Rand Schulman SES Interview and Why Content Will Save America

I had the opportunity to sit down with Webmaster Radio last week at SES to discuss the rising importance of content marketing to SEO as well as how the role of “marketer” needs to change.  The shift in search and seo is indicative of the larger shift within the digital marketing community.  I also got a chance to discuss how our educational system is not designed to produce the type of marketers and engineers that are needed for the future and what can be done to change that.

It was really interesting to see how many content marketing companies are starting to pop up within the search community, specifically trying to put numbers to words.  After all, creativity without conversion = 0!  Listen to the interview over at webmaster world.

Writers get a social boost with InboundWriter

We are proud to have contributed to the successful launch of yet another innovative product this week!  Our client Eightfold Logic just launched InboundWriter, the first cloud-based social writing application of its kind.   InboundWriter integrates real-time search data and the dynamics of social media directly into the writing process itself to help content creators of all walks – marketers, bloggers, journalists, etc. – to write more relevant online content.  Its mission: increasing audience reach, engagement and conversions.   Put simply, InboundWriter taps into social intelligence to drive productivity and results for its intended user – writers.  

There are a lot of things about this product that make it a poster-child for Schulman+Thorogood.  First, InboundWriter is born of the growing inbound marketing mandate, with the objective of empowering writers to easily draw on the “wisdom of the crowds” to attract the right audience to their content.   It is designed for content engineers™ and will undoubtedly contribute to the momentum of the content marketing movement by redefining how we create relevant content.  Joe Pulizzi, a content marketing evangelist and the founder of the Content Marketing Institute agrees:  “Today’s brands have no choice, to get attention, they must be interesting — that means creating consistent, compelling content.  InboundWriter helps increase relevance, and is one of those ‘of the moment’ products that turns content into a more powerful strategic asset.” Read the rest of this entry »

STG Hits the Speaking Circuit to Talk about the ‘Death’ of Marketing

Call it the ‘Death of Marketing Tour,” a bit of a morbid title, but the theme is rapidly gaining traction. That’s because it’s not actually about the “death” of marketing, but about its total re-birth in the social era.

Pelin and I made two local speaking stops in the last two weeks to deliver STG’s though-provoking new presentation: “The Death of Marketing as We Know It: Adapting Marketing to Changing Customer Behaviors and Demands.” The presentation describes the sea change in marketing, from outbound to inbound programs; the rise of the “content engineer” to effectively engage the changing customer; and the importance of establishing a culture of measurement to optimize the marketing mix. The genesis for the presentation came from an essay STG wrote for Cornell Enterprise called “The Birth of Customer 2.0 & The Death of Marketing As We Know It.”

Our first stop last month: the San Diego Software Industries Council (SDSIC) on April 22. The feedback was great. Wrote one marketing executive: “This was the best presentation that I’ve attended through SDSIC to date (and I’ve attended quite a few). Congratulations on a successful event today!”

Our second stop: San Diego State University (SDSU), where we spoke to Karen Marchetti‘s Internet marketing class. The response was great there too, with many students engaging with us on emerging marketing careers in new media.

Earlier this spring, Pelin gave a similar presentation to the Cornell University Entrepreneurship and Innovative Institute. Last month, Pelin and Rand gave a university wide presentation at the University of the Pacific (UoP), which may be considering a future curriculum in  content engineering.

Pelin Thorogood Named One of 20 Women to Watch in Sales Lead Management

When it comes to optimizing the marketing mix to generate the highest quality and volume of sales leads, few can match Pelin Thorogood’s expertise. This was confirmed in April when the Sales Lead Management Association (SLMA) named Pelin as one of the 20 Women to Watch in Sales Lead Management.

Pelin joins a distinguished list of winners, including: Ardath Albee, Marketing Interactions; Lisa Arthur, Aprimo; Jeanne Hopkins, HubSpot; Maria Pergolino, Marketo; Jill Rowley, Eloqua; Jenny Vance, LeadJen; and others. See the full list.

Pelin expertise in sales lead management is forged by her background in web analytics, social media marketing and sales intelligence. During the more than years she has been advising InsideView, a sales intelligence leader, Pelin played a prominent role in helping define and nurture the Sales 2.0 movement, and recently went on to evangelize social selling. Prior to founding Schulman+Thorogood Group that, she served as SVP Marketing at web analytics and online marketing optimization pioneer WebSideStory, now part of Adobe Systems.

Pelin first wrote about Sales 2.0 three years ago in this article in InsideCRM: “Sales 2.0: How Will it Improve Your Business?” She later teamed with partner Rand Schulman to write about how to market to customers in the social era for her alma mater, Cornell University: “The Birth of Customer 2.0 & The Death of Marketing as We Know It.”

Congrats Pelin!

The Death of Marketing and the Birth of the Content Engineer at the University of the Pacific

As the web becomes cluttered with more data and spam generated by black hat games and content farms, relevant Content becomes more critical. The key is findability. Can your content be found? There are many ways to insure good results but there’s a lack of formal education around the new media and just how to do that. Though Web Analytics has been around for a decade, few really use it to optimize their work and we know why and it needs to be addressed by higer education and creating relevant graduates. But things are changing so quickly, so how do you that in this environment and what is the role of higher education in setting the foundation, and giving tools to future content creators?

I’ve been talking about a new disciple that I’ve called Content Engineering for about five years, and now I’m happy to say that higher education is addressing the issue head-on. Pelin and I are speaking to the students and facility, hosted by the Deans of the Business, Engineering and Liberal Arts schools at the University of the Pacific to share our vision of how Social Media is changing marketing and those of us who create content. What’s key is that UOP recognizes that students and future Content Engineers will need critical skills across disciplines – English & Communications; Business and Engineering. We expect to see more schools and universities create programs that address these requirements in the near future.

This is a good start.

A lesson in Marketing at Cornell (But…I was the teacher!)

I am here at beautiful but frigid Cornell, at the invitation of Steven Gal of the Johnson Graduate School of Business, to guest lecture at his entrepreneurial marketing class.  The reason for the invite:  MBA students are starved for practical knowledge on how to leverage social media and online marketing for their entrepreneurial efforts.   When Dr. Gal announced my impending visit to his colleagues, other entrepreneurship professors jumped at the opportunity to engage me as well.  My jam-packed schedule for the three days on campus include several classroom lectures, a lecture at the Cornell Entrepreneurship and Innovation Institute, meeting with the aspiring entrepreneurs of Cornell eLab, dinners with the entrepreneurship professors and few of their hand-picked students, as well as meeting with the Cornell Enterprise team.  Add to this the numerous ad-hoc meetings with individual student-entrepreneurs who want to pick my brain on their go-to-market models. You get the picture…Whew! Read the rest of this entry »

Bathwater, Cornell and the Adoption Myth…

It’s sure great to talk to real people for perspective. We don’t do it nearly enough. Those of us in Silicon Valley spend too much time talking to each other and obsess endlessly about the buzz du jour – Twitter’s analytics;  Facebook’s privacy; the newest browser; Google’s new search algorithm and the games SEOs play. We talk about Social CRM, Social Selling, Customer 2.0. viral, Freemium, brand  and conversions.  But it’s not the real world.

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What’s all the buzz about Inbound Marketing?

Rand and I just gave a very well-attended webinar to the Cornell Entrepreneur Network titled, “The Birth of Customer 2.0 and the Death of Marketing as we know it”. One of the primary trends we discussed is the emergence of Inbound Marketing – and given the tremendous interest, I wanted to talk a bit more about it here on our blog.

It is clear to all of us that online marketing and social media have dramatically changed the marketing practice over the past decade. They have certainly made it a lot more measurable and accountable – much more of a science. They have also made it a lot more interactive and collaborative with the target customer.

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