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Customer Communications 2.0

Lets face it, Business to Business sales is a tight knit world. Your company is usually in a small, well defined industry with a finite number of potential customers. Your customer base, too, has a small number of vendors that they’ve worked with for years and intimately trust (usually). Communication in this small network is very clearly defined.

  1. You, the sales person, have a sales proposal.
  2. You call me, your customers, for chat/meeting/lunch/golf?
  3. We discuss/haggle.
  4. I sign.
  5. You hand off to implementation.
  6. Repeat 3 months later.

The customer can also start the dance with a sales opportunity, but regardless the steps are still the same. Most of this interaction is done over the phone and through email. Both customers and vendors are comfortable with these forms of communication. Used together, email and phone can blend to the perfect ratio of interruption and discretion. We have customer communication pretty much figured out, that is as long as nothing changes.

Its Wednesday, so that must mean things have changed, again. It may sound hyperbolic, but change happens. As a tech analyst in the B2B market, I will say that we seem to have a slower rate of adoption than the consumer markets. Traditional business modes seem to hold on much longer, presumably due to the insular nature of how our industries operate. Eventually, however, the forces that mold the consumer world find their way into the B2B community. I have seen a slow but inevitable adoption of new communication technology in B2B companies in the last few years. Instant Messaging, Blogs, Social Networks, Microblogging. If your customers are using these tools in their business, then you should really pay attention. There may be a new mode of communication forming right before our eyes. The first one there may win the hearts and minds of your B2B industry.

In future posts I will be discussing some of the new ways you can connect with your customers. We will look at when and how to use Instant Messaging appropriately. Next we will take a look at how LinkedIn can help you connect, reconnect, and stay connected to your customer’s colleagues. Lastly, we can dive into web conferencing which is an older idea getting a new lease on life.

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B2B CDN Review – LimeLight

I will be wrapping up the CDN segment today with a look at LimeLight Networks. Limelight’s technology is similar to other CDN’s available on the market. A bit too similar, as they just lost a big patent violation case filed by Akamai. Shares are down since the announcement, and things are looking grim in Arizona. So why are we even talking about them?

Customers: LimeLight has Microsoft, one of the largest clients in the Content Distribution game. The XBOX 360 is a media sponge with a loyal, content craved fan base. When you serve up the largest online market for console games in the US, it means something. So the fact that they just signed last year Sony, the soon to be second largest online console market, gives this company some serious clout. Enough to say that either on their own or though a buy-out, LimeLight will be around in the future.

Their Services: Much like any other CDN, LimeLight offers its customers Content Delivery. This is no different than CacheFly’s service, maybe better situated and built out, but the same offering. Unlike other CDNs, LimeLight also supports a proper Streaming Service for its customers (see previous CacheFly post for reference). It follows up its service with an a-la-carte offering of options in its Custom Service. Here you can dedicate servers and control specific option. These are much needed options in the CDN market. Other players in the market have horizontal offerings that go way beyond what most B2Bs needs for their content. LimeLight is playing in your space.

Having said all that, these are the issues and why I think you are still okay with LimeLight.

The Patent Dispute: According to a PC World article, the patent violation deals with Global Hosting system only and not the CDN portion of their business. The Massachusetts U.S. District Court has ruled that LimeLight did not violate Akamai’s CDN patents, as was originally claimed in the suit, only the global hosting. Long of the short of it is, they have a valid CDN business. Going in with eyes open.

Liquidity: Choosing a CDN parter doesn’t mean you are picking out china patterns together. Content is fluid, easily redirected. Using LimeLight now does not preclude you from moving to someone else in the near future. They use one-year contracts, but those become null in the event of an injunction anyway, so as long as they can meet the terms of the SLA (Service Level Agreement) you have little to worry about.

Personal Take: Litigation aside, this company hits a sweet spot right now. My personal experience with LimeLight is limited, but I have heard good things about their customer service from friends in the biz who use them. Their price points are not published, lending to a more traditional model of molding offerings and prices to individual customers. Numbers that I have seen put simple FLV HTTP progressive downloads under one and a half dollars a Gig. Your mileage may vary. In my opinion that number is competitive. The judgment of $45 million against them is concerning, though an appeal is possible. This company has a $100 million yearly revenue stream and enough major players to continue to run their business. Short on an injunction against what they do today on the CDA side, I think they should be considered a player in the B2B space.

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Limelight Networks
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B2B Social Bookmarking – Del.icio.us

What? Del.icio.us? What kind of url/company name is that? Well, it’s both a company name and a url, and Del.icio.us is one of the more popular social bookmarking sites. Social bookmarking is sharing of website links publicly or through your network. Del.icio.us and many other services also allow you to tag the link with keywords and a short description or comment. You can decide per link whether it is shared with others and every keyword has a RSS feed tied to it so people can subscribe to your link feed (and to your del.icio.us profile page). Del.icio.us is valuable as a content provider, link network, research tool, and seo tool.

Content Provider

Del.icio.us is an easy way to add link blogging to your B2B website or blog. Once you add a link to del.icio.us, you can set it up so it automatically appears on your blog (through a script/tag). This is also an easy way to add content to your blog – tagging pages as you come upon them throughout the day. Both Firefox and IE have del.icio.us extensions which easily allow you to add the site you’re looking at to your profile.

Link Network

If your friends or colleagues are on del.icio.us, you can easily send them specific links (and they can send you links). This is a very valuable way of sharing important information or websites and allows others to browse them at their convenience. If they are sharing their links, you can also see what your network (or others) have tagged for various keywords, which is a very valuable way to keep up with what people feel is important online. This can also be valuable way to show your expertise in the B2B marketplace for whatever niche industries you serve.

Research Tool

Need to know what’s going on in your industry? Need to find links for a particular project or client? Searching del.icio.us for content can sometimes be more reliable than search engines (depending on the subject in question). I find it particularly valuable for subjects that search engines and other social bookmarking sites tend to bury because the subjects are not consumer oriented. Even if there are only a few entries for a particular subject, del.icio.us will give you access to all of them in a very easy-to-navigate format.

SEO Tool

Del.icio.us is a very valuable tool for sending traffic to your website, allowing you to submit and tag your content very easily. More importantly, it is not spamming the system, and usually not frowned upon (although it will look better if your link feed includes links other than your own content). It is also important to give your readers a link to del.icio.us on everything you write, to make it easy for them to submit and add your links to the network (add this! is a good product to look at).

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