In case you missed it, you can watch it on-demand or go through the slide deck at your own pace.

Mike’s tips from the webinar include:
Tip 1: CIOs and CMOs don’t always get it
Tip 2: Stick to the value, not the tactics
Tip 3: Be specific about the goals
Tip 4: Be ready to answer hard questions
Tip 5: Never Stop Selling

Jennifer provided some great questions and answers, framing them in a way that a lot of marketers can relate to.

• Question #1 from Execs: SEM/SEO, what is it? What they really want to know: Will this help me get new customers?
• Question/Statement #2 from Execs: I searched for “water” and we didn’t show up. What they really want to know: Why am I paying for this if my friends can’t see it?
• Question #3 from Execs: Why aren’t we doing video/social media/email? What they really want to know: What cool things can I show my friends we’re doing?

You can sum it up as Educate, Show Improvements, Show ROI, Stay the Course, and…Educate. For the whole story, watch the webinar now.

There’s a number of different methods you can use when developing your social media strategy. One that we’re fond of at Enquiro is Forrester Research’s POST method. POST stands for People, Objectives, Strategy, and Technology. One of the benefits of this method is how it keeps the user, rather than the technology, at the centre of your strategy.

The first step in developing a social media strategy is to know who you need to reach – the People part of the POST method. And this is where Buyersphere insights, from Enquiro’s research on how business buys from business in the online marketplace, can be really useful. Remember that in B2B sales, you actually need to reach two very different types of people: people who use your products and services (the “doers”) and people who decide whether to purchase your products and services (the “buyers”). This can give you two different target audiences who you need to reach with your social media strategy. They can have differing demographics, visit different social networks, and have differing levels of participation online.

The doer will be interested in information on the latest news about your industry and best practices that they can use in their own work. If they aren’t using your product yet, they will be looking for more information about your services. If you are using social media as a customer support channel for past purchasers, it is the doer you are talking to.

The buyer is looking to ensure that you are a trustworthy vendor. They need to know that buying your product isn’t a financial risk to their organization. Reputation management will be important in successfully reaching this persona. This speaks to the need to listen to what people are saying about your brand online. And while you can’t control what people say about your business, you can demonstrate that you respond to your customers’ concerns. If you have a high risk product (very expensive or if you an unestablished brand in the marketplace), showcasing your company as a thought leader in the industry can be persuasive for the buyer.

Knowing that there are two different personas also means that you will develop different objectives and follow different strategies for each group. The reason why and how you engage a doer will be different than why and how you engage a buyer. A doer, for example, is more likely to become an evangelizer of your product than a buyer is. And only once you figure out who you are trying to reach and why you want to engage them can you then ask “Do I need to be on Facebook?”. If you know your target audience and your objectives, then you will be able to decide what technology and platforms will best help your social media strategy to succeed.

Social location sharing is not the only location-based tool gaining attention. MyTown and other location-based, augmented reality games based on location are taking off. MyTown has been particularly successful – particularly in terms of user engagement. The average MyTown user in the U.S. spends 60 minutes per day using the app.

If you are a business looking at ways to incorporate geosocial networking into your social media mix, here are a few things to consider:

-          Know which social location network is the most important for you to target given your geographical location. For example, in Vancouver, Foursquare is the most popular location-sharing application while Gowalla is king in Austin, where it was created.

-          Claim and / or tag your business on social location sharing sites. Once you have this in place you can reward repeat visitors with various promotions.

-          Offer coupons or discounts to visitors who check in to your location and Tweet / announce their presence publicly – this will help spread your brand name.

People tend to be very enthusiastic about the subject of music. CBC Radio 3 is fortunate as they have a substantial base of online users currently using their web properties. The wiki is meant to harness their knowledge and enthusiasm. This provides an established base which will allow their project to succeed. There were some key takeaways from the session that you may want to consider if you are an organization considering accepting online contributions from the public – whether it be comments, forums, or wikis.

Key Takeaways

-          How can you introduce radically different technologies within an organization? Within your organization, you need to innovate at the edges, where there is less impact on your organization if things go wrong. As an organizational entity, CBC Radio 3 exists at the margins of the CBC as a whole. It is often referred to as the ‘Area 51’ of the CBC as it tries out new technologies and tries to reach new audiences. It is a place where it is okay to fail. The project was also developed in Vancouver, out of the way of the main Toronto headquarters of CBC – so physically on the fringes on the organization as well.

-          Minimize editorial risks in order to reduce liability.

-          The key benefit to crowdsourcing the creation of content is to minimize financial costs. With 700 people cut from the CBC last year and continual budget cuts, the only way for CBC Radio 3 to generate a mass of new content is to involve the public.

Lessons Learned: Creating Content

-          Balance openness with editorial checks.

-          Get a mass of contributors.

-          Use an existing base of power users.

Lessons Learned: Corporate Culture

-          Can your culture support the idea? Some organizations would not be willing to open up and host content that hasn’t gone through stringent guidelines or review. This type of approach to content generation would not work in a heavily top-down organization.

As a news organization, the CBC has learned that the softer the area of news, the more open the site can be. This is where the community can police itself. Once you move to hard news, where politics and other controversial issues come into play, openness to audience contributions is much harder to accomplish. There are some cases where the CBC will publish stories and keep the comments turned off as they know the quality of discussion will deteriorate – there are some topics that will be better for public contributions than others. As controversy increases, so does your organization’s liability and risk.

If you are interested in getting an idea of what the conference is about, a number of sessions from previous years have been recorded and are available online. One of my favorites from last year is Dan Schick’s presentation on the topic “Social Media in Large Organizations”. In his presentation, he notes that you need to get organizational wide buy-in when starting with social media. And a great way of doing this is to gain input from a wide range of people as you create the policies and guidelines that will govern your organization’s social media use. It’s the process of creating those policies that is important. As you get input from key stakeholders, you build trust about how social media is going to be incorporated into an organization. As he notes, “trust is the key to opportunity”. You can view Dan’s presentation on Social Media in Large Organizations on Youtube or visit the Northern Voice wiki.

#9.  Google Caffeine and Blended Search – August

#8.  5 Ways Interlinking Can Help B2B Websites - October

#7. Does Blended Search Optimization Work for B2B? – April

#6.  B2B Keyword Research When You’re in a Niche Market/Industry – January

#5.  B2B SEO vs. B2C SEO: How Different Is It? – March

#4.  The Importance of Breadcrumb Navigation – November

#3. The Importance of On-Page Optimization – May

#2.  Duplicate Content: Myths, Mayhem and Making Sense of it All - September

#1.  A Couple of Quick SEO Reminders for E-Commerce Sites – June

Look for our final installment of our milestone posts next week!

Last year, we featured ASK Enquiro’s first ever Top 20 posts of the year (for 2008) and we thought that we would continue tradition again this year.  For the record, you can check out ASK Enquiro’s top post from last year by going to: Top 20 SEO Posts from ASK Enquiro in 2008.

The cool thing about ASK Enquiro in 2009, was that we had over one third of the company submit at least one post.  The posts covered everything from

• SEO 
• Eye tracking 
• Industry events
• B2B best practices
• Integration of offline and online marketing
• The BuyerSphere
• Personal stories and experiences
• The Enquiro Ligers softball success
• and more

Very cool.  Special thanks to all who contributed including:  Karl Hourigan, Kyle Grant, Andrew Spoeth, Charlotte Bourne, Chris Davies, Ian Everdell, Rich Deakin, Jordan Kettner, Jody Nimetz and of course Gord Hotchkiss just to name a few.  Enquiro has a great team and contributions to ASK Enquiro for 2009 were tremendous.  With that we present some of our favorites posts from 2009.

Top 20 ASK Enquiro Posts for 2009

#20.  To Google’s Competitors: Please, this Year, Do Something Amazing! – January

#19. The Continued Importance of Link Building - December

#18. PPC Measurability: A Double Edged Sword – April

#17. 7 Things to Know About the Canonical Tag – May

#16. Brand Religion: A Reading from the Book of Skittles – March

#15. This article brought to you by… – May

#14. Print Media to Digital Media – Much Change in a Decade or Two? – September

#13. Microsoft’s Talk vs. Microsoft’s Walk – April

#12. Eye Tracking as a Method to Improve Search Usability – December

#11. The Difference Between a Dashboard and a Report – July

#10. Does Blended Search Optimization Work for B2B? – April

#9.  The Persuasive Power of Face to Face - April

#8.  Brand Promises vs. Brand Religions – February

#7.  The Importance of Breadcrumb Navigation – November

#6.  The Importance of On-Page Optimization – May

#5.  The Meeting of Mind and Marketing: 11 Books to Read – October

#4.  Get It or Die: Online is your Core Business – June

#3.  Duplicate Content: Myths, Mayhem and Making Sense of it All - September

#2.  A Couple of Quick SEO Reminders for E-Commerce Sites - June

#1.  SEO Success: A Sign of a Healthy Corporate Culture – July

We have a total of 7 speakers joining us for the half-day event. Graham Mudd, comScore’s VP of Search and Media will be arriving from SES Chicago to deliver the opening keynote. Gord Hotchkiss, Enquiro’s CEO, is currently moderating the Search Insider Summit in Park City, Utah. He will join us to present B2B buying research and show us highlights from his newly published book: The BuyerSphere Project.

An “expert hot-seat” panel will kick off the second half of the morning. The panel brings together some of the sharpest minds in b2b marketing right now. During this part of the session, the audience gets to field their tough questions to the group. To round things out, we’ll listen to a demand gen. case study featuring Marketo’s VP of Marketing, Jon Miller.

We’re looking forward to the event and hope to see you there!

B2B Expert Series: Face-to-Face
Thursday Dec. 10, 2009
7:45am – 1:00pm
Redwood City, CA
Registration info >> www.enquiro.com/face2face

The Presenters:

Leslie Hernandez, Industry Marketing Manager for B2B Markets at Google, Matthias Blume, Chief Analytics Officer at Covario, Jon Miller, VP Marketing at Marketo, Patricia Neuray, VP National Sales at Business.com, Enquiro CEO Gord Hotchkiss, and comScore’s Graham Mudd. The event is moderated by Enquiro’s EVP and co-founder Bill Barnes.

Agenda:

7:45 Breakfast & Registration
8:30 Welcome/Introductions
8:40 Keynote #1: The Current State of Search Advertising – Graham Mudd, comScore
9:20 Keynote #2: Welcome to the BuyerSphere – Gord Hotchkiss, Enquiro
10:00 Networking Break
10:30 Panel “Hot Seat”: The BuyerSphere: How Business Buys from Business, Moderated by Bill Barnes, Enquiro
11:45 Case Study: Marketo’s Secret Sauce for Demand Generation: How We Use the BuyerSphere to Drive Revenue – Jon Miller, Marketo
12:10 Closing Remarks
12:15 Lunch
* Google will be conducting 1-on-1 video interviews with speakers and interested attendees during the breaks, collecting insights and footage for its Fast.Forward YouTube Channel.

Graham Mudd of comScore presenting at previous B2B Expert Series event

I often wonder what the Web would be like if there was less emphasis on links and linking inventories?  How would the search engines define relevancy of a result without some sort of link popularity mechanism in place?  Link popularity continues to be a major factor as to why one site places in the search result over another.  While it is not the only factor, it (linking) is still a key factor as to why we see placing for a given key phrase vs. seeing “Joe-blows” website appearing for that same phrase.  According to search engines like Google link popularity has a direct correlation to relevancy.  However this is true to a point.  Just because your site may have a high number of links does not mean you will place well in the results.  Enter the battle between link quality and link quantity.

Link quantity is just that, the number of links that you have pointing to your website’s pages.  Quality on the other hand speaks to the relevancy of those links. At the end of the day it is link quality that helps promote a web property as an authority on a given topic.

For business to business (B2B) sites this is no different.  There is a need for B2B site owners to build their link inventories but prior to doing that from external sources, something that is often overlooked by many B2B sites is the importance of interlinking within your own site and web properties.

The Importance of Interlinking for B2B Websites

You may be familiar with our recent work at Enquiro with our BuyerSphere project where we discussed how businesses buy from other businesses.  Within the realm of the BuyerSphere we discussed the roles and differences between Doers and Buyers.  I wanted to touch on a very important fact with regards to buyers and doers.

While Buyers are the ones who often take control over the buying process, Doers are usually the ones who get the process going.  As a result they have a result over where this process goes.  So of course the Doer may have semantic mapped out their needs and as a result researched out or at least been pointed in the direction of a couple of “rungs on the ladder” that is potential solutions or vendors for their needs.  Doers tend to be the people in the organization who do the majority of the research for the desired solution.  As a result they may be the ones who are visiting your website looking for information to help reduce the risk or a potential purchase decision.  Here is where the importance of interlinking comes in.

If this Doer arrives on your site and cannot find what they are looking for, the risk in the selection your brand as a vendor automatically goes up.  While the information may be there, the Doer was unable to find it.  Effective interlinking can help reduce this risk.

5 Ways Interlinking Can Help B2B Websites

1.  Directional Navigation – effective interlinking can help reduce the amount of time a user spends trying to find items on your web site.  If the Doer is looking for product specs of for software demos, you had better make sure that these items are easily accessed from any page, preferably a minimum of one or two clicks away.  In fact, for your main web pages, you want to ensure that they are just one click away from your home page.
2. Interlinking Themed Content – from an SEO perspective creating themed content is a very important thing to do if you are to become an authority on a given topic.  If the Doer is interested in detailed product specs, it make sense to link to your product specs from your product detail page or from your product summary page.  Linking to related products or user generated reviews can also be of benefit to the user.  In the end interlinking can help direct the user to all of the information that they need to help move the process along.  As we all know B2B buying cycles can be long and are not necessarily linear.
3. B2B SEO Benefit:  Improved Link Quality – proper interlinking on B2B websites can help from an SEO perspective.  Using SEO best practices, you can effectively interlink your site’s page to improve the IBL (Inbound Linking) Quality score of the pages that are being linked to.  Think about it, you have direct control over the quality of a link from one of your pages to another page on your website.  You can have a direct impact on the all issues that affect link quality.  For example, you can link to the pages using relevant keyword rich anchor text, from a page with relevant keywords in the page title and with relevant keywords in the page copy.  This is a quality link, one that features keywords in the title, page copy and anchor text of the linking page.
4. Improve the Quantity of Links - if you are not doing so already, you should be looking at Google Webmaster Tools data for your site on a regular basis.  The linking information that Google provides is worth it.  You can use Google Webmaster Tools data to evaluate which pages on your site have sufficient “internal links” and which pages, or sections of your site need interlinking improvements.  Let’s suggest for a second that you added a new B2B product or solution to your site.  As this content is still new, you can identify existing pages that are relevant for the purpose of interlinking and improve the number of links that link to this new content.  While you do not want to go overboard, you’ll be able to drive traffic to these related pages and help boost the relevancy of this new content.
5. Interlinking of Conversion Triggers – similar to point number one, B2B site owners can use effective interlinking strategies to drive their visitors to conversion triggers throughout the site.  Whether it is to a micro or macro conversion, interlinking allows you to strategically direct your users to a conversion trigger where it make sense to do so.  In essence, you can drive the user through your desired path (i.e. to a conversion) by allowing them to set their own path by providing the relevance  and timeliness of the information that they desire.  Win-wins are always a good thing.

Interlinking your site pages can provide benefit from an SEO and more importantly user perspective.  Developing things such as an interlinking map and establishing an interlinking strategy can allow you to provide a richer and more efficient site experience.  The end result is that the Doer can find the information they seek thereby reducing the risk of making a poor contribution or ultimately poor purchase decision.