Thanks for the great post (and loving the refreshing design of the blog!)

I couldn’t agree more with your last point that you can find bloggers in the most unlikely places. I work for a B2B tech firm and our original bloggers came out of product marketing.

However, one product line opted to open up the blog to a development team. This has been by far our most successful blog and regularly garners a healthy number of comments.

Originally, there was uncertainty about letting developers loose on our sacrosanct blogging platforms – most of them had no proven writing track record and a number couldn’t even cite English as their first language. Still, they are the ones that have had the best success at engaging their audience and giving them what they need.

This case suggests to us that the role of marketers will change. Rather than being the mouthpieces for our company, we will be the facilitators that open up communication channels between company experts and our audience at large.

Obviously everyone in EDA doesn’t read the same stuff that you do. I can think of some folks who don’t even know that they are “dead men walking.”

And very interesting on the fact that Press Releases have changed. I’d love to see an “A/B” comparison of yesterday’s Press Release versus today’s to see what exactly has changed. If you have an old one for me to look at, I’d love to write about it.

Lastly, David Meerman Scott’s premise is that it is more important to be on the front page of a Google search than the front page of the New York Times. I’m having a hard time coming up with an argument against the premise.

Harry,

I’m simply using the terms B2B and B2C to describe a type of business that a company is in — the same way as the the old Business-to-Business Yellow Pages catalog. I’ve found that the terms are very helpful when speaking with my customers, who identify their business one way or the other. I’m simply using their own language to better communicate with them.

For example, one of the most common objections I get from the Traditionals is: “Blogging doesn’t work for a B2B businesses such as ours. That stuff is only for B2C companies.” Which of course is horse crap.

Both B2B and B2C businesses do share a very important trait, though, and you mentioned it in your comment. They both sell to PEOPLE. As you stated, good bloggers, no matter whether they work for a B2B or a B2C, will engage with their audiences in a conversational manner. That’s all I’m trying to do, to help B2B corporations do exactly that.

Two things. First according to several analyst reports, include Forrester, 55 percent of tech sector decision makers use blogs and social media to make purchasing decisions. Yet only 22 per cent of tech sector marketers use the tools. So those that think they can ignore the tools are the ones who are going to lose their jobs within 3 years.

Second: news releases. They are SUPPOSED to be written for journalists, but that practice ended years ago. Even David Scott encourages them to be written directly to the customer now. That’s the reason most news releases get ignored by the press.

But then, most aren’t written with the customer in mind either. Most are written so executives can see their name on Google searches.

I am finding more and more that a blog post would save a lot of effort over sending an “email blaset” for regular updates. Someday, this will be appreciated by our customers and they can laugh with us about the days when everything went out by email.