Can February March? No, but April May.

I'm not usually a fan of puns, but this one slipped into this month's newsletter anyway. For you pun-tastic people out there: you are welcome.

For the rest of us, hear are this month's five must-read marketing articles:

1. Create More Value With Marketing, And Less Frustration, Sales Benchmark Index
2. F8 Update: 10 New Facebook Features Every Marketer Must Know , Buffer
3. Survey: HubSpot is top automation solution in satisfaction, market presence, Fierce CMO
4. 50 Split Testing Ideas (You Can Run Today!) Neil Patel
5. The Platform You Never Planned For, Platform Strategy

Want to learn more about Honeycomb and how we are helping our clients address their strategic and tactical marketing priorities? Feel free to call us anytime.

Interview with Matt Langan- Social Media and Content Marketing

Last week, I interviewed marketing consultant Matt Langan on the Straight to the Point podcast series. Matt is the CEO of L&R Communications and is also the editor-in-chief of GotGeoInt.com, the nations preeminent geospatial intelligence blog.  

Two years ago, as social media was starting to be adopted by marketers targeting the government customer, Matt and I had a great discussion about how companies needed to adopt a more aggressive content marketing approach in order to successfully grow their government business.


What has changed since then? Did our predictions turn out to be accurate? 

You can listen to the podcast here: Interview with Matt Langan

What did we cover?

• How the slow economic recovery is influencing marketing budgets?
• Are marketing executives rotating funds into social media and content marketing?
• How important is social media to achieving marketing objectives now? 
• How important is mobile marketing to the marketing mix? 
• What marketing trends do you see that are going to impact the industry most over the next few years?

Top 16 Public Sector Social Media and News Sites You Should Know About

I'm always a bit flabbergasted when I meet someone in the government marketing space, mention GovLoop or Gov2Social, and I get a blank stare. I know we are in the early adopter phase of using social media to help contractors find and close deals, establish partnering opportunities and grow stronger relationships with government...and I know that just because I know something, doesn't necessarily mean everyone else knows it too...

But how can you not know about GovLoop?

OK, so in the interest of spreading the good news about social media and the public sector contracting business, here is a list of top social media and news sites that you should know about...

(this isn't a comprehensive list-- please leave a comment if you feel I've left something important out...)

1. GovLoop - the Facebook for government, GovLoop has 30,000+ people registered there
2. GovTwit - is a large repository (3,000+) of twitterers in federal, state and local government and the contracting community
3. FedScoup - an aggregation for must read government business blogs, news sites and social media streams
4. MeriTalk- smaller than GovLoop, MeriTalk positions itself as the social network for government IT people
5. FutureFed - learn about Microsoft's solutions and ideas for a more efficient and effective public sector
6. Brightside of Government - Microsoft's social media platform for state and local government executives and the unique issues they face
7. Gov2Social - a repository of social media implementations, case studies and" how-to's" across all levels and functions of government
8. Google Public Sector- thoughts from Google's government group
9. IBM Center for the Business of Government - collection of white papers on the issues facing governments today
10. FOSE - the ur-trade show for government IT
11. FCW and GCN- two magazines from the 1105 Government Business Network that cover the technology policy and management community and government IT specialists respectively
12. Governing is a online magazine that focuses on the issues most important to government leaders and employees
13. Washington Technology- also from 1105, this magazine focuses on the contracting community, especially technology providers and partners
14. Federal News Radio (AM1500) is a local DC radio station that covers a myriad of issues pertinent to the government employees and contractors. Also available over the Internet...
15. Dorobek Insider- one of FNR's hosts is Chris Dorobek who also puts out an informative email newsletter and website
16. GovExec- focused on the needs and interests of government employees

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Kristin Bockius of Microsoft Shares Her Social Media Expertise

How do you use social media to engage with government IT professionals? Is it even possible? Can you generate leads? Integrate social media with traditional marketing?

Well, yes, but don't take my word for it.

In the latest edition on Straight to the Point, my podcast series on BlogTalkRadio, I sat down with Kristin Bockius, the Relationship Marketing Manager at Microsoft's State and Local Government field marketing group. In a 20 minute Q&A, she shares...

• how she evaluated social media as a possible communications tool
• how she socialized the idea of social media with peers and superiors
• how she specifically rolled out social media and kept it tightly aligned with corporate messaging and sales objectives

Here is a link to the show: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/JeffMajka/2009/10/08/Interview-with-Kristin-Bockius-of-Microsoft

or you can just listen to it here



What do you think? Would you market to government executives differently? What could she be doing different or better?

New Straight to the Point Podcast- Jennie Olson of GovDelivery

Time again for another Straight to the Point podcast. This time I'm pleased to have sat down with Jennie Olson of GovDelivery. Jennie is the Director of Marketing at the company, which is the world's leading provider of government-to-citizen communications solutions. GovDelivery's Email and Digital Subscription Management solution is a Software as a Service (SaaS) platform that provides organizations a fully-automated, on-demand public communication system (Full disclosure- GovDelivery is a client of my employer).

What is so valuable about Jennie's experiences is that she faced the twin challenges of standing up a whole marketing operation from scratch and integrating the latest social media techniques into her overall marketing strategy targeting government buyers while accomplishing the corporate goals of driving sales and raising awareness. A tough row...have a listen and let me know what you think? Is she on the right track? What would she do different?

Brand New Straight to the Point Podcast with Ed Bursk

I've been interviewing marketing executives as part of the "Straight to the Point" series for almost two years. One guy I've been working hard to schedule is Ed Bursk. Ed is a marketing consultant who has worked with numerous technology, networking, telecom and government IT companies in his career and has a wealth of knowledge and best practices. His experience includes Nortel Networks, Alcatel/Lucent, KORE Telematics and others. Take a listen to the interview and let me know what you think?

The Old World is Gone...The New One is Here

It's an exciting day in the business world as Congress pummels the CEO of AIG, a company they own, the Federal Reserve announces that it will engage the supercharger on the nation's printing press adding $1.5 trillion (!) to the financial system and news leaked that IBM is thinking about buying Sun Microsystems, reversing a nearly 20 year trend focusing on software and services.

The understanding of the world we developed over the last 10 years of what was possible, of what was expected behavior has been radically transformed. Newspapers are going bankrupt, trade magazines are no longer credible and social networks have passed email in popularity. This disruption is affecting nearly every aspect of our personal and professional lives.

So.....imagine my surprise when last night I attended a seminar on state of the art government marketing practices...and no one talked about social media...as if everything was exactly the same as it was in 2004. Hard to believe really, given that buzzwords like Gov 2.0 have been on everyone's lips as of late. It's clear that there needs to be yet more education on the measurable (read: $$) ROI of social media and how to integrate it into an overall marketing campaign.

Have you come across people that seem to be completely disconnected from the transformation that's occurred in PR and marketing in the past few years? I'd love to hear your war stories...

Social Media and Government Marketing Best Practices from Steve Lunceford

One of the best parts of my job is that I get to talk every single day with talented marketers. Talking shop with these experts is a joy and I could do it all day long. Over the past few years, marketing and PR have undergone the most significant transformation since the mass adoption of the Internet, and possibly since the invention of advertising funded mass media in the 19th century.

Most amazing to me is that the whole industry has seemingly embraced change in the space of two to three years. Given the poor reputation of PR flacks and marketing people, you'd think that we'd be stuck in our ways with our heads in the sand. But no, nothing but continual innovation. Look at the auto industry for an example of folks that just can't quite admit the world has changed- something they've known for decades.

One of the most innovative marketers out there is Steve Lunceford, the Director of Global Communications for BearingPoint. Steve's main responsibility is to support BearingPoint's engagements with government agencies. "Business to Government" marketing has always been one of the areas of marketing most resistant to innovation. But even here, under the leadership of people like Steve, social media is being used to generate real, measurable results.

I sat down Steve to learn first hand how he is integrating social media into his successful government marketing program.

Please listen to the podcast interview we recorded last week.

Related links:
http://GovTwit.com – BearingPoint’s government Twitter directory
http://BearingPoint.com/GovTube - New Thinking In Government video series
http://Twitter.com/dslunceford - Follow Steve on Twitter
http://ProReporterTips.com – Steve’s personal blog

What do you think of Steve's strategy and tactics? Would you do the same thing or do you have a different approach to government marketing? I'd love to hear what you have to say! Please leave a comment...

(...and full disclosure, BearingPoint is a client of my employer, Strategic Communications Group)