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We start off by exploring how to fight comment-trolling. While trolls have been around since before the dawn of the internet, it seems we have few ways to fight them and restore civility, or at least move towards some semblance of it. A story on Neiman Lab’s blog tell how as Norwegian site is “taking the edge off rant mode” by making readers pass a quiz before commenting. Their theory is that if readers actually read an article and prove that they understand the basic issues, their comments will be more meaningful. It is a nice start. (see screenshot here)

Then there is this new protocol from Google that harnesses machine learning techniques to help publishers thwart abusive comments online. Google has published an API and has a demonstration on its website that shows you how you can use it. Paul and David debate whether it is safe to turn on comments on your own blog, and recommend some kind of human oversight to keep things on point. Sadly, you still have to fight off the trolls for now.

Our next item comes from Shel, who pointed out a survey that shows 80% of B2B companies overlook customer renewal messaging. We don’t understand why this very important audience continues to be overlooked by marketers. There is this tidbit: 42% of respondents say their companies invest less than 10% of their marketing budgets on renewal messaging efforts. “Research shows the story you need to tell to protect existing customer relationships is actually the antithesis of the disruptive, attention-grabbing story you need to tell to acquire net new customers.” 

Finally, we examine the latest Fuqua/Duke Biz school CMO survey. It found that spending on marketing analytics is expected to leap from 4.6% to almost 22% of marketing budgets in the next three years. But marketers say barely a third of available data is used because managers lack the tools to measure the success of analytics and people who can link the data to marketing practice. We opine on why this is so and why social media continues to be stuck in a perennial “almost ready” status.   

About David Strom

David Strom is a former editor-in-chief of Network Computing and Tom's Hardware who has written two computer networking books and thousands of articles about B2B IT.

About Paul Gillin

Paul Gillin, host of FIR B2B, is a veteran technology journalist and a thought leader in new media. Since 2005, he has advised marketers and business executives on strategies to optimize their use of social media and online channels to reach buyers cost-effectively. Full bio