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.”

Second, InboundWriter is about increasing audience reach, engagement and conversion through content optimization.  The product enables writers to experiment with different words and writing strategies and observe in real-time the impact to potential content popularity.  This is right in our sweet spot!   After all, we are all about combining left brain and right brain action to ensure creativity can indeed drive business results.  We will surely be blogging about the ROI of relevant content as we analyze reach, engagement and conversion metrics for content “optimized” by InboundWriter.

Last but certainly not least, a social product deserves a social go to market plan – which is exactly what we delivered.  InboundWriter is using one of our favorite pricing models to drive adoption: Freemium.   Similar to some of the most widely used social applications such as Skype, LinkedIn, Hootsuite and Tweetdeck, the basic version is 100% free.   If the product delivers on its promise, the power of viral marketing will drive hoards of new users to InboundWriter…and a certain percentage of them will opt for the additional functionality and upgrade to the “professional” version.  Already, the TechCrunch article and the slew of additional coverage drove hundreds of sign-ups to the product in just day one.  It will certainly be interesting to see how these “free” users convert to “paid” users and identify any differences in product adoption rates for different segments of writers.   The next several months appear to be ripe with the promise of new metrics for social media marketing success – so stay tuned!

It sounds like one of those chicken or the egg questions…and given all the buzz about Sales 2.0 technologies and methodologies, you might be tempted to answer “Sales 2.0”.  But I think Sales 2.0 is really the sales organizations response to the “evolve or die” mandate they face, given the smarter and more informed buyer they have to sell to: Customer 2.0.   I do believe the customer has evolved faster than the sales guy…and I believe this is – at least in part – due to how B2B trends typically follow B2C.  Prospects who are looking to make B2B purchase decisions are also consumers, and have been making B2C decisions for a long time.  Access to online reviews, comparison shopping engines, Facebook or Twitter “conversations” on products and services they are evaluating has turned them into much wiser B2C buyers…So, why not transfer that same process, powered by “social intelligence”, to the B2B buying cycle? 

I started an earlier blog post with the observation “We market and sell in a brave new world where prospects are equipped with near x-ray vision into companies, products and people they are considering doing business with.”  This statement implies Customer 2.0 holds all the cards!  Hence, evening out the playing field requires sales to be just as knowledgeable about the buyer and bring real value to the sales process by demonstrating why their products and services can solve the customer’s unique business challenges.  Relevance emerges as the key to synchronizing the selling cycle with the buying cycle.  Armed with a 360° view of their prospect’s business that can only come from “listening to” them and engaging them through social media, sales people now have the opportunity to gain the deep insights necessary to get Customer 2.0’s attention – insights that will drive Customer 2.0 into deeper engagement with your company and delivering on the ultimate promise of Sales 2.0!