First things first. Thank you, Brian. I am truly thrilled that I’m getting the honor of addressing your friends and I’m more thrilled even to be able to call you a friend.
B2B social media marketing is particularly well suited for business-to-business lead generation. Business purchasing decisions are made by stakeholder committees with diverse priorities and a voracious appetite for details. Social media is the most efficient channel for committees of engineers, product developers, purchasing managers and marketers to self-educate, and a way for marketers to abbreviate sales cycles.
Social media marketing is gaining in awareness and acceptance by businesses all over the world. According to a recent report published by Burson-Marsteller…
67% of Fortune Global 100 companies use Twitter to directly engage with consumers. This is a 78% increase over the previous year. And, 9 out of 10 companies are talked about on Twitter.
Today I have some very special news to share with you – I will be joining Altimeter Group. To help you understand why I decided to make this move, allow me to provide a bit of context.
Over the years, I’ve published my experiences, observations and insights primarily exploring the impact of social technology on marketing, advertising, media, business, communications, and culture.
Who owns social media? Is it marketing, customer service, public relations?
Looking at a recent study conducted by the Pivot Conference, the top four departments where social media is currently run are as follows:
1. Marketing
2. Public Relations
3. Sales
4. Customer Service
Perhaps, it’s the wrong question to ask however. It’s not unlike asking who owns email. But, here’s another question and as we think about it, let’s broaden our perspective as the answer may not appear immediately.
While I’m in the throes of writing thenext chapter, I wanted to share a recent interview I did with BroadVision‘s Andrew Gori. Andrew asked some profound and timely questions that are worthy sharing. Following this discussion, the interview was reenacted live at BroadVision’s headquarters in Redwood City, CA as part of its Clearvale SecondFloor speaker series hosted by CEO, Dr. Pehong Chen.
It’s not access to capital, though that is a real problem in that it inhibits growth in some places where it shouldn’t. No, it’s not command and control management hierarchies, despite the contribution they certainly make. It’s not the problem of “the other” that plagues broad swaths of our society, though that is a close second. I contend the biggest problem is that each business has too few people looking after the whole of the business. This is not only seen in the concentration of power in the hands of the C-Suite and the Board, but also in the org charts that map an often too real silo like operational structure.
Over the years, I’ve written extensively about the need to extend opportunities in social media beyond marketing and customer service to set the stage for the social business. I believe that the impact lies beyond the socialization of business; it introduces us to a genre of an adaptive business, an entity that can earn relevance now and over time by listening, engaging, and learning.
I was recently interviewed by Israel’s BuzzInNews about new media and business. The conversation was translated from Hebrew to English, to share with you here as well. The discussion explores the evolution of social media in business from attention economics to B2B to ROI and concluding with a discussion of the brewing cold war between Google and Facebook.
I’ve received many inbound requests for comments based on a report from Gartner, an IT analyst firm, that estimates as many as 70-percent of social media campaigns will fail in 2011. There are a series of discussions hitting the blogosphere and the Twitterverse exploring this very topic, some elementary and others on the right path. I contacted Gartner earlier this week and the problem is, that this data isn’t new at all. In fact, these discussions are fueled by information originally published in 2008 and in early 2010. Yet another example of the importance of fact-checking in the era of real-time reporting, yes, but, when I paused for a moment, I appreciated the timelessness of this discussion.
Brian Solis is principal at Altimeter Group, a research firm focused on disruptive technology. A digital analyst, sociologist, and futurist, Solis has studied and influenced the effects of emerging technology on business, marketing, and culture. Solis is also globally recognized as one of the most prominent thought leaders and published authors in new media. His new book, What's the Future of Business (WTF), explores the landscape of connected consumerism and how business and customer relationships unfold and flourish in four distinct moments of truth. His previous book, The End of Business as Usual, explores the emergence of Generation-C, a new generation of customers and employees and how businesses must adapt to reach them. Prior to End of Business, Solis released Engage, which is regarded as the industry reference guide for businesses to market, sell and service in the social web.
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