Social media cause people to waste time at work. The problem is not with employees or with the communications technologies, it’s with the premise that employees come into work determined to waste time. Guess what companies, people wasted time at work long before Facebook came along. Customers want to speak to the people they will be working with. don’t know about you, but I don’t have many friends (I know, shocking), so when I use my mobile phone, I’m mostly using it to catch up on work in down moments (like when I’m waiting for my wife and daughter outside Delia’s). MORE >>

He argues that putting a data form in front of a prospect displays a lack of confidence in the quality of our work and at worst drives people into the arms of competitors. 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 >>

Unless the company they work for is a startup or otherwise desperate for attention, these people tend to be ground down by the risk management aspect of their jobs over time. For example, if the agency-managed interview leads to bad press, the guard dogs can show that they are managing risk for the company by blaming and firing the agency (agencies are used to this and work with many different companies in order to manage the ever-present risk of getting fired). They would work hard to get CIOs and subject matter experts to agree to talk to me in an open way. As in dead. MORE >>

One great way to connect ideas to offerings is to create a business theme—think IBM’s Smarter Planet or Cognizant’s Future of Work. I’m looking forward to our annual ITSMA spring road trip. This time, I’ll be speaking about how to tie thought leadership to revenue, starting in Santa Clara, CA next Wednesday, and in New York and Newton, MA the following week. Hope you can join us. Alas, no such magic metric exists. We’re focusing on the wrong things. If you have the ability to measure those two things, then great. Here are three ways to do it: Connect ideas to offerings. Tweet This Post. MORE >>

Much of what works on Facebook seems to fall into two camps: Charity. Recently, I was preparing a workshop on social media for an ITSMA client. The marketer in charge of the company’s social media effort gave me a clear edict: “Look, I don’t want you focusing on Facebook, okay? We don’t see the value of it for B2B and we want it off the table. Every time we talk about it, we have an endless argument that leads nowhere.”. Seemed a bit harsh, but I had to admit that I had been harboring my own doubts about the value of Facebook for B2B for a long time. Why not? Relationships, right? MORE >>