I recently read an article on Fortune magazine titled, Oversharing: The Business of Share Buttons. The article captured something I’d been thinking about for quite a while: with so many means to share content, is content sharing becoming diluted?

There are two major players in the “share button” space – AddThis and ShareThis. AddThis offers 271 sharing services to its publishers and ShareThis offers 50 sharing services. 271 services? What the heck are all those share buttons at the bottom of blog posts? I recognize maybe a dozen. What is Kaboodle anyway?

The Fortune author calls these sharing services the long tail of sharing. Not the most popular means of sharing but certainly being used by some folks. As you might expect, Facebook and Twitter make up the bulk of the sharing venues. Even so, the sharing service business continues to grow.

Recently, Google has jumped into the mix with Google Buzz. Michael Calore at Webmonkey says, “Buzz is more than a little bit like Twitter — and a whole lot like Facebook and FriendFeed. Anything you post is automatically sent out to the people on your Google Contacts list you interact with the most. All updates are real-time, and anything you share is open for comments. You can also post privately to a select group of friends.”

As a marketer, I’m concerned about “link overload” causing my prospects and customers to tune out. Yes, I want my content to be seen by as many relevant eyes as possible. But the keyword is “relevant.” Not everyone in the world will need to see or even want to see the content I create. I need to make sure the information I share is targeted to the right audience, by sharing content where they’re most likely to see it. Is that with the Mister Wong button? I doubt it.

I thought it was just me. My daily tweet count is down this year but I attributed that to my suddenly being insanely busy. Busy is good but I do miss the pint-sized social interaction, even if it’s limited to 140 characters. However, I’m wondering if my trend is telling of something more significant.

In January of this year (2010), CNN published an article, “Has Twitter Peaked?” The article actually references the number of visitors to the Twitter site, down 770,000 from its peak in August 2009 of 22 million. These numbers are intriguing since Twitter has had such huge growth in 2009, with several months of double-digit growth.

The author, CNN’s Doug Gross, interviewed Mark Logan of Berkley Marketing, who echoed my own sentiments when he said he wasn’t sure if Twitter has peaked but his own usage has tailed off. Also in line with my own thinking, Logan mentions the “signal-to-noise” ratio and how the early conversations were centered around digital marketing topics and technology, but it has become much broader now.

There is standard model that describes the technology adoption lifecycle. It was developed by Joe M. Bohlen, George M. Beal and Everett M. Rogers at Iowa State College and used to describe how new ideas and technologies spread in different cultures. You’ll recognize the typical bell curve.

So, how do you think the Twitter curve is shaped? My guess is that we’re in the early majority, but I’m not so sure we’ll ever get the late majority or the laggards. So far, none of my friends or family are using Twitter and I don’t expect them to.

Just so you don’t think I’m a Twitter-basher, I will tell you that Twitter has done a lot for me. I’ve met some great folks and won some great new clients. Maybe this post is my unconscious way of apologizing for my lack of tweeting. Tweet me at @BIMarcom.

Remember watching cartoons about Aladdin and the magic lamp? I always hoped I’d find a magic lamp on a beach somewhere and I’d be granted three wishes. Didn’t you wish you could have three wishes too?

Well today I’m setting aside my marketing hat, my BI hat, and my corporate sustainability hat. I’m putting on my customer hat and asking for three wishes I know  your marketing team can grant me.

Here are my three wishes:

1. I want a real relationship with you. I want to know that you are real people. I want to know that your company values align with mine. I want to know you are passionate about what you offer. I want to know you understand my needs and that you care about my success. I want to know how you give back to society. I will look for clues in your blog posts, Twitter tweets, forums, and other forms of social media.

2. I want you to help me be successful. I need to fully understand my challenge, including the business impacts. I need to learn better ways to do things, including best practices. I want to know how others have been able to overcome challenges and be successful. I need you to help educate me with credible and objective information. I need you to help me justify my business case. I will look for this in your white papers, case studies, data sheets, articles, webinars, e-books, and other educational content and tools.

3. I want to be able to find you when I need you. I want to easily find the information I need. I want my questions answered quickly. I want you to communicate in ways relevant to my needs. I want you to know who I am when I call. I will look for a well-designed, organized, and complete website, regular newsletters, targeted e-mails, trade show presence, search engine results, and most of all: contact information that leads me to a real person.

Rather than standing in the middle of the marketing department and looking out, I encourage you to walk over and stand in your customer’s office and look out. How do they see you and your company? Does your brand personality show through? Are you approachable? Do you offer a variety of content to help meet their educational needs?

If the magic genie could grant you three wishes (not necessarily marketing or business related), what would they be?

Social media is on the tip of most every B2B marketer’s tongue these days. They’re wondering which activities they should be participating in. “Should we be blogging and tweeting?” “Should we have a Facebook page?” “What about LinkedIn? Should we be there too?” These are typical of the types of questions that are heard whenever new techniques are introduced.

Laura Ramos of Forrester recently published the 2010 B2B Marketing Budgets and Mix Trends Research. The study looks both at marketing activities and how the marketing spend is split amongst those activities. Of course, it’s no surprise that Forrester finds social media to be the hot new marketing tool.

Looking at B2B social media efforts in 2009, the study shows:

• 68% have set up group pages on social networking sites
• 55% use Twitter for marketing
• 49% are active with corporate blogging (up from 32% in 2008)

While these statistics are interesting, even surprising in some cases, she cautions that they represent what marketers are doing—not necessarily what is working. In fact, she says that, on average, fewer than one in five say social media has been highly effective for branding and lead generation. What isn’t defined is the term “highly effective.” But I think the point made is that social media tactics still have a ways to go before they produce the returns of more traditional marketing tactics such as e-mail, search marketing, and inside sales.

Forrester’s 2010 study did show that e-mail, search marketing, and inside sales were the only tactics to show steady upward trends in both branding and lead generation. She states pretty strongly that marketers must get these right before adding social media to the mix.

As for marketing spend, most marketers cut spending across all activities, and their 2009 budgets looked the same as 2008. Not a huge surprise given the sting of the recession. She mentions that while trade show activities are down, these types of events still take up an average of 20% of the marketing spend. This is followed by traditional tactics like print ads, executive events, direct mail, and PR, which consumed between 10% and 13% of the budget.

Boiling this all down, she advises marketers to rethink their marketing mix and take bigger risks when allocating marketing budget for online efforts. She says that even though digital and social media efforts will not overtake traditional outbound communications anytime soon, marketers can no longer ignore the shift as customers move more into the social media space.

Personally, I expect to see even more of this marketing shift as 2010 sees a lift out of the recession and business returns to a (new) normal. Also contributing to this shift will be the increased ability to measure and see positive results. Something that has been slow to come.

What does your company think about social media marketing? Have they dipped a toe in the water? Have they seen positive results? Love to hear from you!

They say content is king. But anyone with a good Internet connection can publish content. In fact, the Internet allows anyone to market themselves as an expert. This funny video mocks just how easy it is. Warning: there are a few cuss words tossed in.

So, how do you separate the “wanna-be” experts from the real thing?

Do your homework. Get to know the person or the company. Read their content and understand their motivation.
Here are a few areas that experts tend to excel in:

• Blogs – Does the expert post content regularly—at least weekly? Is it full of buzzwords or does it actually say something that provokes your thinking? Jim Harris’s OCDQ Blog does just that, as does Ted Cuzillo with his Datadoodle blog.
• Websites – Does the expert offer helpful, educational content? Teradata has one of the largest resource libraries available on their site.
• Twitter – Does the expert stay top of mind with meaningful tweets? Kognitio, Initiate, Tableau, and Composite Software have discovered the power of Twitter.

Finally, you can feel pretty certain that you’re listening to an expert if they’ve published a book. Yes, anyone can self publish, but it takes quite a bit of discipline to produce a couple hundred pages of content. Some of my favorite experts who’ve published books are:

Jill Dyche (@jilldyche) “Customer Data Integration” “CRM Handbook” and a few others!
Phil Simon (@philsimon) “Why New Systems Fail” and “The Next Wave of Technologies”
Mike Stelzner (@mike_stelzner) “Writing White Papers”
Casey Hibbard (@casey_hibbard) “Stories that Sell”

Of course, anyone who does all of these things has raised their credibility as an expert—as all of the book authors do.

As a person or company that would like to be perceived as an expert, are you publishing content (big or small) on a regular basis? Is it quality content? Do you provide supporting facts to back up your opinion? Are you committed?

Love to hear who you think are good examples of experts who know how to use the Internet as a publishing medium to share their knowledge.

I skipped last week’s post since I was at the TDWI conference for business intelligence last week. It was a successful conference on a number of levels. One huge AHA (more like duh) moment for me was the reaction I got when meeting my social network friends in person for the first time.

Let me set this up with a little background. As you know, I am a content marketer for high tech companies with a focus on BI. I attend conferences to stay current on technology and the software/hardware market. But I also attend for the opportunity to meet with vendors (who are my customers). Where else would you find so many of your customers in one place?

I’ve embraced social networking. I’ve been able to have conversations with so many people I would have never had the chance to meet otherwise. I’ve talked to industry analysts, BI experts, vendors, and peers. I’ve commented on their blog posts and they’ve commented on mine. We’ve retweeted links to great information and tweeted a mix of personal and business thoughts. We’ve connected on LinkedIn and some on Facebook.

But, what really seals the deal is getting to meet these great folks in person. Time after time I heard, “Oh, you’re @BIMarcom! Nice to finally meet you in person!”  I had lunches and dinners with these folks. I got to know them (and they me) on a more personal, intimate level.

An old, but still relevant article from Rider University on cyberspace vs. in-person relationships says:

The human face and body language are rich in meaning and emotion.

We get a lot from our cyber relationships, but we get so much more in person. The face gives off so many cues. Linking these cues to how the words are being said improves communication, even cyber communication. Having talked in person, I can better visualize how the person is reacting during our online conversation.

My relationships have taken a big step forward. Now when we tweet, comment, and post, we have faces for the names. Our communication is much richer and our relationships stronger. When a vendor has a need, chances have greatly increased that they will consider me.

What about you? Are you finding it too easy to hide behind your avatar? Or are you exploring all the ways to get in front of your customer in person?

Socialytics. I love this word – it perfectly captures what it is — analysis of social media. I’ve only heard it used a couple times but when Michael Fauscette of IDC wrote his post, Socialytics, I decided to investigate it further.

I wondered who plays in this space today. Though there aren’t many, there are more and more social media analysis vendors with solid offerings. In his e-book, The Social Web Analytics eBook 2008, author Phil Sheldrake details 16 of them that responded to his request for interviews.

I then wanted to know more about the types of analytics that might be looked at. I liked the way David Bakken broke down social media data in his post, Social Networking, As Seen by the Economist. He looks at these three dimensions as a way to stratify the levels:

Content: Just what is it that is being talked about. Could be brand or product mentions, could be sentiment. What are people saying?

Source: Who is generating the content? How does the content vary by characteristics of the source. He mentions the difficulty of knowing more about the “who” and suggests companies like Facebook might sell that information as a new source of revenue.

Connectivity: Who is talking to whom? This is probably most about influence and the value of networks — something that has proven very difficult to measure prior to social networking.

(…some time passed, and then…..)

I had this thought:  With many of the social networking companies looking for a viable way to make a sustainable income, why not sell socialytics from their platform to interested parties? They hold the valuable key – the data.

BI vendors would do well to partner with social media analysis companies and call on the likes of Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook to provide this new service as a joint partnership. Not only will all these social conversations create a wealth of data to be managed, they will also require a powerful analysis tool and a presentation layer that is easy to use and understand — something BI vendors are masters at.

Note to BI vendors – socialytics is here. Are you ready?

P.S. As I finish this post I found one vendor already moving forward. Ron Swift from Teradata just put out a timely post, Social Media Marketers Should Get Ahead of the Curve, where he talks about Teradata’s partnership with social media analysis vendors and creating integrated web intelligence (IWI) that combines socialytics with data from the data warehouse creating extremely valuable insight.

Social media is still fairly new and understanding how to connect the various social media tools is not easy. Yet, that’s where the power lies, especially when it comes to dynamic content like blog posts. I’m often asked how to get more exposure leveraging social media, so I thought I’d give you the “101” on connecting, specifically your blog with Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

First, this help assumes you have a hosted blog, particularly Wordpress. You can get Wordpress for free and install it on your own domain or site, as long as your site accepts PHP (hosted on unix or linux servers and not Microsoft servers) and you have the ability to create databases. It’s a little tricky to set up and configure unless you have a geek-streak like me. Let me know and I can help.

So, you have a hosted blog and you’re putting out regular posts. How do you let the universe know?

Twitter – Grab your Twitter handle and make sure you fill out your profile, adding your website URL. The rest involves plugins to Wordpress, though Typepad probably has similar functionality.

            Post blog to Twitter – Grab and install the Twitter Tools plugin. It not only notifies Twitter when you add a new post, it can create a blogpost from your tweets. It comes with additional features such as Hashtag, Exclude, and bit.ly URL shortener. You’ll need to get a bit.ly API code so that the plugin will push out your shortened URL.

            Retweet this blogpost – Grab and install the Tweet Meme plugin. It lets readers retweet your posts and also keeps track of how many times your post has been retweeted.

            Show my tweets – If you are successful with the Twitter Tools plugin (above), you will also have a widget that shows your tweets in your sidebar.

            Follow my tweets – I like the Follow Me plugin, used on this site. Stays off to the side and isn’t too obtrusive.

LinkedIn – First create a company page for your business. As you are setting up your company profile, you’ll see “Company Blog” in the box on the left side. Make sure you add your blog’s RSS URL. Now check your personal profile. Be sure you have your company blog and Twitter handle listed there too. As Wordpress notifies Twitter with a tweet announcing your post, that same tweet will show up in LinkedIn as a status update.

Facebook – First, create a personal profile. Then add the Twitter application and fill out the settings with your Twitter handle. Now all your tweets will show up in the live feed, including the tweets containing your blogpost announcements. To automatically post from Wordpress to Facebook without going through Twitter, use the post-to-facebook plugin.

Facebook’s company fan pages are still coming along. For the life of me, I can’t find an automated way to push blogpost notifications. I still recommend you create a company fan page and for now, manually add blogpost notifications.

One last suggestion, add social links to your posts with the Sociable plugin. This gives your readers several options to share your posts for you.

Feel free to add your suggestions. Would love to know what’s working for you. If you’re struggling with this or have any questions, just ask. Together, we can figure it out.