And yet our latest annual survey of 355 buyers of complex IT solutions, How Customers Choose Solution Providers, 2009: The Importance of Personalization, Epiphanies, and Social Media, shows that the door to the C-suite is opening up. There are two rivers of content at conferences. One is the river of planned content—the conference theme, the presentations, etc.; the other is the river of conversation that flows through the event at breaks, meals and receptions. This is where you get the dope on the shared challenges of the attendees. CEOs Use Social Media More than Other Buyers. MORE >>

The ultimate risk in business is that your customers stop buying from you because they don’t trust you. Preventing employees from speaking to customers because they might make a mistake ignores this much bigger risk—which existed long before social media came along. Customers want to speak to the people they will be working with. We did some case studies at ITSMA this year that showed that companies could easily blow up half their offices and do away with most of their administrative and bureaucratic structures without a single customer noticing. don’t. Mobile. MORE >>

combination of conversational engagement and great thought leadership content are what we need to engage with customers in the coming years, not qualification forms. As social media becomes more prevalent in marketing, we’re going to have to rethink how we gather information from prospects. We’re starting to see social media have a positive impact on driving traffic to websites and on lead generation. In our recent Web 2.0 survey, (all ITSMA clients can download this executive summary ), we found that “increased web traffic&# was the most frequently cited benefit of Web 2.0 MORE >>

First, let’s define what PR means from the perspective of the customer (i.e., a journalist) and the customer’s customer (i.e., Your customer hates and avoids you. These aren’t the people you want talking to influencers and customers. And customers never read the releases. In B2B, that’s not going to build relationships with customers. Agencies’ goals and metrics are usually based on the needs and wants of the guard dogs rather than on the needs and wants of the target customer—the influencer. As in dead. Don’t do it anymore. Guard dog PR. MORE >>

It’s best to address a problem before customers realize that it’s a problem. Some time back, I blogged about the attributes of a thought leader. Lately, I’ve been talking to B2B marketers about the content delivered by these thought leaders and asking, What defines good thought leadership content? Here’s what I have so far. Surely, you have a suggestion that will get us to ten attributes? Visionary. Provocative. The best thought leadership pieces are bold and attack conventional wisdom. Differentiated. No “me too” ideas allowed. Relevant. Timely. Has a narrative. Demonstrates mastery. MORE >>