Base One hosted their first event on the 10 September. It was part of our Beyond series, titled Beyond Search. We invited a load of clients, key contacts and prospects along for a 9am-1pm session. I like to think it was a huge success (as I was the organiser). The thing that really struck me was the relevance to our Beyond thinking - and how perhaps these types of events/conferences/workshops, whatever we like to label them, are going to become one of the best ways to inspire the word of mouth promotion of services in the future.

Is this one of the rivers that my colleague David Thomas is referring to in his Word of Mouth blog post? Getting people together who fill similar roles within different companies is a sure fire way to inspire debate and simply get people talking.

Watch this space for the video take of our Beyond Search event - for all of you who missed out on the day...

The use of video and rich content across the web is now ubiquitous. Just look at BBC Olympics coverage: I watched most of it online - often live - rather than on the telly (not during working hours of course), and could access highlights for any event, at any time. It was great. I now expect this functionality on websites.

That's a high profile example, but this trend is coming to B2B too. For instance: highlights of b2b events can and should be taped and streamed online. I don't want to read a boring long, text based case study, I want to watch customers talking enthusiastically about the company I'm considering. I don't want to download a technical PDF of how to do something, I want to watch someone showing me. I want to interact.

It's all far more engaging for prospects and customers, and brings far more proof to what you say.

And now there's another reason to develop this content, as highlighted at the Beyond Search Event at the Tate Gallery this week: with Universal Search, rich content will now be indexed and appear in search results alongside traditional entries. These entries standout against others and mean users are far more likely to click on them to visit your site.

The barrier is that this content takes more thought, determination and time to produce. And will cost more also, though the increased return should balance this.

Because of this though, I think it represents a real opportunity for those prepared to embrace this: while others find reasons why not to do it, it gives those who are determined a chance to move ahead of the pack.

I read the latest edition of B2B Marketing magazine cover to cover one evening this week (a great read) but was left feeling a little uneasy. The cover story is positioning demand generation as the next big thing. But what is it? I had heard of it but have always thought it was just about taking a structured approach to how you capture prospects and nurture them before (and after) they are passed to sales. So why give it a title?

To make sure I wasn't missing something I did some research in the blogs. I didn't find much of an answer and indeed I was left feeling that (as with crm all those years ago) it was a label given to something familiar in order for some software and service vendors to make it easier to sell their product.

However I did find something useful. A blog entry on the Marketo Modern B2B Marketing Blog by Sean Monahue at last years Demand Generation Seminar in Boston outlining what he believes are the Top 5 challenges for B2B Demand Generation Marketers (i.e. all B2B Marketers). Worth a look and mostly about search.