let me explain. What’s the point?

Thought Leadership 100

Thought Leadership B2B Thought Leadership Advertising Agencies Paid Search Agency 100

Chris Koch

OCTOBER 7, 2011

They are more likely to encounter our content through search than through the social media channels themselves. At the earliest stage of the buying process, marketing owns the relationship with buyers. 9 attributes of the best thought leadership content (christopherakoch.com). What do you think? Related articles.

Social Media 100

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

Chris Koch

OCTOBER 7, 2011

They are more likely to encounter our content through search than through the social media channels themselves. At the earliest stage of the buying process, marketing owns the relationship with buyers. 9 attributes of the best thought leadership content (christopherakoch.com). What do you think? Related articles.

Social Media 100

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

Chris Koch

NOVEMBER 13, 2009

ITSMA research shows that there are other ways to reach these people that are much more effective than social media, such as small, thought leadership-based events, content-rich websites that are optimized for search, and robust reference programs, to name a few.

Social Media 100

Social Media Allocation Media Marketing & Strategy 100

Chris Koch

NOVEMBER 13, 2009

ITSMA research shows that there are other ways to reach these people that are much more effective than social media, such as small, thought leadership-based events, content-rich websites that are optimized for search, and robust reference programs, to name a few.

Social Media 100

Social Media Allocation Media Marketing & Strategy 100

Chris Koch

AUGUST 16, 2011

Anecdotally, we hear that content gets exponentially more clicks when there’s no registration form attached to it. Rather than trading information for value or simply stealing it through invisible cookies, what if we actually did it the way people do in real life: through a personal relationship? Privacy is a concern in B2B, too.

B2B 100

B2B Privacy Click Rate Internet Marketing 100

Chris Koch

AUGUST 16, 2011

Anecdotally, we hear that content gets exponentially more clicks when there’s no registration form attached to it. Rather than trading information for value or simply stealing it through invisible cookies, what if we actually did it the way people do in real life: through a personal relationship? Privacy is a concern in B2B, too.

B2B 100

B2B Privacy Click Rate Internet Marketing 100

Chris Koch

NOVEMBER 12, 2010

PR tries to influence the placement of subject matter experts, content, and interviews in third-party channels (articles, conference and trade show speaking engagements, etc.). Twitter’s viral relationship model means that your subject matter experts can build up their networks of influence much faster than through a press release.

PR 100

PR Peer-to-peer Press Public Relations 100

Chris Koch

JUNE 26, 2009

But Twitter lets you start to build a professional relationship without getting in each other’s face. It’s a great source of content and for people that I may want to follow. Transfer Twitter relationships to LinkedIn and Facebook. They also assemble subject-specific lists of content and update them as needed.

Social Media 100

Social Media Social Marketing B2B Marketing Personalization 100

Chris Koch

NOVEMBER 5, 2010

Nobody reads your content. They dug deeper and created original content. Press releases are not substitutes for real content. In B2B, that’s not going to build relationships with customers. Back when we had a strong press, the fact that press releases were self-aggrandizing crap didn’t matter. Placement PR.

PR 100

PR Press Paid Search Agency Lead Ranking 100

Chris Koch

JANUARY 22, 2010

Aside from the corporate, a blog is the mother ship of social media interaction and content. within a Tweet, you can track how many people click on the content link you offer in your tweets. Social media gives us ways to build relationships with customers that white papers or newsletters can’t. And blogs are really measurable.

Social Media 100

Social Media ROI Lead Ranking RSS 100

Chris Koch

DECEMBER 28, 2010

Social media relationships are shallow and meaningless. For example, the viral relationship model of Twitter adds a new dimension to relationships, it doesn’t subtract. I’ve formed a handful of excellent business relationships on Twitter this year—we know each other on sight and (gasp) we’ve even spoken to one another.

Planning 100

Planning Work Management Paid Search Agency B2B Thought Leadership 100

Chris Koch

FEBRUARY 5, 2010

The education is the exchange of value that begins a relationship between the customer and the deliverer—whether that deliverer is a salesperson, a marketer, or a subject matter expert. That relationship is deepened through a coordinated, multistep campaign with successively more intimate communications over time.

Thought Leadership 100

Thought Leadership B2B Thought Leadership Gartner Planning 100

Chris Koch

OCTOBER 1, 2010

Content is replacing salespeople in the earliest stages of the buying process. If buyers find your content you’re a step ahead. Marketing has more peer relationships with thought leaders inside the company than PR. Companies and customers and prospects will have a more continuous relationship than they do today.

Thought Leadership 100

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