I’m in charge of coming up with B2B social media marketing strategies for our clients, then helping get the content that makes them work through the process of development and implementation. That means I do a lot of research and exploration to find out what lies in that lovely matrix of customer interest and market opportunity. What I do is all about possibility. It’s about sorting out the puzzle pieces and making something cohesive from them (which I love doing).

My research takes me outside of the things that are my immediate domain because I need to have an understanding of what the client does already and how it’s working, what they’re not doing, and where the opportunities are. There tends to be a pile of “other stuff” that isn’t what we’re contracted to do. If there’s something that really needs attention, we’ll point it out and can help you get it taken care of or refer you to someone who can.

Sometimes, I wish that it was my job to help deal with this pile of “other stuff” that could be done as part of the web marketing strategy. It can be hard to curtail scope creep when you’re really excited about finding a huge, untapped opportunity for a client. You might be wondering how people missed these big opportunities in their own business. They’re often not the most obvious or trendy ways to solve the problem. Or maybe they solve the problem in an unexpected way. What they almost always are is the second right answer.

A Facebook page or Twitter stream might not yield big results for your company. You might not have the time or strategy to market it, maintain interest, and fill it with useful content. That doesn’t mean you’re exempt from needing to have some social media in place. Would answering common troubleshooting questions regarding your product or software on tech forums make users less frustrated and inspire brand loyalty? Is checking your reviews on Google, Yahoo!, and Yelp part of your routine? What about responding to customers that had a less than ideal experience?

If you’re intimidated or unable to build and maintain some of the bigger efforts that would boost your company’s web marketing strategy, I challenge you to sit down and think of a dozen things you could do that are second right ideas. Just because they weren’t the first right idea doesn’t make them any less right!

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Then, I stumbled upon “New research: B2B buyers have a very high social participation” on the Groundswell blog site. Groundswell is a book written by two Forrester Research analysts.  Their research shows that 91% of technology decision makers are watching videos and participating in (if only just reading) blogs and other social media outlets.  So, we’ll keep recommending social media strategies to our B2B clients.  I, for one, will feel just a little bit more comfortable doing so with some research statistics under my belt that validate the necessity.

What do you other B2B marketers think?  Are you encouraging your B2B clients to have a blog? post videos? Tweet away the hours?

But folks, I gotta say it – people talking to each other about big choices, like, say, business-to-business purchases  – pretty much that’s here to stay.  And nowadays people do a lot of that talking online.  Just think of “online social marketing” as a big new trade show all your competitors and prospects have been invited to.  It’s happening every day, all day.  It’s easier to get to than any other trade show – cheaper, too.  Heck, it’s indexed so you don’t even need to carry around a map and schedule.

Now, it may be conducted in a dialect you are just learning to speak, but you know what?  It’s the dialect everyone under 30 grew up speaking.   It may not always be Facebook and Twitter and forums and expert blogs and RSS and user reviews, but the top is propped open on this one – prospects are expecting an online presence more and more every year.

…says the Wall Street Journal. I agree. The book is “Citizen Marketers – When People Are the Message” by Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba (favorite bloggers of ours at Church of the Customer).

This insightful book is a quick read and helps explain how social media has come about and how one person can truly make a difference. The book is a social media primer. It’s an historical reference more than a how-to-do-social-media guide, but some of the history happened without my noticing and it’s nice to have a short and sweet explanation of things that now “define” social media.

If you’re not clear what all the hype is about, it’s worth a few hours to read this book. The authors deliver their message via informative, real-life stories. You’ll read about the effect an individual can have on a brand, and how that single person can influence what LOTS of people buy. Get ideas on how companies can benefit — and profit — from engaging Citizen Marketers. Social media is a “trend” that’s real and is becoming a new standard for good marketing and communications.

Now I *almost* understand why people spend so much time blogging, posting videos, creating podcasts and composing advertisements. It’s powerful stuff.

It’s not prudent to create a social networking site just because some businesses are doing it, or because some experts say you have to have one. Your site might do just dandy by only providing customers the information they need to make a purchase decision and the ability to find/buy your products. Of course, you must optimize your site so those customers can find you, but you don’t necessarily have to create a new social “neighborhood” to get – or keep – their attention.

RefreshWeb staffers know an awful lot about social media and we do believe there are benefits to social networks – where appropriate. We’re also good business people and would advise against putting the time, effort and money into something that isn’t strategically important for your business. Are you feeling pressure (from your company or the media) to jump on the newest Internet bandwagon?

Dave Evans pointed out the difference last Thursday at the InteractiveAustin2008 conference, and I wanted to bring it up in the panel I was on, because it needs discussion. That didn’t happen–we did have a lot to cover, between niche marketing on the web and bridging the generations–but it is something to keep in mind as you think about using social media in your marketing mix. Social media is about listening.

Where are people talking about you? What are they saying? Can you help solve their problem with your company or your product? These seem like great opportunities for marketers to get closer to your customers…and learn what they really want, not what we think they want.

Thank goodness a friend taught us about “What’s The Lie?” About 15 seconds in to a commercial for sneakers, my son shouts “The lie is that those shoes can make you jump as tall as a building and have cartoons coming out of your feet!” The next one is easy – after a couple seconds he says “The lie is that having that will make a lot of cool-looking kids want to hang out with you.”

The third commercial is for markers made to mix a pair of colors when they write…he has some first-hand data here. “That they work after the first time – that’s the lie,” he says as wryly as a child can be wry. The next up is a public service announcement against kid’s smoking. “No lie in this one, right mom? What’s it called again, a PSA?”

What turns out to be the last commercial in this set is for a boxed set of radio hits from the 70’s. A tough one…My candidate for the lie is that the offered price is a bargain, but what comes through visually is more an assertion that dancing to this music will make you happy…and, well, that’s true.

Here at the office, we more and more frequently are in dialogue about how to assess ROI for the not-quite-so-analytics-friendly tactics - like articles and press releases and blogging, for instance - in our quiver as part of a really thorough web marketing campaign. The ROI here – it has to be about trust, right?

The return on investing the time and resources to educate, inform, inspire, and interact with your customers is that they become invested in your relationship. (Yes, there are benefits that translate into something you can show on a graph or include in a report) The point of these tactics that aren’t exactly marketing isn’t about ROI in the way that PPC advertising campaign management is. The return on that is calculable, downloadable directly from the service in a variety of file formats.

The return on actually sitting down and interacting, on giving away information that helps and enriches your customers, that’s the kind of return you can’t show a direct correlation in a quarterly report. But it is the difference between loving and loathing in a lot of cases. If you go in saying you’re interacting and real, but the whole thing is about ROI and selling, your customers will spot the lie faster than my son can tell you breakfast cereal won’t make you friends with cartoon leprechauns.