B2B Marketing Portfolio: Dennis Shiao
Hi 👋 there and welcome to my B2B marketing portfolio.
I’m a marketing consultant and freelancer -- read about my freelance journey). I’m Founder of a B2B marketing agency called Attention Retention.
See below for some of the wonderful clients I work with.
Brief Personal Background
I have a B.S. degree in Computer Science and began my career as a software developer. I moved into IT Management and led teams as large as 13. In 2005, I transitioned into Marketing as the result of an acquisition.
Learn more about my journey from coding to content marketing.
I’m a regular columnist at CMSWire and Content Marketing Institute. I write articles about Marketing for both sites:
My author page at Content Marketing Institute.
Sample article: At Content Marketing World 2019 in Cleveland, my favorite session was given by Brian Fanzo:
“Press The Damn Button: How To Stand Out From the Bad News and Fake News On Social Media.”
I wrote a post about Brian’s presentation for Content Marketing Institute.
Second example: Andy Crestodina gave a talk at Content Marketing World and I wrote a post about it. Here’s what Andy had to say:
2020 CMSWire Contributors of the Year
I write a regular column about Marketing for CMSWire. In 2020, I was named one of their Contributors of the Year.
In an article about the award, I answered questions from CMSWire’s Siobhan Fagan.
2020 CM World Community Champion
I love being part of the Content Marketing World (#CMWorld) community. I was thrilled and honored to receive the 2020 CM World Community Champion Award from Content Marketing Institute (CMI).
Joe Pulizzi, Founder of Content Marketing Institute was kind enough to say the following in the post:
“I’m not sure where content marketing would be without Dennis Shiao, but it certainly wouldn’t be on the west coast. If there are 10 people that have done more for the content marketing industry in his area, I can’t name them.”
Client List
I’ve had the privilege of working for leading brands and innovative companies. Here’s a sample of some of the clients I’ve worked with:
- Automation Anywhere
- Capgemini
- Content Marketing Institute
- Forte Group
- Leadtail
- Lohika
- PwC New Ventures
- SambaNova Systems
- Snowflake
- TechTarget
- Treasure Data
If you’re interested in speaking to client references, I’m happy to provide some.
Customer Webinars
Marketing is most effective when it comes not from you (the brand), but from your customers. If there’s one thing marketers should do more of, it’s talking to customers.
I recruited DNN customers and partners to present on our webinars. I used webinars as the building blocks of our content marketing program.
Here’s one example (of many). I featured a customer, COPD Foundation, on a webinar to tell the story of how they built and grew their online community:
I also wrote about COPD Foundation in my monthly column at CMSWire.
Customer Case Study: Westinghouse
I experimented with authoring case studies as blog posts, rather than the more common PDF.
My theory was that a blog post would be easier to find and easier to read.
It would be indexed by search engines, with the potential to receive inbound links.
And of course, readers could easily share the post on social media. Here’s the result, featuring DNN Software customer, Westinghouse.
I worked on 20+ customer case studies during my time at DNN.
Read now:
Here’s another case study I authored, with DNN Software customer, SchoolDude:
Product Launches
I worked closely with the Product Management team on one of the company’s biggest product launches: the release of the Evoq 9.0 and DNN 9.0 CMS, in December 2016.
I led the positioning and marketing of the key event: a live, product launch webinar featuring our CEO, VP Product Management and VP Technology. Here’s the launch webinar presentation:
We had one of the most successful product launch webinars in the company’s history, with 700 live attendees. I detailed how we pulled it off in an article at CMSWire.
Sales Enablement
One of our key sales objectives was to upsell users of our open source CMS, DNN Platform, to our commercial CMS, Evoq. I created a sales enablement asset that reps could use with prospects, to demonstrate the benefits of upgrading to Evoq.
I had the help of a great design agency, Ethos3:
Content Marketing
We created a fun piece of content titled “How the Starbucks Experience Became Contagious,” based on a book by Noah Berger.
At DNN, I evangelized the content marketing function. I helped establish and build a “culture of content.”
Our CEO, Navin, read Berger’s book and I worked with him on the concept of this presentation. The design was done by my awesome colleague, Sara:
Website
In 2017, I re-vamped the “Solutions” section of DNN’s website, creating 30 new pages. We wanted to show, at a high level, what users could accomplish from using our CMS.
Visit now:
The metrics we used to gauge the success of these new pages:
Page views
Time on site
Time on page
Pages per session
Conversion rate
Organic SEO ranking for defined keywords and key phrases
Earlier, I created 60+ new product pages about our CMS. I wrote about lessons learned from that project.
Conference Presentations
In February 2018, I presented at DNN Summit, a conference hosted by the DNN community. My topic was how to write a great blog post. I included tips that were drawn from direct, personal experience.
I also included tweetable tips from a network of industry experts. Check it out:
David Neal attended my presentation and created a sketch note of it. I was so surprised and honored. Here it is:
Infographic
I created an infographic to highlight key new features in our Evoq CMS. I created the outline and business requirements, then worked with a designer on our product team.
Email Newsletters
I help clients with their email newsletters: conception, copy writing, curation and more. To get a taste for my work, you can subscribe to my personal newsletter, “Content Corner.” It comes out every other Friday.
Here’s what Heidi Cohen had to say:
View past issues and subscribe:
https://us16.campaign-archive.com/home/?u=016564b34de5c9577c2ab2f47&id=363cda5b86
Pro Bono Marketing Work
I perform pro bono marketing work for selected non-profit organizations.
Previously, I was head of publicity and communications for Aragon Music Boosters, a parent group that provides essential support to the Aragon High School music program.
In addition, I run the Bay Area Content Marketing Meetup, which I launched in 2015.
We used to meet in-person in San Mateo or Redwood City, then moved to online meetups during the pandemic. These days, we continue to host online meetups and occasionally host in-person networking events in San Mateo.
I love running this Meetup for the opportunity to learn and to bring people together.
I wrote a post that details each and every Meetup over a three year period.
Contact Me
Feel free to reach out to me with feedback or questions: smfcdennis@gmail.com. Thanks!
