An appearance on the SalesFusion blog

I was recently interviewed by SalesFusion for their new “Industry Insight” feature. The results were published today in a blog post titled, “Industry Insights with David Kirkpatrick.” The interview covered my thoughts on marketing automation software and small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs).

Thanks guys! It was a lot of fun being on the other side of the microphone for a change.

From the second link:

Salesfusion commenced Industry Insights, an interview series with industry analysts and marketing and sales experts. Industry Insights kicks off with an interview with David Kirkpatrick. David Kirkpatrick—award winning journalist, author and marketing expert—is Manager of Editorial Content for MECLABS, parent company of MarketingSherpa and MarketingExperiments.

Papers are going somewhere

And that somewhere is a path that leads to fewer pages, fewer ads and much lower revenue. Most dailies have essentially priced themselves into a pure luxury good for people who just like the smell of the ink and the feel of the newsprint under finger (I admit to falling into that category even though I no loner take a daily paper.)

Rishad Tobaccowala writes at Adweek on the future of the newspaper industry in a piece titled, “Papers Aren’t Going Anywhere,” and sees a relatively bright future, particularly in serving the local community. The problem with the article is it’s really about the reinvention of traditional print media into something completely different. Yes, if the newspaper industry can adapt to a brand new world, significantly alter business models and realize they don’t stand alone as arbiters of what news their market gets to consume then yeah, the newspaper industry might pull out of the current death spiral. I wouldn’t bet on it, though.

Here’s the four changes Tobaccowala’s sees as necessary for newspapers:

Having spent some time with senior and junior personnel across the newspaper industry, I know they know the perils they face. Many are making the difficult decisions and changes necessary to thrive. These changes are taking places in the following areas:

1. Culture: The newspaper industry needs to be reinvigorated. The people who created the cash cow of the paper package need help to create challenger products that will supplement and even cannibalize the newspaper. In many papers a cultural and organizational soap opera is occurring. I bet on the next generation to win since nothing trumps survival.

2. Technology: Organizations need to elevate the role of technology and technology partnerships to board-level status. The future will be about how to use technology to curate, combine and aid discovery of articles to relevant audiences at scale. This will require world-class technology smarts.

3. Partnering: In addition to technology partnerships, newspapers need to find ways to continue to embrace other voices into their bundle of products and services. These include the blogging community, the Yelps of the world and all the people outside the industry who are trying to reinvent the industry. We are living in a world of links and connections and, oddly, to be more competitive thinking synergistically is better than thinking competitively

4. Focus: Each news organization has to decide what it makes, what it shares and what it borrows. Vertical integration may be fine for Apple, but doing all things is a no go for most other firms. Each newspaper needs to determine what it’s best at or what, with investment, it could be best at. Share and borrow the rest.

Google Replay charts popularity of tweets

Very interesting idea and useful from a number of perspectives — as a snapshot of public interest at  set point in time, marketing, historical archive … well, you get the idea.

From the link:

Realizing the historic value of these commentaries and first-hand accounts, Google has begun archiving every tweet in what it calls “Replay”—a search function that presents in bar-chart-form the popularity of tweets through a period in time and lists associated tweets for you to browse chronologically.

To access Replay, perform a Google search, choose “Show options…” This reveals a toolbar on the left; click “Updates.” A graph will appear denoting the popularity of that phrase or keyword at that point in time. By hovering over the graph, you can zoom in to a more specific time of day and read the tweets that were sent in that time period.

Bing gaining search engine market share …

… but just barely. I’ve seen more than a few tech stories covering Bing’s modest gains in search engine market share. All well and good, but it’s worth looking at the actual numbers and some of the reasons for that gain. Let’s just say I think the Redmond bunch should probably keep the champagne on ice and heed the advice of Winston Wolf. (In case you don’t remember Wolf, he’s the “Pulp Fiction” character who used a rather colorful idiom to keep Vince and Jules’ ego in check.)

Microsoft is gaining market share, but at a very high cost. Bing has had the living hell marketed out of it, particularly on television. If all that money creates converts who consistently use Bing over Google, and market share keeps growing, it’ll be worth the cost. Right now I’m guessing whatever money Microsoft is earning from Bing is dwarfed by the search engine’s marketing budget. Microsoft has a long and proud history of losing a ton of money in a market area they want to enter and challenge a rival (see: Xbox gaming console.)

Now let’s look at the actual numbers and see just how far behind Google Bing really is, and how it may not be chipping away at the targeted rival at all, but actually stealing market share from its now partner, Yahoo.

From the first link:

	December 2009	January 2010	February 2010
Google	72.25%	71.49%	70.95%
Yahoo	14.83%	14.57%	14.57%
Bing	8.92%	9.37%	9.70%

Source: Hitwise

And:

	January 2010	February 2010
Google	65.4%	65.5%
Yahoo	17.0%	16.8%
Bing	11.3%	11.5%

Source: comScore

Also from the first link:

Bing search engine may still be a bit player in the lucrative online search business dominated byGoogle, but it’s slowly and steadily gaining users. And it appears that Bing’s share is coming at the expense of both Google (GOOG) and Yahoo, the latter of which recentlyteamed up with Microsoft to be more competitive in online search.

A commenter at the link made a great point that some of this gain could be from Windows 7 users retaining — at least for now — the Bing default search engine option.

NewMajority.com has rebranded …

… to FrumForum.com.

From the link, David Frum’s take on the move:

From the time we launched the New Majority site, we have had to cope with a problem with our name. Simply put, there are a lot of “New Majorities” out there. There’s one down the road in Virginia, another at the New World Foundation, a conservative 501c4 here, a liberal one there. All this generated serious confusion, but the worst was with the best known New Majority of them all, TheNewMajority in California, because their mission and ours so closely overlapped. That overlap was leading to very unnecessary conflict with people who wanted many of the same reforms that we did.

The best solution seemed to be: a change of name. But to what?

Marketing with Twitter

Okay, the linked article is titled, “How and Why to Launch a Business Presence on Twitter,” but really what is a business presence anywhere other than marketing? Nothing wrong with it at all, and maybe a business would like some marketing effort (such as social network marketing) to be fairly opaque but lets call it what it is.

Do hit the link because the article offers some good advice and interesting ideas.

You can find me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/davidkonline.

From the link:

But while Twitter’s user base might seem small, the return on engagement from Twitter fans is substantial, says Jeremiah Owyang (@jowyang), a senior Forrester analyst who researches social technologies and who writes a blog on Web strategy.

“Most Twitter users are hyper-connected,” says Owyang. “They are influencers and really want to share opinions with others. Many of them keep blogs. They are very different than the mainstream Facebook users.”

While Twitter’s founders have hinted at charging companies in the future for their participation, any business can get started today for free. For most companies, the decision to utilize Twitter will depend on the type of products or services that they offer, as well as the department — or departments — that would benefit from joining the service.

Blogging and small business

Blogging, Twitter and other Web 2.0 tools can be a real boon for small business, but it’s important to have a solid plan and stay with the plan. Unless a small business owner has a lot of time to devote to social media, or has staff in place that can fill the role hiring a professional writer to ghost blog is not a bad idea.

The business owner can stay on top of the subject matter covered and frequency of blogging while the ghost blogger can focus on solid, SEO content posts and stay of abreast of the rapidly changing Web 2.0 world.

From the MainStreet.com link:

Blogs have blown up. So how does blogging fit into your marketing strategy?

First, the eye-popping statistics. There is a total Internet audience of 188.9 million worldwide for blogs, according to comScore, and eMarketer says half of all readers are in the U.S. By the end of 2009, there will be 28 million bloggers in America and 116 million readers, eMarketer projects.

Some demographics: Readers of blogs have household income of $75,000, meaning upper-middle class, according to Technorati. Half of all bloggers are on their second blog, and 59% have been posting for at least two years. In addition, two-thirds are male; half are 18 to 34 years old; 74% have college degrees; and 44% are parents.

One interesting stat that caught my eye: Fewer than 1% of readers have incomes in excess of $150,000, which tells me the following: Decision leaders aren’t typically reading blogs, and the very wealthy are not reading blogs

Gen G — the latest generation brand

Generation G isn’t about an age group to market to, it’s about an attitude.

From the link:

There’s a brand new generation for online marketers to adapt to.

This time, however, the generation is not defined by date of birth. This generation is defined by repulsion at the corporate and political greed that has plummeted much of the world into economic doldrums.

In other words, Generation “G” is all about generosity and sickened by greed.

TrendWatching.com did a giant report on Generation G, because they see it as the most vital business and marketing trend given the current economic climate. And given the emerging social media culture, I don’t see us going back in the other direction when things get better.

GENERATION G captures the growing importance of ‘generosity’ as a leading societal and business mindset. As consumers are disgusted with greed and its current dire consequences for the economy—and while that same upheaval has them longing more than ever for institutions that care—the need for more generosity beautifully coincides with the ongoing (and pre-recession) emergence of an online-fueled culture of individuals who share, give, engage, create and collaborate in large numbers. ~ TrendWatching.com

(Hat tip — smartsavvy)