Cody has guest blogged for The B2B Lead a few times and we loved his work, so we are making him official.

Cody Young, Sr. Director of Client Success Mgmt. at ReachForce

Some wise old marketer once said “If the circus is coming to town and you paint a sign saying “Circus Coming to the Fairground Saturday,” that’s advertising. If you put the sign on the back of an elephant and walk it into town, that’s promotion. If the elephant walks through the mayor’s flower bed, that’s publicity. And if you get the mayor to laugh about it, that’s public relations. If the town’s citizens go the circus, you show them the many entertainment booths, explain how much fun they’ll have spending money at the booths, answer their questions and ultimately, they spend a lot at the circus, that’s sales.

For more than 20 years I’ve immersed myself in and worked on the principle that sales is almost always a byproduct of good marketing. I can’t even count how many VPs of sales in my life have gone apoplectic at the thought, but I’m glad to say it’s never been proven wrong on my watch. I believe that good marketing puts businesses in the right place at the right time to take advantage of opportunity. There are plenty of opportunities out there — and It doesn’t take a genius to find them. The most important part is being ready for them — because when you have a good hammer, everything looks like a nail. I hope my B2BLead postings will be thought provoking and I look forward to sharing ideas with all of you.

In this chapter, I didn’t really feel like David was talking to me. He gave great examples of a non-profit who used their website to spread their ideas and increase awareness as well as a large company who has policies and procedures to make sure all of their business units’ websites are aligned. And while I absolutely agree that content is key, I could not really relate to his case studies. Maybe I am just lucky that I work at a small company where I, as a marketer, am in charge of our website. I am amazed that I still meet marketers who work for much larger companies than ours and have no control over their website. I have to ask that company, “What is the goal of your website?” Because if the answer is to reach buyers, marketing should be the ones creating the content.

As I myself am heading towards a redesign I am asking the same question. We have so much content that we could put out there but the way we organize it varies based on our goals. Also something that David did not touch on is that great content leads to better SEO. So, if one of your goals is to improve SEO, should you put your best content behind forms? This is a battle I face everyday. Is it more important to get your content out there or know who is downloading it?

Next week we will be discussing chapters 10 and 11 on Building your Marketing and PR Plan and Online Thought Leadership.

For awhile now, B2B Marketers have been caught in a bit of a Catch-22. Our community of B2B professionals are very well represented on LinkedIn. And, it’s fairly easy to set up a topic-oriented group on LinkedIn. However, there’s not much you can do to spread the word about your group to recruit members.  And, worse, once you build your group, you can’t do much for them. There’s really no way to share information or gather feedback.

Facebook, on the other hand, offers a much more “social” atmosphere and once you create a group, you can not only spread the word but actually interact with your members. Seems sort of obvious. I mean, isn’t that what a group is for? Unfortunately, in my situation, test engineers and other IT professionals just  don’t seem to use Facebook. It’s been frustrating because we’ve seen our LinkedIn group grow very quickly without much recruiting, and it’s a very qualified group of the professionals but we simply cannot engage with the members as a group.

Well, at last, LinkedIn has responded with the ability to interact with the members of your group!  They just sent out this email to Group managers:

This Friday, we will be adding several much-requested features to your group:

• Discussion forums: Simple discussion spaces for you and your members. (You can turn discussions off in your management control panel if you like.)
• Enhanced roster: Searchable list of group members.
• Digest emails: Daily or weekly digests of new discussion topics which your members may choose to receive. (We will be turning digests on for all current group members soon, and prompting them to set to their own preference.)
• Group home page: A private space for your members on LinkedIn.

Thanks LinkedIn! Look forward to growing with you.

Google has captured the hearts and minds of most of the civilized world, so the company really doesn’t need to advertise. Although I, for one, wouldn’t mind if Google would reach out and update me on their latest “toys.” So, just what would a television ad for Google look like? Check out these hysterically funny YouTube videos produced by The Vacationeers, here is Part 1 of “The Googling” be sure to check the entire series.

Chapter 8 is full of great viral marketing case studies. The most interesting part, and David points out, most of these weren’t planned acts of marketing. Well maybe the GoldenPalace.com strategy of buying random things on eBay, hoping for some news pick up, was a bit planned. Sometimes it worked so maybe you can plan buzz that goes viral?

B2B Lead blogger and Viral VIP, Pam O’Neal Mickelson, also created buzz that went viral. Check out how she built a viral campaign around a simple video an engineer at NetQoS created. Pam – please jump in here – As an experienced viral marketer, are you now trying to create new ideas to build viral campaigns around or do you think these kinds of things just happen and you have to know when to jump on something?

Whether a viral opportunity happens to you or you create one of your own I think the most important thing to remember is to make sure you are doing everything you can to support and drive the “viral aspects” of the video or campaign. One of the case studies in this chapter was the Mentos exploding when dropped in Diet Coke. While neither brand created the video, Mentos embraced it and Diet Coke ignored it. Mentos leveraged the video to help boost their brand. So the lesson here – If people are talking about you or your brand online, don’t ignore it.

David does a good job of closing this chapter. I’d like to close with it as well.

“Viral marketing – having others tell your story for you – is one of the most exciting and powerful ways to reach your audiences. It’s not easy to harness the power, but with careful preparation when you are sitting on news and with clever ideas for what has the potential to create interest, any organization has the power to become famous on the Web.”

When I started at ReachForce, one of the first things I did was set up my iGoogle page. With iGoogle, I created my own customized home page that included my personal interests, like sports and entertainment news, and access to everything I ever wanted to know about B2B Lead Generation. I think of it as a one-stop-shop for everything I need.

iGoogle pages can include things like today’s weather and news, RSS feeds you’ve signed up for and B2B gadgets or widgets. If you didn’t know they were out there, you should check out these B2B gadgets. Appirio has a tool to make widgits for key points for salesforce.com users, VerticalResponse to get your email and direct mail statistics real time and Etelos can help manage your CRM through Google.

Anyway, iGoogle is a fast and easy way to keep up with the new trends and information in your space. It is also very easy to set up and update. To set up your iGoogle page, go to Google.com and start with an account (you don’t have to use gmail), and then check out all the gadgets and themes that interest you. This short video can help explain iGoogle and all you can do with it.

If you already have an iGoogle page, what’s your favorite gadget?

In the spirit of the Olympics, today I am passing the torch of Blog Master to the newest member of the ReachForce Team, Laura Koether. I am sticking around, but Laura will now be the one to bring you all the latest an greatest in B2B marketing. Here is a little more about Laura and what she is planning on bringing to The B2B Lead:

As the new kid on the blog, I am looking forward to learning more about traditional B2B Lead Gen, but also discuss more new online media on The B2B Lead. With social media changing every day, finding what works best for ReachForce can be a challenge. I am hoping my youth, and “uncorrupted-mind” of old PR and Marketing will come into play as I integrate what I know of social media from my personal life into my new professional world. Here at ReachForce I have a PR title but really my job is to be online watching YouTube, updating my Facebook profile and exploring all of the new media options we have available to us as business marketers. My main goal is to figure out the best ways to directly connect with prospects, customers and the media via the net. I look forward to making The B2B Lead more interactive as I pass on what I know, and what I learn from you.

Do you know anyone who is not online? I even know an 87-year-old who uses eBay. The fact of the matter is that everyone is online. The question is – are they talking about you and do you know what they are saying? David Meerman Scott gives some great examples of how different companies responded to negative comments on forums and blogs. I think there are two great lessons to be learned from these examples:

1. You need to know what people, especially your customers, are saying about you
2. You need to respond swiftly and genuinely directly to your audience. Do not do what Sony BMG did and respond to bloggers by going on the radio, respond where your audience is, online.

Hopefully most of you are already using Google Alerts to help you monitor blogs and news stories but it will not catch everything. Here are some other monitoring tools you should check out:

1. search.twitter.com – you can search on any keyword, like your company name, to see who is tweeting about you
2. blogsearch.google.com – again you can search on any keyword and add an RSS feed of it to your Google Reader. Tip: you can exclude your own blog or website by adding -site:yourwebsite.com after the keyword. So if I want to see who is talking about ReachForce I would search: reachforce -site:theb2blead.com.

I have discussed this before on The B2B Lead, but you should also monitor an RSS feed of blogs and forums that are in your space. These are the most likely targets for your customers and prospects. Have someone in your company who can add value to the conversation be involved. This is not always easy, but can have great benefits.

The point is:

• Be involved online and know what people are saying about you
• If you see something negative, don’t go dark, respond to try to make it better and admit when you have done something wrong. Everyone appreciates an apology when it is genuine.
• You can gain credibility by having an in-house expert active on forums and blogs – remember no sales pitches

What have you found to be successful online. We would love to hear any success stories. Know of any good monitoring tools? Please share.

Stay tuned next week when we will be covering chapters 8 & 9 on going viral and content rich websites.

Happy Birthday to The B2B Lead! Last Friday, The B2B Lead turned 1. We celebrated with the entire ReachForce team and threw a little party as you can see in the pics. We launched The B2B Lead a year ago with hopes of delivering great content to our prospects, customers and other smart marketers but had no expectation on what it would deliver back to us. I think I can speak for all of us when I say that we have learned so much from our readers and hope that they are learning just as much from us. We are proud to have brought you now over 140 B2B Marketing and Sales Tips. I hope you will keep coming back for more.

Here are some of the best posts from the past year:

• Are You a Viral VIP? – The Definitive Guide to Viral Video Success
• Don’t Forget About Customer Marketing
• Lead Generation Using Email Marketing
• Using Surveys for Lead Scoring
• How to Get 3,190 People to Watch a Demo at a Tradeshow
• 10 Signs You Picked the Wrong Web Design Agency – Marketing WTF?
• Invest in the Right Tools to Track the Metrics That Matter
• Even Hitler Got Twitter – Marketing WTF?
• Trade Shows – Branding or Demand Gen or Waste of Time and Money?

You can also download 101 Sales and Marketing Tips from The B2B Lead. The first two volumes have been released with 3 more coming soon. The first two volumes cover the best tips on Online Marketing and Direct Marketing. I hope you will stay tuned to see what we will bring you next!

Let’s start from the top here.  Does everyone know what a podcast is?  If you do, skip the next paragraph.  If not, you need to know so keep reading.

“A podcast is simply audio content connected to an RSS feed.  The medium does not specifically require iPods although that’s how the word was derived.  You can listen to a podcast on an iPod (or any other MP3 player) or directly from your computer – no iPod required.”

Simply put, podcasts are another way to reach your audience.  Some people prefer to read information (whitepaper downloaders), some prefer to participate in events and other prefer to have access to information they can consume on their own time at their own pace.

Podcasts have become a viable option in our marketing toolkit.  David includes a few good ideas to help get you thinking about how you might use podcasts as a part of your marketing mix and I threw in a few ideas too.

• Customer service depts. can use podcasts to deliver “how to” information about the products a customer has bought
• Podcasts are great for marketing to a mobile/traveling audience.
• Podcasts can be lead generation offer options – “You’re 5 minutes away from learning…”
• Don’t forget to turn your webcasts into multiple podcasts for niche targeting
• Instead of writing another dreaded customer case study, consider interviewing them live and creating a podcast to post to your website.