Dance With Strangers

Last night it finally happened, the Dell Inspirion that I had been using for the past six years (not to mention three house moves) gave up the fight. First off, this was a solid computer. Used for nearly every facet of my life during the past six years including:

• Partitioned web server when I started my own consulting business in 2004.
• File server for 100+ GB of pictures, music and video, including a huge growth in files with the births of two sons (‘06 and ‘08).
• Accounting system for the entire family.
• Gaming system before I bought a Wii. My wife and I spent many an hour playing Civilization I, II and III on this piece of hardware.
• Home office computer part deux when my wife started to work from home after our move to Austin.
• Learning platform as I played around with education myself on the innards of computers, programming, HTML/CSS and networking.

Alas, all good things come to an end. The research towards a new computer begins today, but I’m looking for suggestions from all of you, who know me fairly well at this point. Tell me what computer would work best for my family, here are some critical points:

1. I use a MacBook Pro for work and love it.
2. My wife has a separate Dell for work now and she loves it.
3. We need a central computer in the house to serve as a primary system to hold all of pictures, videos and music for networking throughout the house.
4. The computer does not necessarily need any “Office” applications.
5. I need the computer to be partially partitioned as a web server to host my blogs, including this one and several family blogs.
6. I would like to start doing the family video editing on the home computer, whereas today I use FinalCut on my 15″ MacBook Pro.

What say you loyal reader?

One recently new aspect of Google reader that I love is the ability to follow the shared feed of other Google reader users and “Like” individual posts. First, let us take a look at what I’m talking about for those not tracking feeds in Google reader and then we can talk about five ways this can help your B2B marketing efforts.

Within Google Reader, scroll down to the bottom of any post and see:

Let’s talk about the “Share” button first. When you click on Share it will glow a nice yellow, meaning that you are now sharing this article with anyone who subscribes to your Google Reader Shared Item feed. This is a collection of what you consider must read posts, news, Tweets, etc. Using Google Reader at BreakingPoint, I use the shared feed to distribute pertinent industry news to the field and executive staff (I also use the Email function a great deal for individual stories that I want folks to respond to or use in a sales situation, but we’ll talk about that another time). The shared button is a terrific way for you to keep your team informed.

Evolving from the “Share” button we now have “Like” to the left. The Like button notifies anyone else who is also reading that feed AND also “liked” the feed  that you liked this story. For example, I hit “Like” on a recent post from Beth Kanter and scrolling back up to the top of the post saw:

It looks like Evgeni and Sean also liked this post. Hmmm, perhaps I’d enjoy other posts they enjoy? Bingo! I can click on either of their names, get some more info and even add them into a list of people I “Follow” on Google Reader. Additionally, if they have chosen to do so, I can friend them on Facebook, follow them on Twitter, connect on LinkedIn and more.

Obviously the above is from my personal Google Reader account, but I do the same thing every morning for our BreakingPoint account and here are five things that help me as a B2B marketer.

1) Friends Like Me

Let’s use a dreamy scenario; your business provides IT implementation services, specifically helping companies become PCI compliant. You “like” stories about PCI compliance, your prospect also “likes” stories about PCI compliance. Using Google reader you find these people, listen to the articles and information that are important to them and learn more about who you are trying to reach. Each day this helps me determine the topics important to our business.

2) Increasing Our Reach

Once you are following someone’s shared feed you can also see the other social networks they are involved in and determine if they might be someone you want to follow on these other networks. On a macro level it allows me to get a picture of where our industry hangs out online, helping me to further prioritize activities. Additionally I can then interact with individuals where they reside.

3) They Find Out

When you follow someone, they get notified and have the option to follow you back, similar to other networks. This is a critical step and one to remember before you choose to follow someone (no matter the social network). When I follow folks in Google for business it is on our corporate Google Reader account that has all information about our company and nothing about me as a person. Plan this all out before you hit “follow” for the first time. The great opportunity, however, is that you can find someone that seems like an ideal prospect for your company and grab their attention on Google.

4) Increase Your Data Input

Now that you have followed this person, you also have access to all the information they share on Google Reader each day, a plethora of more industry news without having to go out searching.

5) Integrate Into a Campaign

Eventually, as you get more sophisticated on following and sharing within Google Reader, you can update your info or your website that is listed in your profile to coordinate with a specific marketing campaign. For example, say you just published a white paper on PCI compliance (using our above example). Create a personalized URL (try BudURL to track everything and back end into SalesForce), place it into your profile and each time you follow someone that week or month that will be the URL they click to get more info. You could even put it into your status on Google, cross-promote through Twitter and FriendFeed, etc.

Are you using Google Reader for your B2B marketing? How?