Around the Office is a weekly group blog of what the Kobayashi Online team has found interesting, funny, poignant, or otherwise notable over the past week.
The Social Business Revolution
Daveed, like Internet Evolution Editor-in-Chief Mitch Wagner, thinks the idea of social business holds tremendous possibilities and is just getting started. Instead of simply using social networks to find new customers, a social business can find efficiencies in real-time collaboration, which breaks down physcial and organizational barriers. As Wagner writes, “Social business is much more than the platform.”
B2B Marketers See Value in Content
Given the wonderful ways content can be used to give businesses an edge, David isn’t surprised that content marketing is one of the major B2B Marketing Trends of 2012, according to a Curata poll of 450 marketing professionals. A new infographic shows that the use of content marketing is up by 5% over the previous year, and was used in 87% of marketing programs in 2012. Still, the biggest challenges remain: creating original content and finding the time to create and curate content – something David’s glad to help out with.
Storytelling Tips from Pixar
Every great marketer and sales person is a great storyteller. It’s no wonder why Andy found a lot of truth in the rules of storytelling according to animation studio Pixar. These include pearls of wisdom such as: “What’s the essence of your story? Most economical telling of it? If you know that, you can build out from there.” The tips that help movies like Monsters Inc. and Finding Nemo come to life can be applied to our everyday storytelling and branding.
Drawing in Mid-Air
We think of markers as an invaluable tool for making website wireframes and sketching out coding problems. But Roberto would gladly give up his low-tech markers to sketch with a 3-D pen that lets you draw objects in air. Boston-based startup, WobbleWorks created a 3-D pen prototype that draws using heated plastic that quickly dries and solidifies into a 3-D shape. And if 3-D websites catch on, a 3-D pen might be just the thing to add depth to our wireframes.