No Content? Then Make Some - The ScienceLogic FOSE Survey

Tuesday marked SpeakerBox’s “Got Content? Get Government Customers” event, which focused on new ways in which government marketers and communications pros can develop and use content. SEO, social media (particularly Twitter) and content syndication were all hot topics, but tying all of the sessions together was a use case example from Julia Lim of ScienceLogic.

In ScienceLogic’s case, the company lacked any “real” news between product development cycles, and wanted to drum up interest around their presence at FOSE. ScienceLogic wanted something more than just a press release – they wanted content that could be positioned in a variety of ways. So for FOSE 2007, ScienceLogic teamed up with SpeakerBox to create the Government IT Trends Survey.

The survey, which asked government IT decision-makers about current technology trends, turned out to be a huge hit – over 100 attendees took the 2007 survey, giving ScienceLogic great insight into what was hot and what wasn’t among their government customers. Even better, the company now had raw data that could be used for press releases, marketing materials, sales presentations, blog posts and whitepapers.

ScienceLogic conducted similar surveys at FOSE 2008 and FOSE 2009 as well, and expanded the survey to encompass industry trends as well, by asking similar questions at major IT tradeshows like Interop. By leveraging survey data, ScienceLogic has gained:

• Increased awareness from existing and potential partners, as well as more buzz in their sales pipeline;
• Media placements in major government and industry trades, like FCW, CIO and Network World;
• Higher quality conversations with show attendees and sales prospects; the survey acted as an excellent conversation starter; and
• New content for ScienceLogic’s blog.
  

ScienceLogic’s example is a great one – if your company is lacking content, latch onto an industry issue. Create a survey to gain some kind of insight into current trends, and talk about these issues in the public domain. It’s content that is highly flexible and can be used for a variety of purposes, not just a press release.

--John Terrill