Social Business | Small Business Marketing & Business Acceleration

Want to Have a Larger Impact on Your Organization? 4 Tips for Becoming A Better Influencer

Posted on 24. Apr, 2012 by Ashley Zeckman in B2B, B2C, Blog, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social business

How Can You Become A Better Influencer? Tip: You'll attract more bees with honey than you will with vinegar!

Last week Lee Odden shared a post on attracting the attention of influencers online. Whether we’re talking about influencers with mass appeal, or those that have a closer and more personal relationship with their followers, each person presents an opportunity to learn and grow.

That got me thinking, when it comes to the inner workings of an organization: what makes a good influencer, and would I consider myself an influencer at TopRank Online Marketing? In my opinion, there are some key factors that make a good influencer.

Building a strong relationship and trust with your peers is essential in influencing their decisions.
Having a team centric attitude towards those that you work with (no man is an island).
Presenting an attitude that says “I’m lucky to be here” vs. “the company is lucky to have me”.

There is a certain power that comes with having influence over your peers. A power that should not under any circumstances be abused. After all, what is power without trust? The bigger question to ask is: why should you want to be an influencer? There are many benefits to being an influential member of a team including flexibility, trust, decision making power, and proof of ability just to mention a few. I would like to dive into some of the qualities that I think make a better influencer, as well as some signs that you may already be an influencer and didn’t even know it!

4 Tips for Becoming a Better Influencer

#1 Listen More Talk Less: Think back to your “Sales 101” training, what is one of the most important rules that salespeople must always remember? Don’t talk yourself out of the sale. By listening to what your customers (or in this case peers) are really saying, you can better formulate recommendations that will have the largest impact on both their perception of you as well as the project, situation, or problem at hand.

#2 Give Before You Get: One thing that I have found is that you cannot automatically expect that your peers will want to help you. I enjoy seeing the organization I work for from a variety of perspectives and not just my own. Being aware of when your peers may be struggling or need help is the perfect opportunity to offer your help. Offering assistance on a fairly consistent basis will show that you are invested in making each person on your team successful, and are not simply looking to pull ahead of the pack. This will in turn increase your team’s willingness to help when you’re in a bind.

#3 Work Outside Your Comfort Zone: As online marketers our industry evolving at a rapid pace. What was best practices when you go to sleep, may be vastly different than when you wake up the next morning. There will always be tactics that you don’t know but by charging full ahead and working on projects or platforms that are outside of your standard comfort zone you will increase your adaptability and ability to think on your feet. Adaptability and quick problem solving will increase perception that you are an innovator within the organization.

#4 Suggest Collaboration: I’m sure you’ve heard the saying: “two heads or better than one” well imagine what you could do when your whole team puts their brains together. When we come up with ideas on our own without collaborating it’s easy to self validate concepts and consider only one point of view on the subject. By creating an open brainstorming you will give your fellow team members an opportunity to share their opinions and feel that they have an impact on the end product, recommendation, or solution. What you will end up with will most likely be a better version of what team members would have come up with individually.

4 Signs That You’re An Influencer & Didn’t Know It

While many of us may be working on becoming a bigger asset or a bigger influencer within our organization there are many people who are influencers, but don’t know it. What are some signs that you may be more influential than you think?

When your company is making new hires they ask if there is anyone you know that might be a good fit for the organization.
You’re asked to work on projects or tasks that are outside of your job description. Proof that you are adaptable and can work freely.
Team members come right out and ask what you think they should do as it relates to one of their clients or customers.
You’ve formed a meaningful and unique relationship with each member of your team, which shows that you are interested in them as an individual.

Truth Be Told: I shared what being an influencer means to me but I’m curious to know what you think. Do you thinking working towards influencing your team members is a self serving strategy, or will it help the greater good? Is there anyone in your organization that you would like to nominate as an influencer? Why would you nominate them?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2012. |
Want to Have a Larger Impact on Your Organization? 4 Tips for Becoming A Better Influencer | http://www.toprankblog.com

The Hybrids are Coming: Evolution of the Prototype Marketer

Posted on 28. Feb, 2012 by Jay Baer in Blog, Guest Posts, human resources, inbound marketing, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social business, social media marketing, social media ROI, social media staffing

Paul Roetzer (@paulroetzer) is founder and CEO of PR 20/20, a Cleveland-based inbound marketing agency, and author of The Marketing Agency Blueprint (Wiley).

Digital marketing has revolutionized the industry, and the job market. Corporate marketing departments and marketing agencies struggle to recruit and retain qualified professionals for career paths that did not exist three years ago, while academic institutions are faced with the need to adapt curriculums to the real-time nature of business.

The most valued talent in the emerging marketing agency ecosystem will be hybrids. Although specialists, connectors, and soloists can still excel with focused competencies and service offerings, disruptors are built on the versatility of social-media and tech-savvy professionals. They possess exceptional copywriting skills, along with dynamic personalities that enable them to build strong personal brands.

Hybrid professionals are trained to deliver services across search, mobile, social, content, analytics, web, PR, and email marketing. They provide integrated solutions that used to require multiple agencies and consultants. — The Marketing Agency Blueprint (Wiley), pp. 68.

Forward-thinking organizations seek hybrid professionals who are highly proficient writers, analytical and tech savvy, with a strong grasp on business, IT and human behavior. These next-generation professionals excel in the emerging core-marketing disciplines of mobile, analytics, social, web, search and content. They envision on a strategic level, building fully integrated campaigns, and they have the capabilities to execute on the tactical level, conducting activities that drive real business results.

But, there is a talent gap. Your organization can bemoan the lack of qualified professionals in the market, or it can take the initiative to create dynamic internal education programs, find candidates with A-player potential from diverse educational backgrounds, and develop employees into the hybrid professionals who will become the future leaders of our industry.

Catalysts for Evolution

In The Marketing Agency Blueprint, I outline three forces fueling transformation of the marketing-services industry: change velocity, selective consumption and success factors. These same catalysts have a direct affect on the type of talent organizations must recruit, train and retain:

1) Change Velocity

The rate of change, continually accelerated by technology innovations, has created growing demand for tech-savvy marketing professionals. Specifically, trends and shifts in consumer behavior, business processes, software, data analysis, communications and marketing philosophies have impacted the essential competencies and traits of prototype marketers.

2) Selective Consumption

Selective consumption is the basic principle behind inbound marketing, the philosophy made popular by HubSpot. In essence, consumers are tuning out traditional, interruption-based marketing methods, and choosing when and where to interact with brands.

As a result, organizations in every industry are shifting budgets away from print advertising, trade shows, cold calling and direct mail toward more measureable and effective inbound marketing strategies—fueled by content and social—that cater to consumer needs. Thus, marketers must be trained to plan and execute inbound marketing campaigns, integrated across traditionally siloed disciplines.

3) Success Factors

Marketing campaigns are not about winning awards for creative, building the flashiest websites, gaming Google for higher rankings, generating mounds of media coverage, or negotiating the lowest cost per thousand (CPM) as means to interrupt the largest audience. The job of a marketer is to produce results that impact the bottom line.

Marketers have the ability to consistently produce more meaningful outcomes—inbound links, click-through rates, website traffic, landing page conversions, content downloads, blog subscribers and leads—that can be tracked in real time and directly correlated to sales.

Rise of the Generalists

As Jay and Amber detail in The NOW Revolution, organizations should, “Search for well-rounded professionals with core business skills that can translate across roles and enable them to excel in an ever-changing environment.”

The future of marketing belongs to the generalists, the hybrids. These marketers are the key to increasing efficiency and productivity, building an insurmountable competitive advantage and fueling your organization’s growth.

So, the question becomes, is your business prepared to compete in the age of the hybrids?

Social Engagement ROI & the Value of Exchange

Posted on 27. Feb, 2012 by Lee Odden in Blog, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social business, Social Media, social media measurement, social media ROI

Social Media Engagement & ROI How do you measure your online marketing performance? What are your goals, your KPIs and how do you measure ROI? These are pretty common questions in the world of social media marketing.

As companies evolve their people, process and technology to attract, engage and inspire customers through content, I think attention on a broader view of the value that is created warrants consideration.

Many companies that approach my agency ask about the ROI of specific tactics as if they are gambling money with a direct rate of return. If there are agencies contributing to that perspective amongst clients side marketers, I wish they would stop. It’s not helping anyone. Here’s why:

The underpinning of marketing is centered around presenting something of value to customers who hopefully exchange money for it. Many marketers use the notion of ROI to characterize the effect of their marketing investment. Of course it makes sense to understand what the return is on where you’re spending money. But I think traditional models of ROI (input – output) can miss the point of how much impact integrated search, social and content marketing can have on the overall customer relationship. Besides ROI, there are other cumulative effects that can amplify the effect of optimized online marketing efforts that are worth measuring.

Today’s digitally savvy customers are empowered to publish and prone to share their experiences with brands, friends and broader social networks. Consumer expectations of brands are evolving into participatory exchanges with multiple threads of dialog. What consumers want from socially savvy brands is not just about getting free coupons or unique content any more.

The brand / customer relationship is not just about marketing presenting offers to target customers. Brand points of contact are not limited to designated personnel in sales, customer service, media relations or recruiting. Socially empowered businesses are connecting with social savvy customers in a matrix of connections. The growth of social business means entire organizations are becoming empowered to communicate and advocate on behalf of the brand. What’s the ROI on that?

Value of Exchange – The relationship between consumers and the brands they buy from involves more than just a single transaction or a subscription. Every touchpoint between a company and a customer is an opportunity to advance or decline the relationship. Businesses have come a long way in doing that for specific departments such as marketing, PR, sales and customer service. But with the advent of social business and social media empowerment across the organization, the threads of dialog between employees and customers becomes diverse very quickly.

How to manage that? You don’t. Not entirely at least. You inspire it with leadership and a vision for what your brand stands for and what kind of relationship you want with customers, employees, partners, the media and public.

Maybe you’ve observed or worked with companies that have singularly emphasized ROI in every marketing tactic employed without seeing the bigger picture of investing in the broader brand and customer relationship. Viewing industry relationship building as speculative and with uncertain financial ROI can cost a business substantially in the form of positive brand connections with customers, influencers and media. There’s a sort of equity of relationship that serves as an outcome of meaningful industry participation and leadership that many companies don’t bother with because it doesn’t answer short term ROI questions.

When a competitor makes those investments, the neck and neck competition normally experienced can give way to the competitor pulling away because of the amplification effect on their marketing efforts that continued and consistent investments in network development, relationship building and goodwill have achieved – all without certain or short term ROI.

Is your company making marketing investments solely based on immediate ROI? Are you also making investments in resources and relationships as a thought leader and building your network beyond prospects, investors and industry journalists? How are you measuring the value of exchange between your employees and the public?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2012. |
Social Engagement ROI & the Value of Exchange | http://www.toprankblog.com

Essential Resources on Social Business for Online Marketing

Posted on 13. Feb, 2012 by Lee Odden in Amber Naslund, Blog, edelman, jay baer, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social business, Social Media

Attributes of a Socially Optimized Business – Dachis Group

Add “social” to just about anything and you’ll boost interest in your topic by at least 50%. While many consultants appear to be employing that tactic to boost their interesting-ness, it’s not the case with the topic of social business.

As companies work to figure out what role social media will play with external marketing and communications, there’s a rapidly growing trend with progressive companies that are also viewing social media internally. By that I mean, they’re looking at social technologies as platforms to connect people within the company for the purposes of collaboration, tapping into the collective wisdom of the organization and bringing internal social media literacy to a level that enables external communications to scale.

Implications for social business run the gamut of organizational structure from operations to customer service to accounting. And of course, marketing and PR. The fact that social technology can facilitate connections across groups of people world-wide is pretty amazing, especially with Facebook nearing 1 billion users. What’s equally interesting (to me) is the application for surfacing and connecting internal company expertise, collaboration and the multiplier effect of scaling internal resources for external brand social media participation.

If you’re also interested in the topic of social business, here are a few resources I’ve found useful.

Presentations from Altimeter Group, Edelman, Dachis Group, Ant’s Eye View, and IBM.

Jeremiah Owyang – Altimeter Group: Invest in Scalable Social Business Programs

David Armano, Mike Kuczkowski - Edelman Digital: Social Business Planning

Dion Hinchcliffe – Dachis Group: Next Generation Ecosystems

Rowan Hetherington – IBM: Become a Social Business and Get Real Business Results (IBM’s Journey to Social Business)
Also take a look at Rawn Shah’s excellent presentation: Understanding Social Business Excellence.

Christopher Carfi - (Ant’s Eye Vie: Social Business 2012

For those of you who want to dig deeper into the principles and guts of social business, here are 5 excellent books on the topic by authors: Michael Brito, Anthony J. Bradley, Mark P. McDonald, Mike Barlow, David B. Thomas, Jay Baer, Amber Naslund, Dion Hinchcliffe, and Peter Kim.

Books on Social Business

Smart Business, Social Business: A Playbook for Social Media in Your Organization
Michael Brito

The Social Organization: How to Use Social Media to Tap the Collective Genius of Your Customers and Employees
Anthony J. Bradley, Mark P. McDonald

The Executive’s Guide to Enterprise Social Media Strategy: How Social Networks Are Radically Transforming Your Business
Mike Barlow, David B. Thomas

Now Revolution

The NOW Revolution: 7 Shifts to Make Your Business Faster, Smarter and More Social
Jay Baer, Amber Naslund

Social Business By Design: Transformative Social Media Strategies for the Connected Company
Dion Hinchcliffe, Peter Kim (Out May 1, 2012)

I will likely update this post with reports, infographics and events in the coming week. So be sure to revisit the post next Monday.

Source: Michael Brito

Even if it has been many years since I studied Sociology and Organizational Development at University, I’d still be interested as a marketer in the trend towards social business. Think of the transformations that have happened across the globe by connecting common interests through social channels. What transformation is possible for companies that could release the same spirit of change and improvement within their own organizations, amongst partners and customers?

Rather than looking at this from a pure OD perspective, I’m seeing the marketing opportunities. As our agency TopRank matures and brings on more consulting expertise, we’re definitely elevating our practice areas to include the marketing and public relations aspects of social business. In fact, we’re already doing consulting in the area of online marketing optimization for social business initiatives right now.

To me, social business is a natural evolution of how companies can internalize the social tools and means of collaborating that are becoming the norm for communications with the next generation. It’s a way to tap into expertise more efficiently and effectively to boost organizational intelligence as well as the ability to act more competently as a brand advocate on social platforms.

When it comes to marketing and communications, one social media manager and a social strategist can only do so much. Most companies don’t even have one full-time person dedicated to their social media efforts. What if a company could educate, train and support internal staff to facilitate certain types of external social media communications and even support ala Best Buy’s Twelpforce?

What do you think? How would your company do in an assessment of organizational social media readiness? Are you already leveraging internal social tools like salesforce.com Chatter or similar applications for internal social collaboration?

You can read about how SEO and Content Marketing affects Social Business in my book Optimize, coming out soon. (Wiley) Get a preview of chapters here.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2012. |
Essential Resources on Social Business for Online Marketing | http://www.toprankblog.com

Comparison of 100 Top Companies on Social Business and Corporate Culture

Posted on 22. Jan, 2012 by Jay Baer in Blog, Mitch Joel, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social business, The Ultimate Question

Are social business and corporate culture inevitably linked?

In a recent podcast, Mitch Joel interviewed Fred Reichheld, author of The Ultimate Question 2.0, and creator of the Net Promoter methodology. Fred made a statement that has stuck with me in the several weeks since I tuned in:

“You can’t be the best place to buy, if you’re not the best place to work.”

As social business moves from the toddler stage to youth stage, it’s becoming accepted wisdom that the best and most social organizations transform from the inside out. Whether it’s Charlene Li’s Open Leadership, The NOW Revolution from Amber Naslund and me, Humanize from Maddie Grant and Jamie Notter, Smart Business, Social Business from Michael Brito, or Olivier Blanchard’s Social Media ROI, there is a chorus postulating that people make your company social, not tools and technology.

Does Being a Good Place to Work Impact Social Business?

Last week’s release of the 2012 FORTUNE list of 100 Best Companies to Work For got me thinking about whether being employee-centric inherently impacts the social business aptitude of the company.

To search for a correlation, I turned to the Dachis Group Social Business Index, which ranks companies in near real-time based on the ongoing social media conversations about them from internal and external audiences. For each of the 100 Best Companies to Work For, I matched up their Social Business Index ranking (where applicable).

Social Business Comparison

Observations on Social Business and Employee Centrism

When starting this investigation, I had no idea what I’d find. I recognize that this is not an apples to apples comparison, as many of the companies (especially smaller ones) ranked as Best Companies to Work For are not in the Social Business Index at all. Also, some of the companies that are Best Companies to Work For are in industries (finance, healthcare) where outward facing social participation (as indexed by Dachis Group) is sometimes still in the embryonic stages, with growth often stunted by a diet of regulation and fear. And of course, the methodologies of the two rankings are massively different.

Even with the analytical shortcomings of this approach, however, the findings were surprising to me:

Among the 100 Best Companies to Work For, 40 are ranked in the top 900 companies in the Social Business Index
29 of the Best Companies to Work For are ranked in the top 400 companies in the Social Business Index
Among the top 100 companies in the Social Business Index, 11 are also Best Companies to Work For in 2012

Of course, we cannot conclude that being good to your employees inexorably results in being deft at social business. This is an exercise in correlation, not causation, and the data isn’t strong enough to support such a claim anyway.

More likely may be the hypothesis – and here I am clearly drawing conclusions to suit my own assumption (shared by many other social business authors and consultants) that the embrace of an open culture makes companies a more desirable place to work, and this openness then seeps into interactions with customers and prospects. That the cultural qualities that make a company “good” in the eyes of employees also make the company “good” and worthy of chatter in the eyes of external publics via social channels.

This is the “rich get richer” philosophy that I’ve written about before at Convince & Convert. Companies that genuinely care about their employees and customers are typically good at social media, because it’s just one more way for that caring to manifest.

The Social Business Chicken and Egg

Another interesting finding in my comparison is that among the 40 companies appearing on both lists, only five (Starbuck’s, Microsoft, Mattel, Hasbro, and Cisco) were ranked higher on the Social Business Index than on the Best Companies to Work For list.

I wonder then if there is a natural progression at work here. That companies that embrace openness and employee centrism fully articulate and implement those values internally first, before eventually radiating outward to customers and prospects. This stands to reason, as most companies (and certainly the vast majority on both lists) had strong corporate cultures long before social media and social business were coined, much less deemed to be important.

And I question whether it’s even possible to do succeed in reverse order. Is it possible for a company to be particularly and disproportionately good at social media and external-facing social business first, and then shore up their culture and employee focus second?

Can you make your customers happy without having happy employees first?

Social Media Success May Depend on HR

Posted on 18. Jan, 2012 by Mark Schaefer in Blog, Guest Posts, Mark Schaefer, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social business

Guest post written by Mark W. Schaefer. Mark is a consultant, college educator, and author who blogs at {grow}.

There is a growing gap between the social media “haves” and “have-nots.”

Some companies I visit have embraced social media enthusiastically and are moving into some pretty advanced ideas.

Other companies are simply checking the box. They have a blog and Facebook page… and they view the job as complete.

Still others are paralyzed and have not done anything at all.

What’s the difference between these scenarios?

It’s not necessarily resources, ideas, or a strategic vision. It’s a matter of corporate culture. And that’s why the key to future social transformation may very well rest with the HR department.

For decades, our companies have been conditioned to “manage” the message, broadcast ads and wait for things to happen. Now, companies have to be reactive, employees have to be empowered, and above all, we have extraordinary new opportunities to “listen.”

One of the things I love most about The Now Revolution is that it is one of the few marketing books to acknowledge the critical importance of corporate culture on social media success.

Despite my best intentions as a consultant, I know that there is no such thing as a grassroots cultural change. Social media success ultimately lies with the understanding and sponsorship of the company leaders. They are the ones who own the strategy and the budget. And that’s why real progress in your company may be an HR and corporate change issue as much as a marketing challenge.

What has your experience been? Is HR ready to take on this larger role?

The Journey to Social Business Marketing

Posted on 19. Oct, 2011 by Lee Odden in B2B, Blog, Guest Posts, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social business, Social Media, social media marketing

[Note from Lee: Social Business is everybody's business when it comes to modern internet marketing. IBM's social business efforts are really at the forefront of this trend. Ben Edwards is the VP of Digital Strategy at IBM and leads the strategy, design and development of IBM's marketing and communications in the digital realm. Ben joins us today to share his insights into the journey of not only embracing the social web for external marketing, but to adapt and adopt social media tools internally to empower socialized marketing.]

Ben Edwards IBM Companies of all shapes and sizes, in every industry, are increasingly adopting social media strategies and technologies for their marketing efforts, using Facebook to reach out to customers or YouTube to demonstrate new products. These are good first steps, but there is so much more that “social” has to offer. The era of social business is here and it is becoming clear just how transformative it will be for B2B marketers.

In order to fully realize the power of social business as a marketer, you must be willing to embrace the transition from outbound marketing to social media and digitally enabled inbound marketing. Here are several ways to start socializing your marketing efforts on your journey to becoming a social business marketer.

Expertise Location — Connecting experts with customers, prospects, and the knowledge seeking public

The days of businesses limiting or even entirely restricting employees’ access to the Internet and social media platforms are gone. Today, organizations are realizing the power of their employees’ activity on social media platforms. If the average employee has 150 connections on LinkedIn, that’s millions of connections with customers, prospects, business partners and the knowledge seeking public.

The challenges of communicating through these channels is first, educating your employees on how to get involved in social computing and then, connecting the right employee with the right customer through social, digital experiences. Remember communication through social channels is about engaging in conversation. It’s about helping those prospects that might be interested in your products and services, making sure they are speaking with employees who have expertise in that area.

Today’s social business marketer must work behind the scenes to create a system for internal expertise location to ensure that the right employee is participating in the right social experience at the right time with the right audience. As a B2B organization, your brand is experienced through its people— not through the products— you want to make sure that your very best people are well equipped to interact with the ecosystem of customers, prospects, partners and more. Once experts are identified, marketers can help them prepare for being surfaced in digital experiences over social media platforms and even the corporate website. That’s what an expertise location system is all about. It can aid you in supporting and growing your organization’s brand and eminence in the marketplace and twofold, will help your employees to further extend their personal eminence and reputation in the markets which your organization serves.

Crowdsourcing – Encouraging participation through open social technologies

Many brands today want to embrace social, but are wary of quality control and the risk of disruptive crowdslapping over social media platforms, open communities and forums. Carefully managed crowdsourcing can provide a safe solution to these concerns and can help with increasing brand awareness, harnessing ideas and innovation, and taking your next step towards becoming a social business.

Crowdsourcing is not a new concept for marketers, but social business marketers today are pushing the envelope through the use of open social technologies to engage with their communities. Today’s crowdsourcing is about inviting clients, consultants, and employees to contribute in the pursuit of new ideas, to evaluate and enter new markets, to gain customer feedback, and to understand market trends.

Crowdsourcing through the use of open social technologies allows organizations to mobilize the passionate special-interest groups to not only carry a brand message but also to lead and take part in activities on behalf of the brand. This is a unique opportunity for marketers who believe in the power of social collaboration to contribute to innovative ideas and viewpoints, to learn from others with common interests and to influence the future of the business landscape.

Community Creation – Creating social and digital experiences to collaborate, listen and engage

Similar to the idea of crowdsourcing, building online communities where your prospects and constituencies can gather to share ideas and collaborate can be a powerful social marketing tool. But, community building isn’t easy. You need to understand the market view and niche you’re looking to target. What does the market want? Are they looking for an objective approach or one that’s vendor-driven? Once your market is defined and a community created, you as a marketer have the opportunity to listen to the needs and concerns of potential customers, while also engaging and bouncing ideas back and forth, collaboratively.

For example, developerWorks is an online social network and technical resource center created by IBM for software developers, IT professionals, and students worldwide. The community site attracts 4 million unique visitors per month in 195 countries and is designed to help users develop skills, solve problems, collaborate with peers, and stay ahead of the latest trends in open standards. In addition to the technical information available, IBM created a MydeveloperWorks community to help users build relationships with technical professionals who have similar interests and debate and collaborate for ideal solutions to tough technical questions. Within the community, users can take advantage of groups and activities for easier collaboration, profiles and blogs to gain personal recognition, and a personalized landing page that brings them content matched to their interests for increased productivity.

Creating a community like developerWorks not only provides the marketer with insights into what the technical software developer is interested in, what they need to be satisfied in the market, but also provides a level of trust between the organization and its constituencies. It’s not about pushing marketing content out to the public, it’s about creating a community that encourages collaboration and innovation while driving brand awareness.

Leading edge companies recognize that they can’t afford to relegate social technologies to people’s personal lives and are instead implementing social tools and concepts to drive the brand and ultimately, their organization’s bottom line. Likewise marketers are embracing the social tools are their disposal and implementing them in creative ways like expertise location, open crowdsourcing and community involvement to engage customers and prospects, to build brand loyalty, and to gain market insight. This is what makes a social business marketer – embracing the networks of people and expertise you have internally and engaging your external communities through social, digi