If you haven’t already heard, a gradual revolution is taking place in B2B digital marketing, especially regarding the professional services arena.

Earlier, the focal point of the B2B digital universe centered around the website. All B2B marketers had but one goal: Do whatever was necessary to bring folks back to the main website. Yet nowadays, the online world has undergone a change. A brand new game is being played that revolves around the customer (as opposed to the company). Multi-channel marketing, from iphones to tablets to video clips, has shifted the epicenter of the digital universe off the old standby — the website — and on to the individual customers instead. The current mantra is: Be interesting, dynamic and discoverable wherever your customers are.

One company at the forefront of multi-channel marketing is Deloitte. One metric succinctly tells the story: Since starting video podcasts–brief interviews with thought leaders–one year ago, Deloitte noticed that every video is downloaded roughly 3,000 times. Quite a difference when compared with 1,000 average downloads per white paper. The advantages are especially striking when you take into account the fact that videos can take 1/12 of the time it would take to produce  a white paper. The videos have actually become so successful that Deloitte releases a new one every week.

I interviewed two Deloitte digital marketing executives: Jennifer Chico, Director of Internet Marketing, and Kelly Nelson, Marketing Leader, Deloitte Analytics. Here are some tips from their experience at Deloitte.

WENDY MARX: Tell us about your new digital marketing model.

JENNIFER CHICO: We’re changing from the old fashioned, “hub and spokes” to an entanglement model. If you imagine a wheel, it used to be that our website was in the center, and the spokes included email-marketing, Google advertising, and other strategies to bring traffic back to the website. Today, we’re shifting more towards an entanglement model. This model needs us to be relevant and discoverable across a wide array of different channels. With that being said, Deloitte.com is still the basic home base for digital strategy, but it’s no longer everything. We have to be where the customers is, be interesting, and most importantly — easy to find.

How does your new, dynamic relationship with the customer influence content?

KELLY NELSON: We’re taking tips from B2C companies — the content is usually short, sweet, and gets right to the point. There’s also a focus on benefits, and consumers are addressed in a familiar, recognizable way. In previous times, we used to began the white paper with a big piece of thought leadership. We thought, “Why don’t we flip it around? Instead of starting with the with the big thing, let’s begin with the seed, the small idea.” Many people simply aren’t interested in reading a dense, twenty page document. Now we begin with smaller sections, like our three-minute guides. Afterwards, we take a look at the results and see where the interest lies; if there appears to be tons of interest in a certain topic, we’ll go into more depth with it.

What other approaches are you taking with content?

NELSON: Good question. We’re going with a blog-like approach. We post conversational-style content and can be about anything from analytics about talent to supply chain management. It’s brief–roughly two paragraphs or less–and emphasizes the conversation more than omnipotent “thought leadership”. The consumer needs to see you as an approachable friend they would turn to for advice. For instance, “here’s a couple of things to think about when thinking about tax season.”

What exactly do you measure?

CHICO: Here is what we examine to measure our effectiveness: The awareness and engagement we’re driving, the volume and reach, the amount of engagement we’ve stirred up from various outlets–are we having a give and take conversation ? Have we improved on the conversation rate? Have we sparked action? Did they subscribe to something? Download anything? View a podcast? If the answer to any of these questions is “yes”, we know our efforts are having their desired result.

Did you join the B2B digital revolution? I would love to hear what you’re doing — please share!

Wendy Marx, B2B PR & Marketing Specialist, Marx Communications. Follow me on Twitter @wendymarx.

In today’s digital age, the tendency to fess up is akin to getting a second helping of desert. No one plans on it, but everyone does it. Therefore, it comes as a surprise that an old fashioned term like “off the record” still means something.

Take an example from the last presidential election. Samantha Power, one of Obama’s advisors, referred to Hillary Clinton as a “monster” while being interviewed by a Scottish reporter.  She had supposedly gone off the record but only after she had disparaged Clinton. Unfortunately for her, Power forgot the most important aspect of the “off the record” rule: first, establish some ground rules. With that being said, many of the U.S. journalism establishments were outraged at the incident. They felt that a journalist must abide by an “off the record” request, even if it were given later. “Off the record,” refers to the traditional practice in journalism where select information can’t be printed or attributed to the interviewee. It’s occasionally confused with talking on background (providing info which can be printed without a requirement for attribution).

Although a good amount of journalists accept these three little words, PR professionals are largely put off by the phrase. This is due to the fact that many of us have been burned by it. PR coordinator Timothy Vassilakos puts it nicely: “Off the record exists until you get burned once.”

As many PR pros have noticed (take a look at the interesting conversation on LinkedIn about this topic), there’s an implicit debate between the journalists and the PR professionals. Journalists, or at least the driven, stop-at-nothing-to-get-the-story ones, see themselves as truth seekers. They go to great lengths to unearth the “real story”, not the superficial, glossy one. In comparison, PR folks are most interested in looks, branding, and building relationships. In other words, they want to put their client in the most favorable light without lying. Think of it like this: Journalists want to yank the toupee off, so to speak; the PR person wants to stick it back on.

Yet bear in mind that there are always complications and fuzzy, grey areas. From our experience in the B2B PR field, off the record generally works if you have a good relationship with the reporter and can really trust him or her. Ultimately though, you are always taking a risk that your “off the record” statements may end up in print.

Ed Shapson, PR professional, asserts that, “It’s a mighty big gamble. You don’t want to see some statement printed in tomorrow’s newspaper or aired on the evening news? Then don’t make it!” Well put, Ed.

At this point you may be asking yourself, “why do it?” In addition to the human tendency to want to spill the beans, it can also function as a method of building relationships with reporters. However, as Cosmin Patlagenurisks remarks in the conversation on LinkedIn, there are much better ways to develop relationships: “Keep your word, deliver on time, say you can’t when you can’t, be there when you’re needed.”

Here are a few questions to think about as you consider going off the record:

• What’s might occur if the reporter fails to honor your off-the-record request and prints it instead? What could the consequences be?
• What (if anything) are you gaining by going off the record?
• Did you purposefully set the ground rules? In other words, did you define “off the record” and what that entails? I say this because a reporter from The New York Times recently proposed a different definition of off the record than the commonly accepted one.

You may see what I’m trying get at here. Unless you have an excellent reason for going “off the record” — and you’re absolutely positive you can trust the journalist – it may be wiser to keep your lips sealed. Remaining silent is the safest approach to guarantee that your private thoughts won’t be discovered by the general public.

Do you agree? Disagree? I’d love to hear your thoughts…

#1 Mistake: For instance, claiming that you’re releasing a new product that will revolutionize the industry is usually worthless from a PR point of view (unless of course you are on a Steve Jobs level or engineered something like a cure for cancer)–not to mention not extremely believable. You would be much better served on the other hand, by discussing what’s meaningful to your customers. What are their wants and needs? What problems do they have that haven’t yet been solved? That makes what you’re doing real, accessible, and most importantly — useful.

But hold on a sec.

#2 Mistake: B2B companies in our experience tend to over-play products to the exclusion of expertise. Products can best be promoted with product sheets, advertising and demos, and finally lavished with awards.

#3 Mistake:  This one is crucial. Especially if you’re included in the broad territory of B2B small and mid-size companies, the media (and bloggers) could care less about the next version of your product — especially if it only includes a couple minor tweaks. That has the same effect as if you were to claim that you invented air. It’s meaningless to everyone except you.

The only thing customers and potential clients want to know is how your product can help them. Will it make their life easier? Will it save them time and money? Bring in more profits? Can you help them solve key problems or make them smarter?

In that respect, here are five tips to help make you more appealing to your customers and ultimately the media:

1. Make regular blog posts about your particular area of expertise and only mention your new product as a side-note. End your post with a call to action about your product or service. Remember to link your post to various social media outlets. Oh, and don’t mention your product/service in every post! This comes off as too “salesy”.
2. Issue a white paper about an industry problem your product helps address. Don’t make it entirely about your product. Instead, focus on the industry challenges aspect. Also, make sure it’s easy to share with social media.
3. Poll clients about an issue your product addresses and post the results of your poll in various social media platforms.
4. Put together a short video describing the challenges your product helps solve (again,  focus more on the issues, not on your product) and link this to your white paper at the end of the video. Post this video your website, YouTube, and post a link to this on as many social media sites as possible (noticing a pattern?!).
5. Issue an interesting facts-sheet that includes industry challenges your product helps to address. Be sure to include some major issues. Once again, focus on the challenges, not your product.

A Poster Child for B2B PR

In the B2B space, one company doing an excellent job is Deloitte. True, they are certainly a large corporation, but smaller companies can still learn from them. For instance, take a glance at their analytics page. It serves as a model for what B2B companies should strive to acheive online. It contains everything, including videos, debates, engagement, white papers, as well as a short ebook. The page also makes it a piece of cake to share all its content on social media and interact with the company on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and its website. Here’s to you, Deloitte!

Do you have other great examples of companies (or their work) for B2B PR? I would love to hear your thoughts…

This article originally appeared in a slightly different form on Fastcompany.com

While everyone’s business has had to change in this 24/7 always-on, mobile world, we as PR practioners (and here I am as guilty as anyone!) often release news according to our schedule and timing, not that of the media. Like gladhanding politicians, we knock on journalists’ virtual door fronts with our campaign literature (that is news releases) in hand, asking the media to endorse us by writing our story–not their story.

Scott asks a basic but also profound question: What if you reverse the equation? What if instead of reaching out to journalists on your schedule, you get them to find you? Fortunately, digital devices, including mobile, have made it easy for reporters to find sources. And that source might as well be you. One of the best ways to do that is to mash up mobile with social media to concoct a timely, enticing brew that will be quaffed by journalists. Or as Scott calls it, you can “newsjack,” commenting on a breaking story in a way that journalists will find you.

“It’s really a matter of understanding that we live in a 24-hour real-time world,” says Scott. “Reporters can be working at home, on the road, on their iPhone when they are at a baseball game. You can reach them any time. You need to create content optimized for their devices so that reporters will find that when they are writing a story.”

Here are 5 ways Scott recommends doing just that:

1. Write for mobile. Index your site for the mobile search engines so people can find your content on their mobile devices. Make your content visible on the small screen.
2. Monitor keywords and phrases on Twitter so you are on top of the news and trends in your industry.
3. Spot regulatory changes in your industry so you can comment in real time on Twitter about those changes.
4. Create content and comment in real time via a blog, media alert and/or Twitter when news is breaking so media will find you .
5. Construct today’s version of the that old standby, the press kit–a mobile app with a feed of content  optimized in an application for reporters that includes press releases, blog posts, video, and Twitter feeds. Here is a link to David’s app.

Since no good list is complete without a “NOT to DO,” piece of advice, here is one caveat:

Don’t use all the new technology as an invitation to spam reporters on their mobile phone or Twitter feed. Don’t send that uninvited text message. It will likely backfire.

We, as PR practitioners, need to be as nimble and quick as a reporter or blogger on deadline and be anywhere they are likely to find you–on mobile, on social media, on a blog, on video. All you need to do is seize the opportunity. How are you adapting PR for a mobile world?

Both a lot and a little.

While we most likely won’t have a special offer to promote in 140 characters or less, Twitter has much more to offer for B2B companies.

PS: I am well aware of the latest buzz about how Google+ might be a Twitter killer but (at least for now) I don’t recommend abandoning Twitter. Actually, you can even incorporate your Twitter feeds into Google+.

6 methods B2B companies can use to make the most of Twitter:

• A Digital Hearing Aid. Twitter gives one the invaluable ability to listen to what people are saying about your industry/brand/company as well as the competition. Utilizing tools like HootSuite or TweetDeck, it’s a piece of cake to create targeted lists of people to follow or keywords to monitor. In this way, you can build your own virtual focus group to get a better understanding of the needs of your potential or existing customers, and keep an eye on what’s going on with your competitors.  Choosing not to do this means ignoring a critical market intelligence tool.

• Thought Leadership. The key word here is “focus.” Select several topics related to your business and habitually tweet about them. For instance, I talk about B2B PR and try my best to tweet on it 50% of the time. A combination of tweets on that subject, mixed with some broader content, sprinkled with a bit of strategic retweeting strikes a nice balance. While you want to be focused, you also don’t want to tire out your followers by beating a one note drum.

• Brownie & IQ points. Retweeting lets you showcase what others are say about you. It’s completely a win-win situation. While you’re helping someone else and winning his/her support, you’re simultaneously furthering your own thought leadership. Think of it as your Neitzsche moment. Think about it…if you quote an thought leader, a bit of their insight and reputation reflects on you. Retweet a wiseman, (or woman!) and you too by association will be seen as wise.

• Prospect/Partner Dance. Twitter offers you the opportunity to dance with (or at least reach out to) almost anyone — from President Obama to a new prospect you’d like to connect with. With roughly 200 million people tweeting, there’s a decent chance that a potential client you have been looking at could be tweeting away behind the back of you head. At the very least, you can get a sense of a prospect and/or partner’s interests. You can begin by  just observing. After that, you can make a comment or retweet something. This will help begin a dialogue with them. The key word is “dialogue.” Avoid being a bullhorn  and blasting away like too many other companies on Twitter. Instead, interact and engage. Keep in mind that just because you haven’t gotten any new business right away doesn’t mean you fail. Obviously, it will take more than a couple tweets to spark someone’s interest in what you do. However, you can start interacting with people who ordinarily wouldn’t be accessible, such as the CEO of a large firm. It can be as simple as retweeting them. Or commenting on something he/she has said. Eventually, you’ll want to take it offline and make an old-fashioned phone call…but Twitter can help make that happen a lot sooner.

• Media outreach. I love the terminology Sarah Skerik, of PR Newswire used when referring to Twitter. Sarah’s term: the new Rolodex. Twitter gives you another method to engage media analysts, and as Sarah says, “get inside their heads in a way you never could before.” Once again, you should listen before doing anything. You’ll get an inside look into the content they view as important.  This will give you a better understanding of what they like when you eventually decide to engage them.

• Search engine and web visibility. Want to drive more traffic to your website or article? (I think everyone does these days!) The search engines reward links from folks on Twitter who have “authority.” This means having people post links to your content — people who regularly post about your topic and have a plethora followers.

So, what are you waiting for?! Get out there and start tweeting. And feel free to say hi to me @wendymarx. I look forward to hearing from you on Twitter and perhaps elsewhere.

What’s the deal with The Economist and public relations?

This year the magazine has written several tirades against public relations professionals. In its latest outbreak, they haughtily refers to PR people as “flacks,” slime-slingers,” members of the “dark side” and “urban foxes” along with other terms of endearment.

Wow. What happened to objectivity and remaining open-minded?

According to The Economist, the issue is that there are simply too much “brazen flacks,” (who it mistakenly identifies as men, when there are actually a predominance of women in the profession) who supposedly spend all of their time “hassling reporters to run crummy stories.”

The perniciously toned article seems like the writer took in a few sardonic journalists’ views on PR from nearly a century ago. It even quotes a 1928 book by Edward Bernay, an early PR pioneer, as proof of the profession’s unscrupulousness.

That’s a bit like finding an early medical textbook about blood-letting and claiming that defines the medical practicioners’ trade. Could this be any more ridiculous?

Here’s a suggestion for the piece’s author: how about he/she speaks to some of the women dominating the field of public relations today since this person still thinks it’s a male-dominated field. To begin with, here are two excellent lists of women in PR (I’m greatly honored to be listed on both). One is compiled by the altruistic, savvy Valentine Belonwu (@bigmoneywebs) and the other by the amazing, extremely hard-working duo of Cheryl Burgess (@ckburgess) and Tom Pick (@tompick).

As a long-time B2B public relations professional, I can honestly say that there has never been (in my 20+ years in the field) as exciting a time to be in PR. That’s largely due to the vast expansion of the public relations landscape from the Internet. Nowadays, for instance, there are almost an infinite amount of ways to get the word out. This includes everything from tweeting an article, posting it on your own blog/website, spreading it on Facebook, LinkedIn and MANY other social media hubs; talking about it on a video email, in a podcast, in a webinar, or on other people’s blogs. Come to think of it, if you can’t find a way to talk yourself up today, you’re probably doing something very wrong.

Of course, there is always the media. However, a legitimate PR pro’s job has never been, “to pitch a crummy story” as the Economist claims, but rather to turn what might have been a “crummy story” into something engaging. For instance, there’s an exceptional story I read some years ago regarding scientists training elephants in Africa. It was a new training program and they were having a day where they were showing off the elephants’ accomplishments. A sharp PR person transformed this into the First Ever Graduating Class of Elephant University — taking what might have been mundane and made it memorable. To me, that’s being creative. This is the duty of any PR professional worth his/her salt.

What’s your take on this? I look forward to hearing from you.

I hope all of you answered “yes,” since almost anyone in business can be considered an expert.

You heard me right.

If you simply know a bit more than the next person (and in some field I guarantee that you do), you are an expert. Your expertise can be anything from doing statistical analysis … to copy writing … to search engine optimization … to…well, you get the idea.

And the best part is that in today’s digital age, you don’t have to keep your expertise a secret. The online world has made it possible for anyone to display their expertise via blogs and various social media platforms.

With that being said, expertise can only get you so far. Another ingredient that goes hand-in-hand with expertise is confidence. Yep, regular, tried and true confidence. Mix expertise with a generous dash of confidence and I guarantee your talents will shine. However, if either one is missing, you’ll either be full of hot air, or overflowing with knowledge that few will be able to appreciate.

I especially like how Tony Schwartz, President and CEO of The Energy Project and the author of Be Excellent at Anything: Four Keys to Transforming How We Work and Live, defines confidence in a recent Harvard Business Review piece:

“Confidence equals security equals positive emotion equals better performance”.

Don’t think for a moment that confidence and expertise are outside your reach. The final ingredient is practice.

Keep in mind that you won’t suddenly be fully articulate and adept at writing without a good deal of hard work. As Schwartz states in the HBR article, “Deliberate practice will almost always trump natural aptitude.”

I was struck by this the other day when I heard an NPR interview with Rep. Gabby Giffords, the Arizona congresswoman, recovering from a major brain injury after being shot. Giffords, who is re-learning how to speak, was still able to give her nurse, who was preparing for a media interview, some advice picked up from her years before the public eye. Her two words of advice: “practice, practice.”

I can’t reiterate those two words enough. Although someone may seem to be a polished performer or speaker, keep in mind that years of hard work and practice are responsible for that.

Of course, one must be disciplined to practice. It’s easy to give up and say you can’t master a something. That you just don’t have what it takes or it’s too difficult to pull off. In reality though, you can go further than you think you can if you continue to learn and practice.

How have you found that practice improves your performance? I’d love to hear from you.

This post initially appeared in a slightly different form on the FastCompany blog

In the “good news” department, we are honored to have been named One Of The Top 50 Women on Twitter. Kudos to Cheryl Burgess and Tom Pick for creating this.

Those were 4 quick ways to increase the chances of your copy getting read. 5 more tips later … keep on reading!

According to web usability guru Jakob Nielson, people aren’t scrutinizing  your copy. Instead, they skim through it for keywords. The first paragraph of an article is the most likely to be read in addition tol the first few words of a sentence. In fact, the average person reads just 20% of what you write!

I hope I at least got you to read that paragraph

You also need to break up your copy with info, graphics, photos and visuals — especially video when applicable.  If YouTube has taught us one thing, it’s that video works.

The B2B world presents more of a challenge since our content doesn’t  have the inherent attraction of consumer content. With that being said, it can still be snappy and engaging. B2B marketing company HubSpot is extremely proficient at this. They effortlessly combine blog posts with exciting visuals (including plenty of video) and lead generation tools, all in a nice, easy to read package.

Here are five tips to help drive positive attention to your copy while keeping your readers engaged and … reading.

1. Avoid jargon and acronyms. No HSAA, NCA, NMA, DSP, RTB … .However specialized the field you are working with, delete inside slang and acronyms. Never underestimate the ability of insider buzz-words and jargon to pester and turn away your target audience.

2. Avoid over-promotion. It is far better to aim to inform and engage rather than self-promote in order to gain interest.

3. Be yourself. People respect authenticity. If you use your own style of writing, you can expect much more of a response.

4. Use the proper keywords. Keywords are important words or phrases that rank highly in search engine results. Although you should insert keywords throughout your copy, make sure that they appear natural.

5. Address your customers’ needs in a conversational and approachable way. Ask some of your customers if they wouldn’t mind taking a look at the content you plan on posting. If they are interested in a certain idea, theme or writing style, others most likely will as well.

Remember, digital content for the B2B space shouldn’t be boring and dry. By making your message relevant, useful, thought provoking, keyword friendly and simple, you’ll be well on your way to gaining an audience.

This article originally appeared in a slightly different form on FastCompany.com

It’s no wonder of course that B2B marketers are embracing video, given today’s demand for it. A 2010 survey published by video ad company YuMe, for example, revealed that 49 percent of respondents shared they are watching videos every day. More than 66 percent of respondents said they watched more online video now than they did a year ago and more than 40 percent expected they would continue to watch more online videos in the future.

In fact, according to Forrester Research, video increases the chance of a front page Google result by 53 times. In other words, you are 53 times more likely to land on the front page of Google with a video than basic text.

Forrester also reports that adding video in to e-mails increases click-through rates by two to three times,” says Keith Smiley,  a freelance B2B copywriter in Indianapolis, Ind.

Smiley, a video maven, provides the following as great reasons to use video:

1. It can visually demonstrate how a product or service works
2. It communicates a specific message or company news
3. It can be used a lead generation tool, or in case studies
4. It can be used for executive summaries and video versions of  white papers
5. It can be used to share content from webinars
6. It can be used to interview partners and customers at a trade show
7. It can be used to hold a Q & A session with an expert within your company
8. It can be used to give a sneak peak at product releases

Sean Randles, owner of webVM ltd and UK Partner at FLIMP Media in Manchester, United Kingdom echoes Smiley in some of the uses for video marketing. He shares that his Web video company creates video versions of PDF case studies, which he says are “very powerful lead generation tools.” Randles suggests video can be used to create product visualizations, elevator pitches and video brochures, as well as direct video marketing campaigns using www.flimp.net – which he says enables real time tracking of views and response by e-mail address.

Lindsay Leugers, vice president of marketing at OneCommand in Cincinnati, Ohio, says B2B video is a great way to deliver dynamic, real content such as client testimonials, event promotions and new product launches. In addition, Leugers believes video marketing efforts don’t need to cost a fortune to be worthwhile. “We get a great response, even with the most basic, grassroots of our video efforts – and while polished, professionally produced videos are great to have, they aren’t always in the budget,” he says. “We’ve learned that being creative and just having fun with the channel is just as important. Whether we shoot out in the field with one of our Flips or in against a green screen with a Sony-DV – the content is what really matters.”

Daniel Roberts, CEO of Friendly Human in Atlanta, Ga., offers this insight into the use of video.

“B2C videos tend to focus on information (think animated infographics). In B2B, the lead generally already knows what you do. B2B videos must be less about information and more about authenticity and relationships … the real key for B2B is to think smaller yet deeper.”

How have you been using video to grow your business? I’d love to hear from you.

This article originally appeared in a slightly different form on FastCompany.com.

According to a recent article in the Harvard Business Review, which studied 20,000 consumers, many marketers’ spending habits are missing the mark when it comes to capitalizing on opportunities in the consumer purchase process.

The article’s author, David C. Edelman, reports that 70 to 90 percent of marketing spend is directed to advertising and promotions that reach consumers either at the early consideration stage, where consumers are just discovering their options, or at the end game, purchase stage.

However, according to Edelman, consumers are often more receptive to influence at the evaluation stage – a point where they are researching options and at the post-buy, advocate stage, a time where they may want to share news of their new purchase with friends.

As Edelman puts it:

“New media make the ‘evaluate’ and ‘advocate’ stages increasingly relevant. Marketing investments that help consumers navigate the evaluation process and then spread positive word of mouth about the brands they select can be as important as building awareness and driving purchase.”

While the article focuses on consumer marketing, it has important implications for B2B marketing and PR professionals. In the very important evaluation phase, according to Edelman, consumers are vetting review sites like that of Amazon.com, adding and subtracting products to their decision set. At that point in time, it’s also important to create content to give consumers a sense of your brand. That is true not only in the B2C realm, but also in the B2B arena where consumers are equally hungry for information about your product or service.

Edelman suggests that companies take on the role of Publisher-in-Chief, creating content that gives “consumers a clear sense of the brand and lets them better articulate attributes of specific products.”

So too do B2B marketers and PR professionals need to ramp up their publisher function. That means creating everything from white papers, to case studies, to videos, to product comparison sheets, to blog posts, to social media engagement, to webinars. Anything that will increase your share of voice and make it easier for prospects to evaluate what you’re offering.

Too often a marketer and PR person’s job ends at the buy stage. Edelman’s research is significant in pinpointing the increasing importance of what he calls the “advocacy stage.” By that he means the post-purchase stage, which has taken on new life thanks to social media where consumers can give an amplified shout out to their favorite brands – something that also occurs in the B2B arena. While B2B PR people have always recognized the importance of case studies and customer testimonials as word of mouth endorsements, B2B can also do more. Why not for example, supplement your blog with guest customer posts and establish a customer prospect community? And don’t forget the potential of an advisory board or leaders council, where customers can provide direct input into your business.

I also like what small business guru John Jantsch said in a recent post on turning customers into advocates:

“The final stage of the customer development system is to engage your customers as advisors. Some portion of your customer base should be looked at as form of marketing advisory board and invited to share their opinions on marketing initiatives, content and product or service development. By bringing your customers to this level you develop loyalty that manifests in something like a volunteer sales force.”

This article originally appeared originally in a slightly different form on fastcompany.com