B2B Marketing and Social Media Use

Significant New-Media Platform Use by B2B Marketers

“New” media platforms have become a critical and sizeable component of the marketing mix for B2B marketers, according to a new survey conducted by the ANA (Association of National Advertisers) and BtoB Magazine in partnership with Guideline Inc.

One-third of B2B firms surveyed reported spending more than 20% of their total media budget in new media, whereas only 5% of B2C firms surveyed did the same.

The bulk of new media spending for B2B marketers are for more established platforms, including the company’s own website and email marketing.

The survey, “Harnessing the Power of New Media Platforms,” explores the 15 new media platforms in the B2B market, including social networks, user-generated content, podcasts, and blogging, as well as the seminal platforms such as proprietary websites and email marketing.

Addressing issues relating to B2B marketing, the study also found that based on current usage rates, new media platform categories fall into three distinct tiers:

• Top Tier: Proprietary websites, email marketing, Online Ads, Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing, Webinars
• Middle Tier: Blogs, RSS Feeds, Podcasts, Video On Demand
• Bottom Tier: Wikis, Mobile, Viral Video, Social Networks, Second Life

About 50% of B2B marketers report that the two established channels – their own website and email marketing – will be where most new media dollars are allocated. Given their levels of penetration, top tier platforms will continue to garner the lion’s share of spending on new media.

For B2B marketers, the primary objective for the use of top tier platforms is for “demand generation,” reserving the use of middle and bottom tier channels for “brand building.”

Although penetration levels vary widely across the specific platforms, the survey found that B2B marketers are increasing their use of middle tier media, which should attain at least 50% penetration in the B2B market.

The bottom tier platforms will show strong rates of growth this year, but will not reach a 50% penetration level, according to the study.

The average planned increase for new-media platform spending by B2B companies for 2007 is 11.5%, and only 3% of B2B respondents said they would spend less on new media this year, writes BtoB Online.

About the survey: More than 145 B2B marketers participated in this survey, comprising the ANA’s Brand Leadership Community panel member and BtoB Magazine subscribers. With the objective to explore the dynamics of 15 new media platforms in the B2B market, the research addressed marketers’ current and intended usage of new media platforms, spending, measurement/ROI, resource allocation, and integration with other elements of the communications mix.

B2B Marketers Prefer Blogs, RSS, Podcasts among Web 2.0 Tools

Web 2.0 is transforming B2B marketing with blogs, podcasts, wikis and social networks, which are serving as new way of communicating with customers, prospects and partners, according to “The B2B Web 2.0 Tools Report” issued by Direct Impact Marketing and Buzz Marketing for Technology blog.

B2B marketers have adopted blogs and RSS more than other Web 2.0 tools such as wikis, according to the report; moreover, smaller marketers – the Davids among the Goliaths – are at the forefront: Some three-quarters of surveyed marketers that have deployed Web 2.0 tools are in companies of 10,000 or fewer people.

Some other findings from “The B2B Web 2.0 Tools Report”:

• Nearly two-thirds (64%) of respondents use blogs, 58% use RSS feeds, followed by podcasts (54%), videocasts (43%), social networks and communities (42%) and wikis (19%).

• The most frequently noted blogging services were WordPress (35%) and Blogger (30%), followed by TypePad (19%).
• Users’ favorite RSS readers are those offered by Mozilla Firefox (23%), MyYahoo (20%) and Bloglines (17%).

Presidential election brings blogs into the mainstream

Blogs and independent news sites are booming according to comScore.inc, and this boom is being driven by the US Presidential election.

HuffingtonPost.com’s unique visitors in September are up 474 percent from 792,000 a year earlier. Politico.com visitors are up 344 percent on last year.

It is not ony the well kown blogs that are thriving, with other political blogs seeing at least a doubling in their traffic figures, these sites includeDailyKos.com, Townhall.com, Newsbusters.org, TalkingPointsMemo.com, MichelleMalkin.com and RedState.com.

Andrew Lipsman, a senior analyst at comScore, said, “With each new election cycle, the Internet is playing a more significant role in shaping the stories of the day that are so crucial in formulating public opinion on issues and candidates.” He went on to say, independent blogs “are really beginning to enter the mainstream public consciousness with this current election cycle.”

Despite this success, the majority of Americans still go to the established media outlets for general news. Yahoo News drew 41.2 million unique visitors in September, MSNBC attracted 34.2 million, with CNN hitting 33.8 million.

Selected Stand-Alone* Political Blogs & News Sites

September 2008 vs. September 2007

Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations

Source: comScore Media Metrix

 

Total Unique Visitors (000)

Sep-2007

Sep-2008

% Change

Total Internet : Total Audience

181,858

189,468

4

HUFFINGTONPOST.COM

792

4,545

474

POLITICO.COM

532

2,362

344

DRUDGEREPORT.COM

1,215

2,059

70

REALCLEARPOLITICS.COM

192

1,129

489

FREEREPUBLIC.COM

1,022

987

-3

Capitol Advantage

794

959

21

DAILYKOS.COM

192

923

381

TOWNHALL.COM

407

884

117

NEWSBUSTERS.ORG

113

732

547

WORLDNETDAILY.COM

411

636

55

TALKINGPOINTSMEMO.COM

32

458

1,321

MICHELLEMALKIN.COM

103

247

140

REDSTATE.COM

38

235

514

CROOKSANDLIARS.COM

122

218

79

RAWSTORY.COM

219

212

-3

POLLSTER.COM

N/A

194

N/A

MEDIAMATTERS.ORG

145

178

23

FIVETHIRTYEIGHT.COM

N/A

169

N/A

CQPOLITICS.COM

N/A

139

N/A

AMERICABLOG.COM

N/A

104

N/A

Weblogs, Inc. Three Years Later: Impressive Page View And Revenue Growth

Earlier this month News Corp. celebrated the three year anniversary of the acquisition of MySpace. Today, AOL does the same for the Weblogs, Inc. blog network they acquired in October 2005.

Since the acquisition, AOL says, the Weblogs, Inc. blogs (which include Engadget, TMZ, Download Squad, TUAW, Joystiq, Autoblog and others) have seen worldwide unique visitors climb nearly 1000% (122% annually, on average) and page views rise over 1,500% (154% annually, on average), according to August 2008 comScore Media Metrix. In October 2005, the blogs had a U.S. audience of 1.4 million unique visitors and were generating about $6 million in revenue. Today its 13 million uniques and revenues of about $30 million.

In short, it was one of AOL’s better acquisitions.

See the screenshots and Powerpoint presentation below for more details.

Who’s to blame for spreading phony Jobs story?

Posted by Greg Sandoval

“Unedited. Unfiltered. News.”

That’s the slogan CNN chose for its citizen-journalism site, iReport.com, a place designed to tap into the citizen journalism craze. At iReport, any member of the public is allowed to post news reports, ostensibly as part of the cable network’s news operation, simply by providing an e-mail address. CNN and citizen journalism are being criticized after someone used the site on Friday to spread the false report that Apple CEO Steve Jobs had suffered a serious heart attack.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs

The bogus story sparked a minor panic on Wall Street before Apple had a chance to deny the rumor. Trading in Apple’s stock skyrocketed, and the share price briefly fell about 10 percent before rebounding later in the day.

How is it possible that a single fraudulent Internet report can wipe away millions or even billions of dollars of market value from one of the world’s most powerful technology companies? That’s the big question if you’re one of the Apple’s investors. If you’re an investigator for the Securities and Exchange Commission you’re interested in who did it and why. According to CNN, SEC investigators are looking for the person who posted the fictional story to iReport.

Some of the other questions being asked are why mainstream news services didn’t discredit the report before any damage was done? And who was minding the store for CNN? Surely, one of the country’s most trusted news sources wouldn’t allow just anyone to post a story under its banner without vetting it.

Also at the center of the controversy is Silicon Alley Insider, a New York-based technology and financial news blog that has earned enormous respect and popularity in a brief amount of time. SAI and CNN could see their reputations tarnished if they’re found to be at fault, but I venture to say that in the wake of the controversy, everyone involved in online journalism is doing some self reflection…

Sucks to be a Blog Network These Days, Stuck in a Box

OCT

04

Sucks to be a Blog Network These Days

Posted by: Aaron Brazell

 

Having come from the blog network space, I have a mostly unique understanding of the difficulties encountered when running a content business. There is always a war between traffic and community, profitability and loss, long term projections and short term realities. It’s not an easy business.

It’s even more challenging when you’re a blog network. Unlike more traditional style content companies like Newscorp (owners of MySpace, AskMen.com and FoxSports.com) or the New York Times, blog networks attempt to take a relatively new medium, a blog, and lump it together with other relatively new media – blogs. There’s no counter-balance of strengths and weakness. They are all blogs, possessing the same inherent strengths and weaknesses.

One of the core problems with the “traditional”, if there is such a thing in the space, blog networks – and really any online media – is that the business model almost always comes back to advertising models of revenue generation. Historically, the advertising market has come and gone in a predictably cyclical way.

As expected, the advertising model is taking somewhat of a hit during these difficult economic times and only in the past two days, two major media players in the blog network space have had to cut pay, create layoffs or otherwise cut costs due to an impending, or in some cases already present, decline in online ad revenue.

Gawker Media, the second largest blog network and home to industry favorites Gizmodo, Gawker, Valleywag and Lifehackerhas announced a restructuring of staff - laying off 60% of Valleywag staff, as an example, and increasing the staff on their flagship properties. Consolidation is the name of the game in this case.

Likewise, b5media (with whom I worked for several years), had an internal memo leaked (and TechCrunch published) describing a complete revamp of their compensation system “to reduce costs”. Many bloggers are taking significant pay reductions as the company streamlines their burn rate.

This on the heels of AOL/Weblogs Inc layoffs and pay reductions a few months ago and the very public walk-out of Profy staff when pay was to be reduced shortly thereafter.

Let me be clear. If you’re in the content space, you are dealing in a non-tangible asset. Therefore, the economic rules of asset valuation do not apply. There is no “market price”. There is no assessment value. There is no depreciation. If anything, content can appreciate over time. Typical rules do not apply and in a market where investors, advertisers and publishers are trying to identify concrete ideas and assets that they can count on as a sure investment, non-tangible assets will always take a hit.

Publishers, particularly publisher networks, have to look around and identify means to continue to generate non-tangible assets cheaply (yet fairly), and I imagine some models might end up looking to non-tangible compensation (such as community benefits) to acquire new publishers and content.

Problem is, bloggers have this idea that they can be rich by blogging. Some are smarter and think they can simply “make a living” by blogging, without ever uttering the rich word. Truth is, unless you’re a few important people in the world, it’s not happening. It won’t happen. There are other meaningful ways to benefit from blogging, and most of them are non-monetary.

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About the Author: Aaron Brazell is the lead editor of Technosailor.com and a social media expert. His passion is to see companies and individuals use the internet and web technologies wisely and effectively to promote their brands and companies. He is Business Development Manager for Lijit and he worked as Director of Technology at b5media from 2005-2008 and is currently an independent consultant.

Ed: Time for blogs to get out of the box and think differently about advertising. Visit http://ady.tEarn.com/