They can develop a relationship.

For the first time, marketers are presented with a way to engage directly with their audience through their messaging. Imagine trying to do that with a magazine ad! But with Facebook and Twitter and blog comments, marketers can engage in real-time. The emphasis has moved away from just broadcasting a message (i.e., set it and forget it). Marketers are now equally concerned with delivering the initial content as they are with the direct followups that result from engagement. And just as much as marketers want to engage, the audience wants to engage as well; which makes it doubly important that marketers really understand how relationships work because they are more than just connections with new and existing customers. Relationships are the new form of currency in the digital world.

Working with lots of customers as they create, manage, and optimize their digital presence, we’ve started to observe a fairly consistent pattern of behavior with respect to how digital relationships develop. The pyramid below describes it best.

1. At the bottom is awareness. The audience knows who the company is, but they don’t really think about it. The audience might say, “I know who Starbucks is, but I don’t go into their stores.” In the digital world, it’s very easy to become aware of a brand between social media, online search, and digital advertising. Brand is everywhere.
2. Next is acquaintance. In a world of users wanting to engage, this is the first step. The audience might think, “maybe I would go into Starbucks if I was wandering down the street, suddenly wanted coffee, and that happened to be the only coffee shop in 10 miles.”
3. After that is friend. The audience might say, “When I think coffee, I think Starbucks usually. I’ll branch out, just based on convenience (there’s a Dunkin Donuts right down the road, but Starbucks is a mile past that; yeah, I’m not traveling the extra mile). I do appreciate Starbucks product and their company. In fact, I like their Facebook page and sometimes check out their website for new stuff.”
4. After friend is confidante. If an audience members is a confidante, they are sharing info with Starbucks who is trying to personalize their experience. Starbucks wants to connect with them personally. WITH THEM! And on a personal level, that feels good that this big company wants to connect and that makes the individual want to connect with them. Maybe it’s through their reward card. An audience might say, “I actively seek them out for my coffee fix. I might even walk a little further down the road to get to one. When I’m on Google maps, I don’t search for “coffee shops” I search for “Starbucks.”
5. Finally, there is intimate. Every marketer wants an intimate relationship with everyone one of their digital audience. They want them to be their BFFs. A person who is Starbucks’ BFF might get into fist fights with people who dared to say that Dunkin Donuts’ coffee was better. This BFF might say, “I wear Starbucks apparel. I am active in their Facebook conversations. I share my Starbucks experiences with them. I am a loyal reward member and have provided lots of information to Starbucks that they use to make my experience with their digital presence and retail locations more personalized. I feel like Starbucks thinks I’m worthy to be their friend (you’d be surprised what people like this will tell you about themselves).”

So why is this important? First it enables marketers to better plan your approach. Knowing (or at least guessing) at what level the audience is enables marketers to better target content to them that will facilitate more engagement and, hopefully, a deeper relationship towards intimacy. Second, it shifts the focus away from calling our online audience “prospects” or “customers” or “converts” and starts to address them as “people” and “individuals.” An online audience isn’t a nameless group. They are a collection of different and unique people that want to be treated as such. Or at least feel like they are being treated as such. When marketers cross the boundary from “lead” to “person” they invite people to be vulnerable with them, to tell them things about themselves and their experiences with a product or service that they may only tell their closest friends.

An excellent Ted Talk by Brene Brown exploring vulnerability (and she’s a qualitative researcher so it’s not all fluffy feel good therapy stuff) provides some amazing insight into this.

The importance of digital relationships is forcing marketers to understand the psychology behind what makes people connect because understanding that drastically improves the success of people engaging through relevant, contextual, and targeted content.

Know your audience. Know them as people. Only then may you eventually know them as customers.

Below are a number of videos we created of Limelighters telling us how storytelling has impacted their lives and how they think Limelight can help organizations to have the same impact on their customers.

How has storytelling impacted your life? What stories do you remember? How do you interact with stories today? Chime in through the comments!

Bob Lento, Chief Executive Officer

Indu Kodukula, Limelight Networks COO

Kirby Wadsworth, Limelight Networks CMO

Phil Maynard, Chief Legal Officer

Doug Lindroth, Chief Financial Officer

Pablo Benjes, Limelight Networks VP of Operations

Jason Thibeault (“JT”), Limelight Networks Sr. Director of Marketing Strategy

Kevin Odden, Sr. Director of Digital Media

Watch an interview with the Limelight Sr. Director of Marketing Strategy, Jason Thibeault, discuss storytelling, storyshowing, and his upcoming Day 2 keynote at the StreamingForum in London (June, 2013).

And then head over to streamingmediaglobal.com to read an article by Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen on the power of storyshowing.

Learn what it takes to build, manage, and deliver an awesome digital presence.

Digital marketing is changing. You can’t just broadcast your message. You can’t just scream louder than your competitor. You have to be smart about it. You have to tell a story that can reach your customer wherever they are, on whatever device. With a consistent story that connects emotionally to your audience you’ll be able to rise above the digital marketing noise and really get their attention because you’ll have an awesome digital presence.

Below is the recorded webinar with Marketing Week.

 https://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/5932/75625

If you don’t want to listen (or want the slides) you can download below:

Content delivery is evolving. Getting your content from point A to point B is only half the problem. The other half is addressing the complexity of making sure that the right content is delivered to the right audience at the right time (to the right device). Content delivery is evolving by converging the physical delivery with the workflow pieces required to create and manage the content that enables customers to capitalize on a heightened level of efficiency to their business. This presentation explores how content delivery is evolving into an “outsourced business process” that includes content workflows integrated into the very delivery network and how businesses can benefit from the value provided by the integration of content publishing and delivery technologies.

1. Video is impactful, engaging…and growing. Cisco keeps predicting that video will continue to consume available IP space. And it’s no wonder, right? We all like to watch movies. We like TV. We like multi-sensory experiences. And it’s easier to watch a video on a smartphone screen than read a lot of text
2. Video is complicated. Despite the attempt by big companies (i.e., Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc.) and standard organizations to help simplify producing and delivering video, it’s still complicated. And it’s not going to get any less complicated any sooner given the proliferation of devices, players, environments, etc.

The presentation below was delivered as part of a panel called “Working with Video in the Clouds” put on by Streaming Media and featuring a lot of smart video people from a bunch of different companies like MediaPlatform, Haivision, and Harmonic. My presentation, specifically, really explores the idea of outsourcing the entire video workflow into the cloud using one of a variety of different service providers and their products (Limelight provides Limelight Orchestrate Video, for example). Heck, anything to make your life easier, right? Video workflow in the clouds definitely does it.

I recently gave a presentation at the Content2Conversion conference in New York in April that explored not only why this is important, but how to also make your own stories more impactful, meaningful, and ultimately, more engaging by adhering to 9 best practices. Click on the video below to watch a recorded broadcast of the presentation. I’ve also included some bullet points that capture the high level points communicated as part of the presentation and will be posting the slides from Slideshare soon.

And here are the high-level points in that presentation (in case you’ve already watched and just want those 9 Cs again; I’ve even bolded them):

1. Stories are important
2. Stories are containers for ideas that are easier to communicate when they are framed as a story. Example: traveling by yourself in the forest as a young child (which is a metaphor for the world) without parents or help can be dangerous because there are a lot of “wolves” out there. AKA, Little Red Riding Hood.
3. Stories evoke emotion. They make us laugh. They make us cry. They move us to action.
4. Movies are great examples of stories.
5. Digital changes everything by enabling stories with videos and images. By extending stories into cross-channel/multi-channel experiences (i.e., transmedia).
6. Digital supercharges stories to engage and improve intimacy
7. What makes a good story digitally for business?
8. #1: Connected. Stories have to connect us to other people. They have to involve us in a “shared” experience (no matter how much Facebook wants us to think we are the center of the digital universe, we really aren’t)
9. #2: Committed. Embracing storytelling isn’t a “one-and-done” mentality. Coca Cola has committed tens of millions of dollars to reshaping the way they engage and interact with audiences through content. It has to be a life-long change.
10. #3: Customer. The story has to be about the customer. Period. It can’t be about your product or your company.
11. #4: Character. The story has to have a character. That’s with whom the audience forms an emotional bond. They have to be in conflict. They have to have something to lose.
12. #5: Crescendo. The story has to have an ending. It has to wrap up somehow. You can’t leave audiences hanging.
13. #6: aCountable. The story has to be driven by numbers. If there’s no way to see where users disengage, no way to measure how effective the story is, then it doesn’t really serve any business purpose.
14. #7: Consistent. Users are on multiple devices every day. The story has to not only be available on all of them but has to be consistent across it. You can’t tell one story to one device and a different one to another. Branding, look and feel, style, tone. The experience has to be consistent.
15. #8: Conversion. The story ultimately has to convert audience members to customers. Otherwise, you are just wasting your breath.
16. #9. cEmotional. Stories have to be emotional. They have to elicit a reaction from the audience. Laughter. Crying. Shaking a fist. If the story fails to connect with an audience emotionally, they will forget it, and all your storytelling hard work will be for naught.
17. Stories are strung together with a narrative arc. That’s what drives emotion. When a character has something to lose, there’s a conflict to not lose it, and then there’s a resolution (either losing it or not losing it).
18. Stories evoke emotions. Biologically when our brains encounter a narrative arc (and we follow it) endorphins are released. There is a biological and chemical reaction that humans have to storytelling. That’s powerful.
19. Stories help us engage with audiences. Ultimately, they help us become more intimate with our audiences.
20. There’s a way to speed that up, though. It’s video.
21. There’s a “level of relationship” pyramid.
    1. At the bottom is awareness. Your audience knows who you are, but they don’t even think about you. I know who Starbucks is, but I don’t go into their stores.
    2. Next is acquaintance. Maybe I would go into Starbucks if I was wandering down the street, suddenly wanted coffee, and that happened to be the only coffee shop in 10 miles.
    3. After that is friend. When I think coffee, I think Starbucks usually. I’ll branch out, just based on convenience (there’s a Dunkin Donuts right down the road, but Starbucks is a mile past that; yeah, I’m not traveling the extra mile). I do appreciate Starbucks product and their company. In fact, I like their Facebook page and sometimes check out their website for new stuff.
    4. After friend is confidante. If I am a confidante, I’m sharing info with Starbucks who is trying to personalize my experience. Maybe it’s through their reward card. I actively seek them out for my coffee fix. I might even walk a little further down the road to get to one. When I’m on Google maps, I don’t search for “coffee shops” I search for “Starbucks.”
    5. Finally, there is BFF. Every marketer wants every one of their audience to be BFFs. If I was Starbucks’ BFF I would get into fist fights with people who dared to say that Dunkin Donuts’ coffee was better. I wear Starbucks apparel. I am active in their Facebook conversations. I share my Starbucks experiences with them. I am a loyal reward member and have provided lots of information to Starbucks that they use to make my experience with their digital presence and retail locations more personalized.
22. Video gets you to BFF faster because it helps accelerate engagement. When it’s combined with storytelling that means faster emotional connection.

- Jason Thibeault, Sr. Director, Marketing Strategy. You can connect with Jason on Twitter @_jasonthibeault.

This blog post is a recap of the webinar and provides highlights of the key points. I’ve also embedded the playback of the original webinar (for those of you who’d rather watch and listen than read; hint hint: the future of content is video…more on that later).

And now, here are the highlights. Because of the way this presentation was delivered, I am not going to provide a slide-by-slide walkthrough. If you want that, check out the webcast.

1. Most organizations’ digital presence suffers from one of two issues. First, they don’t even realize they have a digital presence. Second, they think it’s better than it actually is.
2. So what is a digital presence? It’s all that content you publish online. Your website. Your social media. But it’s also all the content that people publish about you. And it’s all the connections you make with your digital audience.
3. Your digital presence is ultimately about engagement. And there are multiple levels. For example, your audience may be aware of you (i.e., they know you are Starbucks but that’s it) but have never purchased anything. Moving to the next level, your audience might become your acquaintance. They might buy something from you but only because it’s convenient to them, not because they differentiate your brand or value from any of your competitors. Next, they might become your friend. They like you on Facebook. They like pages you post. They might even share some content into their own network. From there, they become a confidante. These audience members are on your social media, engaging in conversations all the time. They think you are better than your competitors and they tell their friends about it. Finally is the BFF. These are your brand evangelists. They have arguments with friends and family about how stupid they are not to be buying from you.
4. Digital Presence Deficiency is when your digital presence fails to get the reaction you want from your audience. So if your objective is to convert prospects into buying customers and they don’t convert, your digital presence has failed. Generally, you find this out through the numbers.
5. But there are a lot of ways that digital presences fail in general. Some of these include: static content (it has to be dynamic to keep your audience’s attention), lack of rich media (video really engages people), no mobile support (your digital presence has to be across all devices all the time anywhere your user is), not globally available (your digital presence is probably available in localities you didn’t expect; it has to perform well), slow (if users are waiting for things to load, they are going to your competitors), lack of conversation (if you are just telling your audience all the time, not listening, not engaging with them, it’s a dud), no metrics (your digital presence can’t be awesome if you can’t optimize it), and fragmented (it needs to be consistent across channels).
6. So how do you fix it if it’s broken?
7. Storytelling is a start.
8. But what story do you tell? It has to align with the purpose of your digital presence. Are you a seller (you want people to put a credit card # in and you will send them something in return)? Are you an influencer (are you trying to convince people to buy your product from somewhere else, like an automotive manufacturer)? Are you an informer (this is all about entertainment; you sell content like Netflix)? Or are you a facilitator (you kind of do everything: premium content, subscriptions, influencing to buy, transactions; this is like an online brokerage).
9. The key is that your story has to be consistent. We call that continuity. Across devices.
10. Once you’ve identified the kind of story you want to tell, you have to pick where you are going to tell it. You don’t have to tell it everywhere. But everywhere you tell it has to be consistent. Will you tell it on the Web? Via social media? In video? Directly through newsletters and email? Maybe in ads?
11. We have a mantra to help you: Show It. Tell It. Every. Way. Every. Where.
12. And here’s a secret to telling a great story. They need a narrative. That’s because narrative evokes emotion. Your audience will connect with your characters. Your story has to be about a character, in a narrative, doing something. There has to be a conflict and a resolution. It can’t be about your product or your company. The story has to be about your customer.
13. The other thing is about video. Video helps you get to the top of that pyramid quicker (see #3 above).
14. When it comes down to it, though, solving your digital presence deficiency woes isn’t just about technology or storytelling (which is a different way to market). It’s about three things. First is people. Everyone in your organization has to buy-in to your digital presence. They have to feel that they are a part of it. Second is process. You need to re-evaluate the processes by which you create content, publish it, and engage through it. It can’t all be just from the marketing department. Third is the platform. Disparate, disconnected tools will never do. Your digital presence is such a critical component of the success of your company that it has to be built on something that will grow as you do. A flexible platform.

- Jason Thibeault, Sr. Director, Marketing Strategy. You can connect with Jason on Twitter @_jasonthibeault.

- Jason Thibeault, Sr. Director, Marketing Strategy. You can connect with Jason on Twitter @_jasonthibeault.

Digital strategy. It’s the “how am I going to accomplish my objectives” part of your digital presence. Which is why it’s so important to get it right. Because if you are building processes and plans and measurement around a digital strategy that has fundamental flaws, well, you are setting yourself up for tragedy.

But what are those three flaws? What can turn your digital presence into Hamlet instead of the Sound of Music? This webinar will clarify how a critical flaw in your approach to mobile, social, and video can potentially leave your digital presence the victim of hubris rather than exalted by the gods of Olympus (or all your customers, whichever is more important).

Below is a recorded version of the webinar, the original slides (from Slideshare), a slide-by-slide explanation, and even some of the Q&A from the webinar.

Webinar

Slides

And here’s a REALLY cool rendition of the webinar in colorful markers from MarketingProfs. They really do rock.

Slide-by-Slide Explanation

Slide 1. Self explanatory

Slide 2. You probably already have a digital strategy. In fact, you might already in the throws of implementing it. The stage is set for your digital marketing greatness.

Slide 3. Hopefully that means you are getting ready to tell a new story, something that sets  your company apart from your competitors in the crazy digital world we live in.

Slide 4. And that’s lead you to here—connecting all the pieces of your digital strategy together.

Slide 5. Houston, we have lift off. You are launching your digital marketing efforts and it’s going to be awesome. Or so you think.

Slide 6. Is your digital presence in fact, fundamentally flawed? Are you destined to the pages of some terrible tragedy like Hamlet?

Slide 7. The problem is that you may not even realize your digital strategy is flawed. That means all of your digital marketing efforts, all that money and time, could be resting on a house of cards.

Slide 8. We learned about dramatic tragedies in school, about how some heroes (maybe like your digital strategy) are doomed to failure because of flaws like Hamartia, Hubris, and Anagorisis. Sometimes the flaws aren’t apparent or we fail to recognize them. But your digital strategy is no different than a dramatic tragedy, doomed to failure, if you don’t recognize the three flaws that may undermine it—treating mobile separately, publishing video just to YouTube (or other sites), and that social is just another channel to broadcast your message.

Slide 9. Mobile.

Slide 10. When you think about mobile as separate, you create multiple workflows, multiple processes. Everything you think about doing something on your site you have to rethink how to do that on mobile. That’s bad.

Slide 11. That creates more work for you. No one wants that.

Slide 12. But more than just more work, it means a complicated workflow when you have to publish content to more than one place differently. That makes it longer for you to get your content, your story, your digital marketing to your audience. And, of course, it means more elements to manage.

Slide 13. Ciena—a great example of a B2B company not treating mobile differently. It’s an integrated part of their strategy.

Slide 14. How did they do that? By defining a mobile experience that leveraged their existing content and by using a tool that could automatically create that mobile experience as part of its normal publishing process.

Slide 15. A little confused? It’s not, really. Trust me.

Slide 16. Ultimately, you have to stop thinking about mobile as a “device” and start thinking about mobile as a “behavior. When you do that, you get less concerned about screen sizes and content conversion and more concerned, like Ciena, about making a mobile experience (which can be automated through the right content management system).

Slide 17. So how did Ciena do it? They focused their workflow on creating content, regardless of channel, not converting it and selected a tool that enabled them to automate the production of that mobile experience. Ultimately, they realized they had to answer the question, “what kind of content do people want to see when they are not at their computer?”

Slide 18. Video.

Slide 19. When you publish your video just to other sites you are sending your audience away from your website (which is where you want them).

Slide 20. And that means you are disconnecting your audience from your story.

Slide 21. So what can you do? Simple. When you are publishing to YouTube, you can use their features to reconnect your video to your story. That means you get the benefit of YouTube traffic (to discover your video) but can ultimately get everyone back to your website.

Slide 22. Annotating your videos in YouTube is easy. What’s an annotation? An onscreen bit of text that you can link anywhere (cough cough to your website).

Slide 23. A great example of annotation as a call-to-action at the end of a viral video published by 3 (a UK mobile provider). They used an annotation to drive people to a site where they could engage directly with the story (of the dancing pony, yeah, don’t ask)

Slide 24. But annotations aren’t the only way to connect your YouTube videos to your story. This is GoDaddy. They have used the video description to not only reinforce story elements but to also drive users to a specific website.

Slide 25. The result of all that? You get more traffic at your website. That’s home base, just in case you don’t get the image. With this kind of strategy, you can generate a lot more runs!

Slide 26. Social.

Slide 27. Social is not just another channel (and especially one on a TV that old). You can’t use social networks to just broadcast your message that is the problem with digital marketing—it’s so easy to enable bad habits. Marketing is changing. It’s evolving from broadcasting a message to engaging with users.

Slide 28. What can you do to take advantage of that evolution? Two things. First, keep your social media in context. It has to be relevant to the expectations of the audience for the social network in which you are communicating. Second, you have to be like your audience.

Slide 29. Keep it in context.

Slide 30. The problem with old-school thinking embracing the new methods and opportunities in digital is the tendency to employ those new methods with that old thinking. That’s the trap of consistency. Because old school marketing, broadcast marketing, is all about volume—the same message in more places with more frequency will increase the chances of your audience acting on it. Uh, not in the digital world.

Slide 31. Context is changing everything. Technologies are emerging that make content relevant to the behavior of the individual audience members. That means you can target your messaging specifically to social networks AND individual users!

Slide 32. And the digital world, with all its devices, creates challenges for contextual targeting.

Slide 33. Because, remember, it’s not about the devices themselves. Mobile is about behavior. And the behavior with a device is different in different contexts.

Slide 34. In short, the social networks are not the same, especially across devices. Expectations of Facebook on a computer are different than LinkedIn on a mobile phone. How can you keep your content contextual? Look at how users engage with your content in each of the social networks. What are they reading? When are they reading? What kind of content, at what time of day, garners the most engagement? And, of course, fit the format. Don’t post 140 character updates in Facebook when users expect more. Finally, make it relevant. If you are just reposting content from other places, what’s the point?

Slide 35. Here’s a great example from Microsoft’s Facebook page. They could easily just show their products and post stats and details. Instead, they are posting content that puts their products in context. Take pictures with your windows mobile phone. Check out the Xbox gaming event. In short, social media is all about people and relationships and engagement. Not about products.

Slide 36. Be your audience.

Slide 37. What does that mean? It means you should be part of the conversation you are trying to start. Coca Cola does it right on their Facebook page. They are engaging with users not about customer service or products. They are engaging about their brand. In this case, their polar bears.

Slide 38. But British Airways? Not doing it so right. They are focusing their engagement entirely on customer service. Although it’s not bad to provide service through social media, they have started really awesome conversations about destinations and traveling and then let their audience to the talking. They need to be part of that audience (like Coca Cola).

Slide 39. In short, you can’t engage if you are observing. You can’t be like Coca Cola if all you are waiting for are people to post customer service issues.

Slide 40. Get plugged in. Get engaged.

Slide 41. But even companies doing it right on one social network may be doing it wrong elsewhere. Like Coca Cola on Twitter. They are just using the channel to publish messages. There are no re-tweets. No mentions. They are not engaging.

Slide 42. But McDonalds is. Notice all the re-tweets. They are actively engaging with users who are mentioning or engaging with them. It’s a conversation. An active and on-going one.

Slide 43. So how can you avoid the flaws?

Slide 44. By making mobile, social, and video part of your digital DNA. They can’t be just parts of your strategy. Just different aspects. They have to be part of every aspect, of the very way that you approach your audience in the digital world.

Q&A

What are your favorite services/tools that automatically convert to mobile?
It seems that this feature is becoming integrated more often than not with service providers. So on the video side, Limelight Orchestrate Video, Brightcove, Ooyala, Kaltura, Sorenson Cloud, even Encoding.com. They all automatically convert video to mobile devices (some better than others, some more automated, etc.). On the content management side, Orchestrate Content Management can automatically convert webpages to mobile. Not sure on competitors like Sitecore and Crownpeak.

Do you know any user friendly (easy) editing tools for video?
I promised I would look through my notes to find this. Yes! Wevideo.com is an awesome online, collaborative video editing tool. Really spectacular.

Do you think that we are seeing a kind of “social media bubble”, like the real estate one? Isn’t it possible that in a couple of year´s time the social media marketing will settle down with a different tempo and/or intensiveness?
It’s absolutely possible. I think right now, companies are feeling, “hey, this is easy to publish so publish more.” That’s old-school thinking—all about volume. So yes, as marketing continues to evolve away from broadcast-messaging and to engagement, the way marketers publish and use social media will change.

Can you talk more about LinkedIn? As a financial services company, our biggest presence is on this site rather than on FB or Twitter.
This is all about your audience. If you are finding it better to engage with users through LinkedIn, then that’s where you should focus your efforts. Obviously it is more “business” oriented and so may favor certain industries like financial.

What is a better alternative to posting your videos on youtube?
Well that’s the funny part, right? There isn’t. You should post there BUT you should also post on your own website. Many video management tools, like Limelight Orchestrate Video, Brightcove, and Ooyala allow you to publish to multiple places like your website, YouTube, Vimeo, etc. Don’t limit yourself. But also don’t just publish to those external places. Make sure you use features like YouTube’s annotation (and the video description) to tie the video into your story.

Coca Cola, British Airways and McDonalds are B2C companies. How can B2B companies advertise and promote themselves on social media?
You have to remember that all your B2B buyers? Yeah, they are consumers too. They go to grocery stores and book stores and gas stations. They are people. Connecting with your customers through social networking is less about connecting with them as customers and more about connecting with them as people.

What content do people want to see on mobile?
That depends on the type of content that you publish and who your audience is. If you are a networking company, like Ciena, they probably want to see a different kind of content than if you are a financial services company. The best thing to do is to survey your audience. Get them involved. Use social media. Find out what they want to see when they are interacting with your brand and company while mobile.

Are you saying you should have different information on mobile vs. a website?
Again, it depends on your audience. In some cases, yes. The expectations and desires of your audience may be to see different content when they are mobile. In other cases, it may be the same. I would conjecture that it’s a combination of content—part of your core messaging/branding (like product information) along with content that is more germane to mobile.

Can you engage consumers on your website or is it only mobile and social that provides this experience?
Today’s websites (and all the technologies we integrate into it like Marketing automation, blogging, etc.) provide ways to engage directly with users through your website. And when you consider that you can integrate the social experience directly into your website, it’s possible to create an entire experience around engagement right at home base.

One of the problems with Linkedin is everyone is ‘selling’…. thoughts on creating conversation?
LinkedIn provides an awesome “group” feature. As a moderator of a group, you have the right to limit, expunge, or promote messages from group members. So if a member posts something that solicits, you can either boot the message or move it to a specific part of the group expressly for solicitations. You are in control.

How long will the trend to drive rankings using Press Releases last?
Honestly, I was unaware that was a trend. Press releases are definitely undergoing an evolution themselves as the web disintermediates companies like PRWeb. Why is PR so effective in driving traffic? Simple—the distribution service publishes a text-based post rich with keywords all over the place that gets re-posted by news services. It’s like instant networking. So long as that system stays in place, marketers will use it as one of their entry-points to awareness.

I am able to provide useful content for my audience; but unless I am directing them to my website as a landing page for content, wherein, it borders self promotion. How can I bring people back to my website when posting indirectly related content?
Again, that’s an old-school mentality. When you publish “in-direct” content, it’s not about you. It’s about your audience. You are giving them something they need, not selling them, not telling them to come back to your website. You are creating an indirect connection between your brand and the audience. Don’t sully awesome content like this by connecting it to you at all. Your audience will connect you with it themselves, don’t worry.

How do you respond when people say they need to be able to measure ROI on digital?
I kiss their feet. No, really, we HAVE to measure the digital on ROI. We just have to understand that digital marketing is very complex. It’s not a 1:1 relationship between activity and lead generation. Some digital marketing activities like creating thought-leadership content and building a trust relationship with the audience through engagement, is not going to produce leads tomorrow. Different success metrics have to be developed for different kinds of activities.

What do you recommend for automated marketing software?
Ha, what everyone uses! Marketo and Eloqua.

- Jason Thibeault, Sr. Director, Marketing Strategy. You can connect with Jason on Twitter @_jasonthibeault.