NewComm Forum is a social media and influencer marketing event I always make a point of attending. This year, I’ll attend on Weds April 21st. Per my earlier post at Tekrati, I’m pleased to give you discount codes for both the 1-day package and full conference.

Let me know if you’ll be there on the 21st. I’d love to meet you in person.

Conference: http://www.newcommforum.com
The NewComm Forum 2010 One-day Pass
Wednesday, April 21st
San Mateo, Calif.
Cost: $395, when you register and use discount code NCF1D

• Full Access Pass for the 21st
• 3 Keynote Sessions: Jackie Huba, online marketing expert and author; Dave Carroll, singer/songwriter, “United Breaks Guitars”; and Tim Westergren, founder, chief strategist, Pandora
• Access to all conference sessions – choose from 16 breakout sessions in five tracks
• Networking Activities and Food & Beverage Events

If you’d like to attend the entire event, use discount code NCF300 to save $300 off the full conference fee. Or, contact me directly for a slightly deeper discount.

One bit of advice: Be a focused networker to get the most out of this event. It’s a small event. Put yourself forward and you’ll easily go from merely rubbing elbows with top social media authors and practitioners to forging relationships with them.

You may wonder what draws me to an event like this, when I have free passes to industry analyst events around the planet. Here’s the thing: I always come away from NewComm Forum with new ideas and new relationships that contribute directly to my own thought leadership, services and strategies. Check this year’s agenda to see who’s of interest to you.

See you there!

Popularity: 5%

If you work in influencer relations in Silicon Valley, you want to be at the Churchill Club this Monday March 1st for an evening event featuring John Byrne, Richard Edelman, Paul Bergevin, Peter Diamandis and Frank Shaw.

The event comes on the heels of the 2010 Edelman Trust Barometer, a global opinion leaders study mentioned in my last post. The Trust Barometer is freely available. Bring your toughest questions or just show up for a great evening of discussion, debate and networking.

I’ll be particularly interested to see how this year’s discussion compares with the 2008 event (my comments).

See you there!

What:
What the Public Believes: New Trends in Corporate Reputation Management
Corporations are in the combat zone, struggling to build back trust among all of their stakeholders in the midst of the global economic crisis. Faced with an overall meltdown in confidence, how is corporate leadership—including marketing, PR, investor relations and public affairs—to respond? How should companies retool their communication strategies and address the right stakeholders with the right issues and strike the right tone? This panel of thought leaders speaks out on the most current trends and strategies for managing corporate reputation and sharpening stakeholder engagement.

Cost
Individual Churchill Club event tickets run $58 - $90, and normally it’s a cash bar. Reg, more info.

Twitter
Hashtag will be #churchillclub.

Popularity: 9%

Interested in certification as an analyst relations professional? Looking for an analyst relations training course with benefits, such as a certificate of completion? If so, you have several choices for obtaining credentials. Here’s how four AR cert programs stack up, including who offers them, who can take them, what the programs cover, and how much they cost. Plus, some closing thoughts on ROI and funding.

Certification v. certificate of completion

Analyst relations professionals can obtain two types of credentials. It’s important to understand the difference between a certification and a certificate of completion.

Accreditation as a certified Analyst Relations professional: Certification is intended to provide proof of an individual’s overall AR practitioner knowledge. Currently, it requires passing a written test. This designation is the AR equivalent of PRSA’s Accredited in Public Relations (APR) and IABC’s Accredited Business Communicator (ABC) credentials.

Certificate of completion: A certificate of completion provides documented proof that an individual successfully completed a professional development training course in AR. Currently, it does not require passing a written test. This is the AR equivalent of a certificate of completion for a class at a vocational school or college.

The providers: who offers AR certification, training certificates

One professional association and three AR consulting companies offer AR certs:

• Institute for Industry Analyst Relations (IIAR) offers a test to become a Certified Analyst Relations Professional
• Knowledge Capital Group (KCG) offers training with an optional a test to become a Certified Industry Analyst Relations Professional
• Lighthouse AR offers a Certificate of Completion for each of 4 training courses
• SageCircle offers a Certificate of Completion for each of 5 training courses

The IIAR is the only cert provider that does not require candidates to purchase a training course. Instead, the IIAR tests on knowledge they say is best gained on the job and by staying current with the worldwide industry analyst business.

Another difference with the IIAR is that its certification test reflects input from the other 3 cert providers as well as from experienced practitioner members. One consultancy – KCG – provided its entire certification test to the IIAR as raw input.

Training is mandatory for certs from each of the three AR consultancies – KCG, Lighthouse AR and SageCircle. These programs emphasize professional development first; certs are an important yet secondary aspect of their programs. The certification test is an option with KCG. Participants can take the KCG course without completing the certification test.

Attendees will encounter differences in the proprietary courses taught by KCG, Lighthouse AR and SageCircle. Differences can include AR terminology and some of the advocated best practices, tactics and program measurements.

1. Comparing AR Cert Programs at a Glance

2. Comparing the Topical Focus of AR Cert Programs

Cert Programs	Topics
	Detailed knowledge of the industry analyst industry and AR best practices
	Comprehensive understanding of AR professional skills, best practices and processes
	Intro to AR Operational Effectiveness Messaging & Influencing Analysts Selling AR Internally
	AR Social Media Strategy AR Measurement AR-Sales Partnership AR Effectiveness Strategic Issues

3. Comparing Options in Testing & Training

4. Comparing AR Cert Program Activity

Bottomline: What’s the ROI?

None of the providers offers ROI analysis or compelling case studies justifying investments in AR certs. Aside from the IIAR, the providers said that the real value is in the experience of their training courses, rather than in obtaining the actual cert.

In addition, awareness of these certs is very low outside of AR circles. None of the four providers is promoting their certs directly to vendor management or to the high tech marketing industry at large. As a result, making the case to management for the time and money required falls squarely on the AR practitioner.

So what is the value of getting a certificate or being certified as an Analyst Relations professional? The four providers say the value lies in:

• Increasing individual confidence and respect within the AR community
• Raising the standards of the AR profession
• Creating competitive advantage for individual recruitment and promotion
• Establishing a companywide common denominator in AR knowledge, vernacular, practices and processes
• Meeting company or association requirements for ongoing professional development
• Tapping into company funds earmarked for professional development

Please add any other AR certificate or certification programs in the comments. I’ll update the post accordingly.

Popularity: 6%

Britton Manasco sparked an interesting discussion over the weekend on PR, influencers and the caliber of a client’s vision messaging. Britton’s take:

PR firms, too often, are letting their executive clients down. They are encouraging them to stroll out in the public square unclothed and unprepared. Result? Their clients are exposed as leaders without vision… It seems to me that too few have the strengths, expertise and capabilities necessary to help their clients develop and articulate a powerful vision.

I agree with Britton that CEOs and other corporate leaders need to differentiate themselves and their companies with a compelling vision of their market. There are too few CEOs who inspire us with a vision of where we are and where we could go.

We disagree somewhat on how much of a role a traditional PR team can be expected to play in the development of vision. I say less, Britton says more.

In my experience, vision is not a PR project. Vision isn’t the result of a messaging brainstorm. It comes from everyday dialogue and reading and observation. The group of people best equipped to inspire and nuture a CxO’s vision come from inside the company and from the CxO’s peers also deeply engaged in the marketplace — external thought leaders from the ranks of management consultants, competitors, partners, academics, etc.

Check out Britton’s post and comments from Chris Selland, Ardath Albee and Steve Parker and me.

Popularity: 1%

IDC is putting numbers around something tech marketers already know: 2009 is the worst year for vendor-side tech marketing jobs and budgets since the dot-com bust.

IDC projects that 6,000 tech vendor marketing jobs will be cut by the time the dust settles at the end of 2009. Marketing budgets will be down 8.3% over 2008 levels.

That’s the inhouse tally. Imagine the totals when you add agency and freelance personnel and reduced and canceled POs.

The 2009 vendor marketing cuts have come with changes in structure and authority as well. IDC reports more than 70% of senior marketers described their departments as experiencing “significant organizational change”. The focus tends to be sales-marketing alignment. The decisions aren’t necessarily brightening the picture for career marketers. IDC says some of the top tech companies are uniting global marketing and sales groups under one executive. And that executive comes from sales rather than marketing. Titles include Chief Sales and Marketing Officer and SVP of WW Field Operations.

Sooner or later we’ll find the bottom of this free fall and then start the recovery. This time ’round, I expect that the recovery will institutionalize some of the boot-strap adjustments taken in the face of these overwhelming cuts. More shared services, fewer heads, lower retainers, longer payment terms. More emphasis on community. Less priority on specialists the further you move away from the SEO/SEM and analytics axis.

Big hat tip to Kathleen Shaub, who blogged about IDC’s study and guidance for 2010.

Popularity: 2%

There are several good reasons to replace the terms “influencer” and “influencer marketing” in the marketing vocabulary. What are the best  alternatives? I don’t know the answer, however I see signs of a backlash against misuse and abuse of these terms.

What are the issues with the word influencer?

To start, not everyone likes being branded as an influencer. As Evan Quinn so often tells me (and I’m not the only one), many analysts bristle under the “influencer” label.

Then too, there’s the growing confusion around who is an “influencer”.  As Duncan Brown so often says, not everyone is an influencer. You can’t transform anybody into an influencer. Finding influencers is just not that easy, even in the wild west of social media.

Finally, as Nick Hayes says, “None of us has ever seen anybody with a business card that says ‘Influencer’.”

By contrast, there are the outstanding examples where the terms are applied appropriately and best practices applied flawlessly.  Case in point: Don Bulmer’s program at SAP. Such clearcut instances are more exception than norm.

The right words are out there. If we pay attention, we’ll recognize them when we hear them.

Popularity: 7%

Browse the net, and it becomes clear pretty quickly that somebody out there is giving lots of companies dubious marketing advice. Based on the evidence, here’s my take on the Top 10 Worst Marketing Tips for 2009.

1. Let’s add 2.0 to that noun.

2. Let’s add 3.0 to that noun.

3. If we use a cat in your video, it’s sure to go viral.

4. Don’t worry about running it through legal review — this is the social web.

5. We need to differentiate your message. Let’s turn all those keywords into verbs by putting an “ize” at the end.

6. It’s a mistake to strive for excellence. You should aim for good enough.

7. Every blog post should be short and pithy.

8. Create good content.

9. Let’s place your messages where customers don’t expect to see them.

10. Be brilliant.

Remember, friends don’t let friends market under the influence of misguided and useless advice.

Popularity: 2%

Here’s an interesting survey for PR and marketing pro’s at analyst firms and other management/IT professional services providers. Marketing consultancy Bloom Group produced a survey and report on marketing effectiveness among U.S. professional services firms. Turns out strong intellectual capital (IC) is the most important ingredient of effective marketing. The participating services firms rated IC as more important than having a compelling brand, big marketing budget, a sound marketing strategy or capable sales force. Take the 20-minute online survey for a free copy of the full report. (Hat tip to Kennedy Information’s ConsultingWire.)

Bloom Group believes this is common sense. Professional services firms are in the business of providing expertise, so it shouldn’t be surprising that they feel the key to generating marketplace interest in their services is capturing and marketing strong intellectual capital.

Bloom Group report authors Robert S. Buday, Bernie Thiel, and Susan Buddenbaum note that the survey results do not suggest abandoning other forms and components of marketing. The survey simply indicates that marketing the ideas of a professional services firm through educational, rather than promotional, marketing channels is much more important.

Other major study findings include the following:

Content counts: Professional services firms with far superior IC as the content for their marketing programs were much more likely to generate substantial market awareness and business leads than were firms with inferior IC. Some 81 percent of the firms with far superior IC — compared with only 10 percent of firms with inferior or far inferior IC — said their marketing programs were very effective or had more than average effectiveness in creating substantial market awareness and leads.

The smaller the firm, the better the ideas: A much higher percentage of the smallest firms rated their IC to be far superior than did the largest firms. Some 47 percent of the firms with less than $25 million in revenue said their IC was far superior, while only 25 percent of organizations with more than $1 billion in revenue said the same thing. These findings suggest that attaining thought leadership isn’t dependent on resources, and that superior content is the great equalizer between small and large firms in the competition for clients.

Attaining thought leadership requires focusing more resources on developing professionals’ ideas than on marketing them. The firms that said they had the best intellectual capital estimated investing about 57 percent of their IC development and marketing resources in developing IC and about 43 percent in marketing it. The firms with the worst IC did the opposite: they spent only about 41% of their resources on developing ideas and about 59 percent on marketing them. The firms with the best IC were much more likely to use a research consortium and internal research groups as a primary IC development technique.

Superior intellectual capital is increasingly critical. More than three-quarters (77 percent) of the firms polled said having strong intellectual capital to market had grown in importance over the past five years, for three factors more than any others: increasing competition and the need for differentiation; past success with marketing the firm’s IC; and client demands for demonstrating greater expertise before they choose a professional services firm.

The survey featured a wide range of types and sizes of professional services firms: consulting, IT services, law, accounting, training and development, research and others. Some 25 percent had annual revenue of more than $1 billion, 35 percent had less than $25 million, 18 percent had $25 million to $100 million, and 22 percent had between $101 million and $1 billion.

Even if you don’t take the survey to get the full results, check out the three tiers of IC effectiveness listed on page 2 of the survey release.

Reprinted from Tekrati

Popularity: 1%