Social Business Blog

The merger of insight and contact

noreply@blogger.com (Craig Woods) — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 09:19:00 +0000

Something very noticeable in the last couple of months is the growing recognition that news can be a key cog in contact building and can act as a real catalyst for establishing a dialogue. There's a growing understanding that all the dots can be joined to form a perfect storm of opportunity, and now the real desire is to find the best way of joining those dots.

In the early days of online social business, that connection was perhaps not considered to be so important. There was a feel of two separate solutions - news updates, and data mining - the later being seen as necessary and the former seen as an added bonus. I'd say the shift in feeling towards the two has now hit a 50 50 scenario. Whilst contacts are crucial, identifying reasons to make the conversation about your customer has become much, much more pivotal in this world of freely available information.

So many are driving campaigns to make things ABOUT the customer, the news has become a tool shed for just that very reason. Whilst knowing where a contact fits in the formula, the process, and the whole factory production line from start to finish is now being recognised. That's exciting times for business, and the exploration of ways to join the dots is bound to be an innovative one. Now is a very good time to be getting to grips with social business.

What are your key clients doing in 2012?

noreply@blogger.com (Craig Woods) — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 09:08:00 +0000

Whilst many resolution setters have probably already picked up that first glass of wine, or left their gym pass in the outer realms of the storage cupboard, many businesses will continue to have dreams and aspirations going into the new year. Business objectives are slightly harder to let go of than the feint promise to run on a treadmill more and you won't find many companies who don't have a plan in place to hit the ground running in 2012.

The big question is, do you know what your customer's goals are? It's very easy to be quite self centered at this time of year and know what you want to achieve, but knowing what your client's objectives are can be a big step in helping yourself push on.

Is there a better time to build a relationship, to support aspirations than the first few months a year, when everybody like it or not is re-evaluating what they want? I suspect not. You could be just one trigger event away; one phone call away from transforming your customer relationship into something new and special. My new year's resolution is making sure I don't miss that opportunity.

Quick question for you

noreply@blogger.com (Craig Woods) — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 13:24:00 +0000

Got a very simple question to pose today, after somebody asked me to explain the benefits of a 'trigger event'.

For the benefit of this I want you to imagine you are just about to call a prospect and get their attention. You have one chance to make an impact; probably a couple of sentences at best. Picture what you're trying to sell, and go...In your head, speak those two or three sentences out...

Now know this. The prospect you're about to call has just announced a big expansion plan going into the new year and just last night, the team your calling picked up an award at a national event for their achievements through 2011.

Knowing what you know now try speaking out those first two or three sentences again. Are they different? Thought so.

Gartner survey highlights a huge discrepancy

noreply@blogger.com (Craig Woods) — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 08:27:00 +0000

Read a fascinating insight on social media strategy from Gartner yesterday and wanted to share some results from the survey straight away. See if you can spot the discrepancy between these two answers:

1)Question: What is the top reason your organization is investing in social media? 155 people answered this question.

36% – Strengthen customer relationships

30% – Enhance brand awareness

6% – Share information with business partners

25% – Help people find and work better with each other

3% – Meet CEO or board objectives

2) Question: Who is leading your social media initiatives? 168 people answered this question.

27% – Multiple lines of business

10% – Social media steering committee

18% – IT

35% – Marketing

10% – Other support orgs (PR, HR, etc.)

Full report here

So the top scoring answer for question one is to strengthen customer relationships yet there is not a mention of account managers or sales teams mentioned in question 2? The figures between Marketing (35%) and brand enhancement (30%) add up but somewhere along the line customer teams seem to have gone missing.

If this is really the case I'll leave you with the question, if online materials can be used to help build customer relationships then why aren't we exploiting it? There seems to be a lot of catching up to do...

Building a social business

noreply@blogger.com (Craig Woods) — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 07:33:00 +0000

There was a fantastic article in Forbes yesterday from IBM's vice president of social business. Follow the link and have a read as it's a really in depth look at what a lot of businesses are now facing. They key points I took from it were how social business really does increase productivity, enhance innovation and reduce cost. It's the continuing evolution of communication which means failing to keep up leaves you with a distinct disadvantage.

The other key point was this quote with regards to how you should respond: 'Aligning your goals and culture to be ready to become more engaging and transparent. Do not underestimate the task ahead of you!'

How ready is your team for social business? How ready are you for social business? If the answer to either of those questions is 'not very' it's time to start preparing yourself. If the social revolution would be seen as a huge leap within your team it's time to start bridging that gap. Start to lay the foundations that you can build upon, and reduce the shock factor of altering the culture in one quick fire moment. Getting to grips with the basics is vital.

Time is often the commodity most overlooked

noreply@blogger.com (Craig Woods) — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 13:36:00 +0000

For a sales professional or account manager who spends time racing up and down motorways, keeping up with paperwork and generally trying to balance 8 plates on one, thin pole hearing sentences like 'take a while to get to know social media' is probably not a very favourable suggestion. In fact, though they'd probably never admit it to their bosses, that line probably wakes up a few internal neighbours with continuous expletives being held back from actually making it past the voice box.

Social media is not really a close friend of time, especially when it comes to debates around saving it. Being told to go through all of the sign in processes and the up keep to ensure your accounts remain fresh is not an ideal scenario. For a B2B account manager, social media is useful to watch from the outside, but not so much practically when it comes to participating. There's info on Twitter for example that's great to use, but needs to be fished out, rather than caught by hand.

The message here for sales pros is despite what you may hear, the truth is it's not essential to be a 'social media expert'. Like any influential medium it's important to understand how it ticks, and it's vital to appreciate where it adds value, but you can't possibly throw yourself fully into it and expect to have time to do anything else (in the same way just because you advertise on TV doesn't mean you have to be a Hollywood director).

As long as you know what's happening with your customers on these mediums, in a way that suits you, you still have time to focus on the real issue at hand and that's building personal relationships with your clients. Time is the commodity that many social media gurus forget. Business needs to go on as usual; make sure that social CRM works for your work flow.

"You can now know more about customers than ever before" Benioff

noreply@blogger.com (Craig Woods) — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 13:29:00 +0000

Cloudforce 2011 hit London today and the message seemed very, very clear: The cloud is the new place to woo customers through social engagement. If you didn't believe the hype around social CRM then you may be surprised to learn it's already here. "We were born cloud, now we’ve been reborn social" was the stand out statement from Marc Benioff's key note speech at the Royal Festival Hall this morning.

To give an indication of the continued hype around the idea of crossing CRM with social tools, buzz online around the event had doubled since the 2010 edition, highlighting the growth in this booming industry.

Benioff summed it up with the title line "you can now know more about customers than ever before". All the gadgets, keywords and new features aside; the cloud and the processes within it are now making it easier than ever to be on the same wave length as your customer or prospect. It's here, people are embracing it, and it's time to make sure your workflow is exploiting it.

Coca Cola looks to add fizz to insight

noreply@blogger.com (Craig Woods) — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 07:03:00 +0000

When you see a global brand like Coca Cola launching a 'listening review' you know the signs are good for social CRM. Last time I checked (and this is a school playground fact I picked up many years ago, so maybe wrong) Scotland is the only country in the developed world to not have Coca Cola as the number one selling soft drink (Irn Bru if you're interested). Even if that fact is no longer correct, let's not pretend like Coca Cola is not a dominant force on the world stage.

For them to recognise that it's time to listen to their customers and change their approach to feedback and response is such a huge indicator that best practises in social media are impacting business and coming to fruition. The likes of Kodak have already been ground breaking with ideas such as a chief listening officer, and the gap between ground breaking and 'the norm' is now becoming increasingly smaller.

Coca Cola's pitch brief, written with almost a sense of trepidation, still suggests their is a feeling of the unknown, even for the giant that it is on the global market but as more and more top companies make room for a new way of thinking, the more the industry can evolve and rapidly improve the relationship between business and customer.

Running into social CRM without checking how cold the water is

noreply@blogger.com (Craig Woods) — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 13:23:00 +0000

Read a really interesting article from Gartner analyst Michael Maoz this morning which looked at the idea of jumping into unknown waters too quickly, just because everybody else was donning their swimming caps and readying a dive. He argues that businesses are guilty of taking this approach a bit with social CRM, realising they're joining the game late and wondering how it can all really make things better.

In fact, interestingly the article pinpoints a survey suggesting a startling correlation between a decline in customer satisfaction since the launch of 'social' CRM. But social media is like a plug socket; if you connect it to the right things it can power an entire room. Poke it with a fork and you're going to get a bit of a shock.

The key is to not topple a deck of cards just so you can start again with a brand new pack. CRM systems work and integrating current practises into the new world is just as important as embracing it. The old values still apply; customers want to feel valued and also that you understand their points of view. 'Social' should not be viewed as the only answer, just another string to your bow.

Using it in the right way involves a mixture of identifying the influencers that can help you, and contributing effectively to your community whilst all the time listening in on crucial feedback and insight. People share things on social media they might not anywhere else, but that's not to say they're not sharing things anywhere else.

Play the social card right and you've gone from 2D knowledge to 3D; you've got an extra advantage to use at your disposal. Dive in and implement the wrong strategies and you go from 2D to...well....you'll just mess it up!

But there is value in social CRM; real, ROI value. I've seen it in action and unlike a UFO spotting or a flying pig, others have seen it too.

HP's Autonomy deal another big leap forward

noreply@blogger.com (Craig Woods) — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 12:26:00 +0000

Finding the relevant data

Autonomy's mantra on their website best concludes what we've all known for a long, long time: "Human-friendly or unstructured information is not naturally found in the rows and columns of a database, but in documents, web pages, presentations, videos, phone conversations, emails and IMs". The web is changing and that is only good news for the enterprise.

HP's $7billion acquisition proves there is true value in structuring the 'un-structurable' in the form of the world wide web. Being able to find the *right* information and not all of the information. The business world is longing to make use of the vast amount of detail out there and just need a manageable way of actioning such insights.

As the online world sharpens up to it's true potential the unstructured melee that ensued before will gradually find it's feet as an organised system of on target data. It's not how much you know after all, it's what you know at time you need to know it.

Can you really blame riots on improvement in communication?

noreply@blogger.com (Craig Woods) — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 12:02:00 +0000

I watched with interest last week as many media pundits and social experts alike blamed a better way of communicating for causing the shocking riots that rocked much of the UK. Indeed, many spectators and opinion leaders were calling for the sites to be banned, not just temporarily but altogether, as if a leech on society draining it of common decency (admittedly the latter did spring from the Daily Mail). Forgive me for being naive but surely better ways of spreading a message and sharing conversation can not be classed as 'dangerous' just because of a certain niche audience that choose to abuse it?

That's a bit like blaming a telephone for the market crash, as it's likely panicked investors used the devices to scream 'SELL SELL SELL!'. But personally I don't blame the phone for that one. Nor do I blame social media, and it's effective ability to spread a message for the cause of the riots. I also, out of interest, do not blame the printers for some of the content the Daily Mail can feasibly contrive. It's the people that shape the message, the networks merely deliver them.

This, to me, is another indicator of fear towards social networks in general. Those who don't use them, or those who haven't fully understood them are scared of it, and thus criticise it, as is the natural reaction to fear. I will say this until I'm blue in the face but Facebook, Twitter and all the others are simply ways of communicating with fellow individuals. Yes, it's a different method to a phone, or conversation, but it's a useful tool none the less. Use it to communicate and leverage it to your advantage. That is the simple fact of it.

Do you really want to see the world?

noreply@blogger.com (Craig Woods) — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 13:56:00 +0000

Because of pressure to do so, and word of mouth that has turned more into Chinese whispers, there seems to be an obsession with tracking everything on social media. The desire is there to watch for every mention, decipher between the good and the bad and hear every last word about a company that exists on the world wide web. Why? If you are planning on doing this ask yourself that very question. What are you going to do with that info.

What is actually useful is actionable data that can be used to form closer connections to those that need to be connected. Data that can be used as a sales trigger or a potential way in with someone who perhaps was unattainable through other mediums. Do you really want to see everything, or do you just want to see everything that helps build a strategy?

Sometimes seeing everything just makes things more blurry and shrouded in doubt. Take a moment to blinker the view, and everything down that path suddenly becomes much, much clearer.

Why should I have a Twitter account?

noreply@blogger.com (Craig Woods) — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 13:13:00 +0000

For business, Twitter is not all about what you're saying or even what you're hearing. It's about the interactions taking place whilst you're doing both. Make no mistake, I hear pretty much every big news piece break on Twitter before anywhere else, and I also pride my feeds on valuable and engaging content. But that is not what makes Twitter so special.

What makes Twitter is the easy connections you can gain just by sharing your views and opinions in really short sprints of dialogue. With mobile you can Tweet from anywhere and build up a community of dedicated followers without the need to sell, pitch or preach.

Twitter is not a news site. It's a social site and people want to talk. It's an easy in and a refreshing way of communicating with people you could otherwise miss out on interacting with. Emails can be elusive, phone calls can be harder. But the ease in which you can talk on Twitter makes it a business goldmine. If you don't have it, you should. It's as simple as that.

The blogs they are a changing

noreply@blogger.com (Craig Woods) — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 11:11:00 +0000

After two years of biding our time for the perfect blogging re-launch (patience is a fine virtue) The Artesian blog is having a bit of reshuffle. After studying the form and getting some reader feedback this little page here is to become a how to/what is/for the love of social media I'm stuck ....help guide to all things online. You can pose questions via our twitter feed and have them answered as soon as possible and also take advice from fellow professionals trying to take the leap into online sales intelligence.

Our official website artesiansolutions.com will now be home to Artesian news features and opinion pieces.

Hope you enjoy the new look sites and please do get in touch with any questions you may wish to ask around social crm, online sales intelligence or general web dilemmas. I will of course attempt to answer everything as quickly and effectively as possible. May the new times roll.

Artesian featured in Mad.co.uk

noreply@blogger.com (Craig Woods) — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 14:01:00 +0000

Check out this great article from CEO Andrew Yates in MAD.co.uk

Need to have sales info

noreply@blogger.com (Craig Woods) — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 08:14:00 +0000

One of the common things said about sales intelligence is that it's a nice to have, not a need to have. But I wanted to argue that with the table below using salesperson A and salesperson B (creative names I'm sure you'll agree).

Sales person A has not done any preparation for his call. Sales person B has used his sales intelligence application. Who is more likely to win the business?:

Sales Person A knows:	Sales person B knows:
What they're selling	What they're selling
	The department he's selling to has a new manager
	The company has recently had an internal shakeup
	The company is looking to expand in the next 6 months
	The company have recently started using social media
	The department recently won a national award in their field

Is that really 'nice to know' information? My guess is, if you know it, you're likely to win much more business. If it's nice to win more business then I guess so. If you need to win more business, I'd said the information is pretty crucial.

Social CRM: The secret weapon

noreply@blogger.com (Craig Woods) — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 11:04:00 +0000

Just wanted to point you in the direction of this rather swanky little piece in B2B Marketing featuring our CEO Andrew Yates:

Social CRM provides a secret weapon for the sales team

Make that your read for the week and I shall spare you my ramblings...

Super injunction is super interesting

noreply@blogger.com (Craig Woods) — Mon, 23 May 2011 11:01:00 +0000

Let us not pretend like social media and the more traditonal print presses have not been set to square up for some time now. The papers have played social media's games simply because they felt it necassary but the underlying tension based around the increasing fuzz between social and factual has been there for all to see.

This latest episode surrounding the crippling of super injunctions online is the bait both parties were looking for to force a match up in the ring and the next couple of months could well see a landmark period for publishing. Like it or not the enforcers are going to have to try leveling up the playing field which has seen frustrated journalists restrained whilst social users everywhere continued on their merry way divulging information and sharing in dialogue.

It all makes for fascinating viewing for those based inside the business. The old methods of breaking news have all but vanished. Whatever happens in the next few months in terms of law and order, the shift has already occured and online has the upper hand. Print will put up one heck of a fight, but to me the contest is a mismatch. This most recent case once again proves that. How the industry responds will be interesting viewing.

No time to take the escalator, I'll take the stairs

noreply@blogger.com (Craig Woods) — Wed, 11 May 2011 11:30:00 +0000

I saw another piece the other day claiming that companies were failing to adopt online social techniques because they lacked the time to do so. For me that's like saying the aforementioned title. 'I don't have time to take the escalator, I'll just take the stairs.' It's falls under the category of all the excuses relating to time:

1) 'I'll do it one day' translates to 'I'll probably never get round to it.'
2) 'I didn't have time to look at those' translates to 'I didn't really want to'
and
3) 'Another time maybe?' translates to 'please dear lord not another time.'

Being actively social and using the web to stay in touch with a customer is supposed to speed things up; it's supposed to make things easier. And it does. Like any leap of faith it involves the user throwing themselves in at the deep end and making the time to do it. The things you always 'wanted to do one day' are so much better when you're actually doing them. Likewise using social tools to interact with your customers makes things so much quicker when you learn the ropes

Remove the shackles of 'social'

noreply@blogger.com (Craig Woods) — Wed, 04 May 2011 09:38:00 +0000

There are still far too many situations where a sales pro is answering the question 'do you use social media?' with the lacklustre response 'no, not really' or 'I know about it, but haven't got round to looking yet.' Amongst the many reasons for this attitude include:

1) Things were working fine without it.
2) A company has blocked social media use, thus instantly associating the medium as 'un-business' like.
3) People are anxious about failing to understand it.

Get the social media buzz words out the way and what actually is this phrase that keeps flying around? Quite simply, it is another way of communicating with a customer, a client or a prospect; in many cases, it's an easier way. In personal terms, you probably won't phone everybody you want to stay in touch with anymore. You might just message them on Facebook or Twitter when you hear some good news, and they'll appreciate the thought. Why has this got to be any different in business?

Blocking social media in offices is such a backward approach that just screams 'we're scared' in big bold letters. Would you block a sales professional from using a phone? Or an email? No, because you want them to communicate, and that's what the social web is for; to listen and engage easily.

It is time to remove the shackles of social. Forget about the hype and explore what it can do for you. Don't assume you won't appreciate it's subtleties; the whole concept is that it's designed to make conversation easy. And that's all it is at the end of the day; conversation. And conversation last time I checked is extremely good for business, no matter how good your systems were before.

The term 'how's business?' will probably lose yours

noreply@blogger.com (Craig Woods) — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 11:41:00 +0000

Have you ever bumped into an old acquittance in the street who you maybe haven't seen for a few years or so and receive the unanswerable question 'well, what you been up to?' Hopefully, unless it's been somewhat of a write off 730 days, you'll have been up to much more than can fit into a hurried sentence. This question always seems very lazy to me, a sign that the person in question doesn't really care what you've 'been up to.' If they did, they would've made contact, or at least been asking around about you so, they knew roughly what was going on.

In business, this lazy throw away sentence is undoubtedly even worse. If somebody starts a meeting with 'how's business?' it may have once upon of time seemed polite small talk. But now, I'd view it as offensively incompetent. There is no excuse anymore for not keeping tabs on a company's affairs and whatever relationship you're trying to forge with that company, the least you should be is informed on current events. Saying 'how's business?' to me suggests you really couldn't give a monkeys how business really is, you just want some yourself.

There is no reason, repeat, NO REASON for not being informed anymore. The explosion of online content means news has been become one giant community of conversation. What could once be disguised as a conversation starter at best, now leaves you exposed to the possibility of being uncovered as a lazy, uninterested salesperson. If you really want to wow a customer, don't start with 'how's business?', lead with 'how can I help your business with this?'

Myths about online sales intelligence uncovered - Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Craig Woods) — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 08:33:00 +0000

Following on from last week's attempts to demystify common beliefs about online sales intelligence, part 2 looks at further concerns and misconceptions:

"I don't have time to insert another process into my daily routine"

The idea of integrating online sales intelligence into your routine is to reduce the time it takes to scour the Internet for relevant content each day, not increase. If you're a sales professional on the road, or one who spends a lot of time on the phone, getting a timely morning email or a quick summary from a personalised dashboard can be hugely time saving, rather than having to head out onto the World wide web to find out what a customer's doing. It means more knowledge in a considerably reduced period of time, meaning you can abandon your searching days and concentrate on the sale.

"My customers don't have a big online presence"

This makes the need to monitor them online even more crucial. The likelihood is, if they're a relatively low profile company, they're unlikely to make it into the Nationals too often. More to the point, if they ever do get picked up it'll be in industry specific journals that you may well not be following. So tracking them to be alerted when they do feature; in that ONE big story, is absolutely massive. It means you are alert to respond when it happens, whereas previously you simply couldn't have picked up the story. Try testing how impressed a company is when you pick up their quote, or their feature in a trade specific journal.

"It's already publicly available information, it gives us no advantage"

Never assume that just because something is publicly available other competitors have seen it. You have to be tracking things in the right way, and a lot of companies are not. Just because it's out in the open doesn't mean the advantage has gone. Even if other competitors are aware of the story, it's all about internal processes to see who can respond and exploit the opportunity more successfully. But the point is, at least you know. How can you respond if you don't? Sometimes it's not a case of gaining an advantage, it's a case of starting on the same platform. Knowing is the first priority. Then, how you respond is entirely up to your sales team.

What are your views on online sales intelligence? Please get in touch and share your opinion...

Myths about online sales intelligence uncovered - Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Craig Woods) — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 10:00:00 +0000

With online sales intelligence becoming more and more sought after, I thought I'd compile a list of regular beliefs, oppositions and questions and reveal the truth, much like one of those rogue magicians who covers their face and shows the audience where the rabbits are really hiding in the hat. Here is online sales intelligence - The truth:

"What can I really gain from monitoring my customer or prospect online?"

A) The real question is what can you gain from not? With more information being shared online every day the web gives you a chance to see what your customer is up to, and what they're interested in without even leaving the office. Identifying key triggers or reasons to get in touch at just the right time is so valuable. Look at it this way. Give somebody a tissue in the street randomly and they'll probably stare at you rather oddly. Give them a tissue after they sneeze and they'll probably accept the gesture with gratitude.

"I can do all my research with search engines"

A) Search engines are not designed for a B2B environment. Yes, you can certainly search for things using Google and the like but how do you search for a portfolio of 50 customers and a range of business events like expansion every single day? If you can, congratulations, but you probably don't have too much time to do much else - including sleep! Sales intelligence gives you the time to sell, and informs you about relevant news at just the right time. 1million plus automated searches a day is a bit more powerful than just typing in a company name and seeing what you get.

"Does this mean I'll see all the internal shenanigans and juicy gossip?"

A) One thing online sales intelligence is not is a candid camera plugged into the head office mainframe. Although social sites can be extremely revealing, and offer an alternative stance on the news, it is not a silver bullet. You might, just occasionally get a disgruntled employee leak something they shouldn't. But online sales intelligence is not about the juicy gossip really. It's about appreciating the right time to make a phone call, and establishing how likely a potential customer is to buy off you at any given time. Getting caught up in internal shenanigans, although seemingly appealing, doesn't really help anybody.

"I don't really get social media"

A) It really doesn't matter. Sales intelligence is not about the platforms, or the technical advantage; it's about the content. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter where you find out about a customer office move, or a potential merger. Providing you know that's the important thing. So if an email is alerting you every morning with the detail; be it from Twitter, the Telegraph or Cucumber Weekly, it doesn't matter where it came from. What matters is that you're aware of it.

PART 2 NEXT WEEK

The Telegraph startup 100

noreply@blogger.com (Craig Woods) — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 12:03:00 +0000

Don't like using this blog to promote too much (as any 'top 10 list of blogging don'ts will tell you, IT'S WRONG!!!) but technically I'm promoting 99 others here too, so in my book, it doesn't count. So Artesian have been selected in the top 100 Start ups featured in the Telegraph and we couldn't be more thrilled.

To see the full list follow this link

Social CRM is an exciting place to be right now (As Salesforce highlighted last week). With promotion over, the authors of top 10 lists everywhere tutting and sighing, I return to the key message here: If you've not yet got to grips with the concept of social CRM, get reading up fast!

Don't forget the journalists

noreply@blogger.com (Craig Woods) — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 10:44:00 +0000

I've written many times about the importance of not getting too obsessed with the 'social' side of news online, as there is still a vast amount of sales intelligence which can be drawn from the more traditional online sources, as it were. Recently there has been a lot of buzz around social investment and to be honest, much like a broken record, I thought I'd try and emphasis the point once more (because who doesn't like listening to a broken record repeating itself?...)

Online content does not HAVE to be social content. Whilst journalists are currently spending their lives trying to work out how to make some money online without using the dreaded 'paywall' word, they still ply their trade as news breakers, at the forefront of important content. Many point to the personal touch that social sources add to a sales trigger but at the end of the day statistics and facts are still very important and tapping into local news sources and highly respected journalists is equally important to monitoring Twitter feeds to check for any disgruntled employees opening Pandora's Box.

Local press, especially for a regional account manager can be an absolute goldmine for crucial information delivered on a plate at exactly the right time. It's progress online is being overshadowed by the demand for user content but in my view stands toe to toe for B2B relevancy and timely news stories. Don't leave it out of your strategies simply because it's not in vogue. Local papers will soon come back into fashion and when the renaissance comes make sure you're ahead of the game.