Monthly Archives: February 2010

Join the dots – Convergence the talk at TFM 10

No doubt I was strolling the aisles of last year’s Technology For Marketing (TFM) show in a bit of a daze looking for relevant info for the project in hand. This year however,  I was introducing an ex-colleague from many years ago to the broader delights of digital marketing/technologies so was obviously paying a bit more attention than usual.

I’m not sure if I overlooked the fact that dotMailer was now just one smaller part of a much bigger dotDigital Group last year but I was somewhat surprised to see a whole bunch of ‘dotCompanies’ where once there was one. My eye was drawn to dotCommerce and dotContentManagement being promoted – I’m pretty sure there was a dotSEO in there somewhere and I’m guessing a dotSocialMedia must be on the cards somewhere.

It seems a single point solution doesn’t cut it these days and an ever growing number of organisations are expanding their offerings across the digital space, with a lot of commentary about the convergence of WCM, Social Media, Analytics, eCommerce and/or CRM.

Maybe on my upcoming web project challenges for 2010 this will finally be the year when I use one provider for more than one of the requirement areas mentioned above. Previously I’ve always focused on best of breed and/or tactical point solutions before but perhaps we are reaching a position where a traditionally Web Content Management orientated solution offers sufficient email marketing, social media and analytics capabilities to consider a more integrated approach.

I’ve had some promising experiences with Joomla, Drupal and EPiServer in the last year for integrating WCM with community building but I’m still drawn to familiar long established point solutions for things like email marketing and analytics. Does anyone have strong tangible examples of email marketing and analytics integration in Content Management Systems that counter the best of breed approaches?

Observations made in presentations about ‘conversation being king’ and content being boring are starting to resonate having seen first hand how social media generated conversation can have a direct effect on ecommerce activity.

Some chats with SEO specialists suggest an interesting time ahead with real-time search and also that Google may finally be making moves to squash link farming activities more effectively than before. I’ve seen increasing evidence over the last year that these old black hat techniques are still working and this really undermines the efforts of those who approach search marketing ethically and professionally. With Google’s ‘don’t do evil’ brand value increasingly being called into question it risks greater damage if it opens the door to even more search spamming in its efforts to keep pace with Twitter and Facebook.

London Comms Group Prezi…

Many thanks to the London Communications and Engagement Group last night for their kind invitation to present and discuss the area of Content Technologies. The Prezi is embedded below should others be interested in joining the conversation.

Promotion and credit given to CMS Watch (a service of the Real Story Group) and Kristina Halvorson for their great work on the Technology Vendor Map 2010 and Content Strategy for the Web

London Comms Prezi on Prezi

Talk and beer

What's the point of analysts?…

Or rather, what’s the point of analyst organisations? This is really a question that’s been raised for me by the debate about Forrester clamping down on its analysts producing and promoting personal blogs.

Reading this excellent article about Forrester’s action underlines the dilemma for many organisations thrown up by Social Media – who becomes the ‘authentic’ voice or voices of your organisation? Is the genie out of the bottle as far as this is concerned and by trying to pull the reigns back now will organisations face criticism in the way Forrester has about being heavy-handed and effectively limiting its analysts from establishing their own personal brands.

As this pyramid from SageCircle emphasises, Analyst Relations can be quite a personal thing and it’s not so much the analyst organisation itself who you are building the relationship with but often an individual who has specific experience and knowledge of your market sector and operations. The individualism of analysts has been brought into sharp focus by Twitter. Firstly it makes analysts, and the organisations they represent, more accessible but also more transparent. In the cut and thrust of everyday debate, you get to see fallibility more easily but likewise, knowledge and expertise shine through too.

I think what we’re seeing with the Forrester move and recent consolidation in the CMS analyst space is an exposed vulnerability of analyst organisations which have, in many respects, built their operations on inherently poor knowledge flows, communications and, primarily ‘conversations’ between organisations and individuals. To a typical analyst organisation, knowledge is power and wealth, that it benefits from being a gatekeeper to.  Twitter has been blowing this apart over the last year or so by enabling like-minded and/or commonly interested people to get together online and offline far more easily and effectively to exchange knowledge and information. With technology continuing to break down boundaries and facilitate conversation perhaps it’s more the case that ‘we’re all analysts now’?