Presentation giving at a B2B Marketing Seminar in London, April 2010. Shares my thoughts and experiences in blogging/social media/content marketing in the world of B2B.

1. Blogging as part of your content marketing strategy. John Watton, CMO, ShipServ 28 April, 2010

2. I will cover… A bit about ShipServ What we did Why we did it How we did it 5 Lessons Learned

3. A bit about ShipServ E-marketplace. $1.5bn in GMV per annum Connect buyers & sellers of commercial ship supplies Flexible monetisation model Some Freemium elements Buyer Subscriptions Seller listings and advertisements Go-to-market approach Regional direct sales (10+) Philippines-based telesales team (50+)

5. Need to move from broadcast to conversation

7. Content marketing defined Content marketing is turning your insight and advice into campaigns that change people’s minds and incite action

9. Listen

10. Nurture

11. Participate

12. Inspire

13. Trusted service

14. EntertainFrom “We USE ShipServ” to “We’re MEMBERS OF ShipServ”

15. Creating the right content Has to pass a higher bar than ever before What passes that test? Information that a buyer believes will Save a fortune Make a fortune Keep him in his job Keep him out of jail

16. Our content marketing plan v1.0 Content and micro-content around calendared themes Promote and distribute the content through low cost online media – especially social media like LinkedIn and feeding the Twitter account with blog posts, social releases, etc. SEO keyword planning and site and landing page optimization Creating a LinkedIn Group as a community hub and encouraging membership Exploitation of five other maritime groups on LinkedIn (who together have over 11,000 members) Viral videos to lighten the conversation Marketo lead nurturing and lead scoring to track visitor behaviour and create sales-ready leads

17. Our content marketing plan v2.0 Started with big themes & campaigns PLUS quickly incorporated Short company news & updates Pimping our own content “Bigging up” customers, partners, etc “Come and meet us” “Hey we’re people just like you”

18. Before

19. After

20. Publish once & keep our own “dial tone” RSS twitter web facebook Linkedin

21. Take the pain out of newsletters

28. “Splash and drip” – using blogs in lead nurturing Newsletter eBook Blog ……Tip #2………#3……...#4…...…#5…...…#6…..…#7….…#8..….. Tip #1 Tip #9 12 month campaign April 09 May 09 March 09 Promotion & download Lead nurturing Lead scoring Sales intelligence

30. Guidelines? socialmediagovernance.com/MSFT_Social_Media_Policy.pdf

31. Getting help A good agency can help keep a blog on track -- but expect the core stuff to be from your core team (we do) Journalist freelancer can be good. After all it's a journalistic medium...

32. The benefits Thought leadership – the core of our TL program Speed – to respond to timely stuff Informality – lets us relax our voice Engagement – elicits comment & feedback Distance – ability to get a bit of separation from the corporate storyline Connectedness – ease of linking to (and co-opting) anything on the web Social Media fodder – something to tweet or link to from LinkedIn, etc SEO mojo

33. 3,321 people have read our blog in the 12 months up to April 2010 READERS Weeks

34. 5 Lessons Learned

35. 1. People are people

36. 2. Go micro

37. 3. Get into a routine

38. 4. Re-pimp your content

39. 5. Be authentic

40. Thank You jwatton@shipserv.com / @jwatton