How’s that for a ridiculous title? This piece is nowhere near as ambitious as that; it’s a response to some typically provocative comments from Gideon Gartner, a founder and arguably the most iconic figure in our industry. In his blog post Advisory Industry, a future redesign: the Payment Model, Gartner challenges his readers to thinkContinue reading “The State of The Industry Analyst”
Tag Archives: AR
AR: Analysts Don’t List Themselves on Social Media
Several AR professionals have recently asked me how to find industry analyst blogs or Twitter addresses. The immediate answer was to send them to Sage Circle, where a pair of excellent directories are maintained. But the fact of the questions made me revisit the issue with a simple test: if I looked up biographies, wouldContinue reading “AR: Analysts Don’t List Themselves on Social Media”
IT Marketers: Oversold Announcements Weaken Your Story
Microsoft and HP’s recent announcement highlighted some of the ways in which poor announcements strain credulity and make it harder to get attention when you do have something worthwhile to talk about. Some errors crop up repeatedly in IT marketing communications, and this one suffered from several of them.
Tech Marketers Need Friends With Benefits. No, Not That Kind
Every software product developer, and product manager, and sales rep, needs friends in marketing. And they need to be friends with benefits – benefit statements. Clear. Explicit. Specific for a particular stakeholder. Sound obvious? Based on the last month of briefings I have taken, it’s clearly not.
AR: Continuity of Contact Makes A Difference
I’ve been an independent analyst for a few months now, and it’s been an eye-opening experience in many ways. One has been the way some organizations I dealt with for a decade forgot my name the next day. This is not intended to embarrass anyone; I will name no names. It’s about best practices forContinue reading “AR: Continuity of Contact Makes A Difference”
Captive Analyst Bloggers: Break Free! You Have Everything To Gain In Your Links
I spend a fair amount of my time checking in on the blogs of people whose work I respect. Now that I am no longer an analyst at a big-brand firm, I do this more than I used to – and I can now recognize there is an insularity “on the inside” that one becomes unawareContinue reading “Captive Analyst Bloggers: Break Free! You Have Everything To Gain In Your Links”
PPT Wins Poll on Analysts’ Preferred Soft Copy Briefing Formats
Preliminary votes and comments are in – nearly two-thirds of our 46 respondents as of April 10 prefer Powerpoint format to PDFs, and a small minority is using annotatable PDF format, though several didn’t even know it exists. (Adobe, are you listening? Some work to do here.) Key themes in comments from AR and analysts:Continue reading “PPT Wins Poll on Analysts’ Preferred Soft Copy Briefing Formats”
How Should AR Provide Soft Copies of Briefing Content?
I had a couple of quick exchanges today with some analyst colleagues talking about what method we like to take notes during briefings. We all have our own way of storing them, sometimes a company repository, or a personal OneNote archive. I’ve always used a folder for each vendor within which I store content that canContinue reading “How Should AR Provide Soft Copies of Briefing Content?”
Analyst bloggers – strong views abound
My post about challenging issues around analyst blogging drew hundreds of hits, and many interesting comments from analysts, AR and influencer relations practitioners and others. In this note, I’ll highlight some threads from those comments, and I encourage you to review the comments themselves – and to add your own thoughts. I’ve put in linksContinue reading “Analyst bloggers – strong views abound”
Analyst Bloggers – Threat or Menace?
OK, I admit it – I stole that title idea from an old National Lampoon. But the issue is no laughing matter: what is the appropriate code of conduct when industry analysts who work for brand name companies like IDC, Gartner or Forrester have an “outside” blog or start using Twitter frequently? There have beenContinue reading “Analyst Bloggers – Threat or Menace?”