B2B firms led the first wave of social media adoption five years ago with aggressive blogging initiatives. More recently, Twitter, the simple yet powerful micro-blogging service, has lowered the barriers to social media entry for B2B entities almost to zero – allowing organizations to deliver sizable traffic to corporate and product Web content.  

Moreover, HR and legal departments are happy to see the ‘tweet’ alternative – diminishing any opportunity for users to provide inappropriate content with only 140 characters to get their message across.  In fact, Twitter has become a tool to point followers to safe corporate content – a means to monitor and listen to customer complaints before they get out of hand. 

Let’s not forget LinkedIn, the social network for professional adults – growing to 50 million users in 2009. The social network has become a popular destination for B2B companies in search of top talent or business professionals with areas of common interest. Moreover, LinkedIn claims its member demographics outpace those of The Wall Street Journal. 

With more than 500 million members, Facebook is the 800-pound gorilla of social networks. While it has been less popular with B2B marketers than other alternatives, companies including Ernst & Young, Forrester and IBM have built sizable fan bases there. Facebook is particularly popular with corporate recruiters trying to reach young job-seekers.  

Here are a few B2B social applications that will aid with integrated social initiatives – providing mechanisms to syndicate content, share content and monitor activity for future refinement:

SlideShare translates the popularity of PowerPoint presentations as a conversational medium into a membership that is reportedly approaching 10 million.  

BrightTALK takes the complexity out of managing an ongoing series of live and pre-recorded webcasts by consolidating them all into a single destination ‘channel’. It’s where you create webcasts and where your audience goes to see them. 

PRESSfeed, a social media newsroom, makes it easy for journalists, bloggers and site visitors to find and share your content. Content syndication through trusted channels is the next large wave for B2B social marketers. 

In the coming year, B2B marketers will turn their attention to expanding and optimizing the channels they use. Companies such as Jive are bringing tools to market that enable enterprises to manage large-scale social conversations while publishing simultaneously to multiple destinations.  

Great Resources: 

Social Media Will Change B2B Distribution Channels by Social Media B2B (Check out the entire site!)

9 Social Listening & Tracking Tools by Connected Marketer 

B2B Spending on Social Media to Explode by eMarketer

It's Official: Facebook Passes 500 Million Users by Mashable

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Denice MacDonald

Each day, Groupon features an unbeatable deal on the best stuff to do, see, eat, and buy in your city. By promising businesses a minimum number of customers, they get discounts you won't find anywhere else. They call the concept "collective buying power!" 

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How It Works

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Denice MacDonald