!Last night I went to another CMO networking dinner, which turned out very informative. Put on by the Cybersecurity Marketers community; the sponsor was PR and social media powerhouse 10Fold Communications. I went because the invite promised an informative talk about the integration of traditional influence work (also known as PR) with online influencer work (aka social, digital marketing). They knew their stuff, and the evening was both enjoyable and informative. Thanks for the invite!

One discussion that caught my attention more than the others, though, was when we started talking about do’s and don’ts of social media influencer work. And they homed in on podcasts and videos as a way to increase interaction with B2B prospects on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. In a sea of repetitive, self-promoting corporate blather in everyone’s feed, visual and audio media just isn’t for B2C anymore … it’s a way to connect with your B2B communities and get noticed.

Of course, we then wanted to know where between Instagram-type, short selfie videos shot on your smartphone, and expensively produced, professional videos we should be setting our expectations. The feedback was that the highest clicks and conversions these days come with posts that link to 30 to 60-second podcasts and videos that are well-produced but don’t have to be major studio quality.

My inner marketer got very excited because as the famous quote of: “I’m sorry I wrote such a long letter. I didn’t have time to write a short one.” says, nailing a complex value proposition or explaining a tricky subject on 30 to 60 seconds ain’t easy. Short is hard. Hence the challenge, and I will try to produce some of these on my own … you knew me pre-fame ?

In the meantime, if you’re similarly excited about these possibilities, here are a couple of tools and insights you might find interesting:

• Podcast recommendations: Here are some interesting stats about skyrocketing podcast listening and a couple of cool podcast authoring tools recommended by Product Hunt.
• The Descript podcast editing tool, in particular, I thought was well presented (watch their cool video) and had some very nice features, all in a browser-based package.
• This post, with impressive stats and insights from LinkedIn’s own “Sales and Marketing Solutions EMEA Blog” from April 18 to some extend popularized the notion of B2B video content on social media as a way to connect with your community.
• And if you want to check out some samples of 30 to 60-second marketing videos so you have an idea of what they could look like, this series struck me as impressive.

Buy that camera and subscribe to some of these apps and connect yourself with your community.

Don’t turn that dial; we’ll be back!