Last week, our firm had the pleasure of a visit from leading marketing strategist Mark Schaefer. I’ve long admired Mark’s blend of smarts, practicality and humility. In my opinion, his blog grow has the most interesting and connected community on the web.
Mark spent some time sharing his insights on marketing, blogging, networking and social media with our team. Here were some of my favorite quotes:
- “There’s an expectation of free on the web. But you shouldn’t build your business on the backs of other people.”
- “Social success depends on three ingredients:
- targeted connections – more of them do help
- catalysts – superb content, delivered regularly
- authentic helpfulness – you can’t fake that”
- “The single biggest hurdle for corporate blogs? The politics of the client organization.”
- When a client blogs, “you have to deal with ‘what is,’ not ‘what we wish for.’”
- “Blog mentions by customer is the ultimate validation.”
- “I think it’s ok to do social, rather than be social.”
- “There are two conditions that foster a sense of community on corporate blogs:
- a “celebrity” blogger such as a CEO or
- a blog that is carefully set up to solve problems and engage prospects”
- “There’s no reason a PR firm can’t do all the blog work for a client. If it’s done right, PR understands the voice of the customer and they are trained communicators.”
- “Blogging is more or less an American thing, though Australia is ahead in some ways.”
- “QR codes are a fad…our generation’s version of the 8-track tape.”
- “When you blog about what you care about, your targets will find you. It’s P2P (person to person), not B2B anymore.”
- “Every marketing strategy or project needs to begin with a simple exercise. Start by “finishing the sentence ‘only we…..’”
You can follow Mark on Twitter here. If you want to get more of Mark’s thinking behind those quotes, click the video below to hear the whole training session. In the meantime, do you agree or disagree with his assertions?
To reach Elizabeth:
Phone: 212.840.0017
Email: elizabeth@blisspr.com
Twitter: @elizabethsosnow
LinkedIn: Elizabeth Sosnow
05/04/2011 at 9:21 AM Permalink
Love Mark’s take that a blog should be set up to “solve problems and engage prospects.”
Mark and/or Elizabeth, do you feel companies are doing a better or worse job at this in the last 2-3 years? Have we come a long way, or gone backwards in actually providing value, rather than simply pushing out content?
Thanks
05/04/2011 at 10:39 AM Permalink
“There’s no reason a PR firm can’t do all the blog work for a client. If it’s done right, PR understands the voice of the customer and they are trained communicators.”
Amen to that.
I’ve never understood the argument that said it is okay for PR firms to write news releases with created quotes attributed to company executives, to write speeches given by company executives, to write web copy that represents the company and its executives, to write contributed articles and publish them under the byline of company executives BUT NOT to write blog content because it somehow won’t represent the authentic voice of the company and its executives.
05/04/2011 at 10:08 PM Permalink
Thanks for visiting, Francis. I have to agree with you and Mark, I think that folks have become a little high and mighty on this topic. I don’t see blogs as different than past PR content. The same rules continue to be true: if you are a honest and transparent professional, you are going to handle things in the appropriate manner. It shouldn’t have to be anymore complicated than that.
05/04/2011 at 10:12 PM Permalink
Great to see you here again, Johnny! I think things seem relatively similar to a few years ago. Most companies are not that interested in 1) isolating customer pain points and 2) starting a meaningful dialogue to fix them. I see lots of “treading water” on this subject. I guess the positive by-product is that there is lots of opportunity for smart marketers to leapfrog competitor blogs?