Key Media Trends in 2008-Thoughts from Jupiter Media

Jupiter Media has identified the key media trends for 2008 (link to the powerpoint).

•Media Fragmentation Continues
•Social Media & Marketing Evolve
•Internet Video Arrives
•Personal Technology: Integration vs. Convergence
•Mobile Media & Marketing Emerge
•Rising Importance of Globalization

Jupiter analyst David Schatsky describes the continuing and growing impace that internet, social media and mobile media will have on Marketing Strategy and Consumer Behavior.

How to Grow Your Business with Social Media

For those of you who want to know more about how to use Social Media Networking to help your business, I recommend a free webinar: Using Social Media to Grow Your Business, December 7th 1:00 P.M. U.S. Eastern / 10:00 A.M. U.S. Pacific .

Social Media" is getting a lot of buzz these days. But for people who own or manage growing companies, it's hard to see what value Social Media has for their businesses. How can you engage your best sales prospects in a peer-to-peer, conversation-driven, online business community? How can you nurture and grow the community on a platform that increases your organization's visibility and influence? How can you develop an environment of trust that enables you to build relationships that ultimately lead to influence and leads?Is social media the new word-of-mouth marketing? Join us for a lively, interactive discussion of these questions -- and more -- with Seth Godin, best-selling author of Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers into Friends, and Friends into Customers, Jeremiah Owyang, Forrester research analyst and author of the blog, www.web-strategist.com/blog, and top SAP marketer Steve Mann. The moderator will be Robin Fray Carey, CEO and co-founder of Social Media Today.

I will be on it--for those of you who miss it--I will post on it next week

Social Media Optimization (SMO)

The Definition for SMO is: to implement changes to optimize a site so that it is more easily linked to, more highly visible in social media searches on custom search engines (such as Technorati), and more frequently included in relevant posts on blogs, podcasts and vlogs. - Rohit Bhargava

Another buzzword for the Communications world, created in 2006 by Rohit Bhargava His original five rules for conducting Social Media Optimization are:

1. Increase your linkability
2. Make tagging and bookmarking easy
3. Reward inbound links
4. Help your content travel
5. Encourage the mashup

Another source with a longer list is The NewPR Wiki

Definitely not a term to be ignored in the new Communications world.

To Be or Not to Be a Business Plan

I am currently mentoring some MBA students for a Business Plan Competition. I gave them my perspective on preparing a business plan including differentiating between theory and practice since there seems to be a wide gap in real life. Many of the companies I have worked with only worry about creating a business plan when they need one to raise capital with a VC. In theory it should be a decision making tool and one that is dynamic and updated regularly. In practice, that rarely happens.

Wikipedia has a great article on Business Plans and Dilbert--of the comic book fame-who actually has an MBA from Berkley, is used in another very good article, with a shot of humor:
Five Criteria for a Successful Business Plan in Biotech. The Five Criteria are: Management, Management, Management, Management and LUCK.

Gartner and Forrester's leftovers

Analyst Equity wrote a post last month on picking up the money Gartner and Forrester leave behind. As these two leaders concentrate on the big boys, the other analyst groups are focusing on their weakpoints: the smaller and medium sized businesses and the verticals. In my experience, Gartner, on the content side, is blown away by some of the other analysts, in the Financial Services space; but they still are the winners on the buy side.

The Value of Customer Case Studies for Analysts

One of the most successful analyst relations strategies for a vendor is to use a customer case study or "success story". When you talk to an analyst you can suggest the possibility but be very sure that your customer has been fully briefed before and will deliver the success story to the analyst. Jonny quotes one of my favorite analysts at Gartner, Massimo Pezzini on this with his post on : Customer Evidence and the Source of Credibility.

Using Analysts for Market Intelligence

Another great post from Jonny at Technobabble on using Analyst Relations for Marketing Intelligence. A new site for me: http://www.alltheanalysts.com/ gives you a list of all of the analysts reports on your topic. It is free but does not go into the reports themselves as does http://www.itanalystreports.com/.

In addition, I encourage my clients to ask the analysts for introductions to specific people in potential customer or partner organizations which helps on the sales and biz development side of business also.