Break Free B2B Marketing: Dez Blanchfield of Sociaall on Joining the Conversation
When it comes to B2B influencer marketing, it’s natural to wonder just what an industry influencer actually looks like?
Our third season of Break Free B2B Marketing video interviews feature conversations with top B2B influencers, looking closely at the issues that each expert is influential about in their industry.
For more than a decade our team at TopRank Marketing has fostered a strong community of leading influencers, developing close relationships with subject matter experts in many industries.
Running a successful business is the art of juggling a thousand different things in a thousand different ways. It can be challenging to know which of these things to truly focus on and which balls are okay to drop for the sake of company growth. With so many new technologies at the forefront: cloud, machine learning, IoT, big data, virtualization, cybersecurity, and dozens of others – how do you know where to focus? How do you know which business best practices are the right one for your company vs. others?
There’s no catch-all answer to these questions, but there are industry experts who are more capable of answering them than anyone else. One of those experts is Dez Blanchfield. Dez has been in the business of digital transformation for over 25 years and has learned a lot from his robust experience working with IT leaders, solving complex problems, and running his own successful digital social agency, Sociaall Inc.
He’s here today in the latest episode of TopRank’s Break Free B2B marketing video series to share some of his invaluable insight.
Break Free B2B Interview with Dez Blanchfield
If you’re interested in checking out a particular portion of the discussion, you can find a quick general outline below, as well as a few excerpts that stood out to us.
- 1:00 – Introduction to Dez
- 2:03 – Is it a good idea to be a jack of all trades?
- 5:31 – Is the pace of change accelerating?
- 11:25 – Are business changes made due to the Covid-19 pandemic going to stick?
- 20:00 – For the B2B marketing audience: where are things headed in the near future?
- 40:20 – B2B influencer marketing
- 47:11 – It’s not about the number of followers, but the number of people you can move
- 53:24 – Tracking and monitoring development from B2C to B2B
- 56:10 – Where can you find Dez to hear more?
Josh: It seems like you’re looking to where the puck is going to be versus where the puck is now and have your entire career. So in a very general sense for our B2B marketing audience: where’s the puck going? If you’re a B2B business person and leader and executive, where should you be looking just for the near future?
Dez: The advice I’ve been giving people in the last three to five years is that it was a time when you could do it all yourself. If you were an airline, or a bank, or if you were in health care, or wealth management, if you’re a telco, there was a time when you could do it all, you could run your own telephone systems, run your own technology, stack your own email servers, your own domain name servers. But the complexity is so great now and the speed at which we have to move, as you alluded to before, is so rapid, and so short, and you know that the demand is for reduced time to market. The advice I’m giving people now is: find the best partner choice. In each of the segments, you need to be able to address problems. So if you’re a bank, be a bank, focus on being the best bank, you can, and look for things that are gonna disrupt you. But don’t try to be a phone company. Don’t run your own PBX, don’t run your voice systems. If you own a website, don’t become a hosting company. Don’t waste your time running web services.
[bctt tweet=”“If you’re a bank, be a bank, focus on being the best bank you can, and look for things that are going to disrupt you. But don’t try to be a phone company.” — Dez Blanchfield @dez_blanchfield #BreakFreeB2B” username=”toprank”]Josh: No, and it seems like the pandemic, which you mentioned there, is almost an accelerant more than anything. We were thinking of it as a slow down and shut down and lockdown. But really, it seems to have just taken all of these very cautious steps that businesses would have would have taken and made them suddenly have to run forward with it. Do you think these are changes that are going to stick? Or are we going to have this inertia pulling us back to normal?
Dez: The way I like to describe it is: if I was in a boardroom the other day having to whiteboard this out, and I would describe it as we’ve already jumped off this cliff. And if you’ve ever jumped off a cliff, you know, it’s impossible to get back up there without actually landing somewhere and then walking a long way back to the track to get to the top. So we have, without wanting to, had to jump off this cliff and deal with it.
I think the majority of the impact is not going to reverse. We are definitely going to want to sit in cafes and go to restaurants again. But the way in which we interact with those will change. So for example, I have an app now for my local barista and I just ordered my cappuccino and wandered past and picked it up at a window. I don’t wait for 15 minutes in a queue in a stuffy room waiting for my coffee to turn up. So you know those use cases have already changed. And retailers have had to go online when they’ve never been online. They’ve had to get apps or integrate and leverage things, shift to digital payments and move away from cash. All these changes have happened. Even with the worst possible human apathy, where humans are lazy, and very arrogant. And you know when we think of them, when we think of some of the changes that have happened the last couple of decades. They’ve come about and people become lazy and there’s been high level apathy and they go back to the normal ways.
Keep your eye on the TopRank Marketing Blog and subscribe to our YouTube channel for more Break Free B2B interviews. Also check out episodes from season 1 and season 2.
Take your B2B marketing to new heights by checking out out previous season 3 episodes of Break Free B2B Marketing:
- Episode 1: Kevin L. Jackson, GC GlobalNet — The Future of Cloud Computing
- Episode 2: Tim Crawford, AVOA — The New Normal
- Episode 3: Oliver Christie, PertexaHealthTech — The Future of Artificial Intelligence
- Episode 4: Liam McIvor Martin, Time Doctor — Trends in Remote Work
- Episode 5: Sarah Barnes-Humphrey, SHIPZ — The Future of Supply Chain
- Episode 6: Eric Vanberburg, TCDI — The Changing Cybersecurity Landscape
- Episode 7: Nicole Brady, SAHM Reviews — The Importance of Empathy
- Episode 8: Tamara McCleary, Thulium — Visions of the Future
The post Break Free B2B Marketing: Dez Blanchfield of Sociaall on Joining the Conversation appeared first on B2B Marketing Blog – TopRank®.
Dalla Cina: scoperto meccanismo per memorie ultra-veloci
L’Istituto di Fisica dell’Accademia Cinese delle Scienze ha annunciato di aver scoperto un nuovo meccanismo per sviluppare dispositivi di memoria non volatile ad altissima velocità. Un gruppo di suoi ricercatori ha infatti sviluppato un device con queste caratteristiche, basato su eterostrutture composte da più semiconduttori di diverso tipo tenuti insieme dalle forze di Van der Waals, e con interfacce atomicamente nitide tra diversi elementi funzionali, con un valore di estinzione fino a 10 miliardi.
I nuovi Xiaomi Mi 11i con 100 euro di sconto su Amazon
A poco più di un mese dall’annuncio ufficiale di Xiaomi, i nuovi e potenti smartphone Mi 11i scendono già di prezzo su Amazon. E non si tratta di un piccolo sconto, ma di un risparmio di 100 euro rispetto al prezzo di listino, valido per le tre versioni del dispositivo: Celestial Silver, Cosmic Black e Frosty White.
Twitter, Spaces potrà essere usato da chi ha più di 600 follower
Twitter è sempre più impegnato a offrire un’esperienza social a 360 gradi ai suoi utenti, come dimostra per esempio l’implementazione di Spaces, la sua nuova funzione che consente un’interazione tra utenti basata solo ed esclusivamente sulla voce, come avviene sul rivale Clubhouse.
A simpler and safer future — without passwords
You may not realize it, but passwords are the single biggest threat to your online security – they’re easy to steal, they’re hard to remember, and managing them is tedious. Many people believe that a password should be as long and complicated as possible – but in many cases, this can actually increase the security risk. Complicated passwords tempt users into using them for more than one account; in fact, 66% of Americans admit to using the same password across multiple sites, which makes all those accounts vulnerable if any one falls.
In 2020, searches for “how strong is my password” increased by 300%. Unfortunately, even the strongest passwords can be compromised and used by an attacker – that’s why we invested in security controls that prevent you from using weak or compromised passwords.
At Google, keeping you safe online is our top priority, so we continuously invest in new tools and features to keep your personal information safe, including your passwords.
On World Password Day, we’re sharing how we are already making password management easier and safer, and we’re providing a sneak peek at how our continued innovation is creating a future where one day you won’t need a password at all.
Keeping Your Google Sign In Safer
One of the best ways to protect your account from a breached or bad password is by having a second form of verification in place – another way for your account to confirm it is really you logging in. Google has been doing this for years, ensuring that your Google Account is protected by multiple layers of verification.
Today we ask people who have enrolled in two-step verification (2SV) to confirm it’s really them with a simple tap via a Google prompt on their phone whenever they sign in. Soon we’ll start automatically enrolling users in 2SV if their accounts are appropriately configured. (You can check the status of your account in our Security Checkup). Using their mobile device to sign in gives people a safer and more secure authentication experience than passwords alone.
We are also building advanced security technologies into devices to make this multi-factor authentication seamless and even more secure than a password. For example, we’ve built our security keys directly into Android devices, and launched our Google Smart Lock app for iOS, so now people can use their phones as their secondary form of authentication.
OPPO Find X3 Pro: com’è fatta la lente a microscopio che ingrandisce fino a 60x?
L’app Woolaroo usa Vision AI per aiutare a preservare le lingue
Purtroppo, delle oltre 7.000 lingue parlate nel mondo, quasi 3.000 sono a rischio di estinzione. In media si stima che, ogni quattordici giorni, una lingua si estingua. Google Arts & Culture, attraverso soluzioni tecnologiche creative e il supporto delle organizzazioni linguistiche, contribuisce alla creazione di uno strumento interattivo ed educativo per promuovere le lingue.
Woolaroo è una piattaforma open-source di foto-traduzione alimentata dal machine learning e dal riconoscimento delle immagini. L’applicazione è stata costruita su Google Cloud per incoraggiare gli utenti a scoprire di più sulle lingue in via di estinzione in tutto il mondo. Gli utenti, scattando una foto di un oggetto, potranno scoprire, tramite l’applicazione, la parola nella lingua selezionata con la relativa pronuncia.
Woolaroo nasce dall’idea che l’apprendimento delle lingue possa essere migliorato attraverso il coinvolgimento e il contesto. Vedere un oggetto nel suo ambiente rende più facile la memorizzazione dell’informazione e il conseguente utilizzo, in modo più naturale, in una conversazione.
Con l’aiuto dei team di Google, Woolaroo è stato lanciato in 10 lingue, tra cui il greco-calabro, il siciliano, il creolo della Louisiana, il maori e lo yiddish. Durante la fase di sviluppo dell’applicazione, i team di Partner Innovation e Google Arts & Culture hanno lanciato un appello a Google per scoprire quali erano lingue meno conosciute parlate dai dipendenti. Grazie al supporto delle persone madrelingua sono stati creati vocabolari rivisti dalle istituzioni partner per garantire che le traduzioni fossero corrette e coerenti.
Woolaroo utilizza Google Cloud Vision API, che ottiene informazioni dalle immagini attraverso AutoML o modelli pre-addestrati per classificare rapidamente le immagini in milioni di categorie predefinite. Questo rende l’AI accessibile e utile a più persone, poiché AutoML automatizza l’addestramento di questi modelli di machine learning.
Il nostro team di Google Arts and Culture crea esperienze coinvolgenti per far conoscere l’arte, la storia, la cultura e molto altro ancora. L’obiettivo è quello di sostenere la conservazione del patrimonio e dei punti di riferimento culturali – compresa la lingua parlata – attraverso l’uso della tecnologia moderna. Woolaroo è open source, quindi qualsiasi persona e organizzazione può utilizzarlo per supportare una lingua in via di estinzione. Per scoprire di più sulle iniziative Google Arts & Culture, potete scaricare l’app Google Arts & Culture o visitare il blog.
Scritto da: Ian Pattison, Head of Customer Engineering, Retail, CPG & Travel, UK&I
Mass Effect Legendary Edition, online decine di bonus gratuiti
In attesa dell’imminente lancio di Mass Effect Legendary Edition, che arriverà nei negozi il 14 maggio prossimo su PC, tramite Origin e Steam, PlayStation 4 e Xbox One con compatibilità futura su PlayStation 5 e Xbox Series X|S, BioWare ha rilasciato diversi contenuti per i fan, tra cui un mega-cut della colonna sonora di Mass Effect, un’esperienza unica per creare key art personalizzate e un download gratuito di contenuti bonus.
TikTok e Technology Coalition, insieme per proteggere i minori
TikTok è uno dei social network più attivi negli ultimi tempi in termini di impegni per assicurare la massima tutela e protezione ai suoi utenti, specie i più giovani. La nota piattaforma, tra le preferite dagli italiani, infatti, dopo essersi adeguata alle normative italiane volute dal Garante per la Privacy sulle limitazioni di accesso ai suoi servizi agli utenti di età inferiore ai 13 anni, ha annunciato di aver aderito alla Technology Coalition, un’organizzazione che lavora per proteggere i minori dallo sfruttamento e dagli abusi sessuali online.
Facebook conferma il ban, e Trump lancia la sua piattaforma
Il comitato di supervisione di Facebook ha preso la sua decisione sul bando di Donald Trump dalla nota piattaforma social: come vi abbiamo segnalato ieri, per il momento gli account ufficiali dell’ex presidente degli Stati Uniti d’America resteranno sospesi su Facebook e Instagram. Almeno fino a quando non verrà presa una decisione definitiva nei prossimi mesi, quando il comitato avrà avuto modo di analizzare meglio il caso dopo che Facebook gli avrà fornito ulteriore materiale e spiegazioni.
AMP: un Google Update anticipa l’addio
SpaceX stavolta ce l’ha fatta: la Starship SN15 è atterrata intera
La versione SN15 del veicolo sperimentale Starship di SpaceX è partita verticalmente, si è arrampicata fino a circa 10 chilometri, ha effettuato la discesa in “spanciata”, si è raddrizzata ed è scesa fino a terra, sostenuta soltanto dai suoi motori, appoggiandosi dolcemente al suolo invece di esplodere o schiantarsi come gli esemplari precedenti.
A parte un principio d’incendio dopo l’atterraggio, domato dai sistemi antincendio, e una copertura nuvolosa che ha intralciato la visuale, con alcune interruzioni delle immagini video in diretta dal veicolo, tutto è andato bene. Un altro passo avanti nello sviluppo iterativo rapido di Starship. Il prossimo passo è rendere tutto questo normale e abituale.
Questo articolo vi arriva gratuitamente e senza pubblicità grazie alle donazioni dei lettori. Se vi è piaciuto, potete incoraggiarmi a scrivere ancora facendo una donazione anche voi, tramite Paypal (paypal.me/disinformatico) o altri metodi.
A hybrid approach to work
Sundar sent the following email to Google employees earlier today.
Hi Googlers,
We’ve spent the last year focused on supporting employees during the pandemic. I hope the extra benefits such as Carer’s Leave, the work-from-home allowance, the extra reset days, and the ability to work from wherever you need have been helpful in getting through this tough time.
And we’re not through it yet. It’s heartbreaking to see COVID surging in places like India, Brazil, and many others around the world. If you live in one of these places, please focus on taking care of yourselves and your loved ones right now. We are here to support however we can.
In other areas, conditions are less dire and people are beginning to open up their lives and think about returning to the office. In fact, in places where we’ve been able to reopen Google offices in a voluntary capacity, we’ve seen nearly 60% of Googlers choosing to come back to the office.
For more than 20 years, our employees have been coming to the office to solve interesting problems — in a cafe, around a whiteboard, or during a pickup game of beach volleyball or cricket. Our campuses have been at the heart of our Google community and the majority of our employees still want to be on campus some of the time. Yet many of us would also enjoy the flexibility of working from home a couple days of week, spending time in another city for part of the year, or even moving there permanently. Google’s future workplace will have room for all of these possibilities.
Over the last year, a team within REWS has been reimagining a hybrid workplace to help us collaborate effectively across many work environments. They’re testing new multi-purpose offices and private workspaces, and working with teams to develop advanced video technology that creates greater equity between employees in the office and those joining virtually. All of these efforts will help us work with greater flexibility and choice once we’re able to return to our offices globally.
That flexibility will come in a few different forms — and your product areas and functions will share more details on all of these changes by mid-June. Here are the key principles:
A more flexible work week:
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We’ll move to a hybrid work week where most Googlers spend approximately three days in the office and two days wherever they work best. Since in-office time will be focused on collaboration, your product areas and functions will help decide which days teams will come together in the office. There will also be roles that may need to be on site more than three days a week due to the nature of the work.
More choice around where you work:
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More locations globally: One of Google’s biggest advantages is our global footprint. We are investing in many great communities globally — which creates more opportunity for employees to move around throughout their careers. By mid-June your PAs and functions will come back with a process by which you can apply to move to another office. In granting approvals, they’ll take into account whether business goals can be met in the new location and whether your team has the right infrastructure in the site to support your work.
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Remote work: We’ll also offer opportunities for you to apply for completely remote work (away from your team or office) based on your role and team needs. Before the pandemic, we had thousands of people working in locations separate from their core teams. I fully expect those numbers to increase in the coming months as we develop more remote roles, including fully all-remote sub teams. You’ll be able to apply for remote work within your product area or function. As with location transfers, your leads will evaluate whether remote work can support the goals of the team and business. Whether you choose to transfer to a different office or opt for completely remote work, your compensation will be adjusted according to your new location.
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Taken together these changes will result in a workforce where around 60% of Googlers are coming together in the office a few days a week, another 20% are working in new office locations, and 20% are working from home.
More flexibility for your life:
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Work-from-anywhere weeks: Going forward, Googlers will be able to temporarily work from a location other than their main office for up to 4 weeks per year (with manager approval). The goal here is to give everyone more flexibility around summer and holiday travel.
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Focus time: Product areas and functions will also offer focus hours so we limit internal meetings during times when people need to be heads down on projects.
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Reset days: We’ll continue offering extra “reset” days to help employees recharge during the pandemic in 2021. Our next global day off will be on Friday, May 28 (or the following work day if you’re already not working on the 28th). Please enjoy it!
Woolaroo: a new tool for exploring indigenous languages
“Our dictionary doesn’t have a word for shoe” my Uncle Allan Lena said, so when kids ask him what to call it in Yugambeh, he’ll say “jinung gulli” – a foot thing.
Uncle Allan Lena is a frontline worker in the battle to reteach the Yugambeh Aboriginal language to the children of southeast Queensland, Australia, where it hasn’t been spoken fluently for decades and thus is – like many other languages around the world – in danger of disappearing.
For the younger generation, even general language can be a challenge to understand, but it can be especially difficult to try to describe modern items using Indigenous languages like Yugambeh. For example in the Australian outdoors, it’s easy to teach children the words for trees and animals, but around the house it becomes harder. Traditional language didn’t have a word for a fridge – so we say waring bin – a cold place. The same with a telephone – we call it a gulgun biral – voice thrower.
However, today’s technology can help provide an educational and interactive way to promote language learning and preservation. I’m particularly proud for Yugambeh to be the first Australian Aboriginal language to be featured on Woolaroo, a new Google Arts & Culture experiment using the Cloud Vision API.
The team behind the Yugambeh Museum has been working for three decades to help gather local language and cultural stories. Given the importance of Aboriginal language to Australian culture we have the incentive to record the known but in particular new words our community members are using as the world evolves bringing us new technology we didn’t have before.
