Findling Events

Dateline 35,000 feet:
$2 for headset, $7 for a blanket and pillow - economies of scale have reached my limit, solution: fly less or fly where you REALLY want to. Just a few weeks ago a slight change in timing resulted in me flying from my bike on to Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco. Leaving the CalPac medical center I was not in such bad shape, but there were parts that were sore. The nurses said to me “given the nature of your injuries, you will need 4-6 weeks in order to recover.” Hogwash.
As I was leaving San Francisco last week the inevitable went down, Jet Farve. As the Pittsburgh Steelers are found next to my white blood cells in my veins, I could only imagine the fate those fans were left with - as if their own Achilles was traded to Troy. Then Dana Torres came along - no revelations, no light bulb went off, I really just had a good kick in the ass. Brett Farve is 38. Dana Torres is 41. Dana Torres is an Olympic swimmer in which at the start of the last leg of a 4×100 relay race the United States was in a solid 3rd place. By the end, at the completion of Ms. Torres leg, the US took Silver.
As I ride this plane back to San Francisco, where ideas are innovated on birth, so is redesigning my thought process. If anyone ever says “can’t” or “I’m getting to old for this…” - they are lying, pure and simple. Now granted our Dana Farve friends have personal trainers and the powers to sculpt this new found birth, but nonetheless, there it is, just because you are hovering the middle age mark or even ten years below it, that is no reason to sit back and relax on the laurels of mediocrity. I am in awe.
Clichés come and go, challenges are opportunities, but so are achievements. I wonder what the next day will bring, as sure as the sun will rise, what will I achieve tomorrow. A once knew an Air Force Colonel who once screamed in my face “excuses are only delaying failure.” Apparently Brett Farve and Dana Torres didn’t get the memo.

One superlative we never voted on in high school was “first to go to prison after graduation.”   We mostly had good kids at James W. Robinson in Fairfax, VA, but alas here I am 12 years after graduation living in an amazingly beautiful city with views of prison.

Tonight at 6:30 I was supposed to head for a techie event, widgets and such.  All great stuff, been meeting some really nice folks here in San Franc since I’ve moved from New York.  I was getting ready to go and thought “tough week so far, stressed, I need to exercise.”  Well I just threw on a few more layers (yes it is cold here in the summer) and headed out to explore the streets, the hills and the views.  If you can ever get to the corner of Jones and Union at sunset…you might just see an amazing site:

View of Alcatraz from Union & Jones

Findling’s lesson for tonight, sometimes just say F it and do what is best for you, l felt a whole lot better after walking up and down the hills of San Francisco….cheers.

B2B Marketers Eye Social Media, Web 2.0 Tactics

[by Laura Ramos]

Last Wednesday, Dan Klein — who heads up tech industry consulting here at Forrester — joined me on a teleconference to talk about how B2B marketers should “Define Your B2B Social Media Strategy.” Web 2.0 marketing is a subject of great interest to business marketers as almost 700 signed up for the Webinar, just over 300 attended, and 120 participated in a pre-show survey. The vast majority of the invitations went out to Forrester clients and, judging by the list of attendees, the participation ranged from large tech firms to small business services providers. Folks from software, hardware, telecom, agencies, start ups, database marketing, and media were present.

What did we learn from this interactive session? Here are a few highlights:

1) Social media use in marketing is just emerging. While 2/3 say they use email and Webinars in their marketing mix today, only 35% or fewer use blogs, online forums, video produced by marketing, podcasts, customer contributed content, or other Web 2.0 tactics.  Surprisingly, 42% said they are using social networks like Facebook — up from the 25% who said they did in our earlier 2008 research. (Click on the tiny picture below to see the data up close.)

2) Benefits are hard to gauge right now. Depending on which tactic they use, between 30 and 36% of respondents said it was “Too early to tell” whether using social media translated into marketing success.  In contrast, 25% said landing pages and Webinars successfully helped the generate leads in a measurable way.

3) Marketers are sticking with what works. As a result, 65% or more of the survey respondents said that Webinars, landing pages, video marketing, and online forums figure significantly in their 2009 marketing plans. On the other hand 55% or more said that RSS feeds, podcasting, widgets and virtual worlds were marginal or irrelevant in their futures.

4) And, finally, the most popular questions were about how to understand customers’ use of social media. They included: How do we figure out what customers are doing socially? What is the best way to get this information? How do we understand how Web 2.0- savvy our buyers are? How do we assess customer use of social media?

It’s the $64,000 question, isn’t it?  How to reach customers through this brand-spanking new medium. But it’s the wrong question for marketers to ask if they want to be successful with social media.  Social media use is about creating dialog and relationships with a community. The community says what is important, not the marketing folks. This is going to be a very hard lesson for B2B marketers to learn because it means putting the right people — technical, customer-facing, problem-solving people — in front of the community and letting them engage in an open, trustworthy manner. And they may not get the corporate messaging right everytime…

In this new Web 2.0 world, the right question is: how do I get to know my audience better and what they want from social interaction? For this, Forrester developed Social Technographics and the POST methodology, which we talked about briefly on the Webinar.

If you’d like to know more, check out our research on POST and Social Technographics. Or you can join me in Cambridge, MA on August 13 for my “Making B2B Marketing Work” work shop, where we will talk more about social media, among other topics.  In the meantime, let me know what successes you are finding as you explore incorporating social behavior and Web 2.0 tools in your marketing.

I wish I had mystical words to share, but clean and simple I had a great sunset last night here in San Francisco. Even if nobody ever read this “post” - I would feel better knowing that if you are looking for a place to get clean air in your lungs, take a load of, remove some stress - any form of the above, Ocean Beach within the city limits of San Francisco is a great place. Or wherever you live, take a few minutes to breathe without distraction or other stimulation every day, does a body a great good.

Amazing Sunset