Is Social Media Wasted on PR Agencies?

First, let’s get this out of the way: I know some very smart people in the PR field. Yes, some of my best friends are PR people. But good grief. I’m ready to conclude that many PR agencies don’t really get it when it comes to social media. Either that, or they’re just choosing to frame the discussion in such a way as to greatly limit the potential of their clients’ social media initiatives.

Recently I was made privy to a social media plan authored by a client’s PR agency. The stated objectives of said plan were:

* increase awareness amongst bloggers, influencers and prospects
* enhance company’s image by delivering insight to key online communities
* promote company’s approach to [company’s technology & product category]

Reasonable enough, right?

Except awareness and thought leadership represent only a fraction of the potential return from social media, and in fact (I would argue) place well behind the windfall that social media makes possible in the areas of lead generation and lead nurturing.

6 Easy Steps to Increase Leads from Your Corporate Blog

1. Title your posts for Google and Twitter.

Forget nuance. If your blog post showed up in a Google listing, would someone click on it? Is it short (well short of 140 characters) so that someone can easily retweet it without editing? Does it immediately communicate, in specific, tangible terms, what the reader will learn?

Let’s say I blogged about how effective direct marketing copy should always be about the reader, not the sender. I could title the post: “It’s Not Me, It’s You” or I could opt for “A Common Copy Mistake that Dooms Email Response.” See the difference?

Common Email Mistake to Avoid

One assumes that in this upcoming training workshop from TechTarget, one of the “common mistakes to avoid” will be:

If you’re going to insert variable information (i.e. company name) into a subject line, make darn sure that a) your data is accurate, and that b) the fields actually contain the information you want.

BEA Systems was a long-time client of CDI’s prior to their acquisition by Oracle, and the firm in parentheses was their media agency.

New Ebook – 65 Tips on B2B Demand Generation

Newly updated, revised, and now available for the first time in convenient ebook format: The High Tech Direct Marketing Handbook. Download your free copy here.

This is the 5th edition of the handbook, a compilation of 65+ tips and techniques on direct marketing strategy, creative, offers, media, and just about everything in between. After shipping many hundreds of copies worldwide since we introduced the premier version several years ago, we figured the time had finally arrived to go digital.

Here’s some of what you can look forward to:

* How to get resellers to respond to your campaign (Page 6) …
* The #1 secret for improving lead quality (Page 9) …
* 5 simple ways to stretch your Google budget (Page 14) …
* 5 keys to getting started in lead nurturing (Page 16) …
* How to name your next white paper (Page 21) …
* Top 5 tips for Webinar invitations (Page 31) …

Supplies are most definitely not limited. Comments welcome.

TechValidate: Marketing Content that Writes Itself

What single hurdle keeps B2B marketers from achieving the best possible results from inbound marketing, social media, and lead nurturing? It’s content. (Or rather, it’s LACK of content.) Without a consistent stream of compelling, original, relevant information to offer, landing pages fail to convert visitors to leads, blogs wither, and lead nurturing programs are a fraction of what they could be if only they had the right content to power them.

In circumstances like these, I am occasionally guilty of telling clients that “content doesn’t write itself,” but it appears I may be mistaken. TechValidate is an intriguing Bay Area start-up, co-founded by some of the same folks who brought you StumbleUpon, whose aim in part is to provide B2B marketers a constantly renewing stream of relevant, research-based content without those marketers having to write so much as a word of copy. (Think of it as “Marketing Content Automation.”) I had occasion to meet with the company’s principals recently, and came away excited about the potential their service offers for turbo-charging our clients’ online marketing and lead nurturing initiatives.