Social media is certainly a hot topic in B2B marketing right now.  In the consumer world, U.S. congress members tweet commentary and criticism to constituents, YouTube creates instant celebrity and social media addictions are being diagnosed.  New digital tools are being created to help people link together all of the networking services which are linking them together.  How can any self-respecting B2B marketer sit by and let the consumer marketers have all the fun.

As with any marketing trend, pundits are emerging.  But, no one has yet figured out how best social marketing will play a role in the relatively complex world of B2B marketing. 

I'm considering social media a family of marketing tactics that depending upon target audience, marketing objective and how audiences engage with social media through the purchase cycle, may or may not be appropriate.

I'm loosely grouping social media in my own mind around the themes of engagement, connection and listening.

Engagement is represented by social media tactics like twitter, flickr, youtube, wikipedia, blog, blog influence. It can deliver the right information to the right person at the right time to start a two way conversation and accelerate the purchase cycle. And, positively impact your "off-page" search engine results.

Connection gets into communities, forums, facebook, linked in, virtual trade shows etc. and is about connecting like minded customers and prospects to your company and/or each other into a truly global sphere of influence. I'm observing the most relative value in this area right now especially against loyalty and advocacy objectives.

Listening relates to service available now to monitor the "blogosphere" to understand who is talking about you or your area of interest to discern influencers and engage them actively or passively in your marketing efforts.

There's a lot going on right now in the realm of social media and the consumerization of B2B. And, a lot more coming. I recommend you try piloting some tactics that are aligned with your audiences and objectives in a way that can measure performance against your objective. I also caution against signing up for a social media tactic (e.g. blog or twitter) without having a clear strategy on keeping content and brand interactions fresh.