Chris Koch

SEPTEMBER 17, 2010

The same web analytics that have destroyed publishing are now getting marketers fired because nobody’s clicking on their white papers and surveys. But from the ashes of publishing, subtle association is making a comeback. Partly that’s a quality issue, but it’s also an issue of B2B marketers taking the publishing analogy too literally.

Thought Leadership 100

Thought Leadership B2B Thought Leadership Advertising Agencies Paid Search Agency 100

Chris Koch

MARCH 25, 2011

Some companies have companywide competitions for the best ideas or the best white paper. Collaboration—both internally and externally—will help embed idea development into the culture. One company has created an internal portal where project members submit ideas that are vetted and voted on by the project customers.

Social Media 100

Social Media Organization Peer-to-peer SME 100

Chris Koch

MARCH 19, 2010

I want to do something ambitious and I’m hoping you’ll help. Monitoring tools help determine how much impact these smart things are having on our target audiences. Search tools can help you mine that data. This is helpful during important periods like new offering launches or in the aftermath of a crisis. Gather research.

Social Media 100

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

Chris Koch

JANUARY 22, 2010

Here are some metrics, mostly for blogs, that help build engagement with customers and prospects. Bounce rate is a good metric for websites because it helps show whether people are finding what they’re looking for. Social media gives us ways to build relationships with customers that white papers or newsletters can’t.

Social Media 100

Social Media ROI Lead Ranking RSS 100

Chris Koch

JULY 16, 2010

Because you are helping them create a waking dream to play with. Through our events, white papers, videos, whatever, we must prepare our audience to experience that waking dream. Sometimes, providing a fallow field for customers to create their own thought leadership is in itself the very highest form of thought leadership.

B2B Thought Leadership 100

B2B Thought Leadership Thought Leadership Peer-to-peer Wikipedia 100

Chris Koch

MARCH 12, 2010

Chunks and snippets of white papers sprinkled through social media like breadcrumbs in the forest let us deliver value and build trust by providing content at a higher level of frequency. I can’t help but think that as the different social media channels continue to evolve, customer intimacy is going to take a leap forward.

Social Media 100

Social Media Media Thought Leadership Work Management 100

Chris Koch

JANUARY 15, 2010

But a white paper isn’t just content; it is data. If the vendors can’t help with the integration, IT can. This is where social media tools are helpful. PR people meanwhile should use their thick skins and relationship skills to help build the conversation in social media. It can be tracked and measured.

Social Media 100

Social Media Work Management Marketing Management Marketing Automation Services 100

Chris Koch

FEBRUARY 5, 2010

And in Gartner’s defense, sometimes IT can be so complex and confusing that it really does help to have an acronym for talking about things. So I’d like to try, with your help, to nip TLM in the bud before it gains the power to make us all miserable. What types of vehicles (councils, conferences, white papers, social media, etc.)

Thought Leadership 100

Thought Leadership B2B Thought Leadership Gartner Planning 100

Chris Koch

MARCH 12, 2012

For about 20 years (sad to say I was a journalist for even longer than that) it seemed that every white paper that crossed my desk began with some variant of this sentence: “As the world becomes more global and interconnected, businesses need a way to see through the complexity. But you can’t do this with one app.

Enterprise Management 100

Enterprise Management Lock-In Marketing Management Paper 100

Chris Koch

DECEMBER 28, 2010

But influence in social media isn’t purely a numbers game (though numbers can certainly help). All year, marketers have been telling me that they are having a harder and harder time getting noticed in traditional channels like white papers, email newsletters, and events. It’s also about the degree of interconnectedness.

Planning 100

Planning Work Management Paid Search Agency B2B Thought Leadership 100