A dedicated server is a server that is exclusive to one user: it’s not shared with anyone else. So I enjoy the benefits of high performance, security, stability and control from a server that has only my content on it, and no one else uses it.

It’s like having my own high-end desktop computer but in the cloud.

Compared to shared hosting – many users on the same server, each with its own partitioned space and its own set of issues to deal with – I find this an ideal solution.

If you read either of WebHostingBuzz’ blogs, the US one or the UK one, you’ll see that this US/UK company is steadily developing its overall service offering especially this side of the Atlantic.

Last month, WHB announced a new range of dedicated servers located in its new Tier 4 datacentre in the UK (near Nottingham, to be a bit more precise).

I like WHB’s confidence in its UK network:

[…] Based in the Midlands, our network is under 2ms from London and Manchester. Redundant private 10Gbps fibre links connect us to all the key London and Manchester POPs. Extensive private peering and connectivity with all major broadband providers mean our network literally flies! Don’t just take our word for it, try it out yourself.

Traceroute to: 78.25.201.25
Download test file: http://37.61.233.42/100MB.bin

To mark the availability of its new UK setup, WHB currently has some great hosting deals for dedicated servers at different configurations and pricing options.

If you’re thinking about switching hosting services, I think WHB is well worth your time considering and checking out.

And here’s possibly a clincher especially if you run WordPress sites at your current host – WHB will handle your migration. They did that for me when I moved and I can tell you I had none of the migraines that would undoubtedly have happened if I’d had to do that myself!

WebHostingBuzz is a good partner. And I’ve got to know CEO Matt Russell over the past year and a half – that’s him in the picture at the top with me at The B2B Huddle event at Oracle UK earlier this month, at which Matt led a discussion session. I’ve had only a few needs to connect with their tech support team. Very responsive, very quickly. Great experiences.

They’re all worth getting to know.

Given my relationship with WHB, you might see this as a “sponsor post.” I see it far more as my post (I wrote it, not WHB) about a great partner. You can read the foundation to this and decide how you see it.

When something as big as content marketing comes along and transforms an entire discipline, it creates a lot of anxiety. Change is scary and it can sometimes feel like you’re hopelessly behind everyone else.

At The B2B Huddle on May 2, 2013, held at Oracle’s UK headquarters, keynote speaker Doug Kessler shone a powerful spotlight on the future of B2B content marketing, offering compelling ideas and suggestions on what the future will look like – for content, and for content marketers.

With references to his frank messaging in Crap: Why the Biggest Single Threat to Content Marketing is Content Marketing – a viral sensation across the social web with nearly 230,000 views on Slideshare – Doug offered Huddlers credible calls to action on the practical issues that concern B2B marketers, and discussed in the questions-and-answers session that followed his keynote.

Listen Now:

You can listen while following along with Doug’s PowerPoint deck below (updated since the B2B Huddle with some additional content):

Get this podcast:

• Download the MP3 file (19.7Mb, 43:05)
• Get the show on iTunes
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About the Speaker

Doug Kessler is co-founder and creative director of Velocity Partners, the London-based B2B content marketing agency.

Doug’s own content includes The B2B Marketing Manifesto (a rant), The Big Fat Content Marketing Strategy Checklist (a workbook), and Crap: Why the Biggest Threat to Content Marketing is Content Marketing.

Share your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future podcasts, in the online FIR communities on Facebook, Friendfeed and Google+. You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 415 895 2971 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: @FIRpodcast. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

To receive all For Immediate Release podcasts including the weekly Hobson and Holtz Report, subscribe to the full RSS feed.

This FIR Speakers and Speeches podcast is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.

(Cross-posted from For Immediate Release, Shel’s and my podcast blog.)

I don’t do many book reviews these days – our FIR Book Reviews Editor, Bob LeDrew, does an admirable and far better job – and I wanted to prepare well for this one. So I wrote up my notes as a narrative and that’s what made it into the podcast.

As I have that narrative – in essence, the transcript of the podcast – I’m publishing it here as an additional review: the words on a screen that will show up in search results whereas audio yet cannot.

Think of it as bonus content, Philip!

Attenzi review notes

Hello, I’m Neville Hobson, co-host of the For Immediate Release podcast series, with a review of Attenzi – A Social Business Story, the new book by Philip Sheldrake published on May the 15th, 2013.

Attenzi is a business book with a huge difference – it’s not a business book, it’s a novel.

It tells a compelling and credible story of one man’s journey that, unbeknownst to him at the start, would help him and his leadership team “redefine the way we all think about our business and its place in the market and its place in the world.”

With Attenzi, Philip Sheldrake presents a sympathetic character in the story-teller Eli Appel, newly-installed CEO of Attenzi, a fictional international company that makes and sells top-range kitchen equipment and services.

Philip gives us a believable hero in Eli, a man who many readers will easily identify with in his desire to understand the shifting sands of contemporary consumer behaviours, the needs to respond to those changes in ways very different to old management and leadership preconceptions; and his endeavours to knit together a team of people that will be the driving force to enable Attenzi to make the jump to that next level.

As the tale unfolds, we see Eli and his colleagues consider aspects of organizational design, business performance management, marketing, public relations, branding, complexity, and the imminent empowerment of the individuals that make up all organizations.

The story also begins to explore the evolution of the customer-centric mindset that, Philip says, has dominated management thinking for the past two decades.

It’s good writing, good story development, credible characters all. It’s a highly probable storyline of individuals trying to understand the changes in their business world, and in their business itself, figuring out what it all means for them and their business, and working out what to do, who will do it, and when.

The kinds of things that business leaders face all the time in the real world.

Philip has done well in presenting business themes and topics that anyone really could grasp without getting lost or losing interest.

As Eli notes early on in the story, ‘social business’  is the kind of buzz word or buzz phrase you hear about at conferences yet have little belief that even those who bandy the words around have much real idea of what they mean to businesses.

I think Attenzi will make you really think about social business, probably in a way you might not have if you’ve thought about those two words before.

The thinking will be about the very things Eli Appel tells his story about – behaviours, engagement, influence, new ideas, organization culture, change, risks, rewards, and so on. It’s not about the tools and channels of social media.

That’s where I think Philip’s story works well. Yes it’s about social business. But unlike every  other business book on this topic, it’s not a business book – it’s story-telling, it’s a novel, a work of fiction.

In sum, it’s a surprisingly good read on a topic that doesn’t sound like it would be. Social business? That dry old thing?

I think you’ll enjoy Attenzi. It’s not just a good read, a passive activity, though. You could engage with the primary characters, each of which you can find on Twitter. You could add to the content, build on it, with chapters of your own that you can connect via the hashtag #attenzi.

After all, Eli concludes his tale with: “I’m finishing this first part of the new Attenzi story.” In the concluding words of Adam Pisoni, Microsoft Yammer co-founder and CTO, who wrote the foreword, addressing you the reader: “Perhaps you’ll even write the sequel?”

Philip has written this book to give away under a Creative Commons license. The more people who read it, the possibility increases that they’ll talk about it, hopefully favourably, attracting more interest and readers. Word of mouth in action.

You can download a copy of Attenzi free of charge in a variety of digital formats: HTML, PDF, ePub, Kindle, and iBooks. There’s also a version on Scribd.

All available right now from www.attenzi.com.

If you have comments or questions about this FIR Book Review, or suggestions for future reviews, please share them in the online FIR community on Google+. You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; and connect with us on Twitter: @FIRpodcast.

You can find more information about the For Immediate Release podcasts, including the weekly business show The Hobson and Holtz Report, at www.forimmediaterelease.biz.

Thanks for listening.

Philip’s set up the foundation for a community surrounding the book, and its broader concepts, on Google+. Well worth being part of that in developing, influencing and extending the conversation.

Related post:

• FIR Book Review: Attenzi – A Social Business Story, by Philip Sheldrake

Attenzi – A Social Business Story

With Attenzi, author Philip Sheldrake presents a sympathetic hero in the story-teller Eli Appel, newly-installed CEO of Attenzi, a fictional international company that makes and sells top-range kitchen equipment and services.

The book tells a compelling and credible story of one man’s journey that, unbeknownst to him at the start, would help him and his leadership team “redefine the way we all think about our business and its place in the market and its place in the world.”

FIR co-host Neville Hobson reviews the Kindle edition of Attenzi and considers the power a work of fiction – a novel – can have in empowering the Eli Appels of our world with the clarity of vision and perspective to explore the evolution of the customer-centric mindset that has dominated management thinking for the past two decades.

As Eli says, “I hope it helps you develop your organization’s relevance, competitiveness and profitability. I hope it helps you forge your career and helps you bring your colleagues with you.”

Listen Now:

Get this podcast:

• Download the MP3 file (2.2Mb, 4:47)
• Get the podcast on iTunes
• Subscribe to the FIR Reviews RSS feed
• Get the FIR app for your iPhone and for your Android device (visit the Android Market from your device)

Attenzi – A Social Business Story by Philip Sheldrake.

Publisher: Philip Sheldrake
Digital formats (content equivalent to about 100 print pages)
Published: May 15, 2013
Price: Free under Creative Commons license.

Attenzi is available in HTML, PDF, ePub, Kindle, and iBooks formats at www.attenzi.com.

About the Author

Philip Sheldrake is managing partner at Euler Partners, a London-based consulting firm.

He is a widely regarded consultant, author and speaker. He is a Chartered Engineer, a main board director of Intellect, the UK trade association for the technology industry, a board director of 6UK, a government backed non-profit promoting adoption of the new Internet protocol, and a founding partner of Meanwhile. He built and sold an award-winning public relations consultancy.

Philip wrote The Business of Influence in 2011 and was interviewed on FIR at the book’s launch.

Connect with Philip on Twitter: @sheldrake.

Share your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future reviews, in the online FIR communities on Facebook, Friendfeed and Google+. You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 415 895 2971 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: @FIRpodcast. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

To receive all For Immediate Release podcasts including the weekly Hobson and Holtz Report, subscribe to the full RSS feed.

This FIR Book Review podcast is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.

(Cross-posted from For Immediate Release, Shel’s and my podcast blog.)

With social media so prolific, are B2B companies taking advantage of all that exists? That question formed a foundation for the keynote presentation by Allan Schoenberg, Executive Director of Corporate Communications for CME Group, at The B2B Huddle on May 2, 2013, held at Oracle’s UK headquarters in Reading.

During a break at the event after the presentation, FIR co-host Neville Hobson spoke with Allan to capture his thoughts on topics from his keynote including what makes CME employees feel comfortable and confident with social media, and further insights into CME’s employee use of social media.

Listen Now:

Get this podcast:

• Download the MP3 file (4.1Mb, 9:02)
• Get the show on iTunes
• Subscribe to the FIR Interviews RSS feed
• Get the FIR app for your iPhone, and for your Android device from the Amazon App Store

The presentation deck Allan used in his keynote presentation:

• See also: FIR Interview with Allan Schoenberg on February 13, 2013.

About our Conversation Partner

Allan Schoenberg is Executive Director of Corporate Communications for CME Group (@CMEGroup), the world’s leading and most diverse derivatives marketplace.

Based in London, he manages international corporate communications for the company, which includes media relations, social media, reputation management and exchange partner relationships.

Prior to working at CME Group, Allan was with Accenture, Edelman and Fleishman Hillard. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Central Michigan University in Economics and his master’s degree in Communications Management from Syracuse University.

Allan is a regular contributor of content to the blog B2B Voices. You can follow Allan on Twitter: @allanschoenberg.

Share your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future interviews, in the online FIR communities on Facebook, Friendfeed and Google+. You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 415 895 2971 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: @FIRpodcast. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

To receive all For Immediate Release podcasts including the weekly Hobson & Holtz Report, subscribe to the full RSS feed.

This FIR Interview is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.

(Cross-posted from For Immediate Release, Shel’s and my podcast blog.)

If something makes you laugh, particularly because you can identify in some way with the situation portrayed, you’re more likely to remember what made you laugh; and, from a brand marketing perspective, you’re more likely to talk about it, share your comments online and tell your friends.

If it’s a video, you have a good chance of establishing some of the essential conditions in and from which that intangible known as ‘viral’ develops.

Thoughts I pondered as I viewed two new videos from software maker Adobe in its on-going ‘Metrics not Myths’ digital marketing campaign in support of its Adobe Marketing Cloud solutions launched last October.

The campaign seeks to portray Adobe’s product – an integrated set of analytics, social, advertising, targeting, and web experience management solutions – as valuable tools for marketers via a humorous approach in debunking common misconceptions that marketers are disconnected from business results.

1. The fortune teller

2. On the analyst’s couch

What do you think – funny or not? Likely to work for Adobe? Take this quick instant poll and then view the results for a totally unscientific snapshot view on what people think. If you prefer to add your own response rather than choose a pre-selection, please do:

[This post is part of an experiment in brand story-telling.]

Related post:

• Humour in Adobe’s Cloud

Quick News: Calgary Zoo publishes annual report to Instagram, Salesforce acquires bookmarking startup Clipboard, Associated Press updates its social media guidelines, Facebook’s newsfeed will get even more annoying with video ads… or will it?; Ragan promo;

News That Fits: American Airlines’ influencer promotion with Klout (and is it misleading?); Dan York reports on GaggleAmp, SoundCloud, and more; McDonald’s tweets illustrate the risks of marketing in real time; the Media Monitoring Minute with CustomScoop; listener comments and roundup from the FIR Community on Google+; addressing the dark side of reputation management; Michael Netzley reports from Singapore on suggestive marketing tactics in Japan and China from Fleishman Hillard’s Authenticity Gap study; the big picture in the Fleishman-Hillard data reveals the authenticity gap;

Music from Novi Novak; and more.

Listen Now:

Get FIR:

• Download the MP3 file (37.1Mb, 92:13)
• Subscribe to the RSS feed
• Get the show at iTunes
• Get the FIR app for your iPhone and for your Android device from the Amazon App Store

Messages from our sponsors: FIR is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years, www.ragan.com; Save time with the CustomScoop online clipping service: sign up for your free two-week trial, at www.customscoop.com/fir.

For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report for May 13, 2013: A 92-minute podcast recorded live from Wokingham, Berkshire, England, and Concord, California, USA.

Links to websites, blog posts and other content we discuss in the show are posted as Delicious bookmarks to facilitate your connection with the discussions and sharing of that content.

• FIR #703 bookmarks on Delicious

Share your comments or questions about this show, or suggestions for future shows, in the online FIR communities on Facebook, Friendfeed and Google+.

You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 415 895 2971 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: @FIRpodcast. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

To stay informed about occasional FIR events (eg, FIR Live), sign up for FIR Update email news.

So, until Monday May 20…

(Cross-posted from For Immediate Release, Shel’s and my podcast blog.)

Last November, I ended a 23-year relationship with IABC, the International Association of Business Communicators, when I let my membership lapse.

I wrote about it in February and outlined some thinking about why I hadn’t renewed it.

Six months later, I’m still a lapsed IABC member. I deliberately describe myself thus as I believe that my self-imposed exile from active IABC participation isn’t a permanent thing. How can I throw away so many years of commitment to an organization that I believed in and supported so fervently for so long? The many people I connected to and engaged with over the years? The contribution I made to shaping IABC in Europe? The professional development opportunities that have been available to me? And the fun things such as co-presenting the Cafe2Go podcasts?

Some of my professional friends wondered why I’d taken such a conclusive step rather than remain part of the association in order to influence change. Or why I’d done something that meant I could no longer use the accreditation designation.

In reality, I just didn’t care enough any more.

I’m not sure what will change my position into one where I care sufficiently to want to come in from the cold, as it were, and cough up the membership dues plus the lapsed-member penalty.

On May 7, Ragan Communications published the results of a survey they conducted in March that asked IABC members – active and lapsed – for their opinions on “the current state of IABC”:

[…] The Ragan survey questioned readers about the controversy that began with the layoff of half of its 32 staffers last fall, shortly after [current IABC executive director Chris] Sorek took the helm.

[…] In the survey, 55 percent of respondents, or 418 individuals, identified themselves as current IABC members, with another 24 percent saying they had let their membership lapse.

Along with the criticism, the poll revealed that IABC has a reservoir of good will as it reboots its Accredited Business Communicator (ABC) credential and undertakes other reforms. Three quarters of members expressed at least some degree of satisfaction about the services that IABC provides.

Ragan’s report makes for interesting reading, taken of course with the pinches of salt you would apply in an online survey that is as informal and open as this was, and didn’t require people to identify themselves. Those qualifiers by no means make the survey or its results invalid in any way: it’s simply saying that this isn’t some kind of scientific research project, but purely a snapshot from which you can glean insights into what people thought when they took it.

I took the survey as one of the 24 percent who Ragan said are lapsed members. My maths suggest that the actual number of lapsed members who took the survey is about 182. That’s a lot of people who care (enough) to share their opinions.

What adds to the credibility of the report are the comments that Ragan has also published – the unvarnished and unfiltered opinions people actually made – including those that are critical of Ragan and the few that questioned its motives in even doing the survey.

Enlightening, many of them.

What will happen now?

What I’d like to see is some clear and public acknowledgment by current IABC leadership of Ragan’s report. Some public communication – not something posted only in a LinkedIn group or in the member area of the IABC website, or as a member-only email – that shows they are listening genuinely and actually care about such opinion, especially from active members but also of the lapsers who shared their views.

Maybe something might happen at the international conference in New York next month. Something that would demonstrate caring leadership and recognition  of that groundswell of goodwill Ragan mentioned.

Here’s one lapsed member who’d care about that!

Related posts:

• It’s a matter of respect, IABC
• Leadership is about conversations
• FIR Interview: IABC Executive Director Chris Sorek – July 31, 2012

Evian, the premium bottled-water brand of French foods group Danone, has enjoyed some success in recent years for its imaginative and virally-attractive online video campaigns centred around babies.

Not ordinary babies, though – these are dancing babies and roller-skating babies, all behaving in their body movements and expressions like miniature grown-ups.

From a brand marketing perspective, the success behind such campaigns can be seen in metrics like the 17.8 million views to date of the roller-skating babies video since it was first posted on YouTube in July 2009.

Yet that number pales in comparison to what’s happening with Evian’s latest video posted last month: Baby & Me.

This latest video sees Evian’s babies repeat the formula of previous babies videos to represent “your gleeful inner child,” but this time they want to dance with you. Take a look:

As of today, the video has garnered over 45 million views in the three weeks it’s been available on YouTube.

That’s not all: perhaps of more interest and significance – that brings the phrase ‘viral video’ to life – is what’s happening across the social web according to Visible Measures:

[…] Baby & Me took top billing on the Viral Chart [in the last week of April], garnering a True Reach of more than 35.8 million views. The campaign also has more than 80 related clips, 740,000 Facebook shares, and 11,000 comments. Since it’s debut on April 19, the campaign has raked in a True Reach of more than 42.3 million views.

I would imagine Evian’s marketers are pleased with such results although I claim no knowledge of their specific objectives for this campaign, nor how they measure what success looks like. (A case study of Evian’s Live Young campaign by Syndicate Media Group gives you a great sense of what the measures may be.)

Creatively, I think the video works well. So I was interested to find out how the producers matched adults with babies in appearance. Yes, they searched for actors with a clear resemblance between their generations.

AdWeek has the story:

[…] The spot, filmed in Buenos Aires and Paris, features adults and kids who were cast because they looked like each other. From there, thanks to some CGI, they mirror each other’s dance moves.

AdWeek goes into some detail about the campaign and what else it involves beyond the video.

Marketing and social – an imaginative collaboration.

[This post is part of an experiment in brand story-telling.]

For social to become recognised by business as the next marketing powerhouse that it is, it needs to prove its return on investment every time, says Oracle’s Kimberley Brind.

In this podcast of her keynote speech at The B2B Huddle on May 2, 2013, held at Oracle’s UK headquarters, Kimberley explains the reach and power that social is giving her company, and joins a vibrant question-and-answer discussion with the audience that followed her presentation.

Listen Now:

Get this podcast:

• Download the MP3 file (15.3Mb, 33:30)
• Get the show on iTunes
• Subscribe to the FIR Speakers and Speeches RSS feed
• Get the FIR app for your iPhone, and for your Android device from the Amazon App Store

About the Speaker

Kimberley Brind is Global Marketing Executive and Social Strategist, Oracle. She is an accomplished and pragmatic goal orientated Technology Marketer with an entrepreneurial approach and 20+ years international, strategic marketing, demand generation and marketing communications experience.

Kimberley is responsible for social media marketing strategy and operations, inside sales demand generation programs, midmarket awareness and demand generation as well as preferred vendor management across Europe, Middle East & Africa.

Connect with Kimberley on Twitter: @kimberleybrind.

Share your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future podcasts, in the online FIR communities on Facebook, Friendfeed and Google+. You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 415 895 2971 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: @FIRpodcast. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

To receive all For Immediate Release podcasts including the weekly Hobson and Holtz Report, subscribe to the full RSS feed.

This FIR Speakers and Speeches podcast is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.

(Cross-posted from For Immediate Release, Shel’s and my podcast blog.)