Also encouraging is the list of magazines leading the charge in terms of ad increases, including titles such as Fast Company – at a whopping 31.4% – Barron’s, Bloomberg Businessweek and Entrepreneur.  If business magazines are seeing increased ad sales, it seems clear that B2B companies are increasing their ad budgets – a good indicator that we’re pulling out of the economic doldrums.  Hopefully it also means increased IT budgets at the end user companies that are reading all these business magazines.

Another positive indicator is that fewer magazines shut down in the first half of the year – 87, to be exact, way down from the 279 that closed shop in the first half of 2009. And 90 new magazines were introduced, which I find almost astounding in this economy, even if it is way down from the 187 new publications during the same period last year.

Call me an optimist, but I’m looking at both of these tidbits as good news.

Part 1 of the series focuses on “Developing a Compelling Point of View,” and offers a prescription for ensuring that your white papers actually say something interesting and have a “novel point of view,” as Bloom principals Bob Buday and Tim Parker put it.

Most white papers, the authors contend, “are treated as writing projects, not as structured initiatives to develop a compelling point of view.  Their emphasis is on phrasing an argument, not on building it.”

The key to developing a paper with a point of view is to sketch out your argument by addressing a series of issues, including: the target problem, shortcomings of current solutions, an overview and detailed explanation of your new solution, barriers to adopting the new solution and how to overcome them, followed by a call to action.

While I completely agree with that approach, I was a bit taken aback by the insinuation that companies aren’t already following a similar approach when they produce white papers. In my experience, that’s pretty much exactly the tack most companies want to take – and they get no argument from me.

Buday and Parker go on to tout the importance of concrete evidence to back up assertions in the white paper, with the most forceful being customer case studies. “Several surveys have shown that what managers value most in white papers is learning about how other companies solve problems,” the authors say.

I couldn’t agree more and this is an area where many companies do indeed fall down. Lining up customers to reference in white papers typically seems to be an after-thought. It’s a topic I always bring up on a project kick-off call, and one that typically results in silence or low groans on the other end of the line.

Yes, it can be a chore to get customers to agree to play ball, but the payoff is enormous. If you play your cards right, from a single customer phone interview you could not only get valuable content for your white paper, but a standalone case study, numerous customer quotes for various marketing materials, perhaps even a podcast.  It’s true that some companies have strict rules about not appearing to endorse products but most don’t.  Generally, IT folks are more than happy to opine about their vendor choices and enjoy seeing themselves quoted, especially when their results have been positive. The exposure puts the IT exec in a positive light as much as it does your company.

And exposure is exactly what you’ll both get if you follow the advice in part 2 of the Bloom Group paper, which discusses various ways to use social media to spread the word about your white paper to the right people.  Go beyond the bloggers, the authors advise, and come up with op-ed pieces drawn from the original ideas in your white papers that you can pitch to the online editors of leading business publications.

You can even build web sites around the point of view represented in your white paper to generate an online community of people interested in the topic.  “This means a white paper marketing campaign never needs to end—as long as the service or product that it supports is still being sold,” the authors say. Food for thought indeed.

Part 3 in the series has yet to be published but will focus on the biggest obstacles to producing and marketing white papers in the manner the authors describe.  I’m guessing time and resources will be two big obstacles, but will keep an eye out for the last installment to make sure.

But if your survey is to have any credibility, you need to tell people how many qualified respondents it is based upon.

This came up today because I was poring over the results of AdMedia Partners’ 2010 Market Survey, its 16^th annual survey of executives with leading media and marketing services firms, the results of which are covered in another post. I was initially attracted to the survey because it appeared to be based on a huge number of respondents – more than 7,400.

At least, that was my take after reading the survey methodology, which begins, “This report is based on a Web-based survey of more than 7,400 domestic and international executives in the advertising, marketing services, digital marketing, marketing technology, media or digital media businesses and related venture capital/private equity investors.”

Just to be sure that meant more than 7,400 respondents, I called AdMedia Partners. As it turns out, that figure reflects how many folks got the survey; the company doesn’t disclose how many responded. In the survey’s 16-year history, that’s just always the way it’s been done, says AdMedia Partners managing director Seth Alpert, although he’s not sure why. I tried to get a ballpark response rate out of him, but all he’d say was that it’s on par with “the norm” for such undertakings – whatever that is – and that it was less than 50%.  (My sense was that he wanted to tell me, that he couldn’t think of a good reason not to – but I’m guessing.)

To me, it’s not only a mistake to fail to disclose the number of respondents to a survey, it’s a disservice to your audience, which deserves to know whether your results are based on 20 opinions or 2,000.  I’ve done lots of surveys in my time, mostly as features editor for Network World, when we had a series of surveys we did each year. Always we were concerned about getting a high response rate so the results would be statistically valid, especially for our salary survey, where it was important to get enough responses for each geographic region. If we didn’t have enough responses for a specific job title in a given region, we’d fess up that the sample wasn’t statistically valid, give the results we had, and let the reader decide what it all meant.

Any company that wants to use survey results as part of its marketing strategy should follow a similar path. While the Web has made surveys far easier to conduct than in the days when we relied on snail mail, it’s still not exactly easy to get a high number of responses. But resist the temptation to fudge the response rate, or to simply not disclose it at all – the credibility of the survey and perhaps even your company is on the line.

First, the good news – sort of: folks are optimistic that the worst of the recession is behind us, with 68% believing we’re in an economic recovery. Consequently, they expect an increase in advertising budgets, with a median increase of 3% overall and 10% in interactive advertising.

While a 3% increase is certainly better than the 5% decrease in the prior year’s survey, it’s still not much. In fact, it’s 40% less than the 5% increases respondents in the 2006, 2007 and 2008 surveys reported.  On the other hand, you’re probably getting better deals for your dollar so maybe it’s a wash.

Where things get really interesting is in perceptions of online content companies and social media.  Nearly half of respondents (45%) consider growth opportunities for sites that focus on user-generated content to be overrated, while a whopping 63% think the same for social media sites.

At the same time, however, when asked about plans for expansion in 2010, 78% of respondents indicated one or more online marketing sectors, with the most popular choice being “word-of-mouth/social media marketing” at 55%.

So, respondents consider social media to be overrated, but that’s not going to stop them from expanding into social media.

Now I’m not bashing social media here; I do think it has a role to play in marketing.  I wouldn’t be writing this blog if I didn’t.  But from survey results like this, it’s clear that there’s no shortage of confusion over what that role is and how effective social media will ultimately be.

Of course, where there’s confusion, there’s opportunity. So I’d say marketers are right to get into the social media fray and try to figure out what works.

“If your app uses location-based information primarily to enable mobile advertisers to deliver targeted ads based on a user’s location, your app will be returned to you by the App Store Review Team for modification before it can be posted to the App Store,” the posting says.

What about people who might want such offers?  Some great location-based apps are available for the iPhone. I use one called AroundMe that’ll give me a list of nearby restaurants, gas stations, hotels, movie theatres and lots more.  If I click on restaurants, I’m probably looking for a place to eat and there’s a decent chance I haven’t already decided on one. A nicely targeted offer of a discount could well sway my decision – and I’d likely welcome it, frugal sort that I am. And if I take it upon myself to download an app knowing full well it comes with location-based ads, then what’s the harm?

I hope for the sake of GPS-aware marketers and discount-hunters alike that Apple soon changes its tune on this decision.