The Social Media Olympics, Sponsored by Penn State's ISBM & A Chance Meeting with George Bush Senior
Pennsylvania State University's Institute for the Studies of Business Markets (ISBM http://isbm.smeal.psu.edu/ and part of the SMEAL College of Business) is another example of academic thought leaders who are working directly with industry to understand and capture competitive advantage in B2B marketing. Ralph Oliva, the Executive Director is what I call a "cosmic bondini" in that he connects the dots between what industry needs, and addresses those needs by building his network and foundation on rocks called research and B2P networking. Ralph, brother of my friend Vinnie Oliva at Gartner, assembled one of the first ever B2B conferences focused on social media. This ISBM conference was genius in the sense that it not only presented research that clearly shows where social media is going; but also provided speakers and practitioners that are actually doing it! HELLO!
Those practitioners included myself and Robin Carey of Social Media Today, Rick Short of Indium, Jeff Hayzlett of Kodak (see him on YouTube) and Cisco's Doug Webster, in addition to several consulting organizations. One particular consultant/social media guru, had the audacity to actually get on stage and admit that they don't even blog, wow are u kidding! This conference is one of the first I have ever seen that provides insights into how to execute a B2B social media strategy that addresses the bottom line, sales.
For background reading on thought leadership see Thought Leadership is Key to Marketing Communications Today at: http://www.thesocialcustomer.com/blog/PeterAuditore1/site/posts/Net/Net: The Barrier to Executing B2B Social Media Strategy= Company & Org Culture
As Drucker always said "there is no strategy without execution," and after spending last week with 100 marketing CMOs, directors and managers from more than fifty companies and organizations, I can tell you that most of them are far from executing any social media. Although many of the companies were from the manufacturing and the services industries they don't get that B2B social media is simply another way of getting closer to their customers, partners and suppliers. Their company cultures are stuck in the mud of the antiquated four Ps of marketing, intellectual property protection discussions, and are threatened by the change of represented in the social media landscape that is downright scary to them. This again harkens back to what I said multiple times last year about how social media can drive competitive advantage and most importantly sales. Get it!
I had the pleasure of keynoting this conference at the Houstonian hotel last week with my partner in crime Robin Carey. We presented SNCR research on how social media peer groups are rapidly becoming trusted decision support tools, and discussed the development of our famous MyVenturePad best practices in social media marketing case study. Here is a quick overview of the most important presentation that hit the spot.
Best Conference Presentation: Rick Short of Indium
Imagine if you were the marketing guru for a company that makes solder and solder paste how would you leverage social media? Well Rick has been doing it for nearly five years now, Rick and I presented last year at the BMA conference and his formula for success with social media can be summed up in what he calls the three Cs and I love this:
CONTENT 2 CONTACT 2 CASH
Rick's story is indeed a best practice in B2B social media and he provided a roadmap to executing it. Rick has now convinced seventy of his company's engineers to blog regularly on their areas of expertise and they are driving revenue from the people that read their blogs. He used one specific example of how an engineer was blogging on an obscure metallurgy topic and as a result the potential customer came to them because Indium has more content on the Internet about this area through blogging than any competitor, so they were viewed as an expert. In spite of the fact that Rick Short was there to tell them just how his company, Indium, makes money from social media, many conference attendees still did not get it, amazing.
A Chance Meeting with George Bush Senior
It is not often that I meet a President and have a conversation with one, but it was indeed fun to meet President Bush one of our kinder and gentler Presidents in Houston. While sitting out front of the hotel having my afternoon cigar, I noticed two secret service people open the door to the veranda I was sitting on, and out of a side door to my surprise emerged George Bush and his cane. For an older guy he looked great and vibrant and as I arose to shake his hand as he approached me and said "hi I am Peter from California, nice to meet you President Bush." He looked at me and said, "You are enjoying a cigar" and I said "yes my grandfather told me that the man who smokes the big cigar has his life and plans well in hand." (That is because usually when you light up a cigar everyone around you that does not smoke exits) George laughed and said "nice," and then I said "we need to change this Cuban situation." 'George said why? George W likes cigars what should I tell him?' I said "tell George W this, "Cuban cigars smoke up to twice as long as others, and they often taste like chocolate, nutmeg and other wonderful flavors and they are really smooth." President Bush said, "I will, nice to meet you Peter."
There is an awful lot more I could tell you about this conference but the net/net is most companies even today don't understand the value of social media and don't know how to use it, their competitors will. Until next time I wish you great marketing and selling in the millennium.