Eloqua's Joe Chernov Talks Content Marketing

From infographics like The Message is The Messenger to videos about Revenue Management, content has become a science and an art at Eloqua, a marketing automation SaaS company. Joe Chernov, VP of Content Marketing, is leading the charge by acting not only as a savvy B2B marketer, but also as an editor-in-chief that crafts and delivers unique, memorable, and effective content. In this interview, Joe shares his thoughts and wisdom around all things content marketing.

"We want to create premium content in the way Louis Vuitton produces premium leather goods."

Social Nerdia: How has B2B marketing changed in the last decade?

Joe Chernov: I hate to confess this, because it keeps me up at night – literally – but being a “brand marketer” has become a dirty word. Much of marketing, especially in B2B, is about the data over image. “Brand” only matters if the data says it matters. Questions like: “How much is an organic visitor worth vs. an AdWord visitor?” dominate internal planning sessions. Marketers are expected to be accountable not only for revenue growth, but we are also expected to have visibility into the dollar value of each of our campaigns. B2B marketing is like the book, “Moneyball” – it’s about using data for competitive advantage.  

 

Social Nerdia: Content seems to be a very important part of Eloqua's marketing strategy. Why is this?

JC: Because the data tells us it is. People who consume our content – even the more creative, “top of funnel” content like our infographics – are disproportionately more likely to buy our product. Content is also critical because it is invaluable to organic search – the inbound links, and social signals are vital for SEO. Content also drives our PR. If we launch a new product, we can expect a handful of articles to cover the news. But a compelling piece of content can generate hundreds of articles and blog posts.

Social Nerdia: What process do you go through when developing and distributing infographics like "The Message is the Messenger" and videos like "What is Revenue Performance Management?"

JC: When talking about premium brands, Richard Branson once said, “The best in anything is recession proof.” That stuck with me. My view when it comes to content is that we will never be the most prolific in our space. Someone else can have that status. Instead we want to produce the best. We want to create premium content in the way Louis Vuitton produces premium leather goods. I draw my inspiration from a company like LVMH, not the other vendors in Eloqua’s industry. The creative process is grueling. For any individual infographic, our design partner JESS3 will churn out more than a dozen comps. I think of each piece of content as a product, and we run a PR campaign around every single one, much as we would run a PR campaign around a product launch. I also believe that co-creation is a key to distribution. The more people that feel “ownership” of a piece of content, the bigger the distribution channel is on day one.

 

Social Nerdia: Why is it important to be customer-centric?

JC: Because, frankly, the customer needs an advocate. Companies are so obsessed with clamoring for the buyer’s attention that the noise can be deafening. It’s an affront. Consumers are barraged by thousands of advertisements a day, all of which put pressure on the person to do something in the sponsor’s best interest:  buy, try, upgrade, download, switch. Enough already. Our view is different. We try to create content that is designed to help our audience stay current with their changing world, and we do so without any hidden agenda. We hope the person will later come back to us when they are ready to buy, but we don’t obligate them to fill out a form to learn from us. We give our knowledge way freely and for free.

 

Social Nerdia: We've heard you talk about suspects, prospects, leads and opportunities. Can you briefly describe how companies should think of - and target - each of these groups?

JC: This can be a very long answer, so let me talk about fundamental concepts. All of your potential buyers are at different stages of “purchase readiness.” So the first thing companies should do is identify these stages, and associate content with each one. For example, if someone has never heard of you, what content should you publish that “makes an introduction?" Conversely, if someone is comparing you to a competitor, what content do you want to supply that best presents your relative value? This basic philosophy – overlaying content on top of the buyer’s journey – is a “hiding in plain sight” solution for many companies.

Social Nerdia: What are your thoughts on the future of real-time marketing?

JC: If you find yourself unsure what position to take in a marketing debate, figure out what side David Meerman Scott (author of Real-Time Marketing and PR) is on, and pick that side. Because the guy is pretty much always right. I think we will see an increasing number of companies place a value on being fast, if not first, because doing so gives them an opportunity to “jack” industry happenings. Being the first to comment on an acquisition in your industry places you in every story about that deal. Being fast to respond to a complaint reduces the likelihood that the situation will fester. Speed is both a sword and a shield.

Social Nerdia: Just as writers have writer's block, marketers have creative blocks of their own. What do you do when this happens? Where do you seek inspiration?

JC: Of course. In any given week I have moments in which I am paralyzed by the fear that I’ve had my last good run of creativity. Ultimately you have to have the guts to propose something truly stupid, if only because it might lead to a path in which a good idea is hiding. I really don’t look at creativity as the birthing of ideas as much as I see it as the discipline to ferret out good ideas that are hiding from me. I also believe you should serialize your best ideas – which takes the pressure off of coming up with all new ones every time. For example, the public seemed to like our Blog Tree infographic, so rather than come up with an entirely new concept, we serialized that one. We are about to introduce our third in the series.

Social Nerdia: What advice would you give to young professionals looking to become tomorrow's marketing leaders?

JC: There’s a wonderful poem that reads: “Oh snail / Climb Mount Fuji / But slowly / Slowly.” My advice is to work hard, find inspiration in unconventional places, and don’t rush it. You will get there when you stop trying to get there.

Creating, Curating and Cultivating SXSW Interactive

About a year ago I gave a presentation titled “Creating, Curating and Cultivating the Social Web” at the Marketing 2.0 Conference. The point of the presentation was that I believe brands need to create and curate high quality content while cultivating relationships with customers in order to become and remain relevant in the hyper connected world we live in.

You see, content (objects that can be experienced and shared online) has drastically changed the way people communicate. From pinboards on Pinterest to meme generators, Instagram and Hipster, the plethora of options to create and distribute content has made everyone a content producer. It's not just developers, designers and bloggers anymore; it's everyone. Whether it’s a video captured at the right time and the right place on a smartphone or a carefully produced campaign like KONY 2012, content has the potential to spread like wildfire. That puts some pressure on companies because they no longer control the medium, the message or the messenger.

Digital campaigns have evolved in the past decade from interactive (think Burger King’s Subservient Chicken), to shareable (think Evian’s Roller Babies and Nike's Write the Future), user generated (think Doritos’ UGC Super Bowl ads), multi-faceted (think Bing's Jay-Z Decoded, Heineken's Star Player, and Red Bull's Supernatural with Shazam), collaborative (think Converse's Three Artists, One Song series), personalized (think Intel's Museum of Me) and, of course, social (think Old Spice Man).

The Internet and the rapid way in which content is created, modified, and distributed was absolutely unthinkable 15 years ago, and most marketers have been encouraged (or forced) to think about ways in which their brands can produce better, faster, more immersive, rewarding and relevant content and experiences.

With changes in consumer behavior and marketing, marketers often end up looking for places where culture gets created and transformed. One of such places is SXSW Interactive, a one-week festival/conference in Austin, TX where some of the brightest minds in all things digital gather once a year. A gathering too important for brands to miss.

Now, gaining attention, respect or any kind of momentum for a company at SXSW is not easy because SXSW attendees are not easily impressed. They have seen the rise of Twitter, and they have also abandoned a keynote by its former CEO and co-founder Evan Williams. A digital marketing campaign promoted with social ads will simply not cut it at SXSW.

Everyone attending, from young college students going to as many panels as possible to startup CEOs that everyone seems to know, is there not only to experience the event but also to become part of the experience and decide what matters and what doesn't. SXSWi is a perfect place to tweet, check-in, write blog posts, take photos, create data visualizations, design infographics, live stream videos, start Google+ Hangouts and simply meet up with others.

From a marketer's perspective, you need to think about how to enhance the SXSW experience for as many attendees as possible. Experiences don’t just happen and they can’t be forced either. You might be able to lure people into a party, an event, a link, a lounge, etc. but you can’t make the experience valuable. Or memorable. Or meaningful.

I’m incredibly proud of what we did with Samsung this year. It was our 2^nd year as a major Interactive sponsor and our objective was not simply to sponsor the conference, but also to enhance the experience by creating utility and adding value. From our #SmartWall, where we curated social data and visualized trends (and breaking news) in the first floor of the Austin Convention Center, to the Samsung Blogger Lounge, where serendipity constantly happened as bloggers, journalists, social media influencers, developers, entrepreneurs, podcasters, designers, musicians, artists, Samsung fans and even a few celebrities gathered throughout the 5 days of SXSWi, it looks like our efforts resonated. We were able to create + curate + cultivate SXSWi, both online and offline, while also enabling others to do so as well.

I can’t share our own internal findings, but I must admit it's satisfying to read tweets and posts about our presence there. It's also great to see third parties reporting good results. Examples include infographics by Spredfast, Tracx and Mass Relevance, and this article by Fast Company. Of course, buzz levels and positive press aren't the point, but they can be indicative of valuable, memorable and meaningful experiences.

Marketers have a lot of challenges and opportunities thanks to social media. With limited resources, increasingly demanding consumers, and tough competition, it's important to focus. Creating, curating, and enhancing experiences, while building relationships with customers and potential customers, especially those who are passionate about your brand, should be top of mind. When done well, this can result in great reach, awareness, and most importantly, relevance.



Note: The views expressed on this blog post are all personal and do NOT reflect the views of my employer or any company.

10 Reasons Why Pinterest is Addicting

I completely dismissed Pinterest the first time I tried it at some point in 2011. "Nothing new here," I thought to myself. It didn't seem innovative enough (and a bit too girly) to be worthy of my interest.

It wasn't until around the time Pinterest secured $27 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz, which valued the company at $200 million, that I realized Pinterest was onto something. Now, I didn't start paying attention because of the crazy amounts of money that startups can raise or because of posts like this on on blogs like TechCrunch.

Nope. I started paying attention because I noticed my wife using Pinterest.

Actually, my wife and most of her girlfriends were spending what seemed like an absurd amount of time on Pinterest. It was as if Facebook had ceased to exist and the magazines they usually browsed were not current enough to deserve their attention.

So I gave Pinterest a second look.

I was skeptical. And sort of embarrassed.

I quickly realized two things. For starters, it was clear that there were a lot of women on Pinterest and most of them were using the site to motivate themselves through inspiring images, quotes and photos.

Secondly, I realized that most of my early adopter geeky friends were NOT on Pinterest. The usual suspects that tend to be first to sites like Pinterest were not there either. There were absolutely no signs of Robert Scoble and some of the most popular Pinterest users were people I had never heard of.

The things is that Pinterest wasn't created for geeks and I don't think the service is an attempt to change the world. Most Pinterest users have no idea what Delicious is, they have no interest in what TechCrunch has so say, and they are not concerned with whether Pinterest is a fad or not.

For Pinterest users, the service is like an eternal magazine that is also a real-time scrapbook. It is a simple, easy to use, intensely visual, and amazingly addicting experience. 

It might be a single feature in the eyes of people in the tech industry, but with almost 15 million Pinteresters pinning everything from their favorite places on Earth to infographics and memes, it is one truly killer feature.

I can't fully explain why Pinterest has exploded in popularity, but my wife and I have put together a Slideshare presentation with 10 reasons why we think Pinterest users love it. Check it out below and feel free to comment on why you love (or hate) Pinterest.

10 Reasons We Love Pinterest

View more PowerPoint from Esteban Contreras.

The State of Social Media and Social Media Marketing in 2012

Social networking is the #1 activity online. Even though Google gets the most visitors, Facebook is where most of us are spending our time. And it's not just about Facebook anymore. We are spending a lot of time on LinkedIn, YouTube, Tumblr and Twitter. While there are some clear major players in the social space, the social media universe continues to expand and 2011 was a banner year for the idea of an "Interest Graph."

In 2011, we saw Google launching Google+ and Pinterest grewing at an astounding rate. Facebook launched "Timeline" and "frictionless sharing" with partners like the much anticipated Spotify. Facebook also acquired design companies and the team behind Gowalla, showing the company's intent to provide a consistent experience across devices and becoming a more prominent player in the mobile space.

2011 was also a big year for social IPOs: From LinkedIn to Groupon and Zynga, small tech startups are becoming public companies. There is much speculation around the existence of a bubble, and some say growth cannot continue because social networks are running out of users. However, Facebook is not yet public and we still don't see a clear exit for Twitter.

There might be saturation, but social media has changed the way we live. And this means social media is no longer a question for marketers. Companies of all sizes have accepted and even embraced the importance of social media. Investments are starting to increase and companies are now building teams to tackle the new risks and opportunities that social media has created. While Facebook and Twitter ad spending is expected to grow only at a decreasing rate, advanced brands are leveraging more digital dollars for their social media marketing strategies and tactics. "Social" has been an afterthought for many years, but marketing campaigns and programs are finally starting to feel inherently social.

This presentation is about the state of social media and social media marketing on January 1st, 2012:

The State of Social Media and Social Media Marketing in 2012

View more presentations from Esteban Contreras

Chris Brogan on Google+ for Business, Black Friday Marketing, and The Power of Building a Platform

Chris Brogan is a blogger, speaker, consultant, bestselling author and President and CEO of Human Business Works. Chris was one of the very first people I ever "met" on Twitter and I've been reading his blog www.chrisbrogan.com ever since. In this interview, Chris talks about blogging, his upcoming book, brands on Google+, Black Friday marketing, content curation tools, and more.

"If you REALLY want to know what bloggers have to focus on, it's building a platform."

Social Nerdia: Congratulations on your upcoming book Google+ for Business: How Google's Social Network Changes Everything. The book description says "This is a business book, not a technology book." Can you share more about how this book can help businesspeople?

Chris Brogan: Business people tend to get a bit twitchy when a new technology comes along. But what I'm saying with this book is that this is a book about how to use the telephone to sell, or how to use business cards as part of your selling, or what to talk about at the cocktail party to sell. The tech of it all isn't the worry. The problem is, for some unknown reason, humans get really weird when they start trying to use social media to sell. They forget the niceties and the human nature sometimes.

Social Nerdia: Google+ Pages have been around for a few weeks now. What are some examples of companies and organizations making good use of them?

CB: I love what Samsung USA is doing (and no, not because you work there). I love what Dell has done. I think that Pepsi is already getting great engagement on their site. For a small business, check out Allure Home Improvements. I think people can really learn from places like these. Oh, and Kodak! Great work, Jennifer Cisney and team.

Social Nerdia: Social media is becoming an important part of how brands do marketing. What did you think of Black Friday efforts this year? You know who I saw doing something interesting for Black Friday?

CB: Cali Lewis. Not a company, a person. Someone who works for a brand of her own, but who used Amazon associate links to point people towards products she endorsed, with a cut for herself. Did I see any brands doing something amazing with Black Friday? Well, at the risk of really seeming like I'm sucking up (I'm willing to risk this), I *did* like that Samsung had a nice summary on the Google+ page. Beyond that? Not as much on Twitter as I'd had expected, and I'm no longer qualified to talk about Facebook. I don't go there anymore.

Social Nerdia: What are your thoughts on content curation and services like Pinterest, Curated.by and Storify?

CB: I think that content curation is *finally* getting its due. Steve Rosenbaum wrote a grossly overlooked book, CURATION NATION, that deserves more eyeballs and thought. The specific tools will come and go, but people are finally understanding that curation is just as important as creation.

Social Nerdia: You've been blogging for over a decade and you've been using Wordpress for many years. Do you think Wordpress is at risk with the increased usage of Tumblr, Google+ and social media overall?

CB: I rarely worry much about the tools. I think that there's a huge group of people using Tumblr for curation and sometimes throwaway products. I think that people looking to use serious tools for serious business will stick with WordPress, but when I say that, don't presume that I'm being elitist. I'm saying that one set of tools, WordPress, delivers a lot more business value. I'm saying that Tumblr is easy and makes it very easy to share and create. Both are quite wonderful and useful. That's how I would divide them.
 

Social Nerdia: What advice would you give to bloggers who aspire to be book authors?

CB: Blogging and books are two different disciplines, but I will say that if you blog daily and if you can write thoughts up such that they have a beginning, middle, and an end, you've got some potential. If you REALLY want to know what bloggers have to focus on, it's building a platform. Book deals go to people with lots of followers and readers, not the people with the best ideas. Sorry to pop your bubble, aspiring authors, but Trust Agents isn't a great book. I just have a huge platform. Yep, there it is.

The Many Deaths of Google+

+Dan Reimold has 44 followers at the time that I write this. He wrote an "article" called "Google+: Social Media Upstart 'Worse Than a Ghost Town."

Dan's article basically says "Google+ is not good because no one follows me."

Now, Dan has some "evidence" for this. Of course he does.

Except his evidence consists of Rainbow Rowell's article on Omaha.com. +Rainbow Rowell has 33 followers on G+ and she has posted a handful of times. Rainbow's opinionated column basically comes down to this: "My Google+ home page is worse than a ghost town. It doesn't even feel haunted. Meanwhile, down the road,in a much less desirable neighborhood, Facebook is teeming with life." So apparently Google+ is dead because Facebook, which is over half a decade older has more users poking each other (I'm not disagreeing necessarily, just paraphrasing).

And her "sequel" is well... "The fact that I think Google+ is useless might be one of the best possible indicators that it's going to succeed. Get yourself a Google+ account. This thing's going to be huge."I'm not sure what it is. Insurance? Change of heart? Sarcasm? Live journal emotional flashback?

But that's not all. The "best" evidence comes from the one and only Forbes: +Paul Tassi, the person who called the "eulogy" for Google+ and celebrated when others talked about it on G+.

Apparently Google+ has become appealing to Mr. Tassi, who ironically also wrote a follow-up article only hours after the first one. No one remembers that one. Now, when I first saw Tassi's profile on Aug 15th, he had few followers and aprox 5 public posts. Today he's a happy Google Pluser with 1200+ followers. He almost raves about it without having to rave about it. Paul has converted and has amassed a following.

But wasn't G+ dead? Hmmm... I'm confused now. I thought the word "EULOGY" was a strong one but apparently I've been reading the wrong dictionary.

Now, I would've rather Dan linking to this TechCrunch article. Despite their opinionated (and allegedly unbiased) point of view and their recent TMZification, TC writers actually know what they're talking about. +Robin Wauters actually posted some numbers: A 41% decrease in public posts month-to-month. He might be right (someone please do call +Robert Scoble lol), but I will soon tell you why less posts doesn't show the whole story. It's not a good sign, but it doesn't say anything about the quality of posts and the engagement within them (take a look at the average Fb post), or the quality of users (take a look at your DMs and you'll see what I mean).

My thoughts are that if something is dead or a "ghost town", then no one will care enough to write about it more than once. Google Buzz died once and it was a quick death. Google+ is dying on a daily basis but I don't think +Larry Page is worried about what to post next before someone else tweets about his absence.

Traffic matters and all these deaths of Google+ create traffic. Even if the only people who care about it are those geeking out here and the media which absolutely loves to cover social media at its shallowest.

25 million or not, the Google+ community is unique and it has something worth coming back here for: DEPTH.

We'll see what happens but I can assure you that there is no dead player in the Social War(s). Social depth is what I see as the next big thing in social. And I don't mean this based on evidence but only as my personal hope (I've learned from the pros above that writing is apparently all about my own experience). This is why I think Google+ matters to me.

Google+ doesn't create it, but it enables it in a way that my blog doesn't, location-based apps don't, Twitter barely does, FriendFeed almost did, Tumblr almost does, and MySpace never will.

I'm a big fan of all Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Google+ is new so I may be blinded by that. Or maybe I'm excited to see 3 big competitors instead of two or maybe I'm more of an "interest graph" kind of guy. I'm in a position where I can, and must, get to know them all quite well. But bottom line, I'd interested in more meaning and substance while I'm spending time on these networks. And the same goes for articles with clever traffic-driving titles.

5 Questions to Ask Yourself before Giving Up Twitter and Facebook to Reclaim Blogging

Hugh Macleod, the cartoonist who blogs at gapingvoid.com, recently announced that he was "giving up" Twitter and Facebook to "reclaim" blogging.

His reasoning seems to be partly philosophical (content ownership) and partly strategic (less tweeting about meals means more time to blog about, well, the important stuff).

Philosophically, Hugh says he doesn't appreciate the fact that social media sites own what is supposed to be his content. There's no Wordpress-like utopian open source self-hosted social network (and I haven't heard about Diaspora since Mark Zuckerberg sent his $10 donation).

The cause may be a noble one, but I'm skeptical of this alleged ownership argument though. Hugh and others who have shunned Twitter before him (ie. Seth Godin) don't seem to be opposed to others sharing their content on Facebook and Twitter. The "Tweet" and "Like" buttons that appear at the bottom of each of their blog posts are evidence that they approve of content sharing and traffic building. It's ironic that the "Decide" call to action on Hugh's blog post is only a few pixels above the word "Tweet."

Strategically... Hugh has a point. Focusing on one thing, instead of aimlessly trying to be active all over the web, makes a lot of sense. However, Hugh is in a unique position. He's a published author and you could say he's a bit of a quotable celebrity in the tech startup scene. Whether Hugh will be able to maintain the interest that his recent blog post generated (111 comments and counting) is yet to be seen, but there's a chance he'll be ok even if he never tweets ever again.

So, should you give up Twitter and Facebook to reclaim blogging?

Probably not, but ask yourself the following questions before making a decision:

1. Do I have a "reclaimable" blog?

Most likely, you do not. A "reclaimable" blog would be one that used to get a lot of traffic and comments, but at some point it failed to keep up. According to Compete, gapingvoid.com was getting 65k unique visitors in July of 2010. A year later, that was only 12.7K. The drop is a great one, but 12.7K unique visitors is still a lot.

2. What am I trying to achieve?

Is your goal to have a creative outlet where you share thoughts and ideas? Or are you trying to become a top blogger and quit your day job?

3. What do I really enjoy doing?

This is very important. I personally enjoy blogging and podcasting but it's getting harder to do this. Being on Google+, Twitter and Facebook allows me to have rewarding conversations and discussions with friends and strangers, at any time and from anywhere.

4. What am I good at?

Everyone is different and you need to be objective about what you're good at. People that are comfortable in front or behind a camera should be on YouTube, Flickr or Instagram. People with a radio voice should probably check out BlogTalkRadio and Cinch.

5. Where does my audience want me?

Hugh's audience might be more than happy to visit his blog. For you, it might be a different story. Maybe your Twitter friends like to communicate with you in 140 characters, but they might not really be interested in reading your essays. It's important to consider your audience, even if it's a small one.

I asked myself the 5 questions above and I quickly determined that it would not be possible for me to give up Facebook, Twitter or Google+ to focus on blogging. In the same way, I wouldn't give up blogging to focus on social networks.

In conclusion, I don't think you should follow in Hugh's footsteps. As Hugh mentioned in his post, blogging has gone from magical to diluted in one decade. Unfortunately for bloggers, I'm not sure that magic will ever be recovered.

Whether we can call it magical or not, great content has the opportunity to create valuable and powerful experiences in ways that were impossible just a few years ago. Where and how you do this is completely up to you.