Chris Koch

JANUARY 22, 2010

This is what it would cost to place an ad in a magazine vs. the cost of getting the story placement. So if you buy that leap of logic, let’s say that blogs are another channel, like PR, in a marketing mix designed to familiarize customers and prospects with our companies and us. If they happen to also be customers, then all the better.

Social Media 100

Social Media ROI Lead Ranking RSS 100

Chris Koch

JANUARY 15, 2010

During one of the first few days I went to work at CIO magazine in 1995, I had what we called a “vendor visit”—one of many I would have in the coming years. But a quick read of our magazine showed that we didn’t write about products. Kind of a Fortune magazine for IT executives. Bibles, vacuums, and boxes. Tweet This Post.

Social Media 100

Social Media Work Management Marketing Management Marketing Automation Services 100

Chris Koch

APRIL 10, 2009

This led to the explosion of the trade magazine industry during the 1960s-1980s. Even in industries with low information intensity in their products—coin-operation laundry franchises, for example—there was a trade magazine offering information about how to improve business practices. Why did companies start focusing on it?

Thought Leadership 100

Thought Leadership B2B Thought Leadership Peer-to-peer Work Management 100

Chris Koch

AUGUST 7, 2009

When I covered CIOs for 13 years at CIO Magazine, I found that it was very difficult to generalize about the profession, beyond a handful of universal problems such as alignment with the business and the complexities and the voracious needs of the IT infrastructure. And that has big implications for marketers.

Planning 100

Planning Segmentation Work Management Gartner 100

Chris Koch

AUGUST 7, 2009

When I covered CIOs for 13 years at CIO Magazine, I found that it was very difficult to generalize about the profession, beyond a handful of universal problems such as alignment with the business and the complexities and the voracious needs of the IT infrastructure. And that has big implications for marketers. Tweet This Post.

Planning 100

Planning Segmentation Work Management Gartner 100

Chris Koch

MARCH 26, 2010

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. Get ideas from customers. Set up an RSS feed of key news sources and bloggers and forward the good stuff to your SMEs.

B2B Thought Leadership 100

B2B Thought Leadership RSS Enterprise Management Thought Leadership 100

Chris Koch

MAY 21, 2010

Have you ever noticed that your Facebook profile page looks like one of those horrible qualification forms that we make our customers fill out? Customers are less willing to give up information. The privacy issues for Facebook are going to be on the cover of Time magazine next week. The expectation on Twitter is that 99.9%

Privacy 100

Privacy B2B Marketing Lead Ranking B2B 100

Chris Koch

FEBRUARY 12, 2010

The experts say that in the new era of social media, marketers need to stop delivering tightly-scripted, one-way messages and start engaging in uncontrolled, transparent conversations with customers and prospects wherever those conversations happen. So why not just let them start their own? Look, I love Forrester.

Social Media 100

Social Media Forrester Media Transparency 100

Chris Koch

OCTOBER 1, 2010

Ideas that educate customers and prospects about important business and technology issues and help them solve those issues—without selling. That’s where the trade magazine explosion of the 60s-90s came from. Heck, I remember a trade magazine about coin-op laundromats! So they are all here for your enjoyment.) More integrated.

Thought Leadership 100

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

Chris Koch

FEBRUARY 5, 2010

Regardless, it’s a twist on an old consultant’s trick: Gain attention and credibility with press, customers, and influencers by creating your own definition, which gives you the ability to insert the “what we call x…” phrase into descriptions of otherwise basic things. What are customers’ areas of interest?

Thought Leadership 100

Thought Leadership B2B Thought Leadership Gartner Planning 100

Chris Koch

NOVEMBER 20, 2009

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. Customer factors. Customers (the younger ones, anyway) are adopting social media. Trade magazines are imploding as marketers continue to pull out of print advertising.

Social Media 100

Social Media Social Marketing B2B Marketing Work Management 100