I’m in charge of coming up with B2B social media marketing strategies for our clients, then helping get the content that makes them work through the process of development and implementation. That means I do a lot of research and exploration to find out what lies in that lovely matrix of customer interest and market opportunity. What I do is all about possibility. It’s about sorting out the puzzle pieces and making something cohesive from them (which I love doing).

My research takes me outside of the things that are my immediate domain because I need to have an understanding of what the client does already and how it’s working, what they’re not doing, and where the opportunities are. There tends to be a pile of “other stuff” that isn’t what we’re contracted to do. If there’s something that really needs attention, we’ll point it out and can help you get it taken care of or refer you to someone who can.

Sometimes, I wish that it was my job to help deal with this pile of “other stuff” that could be done as part of the web marketing strategy. It can be hard to curtail scope creep when you’re really excited about finding a huge, untapped opportunity for a client. You might be wondering how people missed these big opportunities in their own business. They’re often not the most obvious or trendy ways to solve the problem. Or maybe they solve the problem in an unexpected way. What they almost always are is the second right answer.

A Facebook page or Twitter stream might not yield big results for your company. You might not have the time or strategy to market it, maintain interest, and fill it with useful content. That doesn’t mean you’re exempt from needing to have some social media in place. Would answering common troubleshooting questions regarding your product or software on tech forums make users less frustrated and inspire brand loyalty? Is checking your reviews on Google, Yahoo!, and Yelp part of your routine? What about responding to customers that had a less than ideal experience?

If you’re intimidated or unable to build and maintain some of the bigger efforts that would boost your company’s web marketing strategy, I challenge you to sit down and think of a dozen things you could do that are second right ideas. Just because they weren’t the first right idea doesn’t make them any less right!

Yesterday, I was at VMX09, a video conference held in Austin. It was an outstanding intermediate-level event. They did a great job blending in marketing and new methods, for people who have been doing video, and then video production and scaling and workflow hints for marketing people who are looking to add video to what they do online. As a marketing person who’s done a few videos from start to finish, all by myself, it was helpful to know that I’ve been doing things right, how to do it better, and how to do it more easily and frequently.

Here are my quick and dirty take away tips:
1. Audio is the most important thing. People will put up with crappy visuals if the audio is great, but make them adjust everything and they’ll abandon.

2. Your content and info can’t suck. Be informative, entertaining, and to the point.

3. blip.tv is your new best friend.

4. Don’t go for the lowest quality. You can’t control where your content is shown. The services automatically compress and serve the right kind of file now, so you want to make sure people using web TV or big monitors have a good experience.

5. Read the Terms of Service for each site before you post anything. Period. Some sites can use your content without notifying or paying you, others absolutely do not allow anything of any sort of commercial intent and will pull your video. Yes, you demonstrating a product is commercial.

If this is something that interests you, or if your company is thinking about adding it, or if you already do it but want to improve production values or know where to spend your time and money to make it better, you might want to check out a few of the sessions. Everything will be available on streaming video next Wednesday here: http://www.vmx09.com/.

Seems like all our clients are asking the same question these days. They pay us to give them helpful answers, but hey, it’s a Saturday and I have a little free time (because I don’t have Tweetdeck turned on!). My apologies to the Bard:

To tweet or not to tweet, that is the question;
Whether ’tis nobler to spend your work hours on Twitter
Following news of outrageous behavior and misfortune,
Or to take to your keyboard and get back to work,
And by un-following, end them. To work, or to tweet
No more; and by an unsubscription to say we end
The dull conceit and the thousand unnatural shocks
The web is heir to — ’tis a mental nirvana
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die to Twitter;
To sleep, perchance to work. Ay, there’s the rub,
For in that sleep or work, to what purpose our time,
When we have logged off this persistent stranger,
Freedom must give us pause. There’s the disrespect
That makes calamity of online life,
For who would bear the whips and scorns of bloggers,
The anonymous poster, the proud arrogant insult,
The pain of willful misunderstanding, manners’ decay,
The insolence of contempt and the spurning
Of patient merit and reasoned conversation,
When we ourselves can our own quiet make
With a blank monitor? who would follow the chatter,
To linkshrink and retweet instead of work,
But that the dread of being laid off,
The unpaid, inactive state from which
No coworker returns, strengthens the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of…

I just listened to a recording of John Jantsch with Duct Tape Marketing, interviewing Seth Godin, bestselling author, entrepreneur and agent of change. They covered a LOT of interesting topics related to small businesses and our current economic environment, including why Godin doesn’t Twitter! Godin is a believer in being the best in the world at a few things, rather than being average at a bunch of things. I was multitasking while listening (being average at a bunch of things), and I still got a great deal out of the interview. Seth’s final request of the audience was to “just start” — so, I am hereby just starting by blogging about it! Tell me what YOU are going to start.