Citizen Marketer 2.1

Aaron Strout

Experts in the Industry: Ann Handley (32 of 45)

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Where do I start with Ann Handley, chief content officer of MarketingProfs? I met Ann for the first time at a blogger dinner held in Jeremiah Owyang’s honor in Fall of 2007. I was (and still am) a big fan of MarketingProfs and had started following Ann on Twitter. My conversation with Ann at the Rattlesnake Bar in Boston didn’t last long that night but as I’ve talked about before, it was nice to make a personal connection with Ann.

Since that time, Ann and I have done Webinars together, talked regularly via Twitter, e-mail and occasionally on the phone. It’s always refreshing because Ann is such a wealth of knowledge and just a nice person in general. To that end, here are her answers to the Experts in the Industry questions:
In one sentence, please describe what you do and why you’re good at it.
I have two sides: I create and manage digital content to build relationships for organizations and individuals (right now at www.marketingprofs.com), and I’m a writer (right now at www.annhandley.com). I am good at it because I love it, I suppose, but I’d rather leave that judgment up to others. 
 
How did you get into the world of online community, social media or social marketing?
I invented blogging when I was a kid. It just took 30 years for the technology to cach up.  
I am only partially kidding: I have always been a believer in interaction, feedback and community, and in the power of talking to an audience in an intimate and immediate environment, and in hearing their voices talk back. I’ve embraced it as a business tool, certainly, as a way to educate, elucidate, and be educated. But, at the same time — just as I did when I was a kid — it’s rooted for me in the joy of communicating, the creativity of writing, and the thrill of the conversation.
 
If you had $10 million to invest in one company and one company only based on their use of “social,” which company would it be and why?
I’m not sure I’d invest in anything “only based” on their use of social, since I see social as a tool, not a business model. That said, I’m impressed with what lots of companies are doing to embrace social media tools — but that usually requires a shift in mindset more than an influx of cash. p.s. I would, however, invest in MarketingProfs. There’s lots of things we’d like to do here, and $10 million would sure get us there quicker.
 
Which business leader, politician or public figure do you most respect?
Politician: Barack Obama. Business leaders: Arianna Huffington and Tina Brown. The writer I’d most like to meet: David Sedaris. 
 
This reminds me of my favorite inner debate, which do I hate more? The dentist or the gynocologist? Which would you say?
 
Freeform – here’s where you can riff on anyone or anything – good or bad. Or just share a pearl of wisdom.
Thanks for including me here, Aaron. I’m grateful to anyone who wants to hear what I have to say, both in the physical world, and online, both in business and in life. My pearl, my mantra is this: Your community is everything: Foster it. Feed it. Respect it. Don’t abuse it.

Hubspot Keeps Delivering the Value

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Last night, I got a direct message from my friend, Mike Volpe, who is the VP of marketing at Boston based company, Hubspot. In his DM, Mike was letting me know that Hubspot would be releasing an informative report this morning on the “State of Twitter.” If you use Twitter as an individual or a business, I would highly recommend that you check out this report as it is chock full of valuable and informative statistics.
With that said, I’m actually not going to write abou the report. ReadWriteWeb and Techcrunch along with many others have already covered that angle (some before Hubspot was ready). Instead, I want to talk about what Hubspot does well. The have learned the incredibly important lesson of “give before you get.” Just take a look at their site which includes freebies like:
With that said, I have to admit that I was a little skeptical of Hubspot CEO, Brian Halligan, when I first met him several months ago. We were on a MITX panel together along with Chris Brogan and Chris Penn. During the panel, I could tell immediately that Brian was smart and that he got it but I wondered if he might be too far over on the dark side of “using” social media for business. Based on subsequent conversations with Brian and Mike along with watching how Hubspot behaves in the social media “sandbox,” I not only discovered that I was wrong about my initial assessment but also that Brian, Mike and team were in fact REALLY good at tying business goals together with social media outcomes.
I was reminded of my admiration for Hubspot the other day during a webinar I did with Ann Handley of Marketing Profs and Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester. One of the slides in Ann’s portion of the presentation — focused on creating great content — mentioned Hubspot (see below). Between that mention and Mike’s DM last night, I felt compelled to give Hubspot a Stroutmeister “shout out” (that’s a reference to my blog vs. me talking about myself in the 3rd person btw).
To that end, what other companies are doing a great job creating content and sharing it freely with their consituents? I’m always looking for companies to write about, interview or invite to join me on panels etc. If you know of anyone, DM me or leave a comment in the space below.

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