Last updated on January 1st, 2015 at 08:24 pm
It’s been a wild and fun year for our B2B News Network. In the two months since our soft launch (Nov 1, 2014), we have attracted attention from B2B executives and startups from across the world. We’ll have an update on our data on the first of the year, but it’s clear our reports and marketing + tech content for B2B is finding a senior executive audience globally. We’re even more excited that we achieved that organically, and that so many of you found us without a dollar of ad spend. So thank you: for all the retweets and reads and shares and comments.
We wanted to share some of the key highlights from the past 60 days.
Top 10 articles (in terms of pageviews):
1. What every business can learn from the Toronto Raptors – Undoubtedly, this post is the big winner thanks to some reddit love and, well, it’s the Raptors, and the surging NBA team has captured international attention. I wanted to parallel how the players and the coaching mindset could apply to any B2B company, and it looks like those tips truly resonated with our audience.
2. Welcome to the weird world of ‘heartbeat payment’ technology – Innovative and unique tech also appealed to our readers, as we noticed in this report on Royal Bank working with Toronto-based technology developer Bionym to test a wristband called Nymi that reads the user’s heartbeat. Rest assured we’ll be watching this experiment closely to see if the rollout flies or flops.
3. What every business can learn from David’s Tea – In another entry to our “What every business can learn” series, we analyzed what David’s Tea is doing right and how it overcame challenges to become a retail powerhouse. Who knew a tasty cup of tea could help educate B2B executives?
4. What you need to know about the Industrial Internet of Things – Tech journalist Stephanie Medeiros clearly explained how the IoT trend is extending to the industrial side of things. “A handful of companies are already utilizing the power of the Industrial Internet of Things to better their operations,” she wrote. Are you?
5. Online Boxing Day sales skyrocketing for ecommerce – We’ve seen how news headlines appeal to our readers, and this report was no exception. Surging highly on Boxing Day, the article looked at how e-commerce and m-commerce firms were turning to Boxing Day sales launches as a way to reel in customers. We have a feeling this post will still be attractive to readers come Boxing Day 2015.
6. What’s a Hadoop? A (short) big data primer – You love primers, don’t you? That’s a trend we noticed in our first 60 days, as our primers and explainers enjoyed some serious reader love. This post by Jennifer Evans broke down big data’s applications for B2B firms, also pointing out why you should care about a hadoop: “an open source software (Apache) framework specifically developed for distributed processing of big data.”
7. Why “Dewrito” will never appear in stores: stunt marketing and B2B – Quickly rising high on social media was an early November experiment of a food hybrid blending Doritos and Mountain Dew. Wait, what does that have to do with B2B? The author looks at how stunt marketing could work for some firms, but only if done smartly and not simply because they “want to go viral.”
8. What is 4chan? A primer on the infamy engine of the web – This primer focused on an online community often associated with memes and leaked celeb photos, but we learned how this influential site can be a hotbed for creativity, even inspiring B2B insiders. You’ll never look at reddit’s precursor the same way again.
9. The top tech conferences coming to Canada in 2015 – Inspiration can come in many forms, but for those neck-deep in their career, they can gain valuable insights from conferences. That’s why we saw high pageviews for this preview of upcoming conferences ideal for any Canadian tech exec. Also, be sure to also read Saul Colt’s first column on how to prepare for attending a conference.
10. 7 search optimization trends you’ll see in 2015 – Andrew Moran listed the SEO trends bound to make an impact in 2015. We’ve seen how B2B companies appreciate this kind of outlook, as it gets site developers thinking about how to attract more eyeballs to their product. We’ll continue to track SEO trends as they pop up in 2015.
Profiling the marketing stars
Since launch, we wanted to highlight those who could teach others how to effectively manage their business. We began the SAP CMO series with profiles of three gifted business leaders and marketing innovators: Maggie Fox and Doug Shirra of SAP, and Aleya Chattopadhyay, former CMO of Brookfield and Scribble Live.
B2B marketing is undergoing convulsive change, one that is resonating powerfully with our readers. It’s no coincidence that B2B marketing content is our top performing category. Readers are clearly seeking information on how to navigate the landscape.
Our first article in the series looked at this shift, and each of the executives we spoke with echoed it. Maggie and Doug talked about how complexity was overwhelming marketing and outlined the push at SAP for a simpler, more streamlined approach, and Aleya discussed the increasing strategic importance and coming dominance of digital in all areas of marketing.
We listed our top 10…so which B2BNN articles did you enjoy reading most?
