This makes sense when you consider what our IT buyers have been telling us for years: that their peers are by far their most preferred and trusted choice for information during the buying process. 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. Specifically, frustration over how to use social media to reach the C-suite. MORE >>

Creating a temporary virtual community in the run up to an event to inform and liven up in-person meetings at the event. Here’s a list of things I wish we would stop doing and thinking as of December 31 st : Social media. Social media cause people to waste time at work. Companies have a long and pointless history of resisting new forms of communication. From Facebook to email to putting telephones on employees’ desks (remember, the telephone started as a “consumer” communication technology, too), companies think that every new wave is going to lead to gajillions in lost productivity. MORE >>

As social media becomes more prevalent in marketing, we’re going to have to rethink how we gather information from prospects. Given the potential for lead generation through social media, the question then becomes how much information should we try to get from people coming to us through social media? nature of social media means that we should err on the side of less information. But I think Tom has a great point when he says that there’s not much reason to be asking people for a lot of information during the early stages of the buying process. In our recent Web 2.0 MORE >>

On the contrary, they asked me to explain the story I was working on and supplied that information to the CIO or their subject matter experts prior to the interview. 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., the readers of the journalists’ publications). Looked at this way, there are only two types of PR: Guard dog PR and placement PR. Guard dog PR. MORE >>

Tags: Customer Relationships Marketing Strategy Application service provider B2B marketing Business Business process Chief information officer CIOs Cloud computing Corporate Executive Board E-Commerce Information technology Thought Leadership MORE >>