By Graeme Foux, Knexus CEO Cloud computing and Software-as-a-service are two of the hottest topics of discussion in the technology community today. So if you’re a marketer, you may feel now is the moment to turn away and find something more interesting and relevant to read. Well don’t, because this is a topic that has the potential to be hugely liberating for marketers. The sooner you grasp the concepts, the quicker you can deploy this insight to create great digital experiences for your customers and enhanced revenues for your company. So what is ‘Cloud Computing’. Put simply, with Cloud Computing...

Guest blogger Chris Bagnall, managing director for DWA, questions whether there is the right share on the time, effort and budget spent creating content versus promoting it What content can doThe Internet has fundamentally changed the traditional B2B sales and marketing process. Prospective customers for a huge percentage of products and services can access a wide range of information to aid their purchasing decisions often without learning about a company through direct dialogue. The amount of content available online to aid decisions is vast but is it necessarily in the right format to be consumed by your audience and can...

In the next few weeks I become a Dad. So, over the last few months I have spent a lot of time reading about what my wife can and can’t eat or drink, buggies that cost the same as a car, sleeping routines, leaving your baby in the garden with the foxes and a lot more – what did people do before the internet? You may think that, true to form, I am now going to go on a rant about something -  paternity and maternity leave as a business owner, perhaps? But no, I actually want to share with...

It’s now back to reality after a fantastic Christmas and New Year break, the latter part of which was spent with friends skiing in the French Alps.  Don’t worry, the irony of returning to the UK in the midst of the most extensive snow fall for decades was not lost on me! That said the skiing was great and the company excellent. I went with a group of friends, a couple of whom are business owners. One of whom had organised the accommodation (yes all sourced and booked online), and very nice it was too, but knowing him as I do,...

I had the pleasure of speaking at an event dedicated to B2B marketers recently the theme of which was around digital marketing. I spend quite a lot of my time talking with B2B marketers and business owners, at events or in individual meetings, but it is rare that I have seen so much interest in one topic. That topic was social media. The whole room seemed obsessed about how to get out there and start ‘doing social media’. What really surprised me though was not the interest in the latest buzz phrase/‘must do’ marketing solution, but the fact that so many of the...

Great news that Twitter and LinkedIn have finally enabled update sharing – what took them so long? Finally this innovation provides a means of updating the two primary business-focused social media platforms in one go. Goddamit, it might event get me tweeting again!As Twitter founder Biz Stone (great name) says, "it's like bringin' the peanut butter and chocolate together!"Quite.LinkedIn is also promising further integration down in the next few months – is B2B social media finally coming of age?...

Many years ago, superheroes were a relatively obscure cult. You were only likely to be interested in them if you were a child or a strangely malformed adult.These days, however, in the wake of numerous big budget Hollywood remakes of 1960s classics – including not one but two reinventions of Batman – superheroes are everywhere. Just as ‘Lord of the Rings’ turned us all into geeks, these days we all have a superpower fantasy… or is that just me?Anyway; so mainsteam have superheroes become these days that they’re even being used in the obscure world of B2B marketing – shock,...

I was just on our B2B Marketing LinkedIn Group (a plug already!) and I read a response to a question I have heard a lot lately. “Where do I put my marketing spend in 2010?” Do I keep a good mix or bin traditional marketing in favour of digital, as it’s cheaper. The thing is, in today’s market I think this general talk of shifting away from traditional spend to digital is already outdated. “Digital” is not new anymore, I know we’re not yet hanging out with Star Trek's Captain Picard but come on; we’re online most of the day...

You can't run – but you can hide.The old maxim seems to have been reversed for social media, and it raises some big issues for those of us involved in making the web work in B2B marketing.What I mean is that when an individual contributes to the online content pool, that information is released to the mercy of others. You can't run away from it: once you've posted, it's out there and there's nothing you can do to get it back. This can work for you or against you: ask Domino's Pizza.But for me, the interesting point right now is...

Video used to be a nice-to-have for websites, with the cost of production generally precluding all but the biggest B2B brands from getting involved. But with changes in how search engines view and rate traffic, online video is becoming an increasingly important weapon for brands seeking to maximise the visibility of their websites, engage with visitors and ultimately convert leads into sales. The exclusive below, from our recent half day seminar on search engine marketing, covers this issue in detail, including interviews with presenters from Google, Salesforce.com and Base One Group....