Every firm I speak to wants to better position themselves as thought leaders in their specific area of Technology. And for good reason – better margins, better awareness, better leads, more qualified leads. Moreover, it changes the dynamic of the conversation from one of WHO are you to HOW can you help me with my problem. But creating Thought Leadership is not so easy. Sure you can get someone in your organization to write a white paper for you that you can send to trade pubs, email out to existing clients, post to your website and buy keywords to point at it that drive you leads. But Quality writing and Quality writers are hard to find – You don’t see very many schools offering – Thought Leadership for Tech Firms 101. Nor do you hear kids saying they want to grow up to be a Thought Leadership writer someday. That’s why this book Thoughts on Thought Leadership (http://www.amazon.com/Thoughts-Leadership-Insights-Creating-Professional-Services/dp/0615224164 ) is one of the best compilations of ideas on how to create better thought leadership if have read EVER! With that in mind I had to get Bob Buday from The Bloom Group (http:// www.bloomgroup.com/) on another podcast to keep drilling for more ideas on how to make my process and hopefully your process for creating thought leadership better. Give a listen. << MORE >>

Discovering and connecting with the people who will help your business thrive in today’s social economy is vital especially when attention has become a precious commodity! As a PR and Marketing specialist it is becoming mandatory for businesses today to identify the communities that are actively defining and shaping the future of your business in places like blogs, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, as well as traditional media. Much more than a Social Media monitoring solution, BuzzGain can help you reveal the influential voices and corresponding conversations that are happening about your product or service so that companies can listen, learn, and effectively engage in mutually beneficial relationships. BuzzGain is an ideal DIY solution for PR check out their white paper the 5 Steps to DIY PR http://buzzgain.com/web/BuzzGain_DIY_PR_Whitepaper.pdf Pricing for BuzzGain starts at $99 per month for companies under $100m in revenue, $100m - $1 billion is $500 per month, those with over $1b is sales is $1,000 per month. And don’t miss out on the BuzzGain’s 15 day free trial offer -(http://buzzgain.com/web/index.php?action=SignUp ) you can be accelerating your companies PR in matter of minutes! << MORE >>

We live in an age of skepticism about all forms of consumption. The diffusion of our skepticism is accelerated by the Internet and makes the sincerity even more pressing. So it’s no surprise that the world of business -- specifically in the realms of advertising, branding, and marketing -- has to once again ennoble the concept of sincerity, which is to say, they have to simply be sincere and do work that is bounded by and radiates honesty. Marketing too often over promises in the hope of attracting prospects but the product or service under delivers in the execution. Warren Buffet once said - “Trust is like the air we breathe. When it’s present, nobody really notices. But when it’s absent everybody notices.” To explore this topic further I interviewed Romi Mahajan who recently wrote a piece in Internet Evolution on this topic. http://www.internetevolution.com/author.asp?section_id=730 Listen to our podcast and advice on how to be more sincere in your marketing efforts<< MORE >>

A year and a half ago when I was researching how to start a wiki and looking for best practices in wikis – there was little information out there about it. So I decided to reach out to our internal consultant and found out there were already 6 wikis within the BearingPoint organization all built to do collaboration for various teams! I once read that 90% of collaboration happens in email – which is a shame since that really isn’t collaboration – it’s almost the opposite of collaboration! The goal of collaboration is to include as many people to get the best thinking on any given issue. If you are thinking of starting a wiki or working on launching on you need to hear what Eugene Lee the CEO of SocialText has to say about wikis, collaboration and enterprise 2.0. << MORE >>

As the economy twists and turns with more layoffs mounting – having a strong personal brand is becoming ever more important from a career perspective. But what does that mean? Do you launch a blog? Do you start a Twitter account? Do you launch your own Vlog? Or maybe some combination of all of the above. To get some more clarity on this I interviewed Dan Schwabel the author of the Personal Branding blog. He will also be releasing a new book called Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success (due out with Kaplan in April 09). In my opinion, Dan is also the hardest working guy in Social Media posting 10 times a week on his blog, publishing his own magazine and book as well as having a full time job as the social media expert for EMC! << MORE >>

These days many professional services and technology firms looking to differentiate themselves lean on an age old technique of creating thought leadership. But truly differentiated and provocative thought leadership is actually hard to come by. Most of the time, it is just interesting theory without any proof. Moreover, does the thought leadership actually drive the business and create sales or is it just content for content sake. To get a better understanding of this space I decided to interview Bob Buday the co-founder of The Bloom Group (link) whose firm specializes in the creation of cogent and well differentiated thought leadership. Bob is also the co-author of a new book Thoughts on Thought Leadership (link) which is a great resource for anyone working to create thought leaders in their organizations. << MORE >>

Marketing is the interface a company builds to interact with the marketplace and the customer base. The marketing group, combined with the sales force, is the point in the company where the market understanding resides. This should be the group that drives the company, that sells the marketing vision and message internally, and if that is not happening or doesn't seem appropriate, there is something seriously wrong. Big M Marketing focuses on the broader more strategic use of marketing have having solid processes in place to take advantage of this. I sought the advice of Dave Guzeman president of Mindpik and author of a recent book called - Driving Marketing Success with Big M Marketing. << MORE >>

Stop everything you are doing and listen to this podcast! Seriously, if you have never met or had the opportunity to listen to Avinash Kaushik you must hear this podcast – I guarantee you will learn something from this podcast. Sometimes you meet someone so passionate about something that it’s contagious and if you listen closely you can hear me firing off emails to my team in the background about what I am hearing and learning on this podcast. I had the opportunity to do a podcast with Avinash to discuss some areas where marketers are doing things right and wrong but all of them are simple but extremely powerful uses of web analytics to make their websites and businesses better on the web. We also took some live Twitter questions as we were doing the podcast. But stop reading this and start listening to Avinash – its 25 minutes long but positively electric! << MORE >>

There is no doubt the speed of change in the media space is blinding. New tools become available to marketers and individuals alike nearly every week. If you have ever felt like it is hard to keep up (and I know I have) then this book is for you. Admittedly, Paul Gillin wrote this book for the 90% of marketers still trying to figure out social media, I can tell you it makes and excellent resource for even the most polished social media expert. Paul covers topics like how to sell your social media program to by making a strong case, how to be a good listener using DIY tools across many types of media, how to find and court influencers, how to make social media worthy content and measuring results. I was lucky enough to get an advanced copy of his book and really enjoyed reading because it gave me ideas I can put into play immediately. Check out my podcast with Paul as we discuss some of the Secrets of Social Media Marketing. << MORE >>

Normally email and profit don’t go in the same sentence at least in the minds of most B2B marketers – but actually they should. Everything has a cost associated with it and email is no exception – so this podcast focuses on how much lift in revenues and profits you can get out of your email program if you are in B2C or B2B marketing. To accomplish this I decided to speak to Steve Webster, Chief Strategy Officer from iPost who has published several case studies on the topic of improving profits via email. Don’t miss he views on this topic. << MORE >>