Oculus Rift’s CEO announced recently that its virtual reality headsets are months, not years, away. Will there immediately be applications for B2B? When we talk VR, the geekily inclined of a certain generation immediately thinks holodeck, and VR for recreation and entertainment. But B2B applications may come first. The ability to layer data or make […]
Many businesses are latching onto the Instagram buzz. Simply Measured analyzed Interbrand’s Top 100 list on Instagram during Q3 2014 and found that 86 of the top 100 brands are now on Instagram, up from 54 of the top 100 companies at the same time in 2012. User engagement has also increased during this time […]
This week, Jennifer Evans, the president of B2B News Network, was part of a panel discussion on a TV Ontario news show discussing the gender divide in the tech industry in Canada. On The Agenda with Steve Paikin, Evans offered her insight on how tech companies are ignoring female talent and the challenges she has faced in […]
Lean is in, and it’s changing the function of tech in the organization. When IT first started, dev and ops had nothing to do with one another. Development can now be so agile that it is changing how businesses are managed, practically on the fly. While there are a number of different factors affecting IT […]
Your business is flourishing and now you want to bring a mobile app to market. You have the customers, the interest, the idea, and now you just need to get the app off and soaring. But you don’t want to dive headlong into such a complex process that you stumble and fall flat. Here are 5 steps […]
Move over, bots. URL masking is climbing the ranks of common fraud in the digital advertising industry. URL masking is used to trick advertisers into running their ads on sites with illicit or stolen content. Though these sites typically generate a lot of traffic, thereby boosting chargeable impressions to the advertiser, they often don’t generate […]
In a move some critics call a major overpayment, French advertising powerhouse Publicis announced Monday it will acquire marketing and consulting company Sapient for $3.7 billion US. The all-cash transaction equals $25 per share. In a press release [PDF], Maurice Lévy, Chairman and CEO of Publicis Groupe, said: “Sapient is a ‘crown jewel,’ a one of […]
In the post Lessons from a Shark, we looked at how senior executives measure content marketing performance. Here is one way to apply those lessons and get started understanding the performance of your organic content. Set up a content performance whiteboard. Draw a big circle on it. Then draw two smaller circles so that it […]
From startups to windups, the B2B space has never been more active. Here are the top 5 stories you need to know about going into the week: 1. Motorola is Lenovo. Motonovo? It’s already displaced Xiaomi as the 3rd largest mobile manufacturer (after 24 hours). From Motorola Mobility’s President, Rick Osterloh: Congrats to @Xiaomi for […]
The Bitcoin rush is underway. From the the inexplicable to the blatantly commercial, cottage industries and derivatives are springing up everywhere. Who is innovating fastest and who is selling pickaxes to the miners? Here are 5 companies to watch: 1) Our pick: Ethereum, headed by Vitalik Buterin, a Torontonian, cousin of Wild Apricot co-founder Dmitry […]
In a sea of concrete, Google Tokyo’s offices needed that traditional koi pond feel. Winnipeg-based triple threat (hardware, software, event services) Pomotion Inc. came up with an ingenious, interactive, and low maintenance way to deliver it:
Lego cures all. One of the consequences of our device-obsessed world is RSI, or repetitive stress injury. But for artisan small business owners who are often performing the same tasks repeatedly this can be a career-killing injury. When Lynn Wyminga of Lynn’s Lids fell victim to a shoulder injury right before a big show, she […]
Rule #1: don’t put them to sleep. Content marketing is effective, but it’s not easy to plan. If it isn’t aligned to corporate priorities, it won’t get the right results. Without a focus on relevancy and customer needs, it might cause drowsiness. A recent study showed that nearly 50 percent percent of the 88 percent […]
Management consultant Peter Drucker said: “There are only two things in a business that make money – innovation and marketing, everything else is cost.” Is business actually starting to believe this and what are the implications for marketing vendors? Social business is far from dead. Business is experimenting with customer engagement in areas like content, […]
Page views? Time on page? Video views? Are these real content marketing performance indicators? No. Why not? If you know how much time was spent on a page, and that more time was spent on one page of content than another page, is that actionable information? Does it give you any insight into content ROI? […]
Measuring from awareness to action online is not simple. It’s an ecosystem, it’s a path, it’s a narrative. Whatever the new buying process is, it’s clear that a funnel is no longer what we’re working with … or is it? Data shows there are two customer trajectories for all but the most rote or impulse […]
Launching a new B2B presence on social networks with zero budget and no existing web presence on a Friday night? Requires tons of patience and you won’t really see results for months, right? Not necessarily. On September 19 2014 we launched the @b2bnewsnetwork Twitter account. We kicked off (somewhat unintentionally) at the worst time […]
You wouldn’t serve wagyu to vegans or request formal attire at your Burning Man meditation meetup. So why do marketers deliver untargeted content? Yes, bad content is everywhere, and any way to create more relevant, useful marketing content works for us. But a way to do that AND cut your content marketing production costs dramatically […]
Sometimes when you’re looking for something, you need to take a step back and figure out what you really need it for, and what you need from it. Today this type of context is completely missing from product information in the rush to sale. But let’s re-imagine how this happens online … You arrive at […]
1000 is critical mass in B2B. It’s the magic number where things will start to happen organically if you get a group together. But acquiring 1000 real meaningful Twitter followers is hard. We almost did it in 30 days (870 and counting!) Here are some things that worked for us that might also work for […]
