Linda Boff | B2B | BtoB Magazine

Linda Boff

By By Sean Callahan

Story posted: June 11, 2012 - 6:01 am EDT

Title: Executive director-global digital marketing

Company: General Electric Co.

TIme in current job: 1 week

Linda Boff, executive director-global digital marketing at General Electric Co., was recognized as BtoB's Top Digital Marketer of 2011. Since that time, she and GE have remained at the forefront of digital innovation. Among GE's latest “digital R&D” initiatives is its use of Instagram and Pinterest to tell its story visually. The company is also wading into mobile marketing. “It's getting more and more important all the time, particularly for us as we enter what for GE are new and emerging markets: India, Brazil, China, Turkey, Indonesia,” Boff said. “We are looking more and more at mobile in these areas, because it's not the second platform there, but the first platform.” Boff said GE takes a “stock and flow” approach to marketing via social media. She defined “stock” as more traditional content marketing fodder, such as white papers and videos that have long shelf lives. “Flow,” she said, is content that is “lighter, more perishable.” As examples of flow, she said GE has used simple games, such as placing two photos of a GE locomotive side by side and challenging site visitors to find five differences between the shots. “It helps our brand be more human, more approachable, more accessible,” she said. The rise of social media, Boff said, has altered the way content marketing works on the Web. “It's a Web rebuilt around people,” she said. But she added: “Content without context is actually not a good use of money.”