Lo and behold the return of the Bateman Buzz Meter, our ranking of recent newsworthy events based on PR and Social Media effectiveness. As always, please comment on any current news headlines or PR stunts you think are worthy of the Buzz Meter.

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This is the first in an ongoing series of Q&As with marketing executives and senior management at Bateman Group client companies. The series aims to spotlight the critical issues senior marketers are grappling with and offer practical advice about PR’s role within the broader marketing mix.

The following interview was conducted with Carlos Carvajal when he was vice president of Marketing at Baynote, a leading provider of software solutions for personalizing the online customer experience. Currently, Carlos is vice president of Product Management at Baynote.

Q: What do you view as the most important element of a successful B2B marketing program?

Having the right team in place is first and foremost critical to the success of any marketing organization. Beyond this, there are really three core pillars to running a successful B2B marketing program.

First, marketing needs to be in alignment with the overall corporate strategy which should guide all tactics and campaigns. This sounds simple but all too often is overlooked. Staying true to your strategy often means a slow and steady approach. But in my experience, this approach always wins the race.

Second, a marketing program cannot be successful in this day and age without a strong customer reference program. It’s become increasingly difficult for marketers to differentiate their messages from the competition. This means the real differentiation is best coming through a third party that’s viewed as credible to your target audience. Customers are the most credible source in the eyes of their peers, with industry analysts and media also playing an important role.

Finally, the third requirement is compelling content. There are too many cases where marketing content simply regurgitates a company’s positioning and product messages. Content needs to be useful. It needs to make people feel like you are trying to help them, instead of selling them because people are so desensitized to traditional marketing messages.

Q: In what ways has social media changed the way you approach marketing?

Social media has changed the dynamics of marketing in many different ways but from my vantage point at Baynote the most profound changes are around how we communicate thought leadership and interact with customers. For example, a successful corporate blog allows companies to show thought leadership in a way that conditions people to look for them on a regular basis. This phenomenon didn’t exist with traditional websites because the content wasn’t dynamic and marketers couldn’t truly engage their audience in a two-way conversation.

The important rule with social media is that slow and steady wins the race. You really have to invest and stick with it. It takes time to build a loyal following, but once you have established one it will truly pay dividends.

Q: PR is under a lot of pressure to improve the way it measures business outcomes yet it often lacks access to the KPIs used by marketing, such as data on lead flow, revenue growth and company valuation. What KPIs are you currently held accountable for at Baynote and which of these would you like to see better integrated into PR measurement?

Marketing lives to service sales. Our overarching performance metric for marketing is marketing sourced revenue. We also look at different marketing functions and those that mattered most. From an awareness standpoint, we look at traffic and bounce rates. Is there a steady uptake in traffic? This is far more important than the number of impressions.

With lead generation we look at two things: marketing sourced pipeline and marketing qualified leads. Finally, with product marketing, who’s main job is to enable sales to close leads, we track the opportunity to close ratio.

In terms of the measurement opportunity for PR, I’d like to see a system that tracks the effectiveness of the PR assets the sales team uses, like media coverage and blogs. Through better understanding what specific articles or blog posts played an active role in the different phases of the sales nurturing process, PR could play a more focused role in tangibly driving revenues.

Q: What technology company do you admire most for their marketing effectiveness and why?

It’s hard to pick just one. I really admire Apple for their brand which they’ve built around their relentless focus on staying true to their vision and core competency. Google has done the same thing. Everything with the Google brand and service offering is about simplicity and speed.

I also think Marketo and Hubspot have done an exceptional job establishing thought leadership around the problems they are solving for their customers. They both excel at content marketing.

Q: What piece of advice do you have for PR teams on how they can work more effectively with senior-level marketers?

First, I think it’s important that we look for better ways to share ideas beyond email. This is not limited to PR/Marketing. Businesses simply need more effective collaboration systems that foster better ideas and encourage ways to track progress. At Baynote, we have been experimenting with Box.net to improve collaboration and communication around critical marketing projects and campaigns.

Because marketing is so busy, PR can also help by creating “cookie cutter” emails around company news or competitive moves that can be easily shared with the entire company. This concept of helping senior marketers communicate big wins internally is really simple, and equally as important.

As the year comes to a close and we reflect back, there’s no denying 2011 has been an incredible year for Bateman Group. The surge we experienced in the fourth quarter; however, has truly been unprecedented. Today, we publicly announced our selection as agency of record by three exceptional companies. These recent additions to our client roster include:

Qualys — Based in Redwood Shores, Calif., Qualys is the leading provider of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) IT security risk and compliance management solutions. Qualys solutions are deployed in a matter of hours anywhere in the world, providing customers an immediate and continuous view of their security and compliance postures.

Antenna Software — Based in Jersey City, N.J., Antenna provides mobile business solutions that enable enterprises to build, deploy and manage applications, websites and content across myriad devices for employees, customers and partners.

Sociable Labs — Based in San Mateo, Calif., Sociable Labs provides on-site social commerce solutions for online retailers to maximize social sharing, referral traffic and conversions.

We’ve worked hard over the years to maintain a client roster notable for its diversity — particularly in terms of geography and market position. These recent wins only enhance this by adding an early-stage startup and two fast-growing market leaders that hail from Redwood City all the way to Jersey City. At the same time, Qualys, Antenna and Sociable Labs will strengthen our sector knowledge in IT security, mobility and social commerce markets, respectively. Today we took another big step in our journey to national prominence.

A warm welcome to all three!

The Future of Media Round Up features the top articles and blogs curated by Bateman Group on issues and events related to the convergence of technology, media and communications.

Here’s our take on the most disruptive news, commentary and insights about PR and media from the months of November and December 2011. Please share links to other must-read articles in the comments below if you think we missed anything.

Required Reading:

Redefining Public Relations in the Age of Social Media, The New York Times – From Nov.21 to Dec. 2, the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) sought submissions from public relations professionals, academics, and students and the public to help redefine what “public relations” means. The role of public relations has been significantly transformed by the Internet and social media. PR is no longer about solely managing the message. It has evolved to focus on facilitating the conversation between entities and their audiences. This why PRSA’s “Public Relations Defined” effort is calling for a “modern definition for the new era of public relations.” The last time PRSA updated its definition was in 1982. Interested folks can visit prdefinition.prsa.org to share their definitions.

Social Media Help Bosses Tell Their Story, Financial Times – More than three-quarters of the leaders of the 100 biggest US corporations do not have a Facebook page and only two CEOs use Twitter. But among twenty-something entrepreneurs running online companies, 100 percent are fully involved in the scene. The pros and cons aside, a strong reason to use social media is that can be the ideal platform for disclosing compelling stories that aren’t readily accessible to the public. “More practitioners in business should be out there describing their experiences and giving their opinions. It might help correct some of the misinformation promulgated by anti-capitalists, and the general skepticism about wealth creators expressed by much of the media.”

Occupy Movement Pushes CSR to the Tipping Point, CSRHub – The Occupy Movement is forcing banks to examine whether current  Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) efforts like philanthropy are enough. Facing the movement’s disastrous effects on client and employee loyalty as well as recruitment, financial firms are being pushed to seriously reconsider going beyond old-school deeds to show true leadership in “doing well by doing the right thing.”

Public Relations Won’t Fix Penn State’s Crisis, PRSAY (PRSA) – The multilayered Penn state crisis has raised a lot of questions and challenges around the university’s reputation. From a PR standpoint, “one thing public relations professionals cannot help people understand, and should never have to, are an organization’s moral and legal failings.”  PRSA’s own Keith Trivitt and Arthur Yann give their PR perspectives on the crisis and make the distinction that the crisis is a management issue and not a public relations issue.

Charlie Miller’s Punishment by Apple Tests a Complex Relationship, Huffington Post – Earlier in November, white hat hacker Charlie Miller’s relationship with Apple was damaged when the company said he violated the terms of his agreement after disguising an app to reveal a security flaw in Apple’s App Store. This incident reflects the tension in the partnership between companies and their security experts. Should flaws be disclosed privately to developers or publically? Bruce Schneier, a security expert, thinks that “if researchers don’t go public, things don’t get fixed…Companies don’t see it as a security problem; they see it as a PR problem. And if there’s no PR problem, it’ll never be a priority.”

Follow @BatemanGroupPR for more opinions on breaking news and issues.

It’s not a text book, but it should be. Going into my fourth and final year at the University of Oregon, I’ve read my share of textbooks, not all of them good. Famed blogger, speaker and marketing strategist, David Meerman Scott, wrote The New Rules of Marketing & PR which I have to say would be a great supplement to marketing or PR instruction.

For those of us who have grown up immersed in social media, some of what he encourages is intuitive, but a lot of it isn’t. We see public figures misuse social media on a daily basis, and we see our friends do it too. From marketing ourselves in pursuit of a job, to managing a corporation’s reputation, to communicating with consumers, Scott explains what’s necessary to be successful with PR and social media in today’s market (job or otherwise).

Without further ado, here are my impressions on Scott’s new book – from my perspective as a journalism student and two-time summer intern at the Bateman Group…

Favorite Part: “Social Media is a Cocktail Party.”

Growing up in social media is a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing because it’s familiar and second nature; it’s a curse because it’s easy to forget the power of a tweet, status update or post. Scott presents a simple set of rules, a mindset really, to think about. He says that the social rules of a cocktail party are the same as those of social media. Some of the things he urges people to consider:

• Do you go into a large crowd of people, most of whom you don’t know, and shout, “BUY MY PRODUCT!”?
• Do you ask everyone for their business card?
• Do you listen more than speak?
• Do you try to meet every single person, or do you have a few great conversations?
• Do you avoid interaction altogether?

I find this are helpful things to keep in mind for those trying to dip their toes in the social media pool (a little late in the game) and those who forget about the power of social media.

One of my teachers last year surprised us all on the first day of class by presenting a slideshow of everything she could find about us online – one slide per student! Some were good, some were embarrassing and some were downright horrifying. If a few of these students had thought about Scott’s cocktail party analogy, our professor may have respected them a little more for the rest of the term. Then again, I’m pretty sure there’s no such thing as a classy cocktail party in college.

What’s Missing: Cross-Platform Strategies?

One thing that I learned in one if my strategic public relations writing classes at the University of Oregon was how to write a Twitter pitch and search engine optimize a press release. While Scott does give tips to make press releases more visible to the average consumer and internet browser, he doesn’t address how to leverage press releases through social media channels and what the rules for doing so are. Since press releases are no longer meant just for the press (according to Scott), distributing them to consumers is that much more important. Scott espouses the importance for brands to participate where their consumers are participating, but didn’t offer enough practical guidance on how to make press releases more visible to consumers where they read news most, online.

I was also looking for Scott to provide a little instruction on how to make social media presence most productive. There’s not a PR or marketing professional in the world who doesn’t understand – at least on some level – the importance of social media. But with so many marketers still misusing Twitter, for example, what are some proven ways to improve engagement? Contrary to what some may think, you can’t just post a link on Twitter to draw followers in. A good percentage of tweets coming from organizations include a link; and not everyone clicks on every link. Creating an attractive pitch that tells your followers the news, why it’s important and lures them to click in 140 characters or less is no easy task, especially if you have complex news.

Overall Grade: A-

It was a great read. A little long, but Scott’s blogger-esque voice made it more entertaining than the typical run-of-the-mill textbook. Although he covers most of his bases, there are some things missing. I would definitely recommend this book to any professor, grad student or entry level coworker.

Now a little over a month since the launch of Google+ and the most buzzed about online service already has 25 million users, estimates ComScore. These stats mean Google+ is growing faster than Facebook and MySpace did in the early days. Further, according to a new survey from Bloomberg/YouGov, Google+ is on track to claim 22 percent of online U.S. adults in a year, which would place it second behind Facebook as the most-used social site – ahead of Twitter and LinkedIn.  Says the survey, Google+ has already snagged 13 percent of U.S. adults and will add 9 percent over the next year.

It’s no wonder why marketers are so excited about Google+, despite the fact that it’s not technically open to brands. Ford is among the shortlist of brands to test the platform, and understandably its audience is relatively small. At the time of this blog, 12,154 people had added Ford to their circles. This compares with 781,899 people following the brand on Facebook and 75,327 on Twitter.

As a marketer, I am personally a little nonplussed by all the hype around Google+. As a shareholder on the other hand, I love it.

I admit Google+ has some shiny new features that certainly hold promise for marketers once consumers sign onto the service en masse and actually stay on it. For example, Ford’s head of social media Scott Monty says the chat capability has potential for webinars, analyst calls, and even customer service uses for people to have a face-to-face experience with the brand. But it’s not clear whether Google+ brand profiles will support the same functionality for individual users. Just think about how powerful features like Circles could be in supporting audience segmentation and message customization. And potential integration with Google Analytics could give brands just the social ROI metrics they have been waiting for.

Like the Bloomberg/YouGov survey, I predict that adoption of Google+ will continue to grow if only because it has the advantage of being pretty seamlessly integrated into the overall Google ecosystem (search page, Google Docs, Chrome, etc.). This integration should conceivably increase the likelihood that Google search users will check in regularly on Google+. But what will it take for the masses to stay there?  Apparently 31 percent of users polled in the Bloomberg/YouGov survey said they have already abandoned their accounts or not written any posts yet on the site.

As a PR practitioner who spends a large part of the day searching for and reading news from my personalized iGoogle news page,  I check in more frequently on Google+ because the icon is an eye’s distance away, but still spend considerably more time on Facebook and Twitter. This is because the content and interactions I have on those sites are more valuable to me. Although truth be told, I use both Facebook and Twitter increasingly less and less. This brings me to the premise of this post.

Drumroll please.

Above all else, when developing their social media strategies, marketers must remember that the quality of the content will always trump the quality of the platform. This holds particularly true in an era of social media fatigue when consumers are growing tired of how brands are communicating to them via social channels. As Tom Fishburne poignantly said in his recent blog about social fatigue, “It’s not enough for communication to be good for the brand. It has to be good for the consumer.”

So, will social media fatigue kill Google+? Given its steady rise, innovative features, and strong base of early adopters who are charting purposeful best practices, the answer is probably not. However, a good platform with a strong following does not a successful social media program make. At Bateman Group we are admittedly still wrapping our heads around Google+ and formulating our ideas on where, if at all right now it should be used with clients. Given the service is still very much in early adoption mode, it’s currently better suited for most of our clients to communicate with and engage their respective industry influencers versus their direct buyers. Hangout, for example, offers a new twist on how we can engage with influencers but only time will tell if the feature poses too big of a cultural shift to become a mainstream anytime soon.

We’d love to hear from other PR and marketing professionals about how they have begun to incorporate Google+ into their mix of social media tools.

Follow Bill Bourdon on Twitter @bbourdon.