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The channel that gets to close our series on how social media helps engineers is YouTube. The only social media platform that we never hear anyone complain about or say they would never use is YouTube. Why is that you ask? Because everyone loves video! If you don’t have a Facebook page, refuse to open a Twitter account and are happy with your rolladex of business cards instead of LinkedIn, we still bet at one time or another you were on YouTube and enjoyed it.

YouTube isn’t just for funny home videos, music videos and movie trailers. It is a great place to learn and see things you would otherwise never have the chance to.

YouTube is especially great for engineers because it is a source for many valuable videos including how-tos, product demos, technical reviews and technical answers to questions you just can’t seem to solve.

Below is an example of a video that engineers could find useful. In the video MCCI explains how to migrate your drivers to USB 3.0 designs on Synopsys USB 3.0 IP.

If a picture can say a thousand words, then a video can say a million. YouTube allows companies to take you places you wouldn’t normally be able to go.

When you are watching a video on YouTube and realize that it has over a million views, I’m sure sometimes you think, wow, how did that happen? Well that is the power of YouTube. If people find the content valuable, for whatever reason that may be, people are going to share that content with their friends, family, co-workers and so on and so forth. A YouTube video can become viral very quickly.

Unlike some of the other channels, YouTube is very straightforward. If you can figure out how to record your own videos, you will definitely be able to start your own personal channel on YouTube. Finding videos is also extremely easy because it is just like any other search engine.

Everyone loves a good video. They are much easier to digest than an article or even a podcast, so YouTube makes it easy for you to share them whenever you find one you like on any channel you like.

What is your favorite part about YouTube?

This concludes our series on how social media helps engineers. Is there anything we missed that you would like us to touch on or anything you would like us to explain more? We would love to hear from you!

With so much emphasis put on B2C in universities, are students prepared to work in a B2B? As far as Santa Clara University students, Professor Barr says, “Yes”. Read his take on what a graduating student needs to know to succeed in any business environment, especially a B2B.

Darcy & Hannah: How does SCU prepare its students to be successful in a B2B? What are the main things you hope students walk away with upon graduation?

Professor Barr: When you focus on just B2B the answer changes drastically because Santa Clara, and most universities and most academia, are very strong in B2C. SCU students are prepared for any career be it B2B, B2C or innovation etc. We teach the competencies of how to do the job and how to think, as well as how to look at everything they are doing through compassionate eyes and with a conscience of how it’s going to affect the world. We’ve got to get integrity and common good back into our world. We have lost this, and I believe competence, compassion and conscience is what we teach our students to practice wherever they may go. Over 50 percent of our business faculty is non-tenured track, and many have had strong experience in B2B companies, so students get a good look at B2B across the board. We call ourselves the Jesuit University in Silicon Valley. When I think Silicon Valley, I think business to business, because that’s what’s here, that’s where most of our students are going to get their jobs. The competence that students leave here with can be applied to any business, including B2B.

Darcy & Hannah: As the Professor of the Leavey School of Business’ B2B Marketing course, what do you hope your students learn from your class that will help them in a B2B environment?

Professor Barr: I want them to understand the vast difference between the relationship with a B2B customer versus the transactional relationship of a B2C customer. I want them to understand that they are going to have to learn an awful lot more about their customer’s company: their technology, their value added. It’s much more than just selling an item. The buying process is more formal, it’s more complex, there are a lot more people involved, and so you have to learn to work with a company over an extended period of time. You have to learn to help your customers do their jobs, and that’s what they are going to be looking for. Today, it’s no longer them waiting for us to come in and take them to lunch, it’s the fact that we want to be their source. John Chambers has done this very well with Cisco, he talks about the industry. Jonathan Schwartz, Sun’s former CEO did that very well with one of the first really successful corporate blogs. He talked about the industry not just their products. So if someone wanted to know what was happening across the board they would go to that site. Students must understand B2B, how it is different and how it’s going to influence not only your message, but also the delivery of that message if they are going to succeed.

Please tune in next week to discover Professor Barr’s opinion on how to develop your personal brand, especially when you work with engineers.

How did your university prepare you to be successful in a B2B? What was most valuable to you? Is there anything you wished you had learned that you’d like to pass on to new graduates? Please share with us!

We both had the privilege of taking a course from Professor Buford Barr during our time as students at Santa Clara University. In our opinion, Professor Barr is by far one of the best professors at SCU. His professional experiences and teaching methods are exceptional. Perhaps what leads to this is that he truly loves his students. The level of care he holds for each and every one of his students, past, present and future, is very evident.  As a professor, mentor, and friend, Professor Barr played a huge role in our success as students at SCU and now in our careers at Synopsys. We knew an interview with Professor Barr would give an excellent insight to communicating with engineers from both a professional and academic standpoint.

H. Buford Barr is a Lecturer in Marketing for the Leavey School of Business as well as a Lecturer in Communication for the College of Arts & Sciences at Santa Clara University. Professor Barr currently teaches undergraduate and MBA courses in marketing, marketing communications, and public relations at Santa Clara University where he has been associated since 1989. In 2008 he received the Extraordinary Achievement in Teaching and Service Award from the Leavey School of Business. This was Professor Barr’s second recognition in Extraordinary Achievement as he received the award in 2006. He was recognized by the students of SCU’s Accelerated Co-operative Education Program (ACE) with its ACE 2006 Outstanding Faculty Award and named faculty advisor in ’08. Barr’s professional career includes senior marketing positions at Actel Company, Sunnyvale, CA; Signetics (now NXP Semiconductors), a division of N.V. Philips; McCann-Erickson Advertising/Dallas where he established the office and was responsible for the worldwide marketing communications for Texas Instruments; and prior to that he spent fifteen years with the General Electric Company in New York and Connecticut. He was graduated from The University of Texas at Austin with a BBA in Marketing and completed graduate studies in Communication.

(Our interview with Professor Barr consisted of three topics, which we will feature in a three-part-post over the next three weeks)

Darcy & Hannah: As an individual who worked in corporate marketing and communications for over 30 years, how have things changed and how are they still changing in your perspective? More specifically, what are some things that college graduates today, who only know the technology era, may not realize about how corporate communications was carried out in the past?

Professor Barr: Long before President Obama’s campaign, change has been a major part of this country and our business life. It’s happening faster, and more significantly than ever before, especially in communication technology.  The key understandings in corporate communications and marketing (what we are trying to do and what we are trying to achieve) has not changed at all. How we execute it, and the tools and techniques we have are changing by the hour! They have changed significantly since the mid-1990s, and the growth of the internet, Web 2.0 and social media. The role that the internet has played has put the power and control in the hands of the consumer.

When I was running the McCann-Erickson office in Dallas, working with Texas Instruments, we controlled all of the information about Texas Instruments. We allowed information to go out when we wanted it to, we sent it to certain people when we wanted to, through advertising, through press releases, through direct mail, through brochures, through tradeshows. We controlled the information. Today, the consumer, the engineer, controls all information and all access. They control when they look at it, where they look at it, how long they look at it and who they value the most. So now, our job has moved from really almost trying to manipulate a target audience to now providing meaningful, interesting, relevant, up to date, transparent, accurate content that is valuable to our target audience.

Darcy & Hannah: Do you see a lot of pros and cons to the changes?

Professor Barr: It’s reality! I think there are going to be a large number of unforeseen consequences coming out of the internet, Web 2.0 and social media, I really do. How are we using these tools? I think as far as using the internet today, we are using it for personal entertainment most of the time. Facebook has people spending 700 billion minutes a month on their site (Source: http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics). Now I say to myself, “What if all that time was used for something productive, what if that time was used to save our cities, our states, our nations, our world’s problems?” The number of hits some kid gets falling down the stairs on YouTube is sad. I believe the internet and social media have so much potential, but I don’t think the internet and how it’s being used is leading us to more innovation.  I think its leading us to having fun with information we already know, rather than generating new information. Right now does it matter? Maybe not, but I think long term it will.

The big thing is that the consumer rules. So you have to determine how they prefer to get their information, what information they want, how to make it available to them and how to develop yourself into the source people will go to for that information. That’s the trick. We used to control that by running ten ads instead of five ads and that’s the way we measured our media, who was the biggest advertiser, and who created the best read ads. Today, in one of my classes, one out of 45 students knew the value of Facebook ($50 billion). Students do not read anything in print, and it’s getting worse and worse. To me, that has been the biggest change, but we are still trying to understand the customer, we’re trying to deliver value that is profitable for the company and is hopefully done in an ethical and socially responsible way.

Please tune in next week to see what Professor Barr thinks college graduates must know to be successful in a B2B!

What do you think about the changes that have occurred in marketing and communications? We’d love to hear from you!

B2C companies have it easy when it comes to spreading the joy of the season and wishing their customers Happy Holidays this time of year. Many are very creative!

As seen on their facebook page, iTunes offered a few free downloads of holiday classics.

Verizon Wireless offered Facebook and Twitter followers a daily “Seasonal Surprise”, giving each fan who “unwrapped their gift” with a Tweet or Facebook share, some kind of online deal.

Walmart featured a “Holiday Table” tab on their Facebook page where they shared recipes for affordable holidays meals.

But what about B2B and G2G companies? Fans of B2Bs and G2Gs tend to be employees of companies who already use and are familiar with our products. For us, holiday giveaways of products are not only unrealistic but pointless.

Can you imagine landing on the Synopsys Facebook page during the holidays and seeing this:

“Hello Synopsys Facebook fan (whose company probably already pays to use our software), we are giving one Synopsys product away each day during the month of December. Perfect for all of your personal spare-time-microchip-designing needs. Just share this post and you’ll be entered to win!”

Ok, so that was over exaggerated, but you get the idea. B2B and G2G companies simply can’t do the same things as B2C companies during the holidays.

We spent some time exploring  what various B2B companies did to get into the 2010 holiday spirit.  Compared to the vast expansion of B2C examples, B2Bs are far and in between. Although creating holiday interaction is slowly emerging in the B2B world, it appears to be something that will take slow experimentation. We could probably count the examples we found on one hand and here are four:

Adobe asked its followers on Facebook what inspires them this holiday season. For every shared inspiration, Adobe donated $1 to the Mercy Corps, showing a great way to interact with your current community and show the importance of giving back during this time of year.

BASF, the world’s leading chemical company, thanked their Facebook fans and Twitter followers for following them and wished everyone happy holidays. Cisco had a similar strategy but took it a step further by attaching a link on their post to one of their blogs with highlights from 2010 and a video rap with various employees saying happy holidays and happy new year.

HubSpot, is one of our favorite examples.  Being  a very progressive company, especially when it comes to social media, they created a “Happy Holidays Video Card from Hubspot!“,  which they posted on their blog and linked to their Facebook and Twitter pages.

As you can see, B2Bs using the holidays as an opportunity to build community and interact with customers  is emerging, and will have a definite bearing on our future for us as a G2G.  What will G2G look like around the holidays? Here is what we think is coming:

Holidays are a special time to make an extra effort to humanize your company, as well as thank those that have aided in your success. A lot of people make the mistake of forgetting that a B2B/G2G company is not just a robot that automatically produces products and services, but there are actually real people behind it. This is your chance to show your followers that you…

• Have a warm heart: Post examples of what your company has done to give back to the community.
• Can have fun: Videos are a great way to express the “personality” of the company and build a stronger relationship with customers.
• Are thinking of them during the Holidays: If you have an email list, send a holiday themed email.
• Are real people: Take a “family picture” of your team and send to clients in holiday card and/or upload it to Facebook and Twitter.

Of course, a lot of these ideas cannot be strictly reserved for the holiday season, but it’s a good time to do a little more than usual.

Are there any examples of what B2B or G2G companies did during the holidays that really impressed you? We would love to hear your feedback!

From both of us, we hope that you had a wonderful 2010 and we wish you a very happy New Year!

So you’re probably wondering what is wrong with your browser, because not only is Rick’s face gone, but it has been replaced by those of two young women.  Well, we are happy to inform you that you are still at The Listening Post where you can get insights into the G2G industry. Yet a new perspective is upon you.  Please allow us to introduce ourselves: Darcy Pierce and Hannah Watanabe. We are both recent Santa Clara University marketing graduates and new additions to the Synopsys team.  Having been born and raised in the Silicon Valley and grown up in the technology era, for us social media has forever been the norm.  It is our desire to take this unique perspective, educational background, and creative spark to benefit our customers and partners who enjoy reading The Listening Post.

Hannah Watanabe & Darcy Pierce (Photo by Leah Watanabe)

When you get a new job, it is not unusual to walk in on your first day and not know a single one of your co-workers, let alone your teammates.  Perhaps it is destiny, a small world, or just good old networking, but we are not two random gals arbitrarily teamed together to continue the success of The Listening Post when Rick passed us the torch.  On the contrary, we actually met in a social media class while attending Santa Clara University. In this class, we worked with two other team members to create a social media program for a local business. The success of our efforts ignited a passion within us of the power of social media.

Hannah participated in an internship with Synopsys over the summer, and after being offered a full-time position, she was informed that a counterpart to her role was needed. So here we are, living the dream, doing the exact work we always hoped for and collaborating together.

What’s the future of the Listening Post? As the founding father of this blog, Rick Jamison said, “A conversation, of course, is never one-way (that would be a monolog, aka traditional marketing). Whether a conversation includes two or many, listening is half the equation – the part where learning happens as new insights are heard and understood… At Synopsys, listening G2G (geek-to-geek) is an essential part of the mission as we use the Internet to build online communities around shared interests.”  With these wise words as our foundation, we will continue to interview experts in the field as well as offer you insights into the trends and strategies being used today, with a specific focus on G2G (geek-to-geek) communication.

We both look forward to having you read our blog and to receiving your feedback. Which guests and topics would you like to see on the Listening Post? We would love to hear your ideas! Please feel free to send us your suggestions to TheListeningPost@synopsys.com or add a comment below.