When putting together the program for SocialTech 2010 we were looking specifically for practicing marketers at hi-tech, B2B companies. We were also looking for people who had plenty of real-world insights and an eagerness to share them.

Turns out we found a number of folks who fit that bill and who are an active part of the so-called "conversation." Here's what some of them have been saying lately:

• Chris Koch of ITSMA wrote a very intriguing post on the problem of measuring social media ROI. To remedy the problems inherent therein, he recommends making blogs the center of social media strategy.
• As far as blogs are concerned, Intel's Bryan Rhoads describes how Intel implemented and grew their blogging strategy over the last three years.
• After reading MarketingSherpa's 2009 Social Media and PR Benchmarking Guide, Brian Ellefritz of SAP was struck by their finding that "the most successful social media marketing tactics are the least measureable" and wondered if we are wasting our time trying to measure them.
• Jamie Grenney of salesforce.com shared a presentation he gave on setting social media strategy, which features a very detailed discussion of their video strategy.
• Michael Fauscette of IDC shared his team's predictions for 2010, among which you will find this intriguing claim: "As a fundamental part of the Social Business Transformation businesses shift their focus from technology and process to people, who in effect become the new enterprise platform." (I like the slogan: People are the Platform.)
• Sandy Carter of IBM saw Avatar and it got her thinking about 3D technology and how it is solving logistical problems for the German rail system, the medical profession, and education (where 3D technology can produce 80% higher retention rates, for example).
• And lastly but not leastly, the ever prolific Paul Dunay from Avaya draws a "hard line" between advocates and influencers (SPOILER: Advocates support a specific organization, Influencers address an entire industry or space).

That's just a sampling of the brain power and breadth of experience that will be on display at SocialTech2010.

Still, as much as I love reading what people write, I always learn more when I'm able to catch them in person. I think you know what I'm getting at....

The Altimeter Group held a webinar last week entitled "Understand Your Customer's Social Behavior" and were afterwards kind enough to post the slides. (They also posted a recording of the webinar but I found the slides pretty self-explanatory).

Socialgraphic data, as described in this webinar by Jeremiah Owyang and Charlene Li, fits into the broader mix of market research data (demographics, psychographics, etc.) but focuses explicitly on customers' "social" behavior, or, more explicitly, the nature of their online behavior with a particular emphasis on social media.

The questions that socialgraphic inquiry addresses are:

• Where are your customers online?
• What are your customers' social behaviors online?
• What social information or people do your customers rely on?
• What is your customers' social influence? Who trusts them?
• How do your customers use social media in the context of your products?

The basic point here is: If you are going to implement a social media strategy, you need to do socialgraphic research.

I liked that, in this presentation, they offer a number of suggestions on how companies can engage a variety of online behaviors (watching, commenting, producing, etc.) as well as sketching out how answers to the questions above can and should influence marketing tactics.

I was a little disappointed that the main way they recommend companies gather socialgraphic data is through surveys. Isn't there another, better way?

Also, while I appreciated their use of a fictional case study to illustrate the application of their model, I would really really really like see how this has played out with a real-existing company.

I think I'm gonna ask Jeremiah about that at SocialTech 2010. What would you ask him?

December and January are the high water mark for prediction posts (and even posts aggregating prediction posts). B2B marketing is not exempt from this annual ritual.

The sheer quantity of prediction lists can be overwhelming but then so can the lists themselves.Ten predictions, thirteen, twenty... it's too many!

Which is why I appreciated the fact that Ogilvy's John Bell went to the trouble of writing 3 Helpful B2B 2010 Social Media Predictions. The three predictions he highlights (which he took from three longer lists) are:

1. Social CRM will integrate with Social IRM (Influencer Relationship Management).
2. Sales Team Entrepreneurs Will Lead in Social Media Adoption in the Sales Force.
3. Content Managers and Strategists Will Take the Lead.

I was pleased to discover that John took his first helpful prediction from Paul Dunay's list of BtoB Marketers Predictions for 2010. I was pleased in part because Paul is a nice guy but also because he will be one of our speakers at SocialTech 2010.

John overlooked one prediction that Paul made, however, that I believe worthy of special emphasis. Specifically, Paul writes:

Social will leave Marketing – This year Marketing and Communications totally “got” social media but next year is the year it starts to transform the rest of your BtoB organization from Product Development and R&D, to Billing and Finance, to HR and Recruiting, to Customer Service and the Contact Center. Social Media is not like the dotcom rush to build a website and have a group of long haired people running it in a corner of your organization. Social is a process that has the power to transform your entire organization.

John's prediction that the sales team will deepen it's engagement with social media is only part of the picture. The fact is that social media tools have applications across the organization and the notion that these tools are peculiarly marketing- or even sales-specific is just wrong. Marketing relies pretty heavily on e-mail, for example, but few believe that e-mail belongs to marketing.

The funny thing is that John's third helfpul prediction actually underscores this point. He doesn't write that "social media directors" will take the lead. He says instead that people responsible for the content moving through these channels will become more and more influential, organizationally speaking.

Long story short, I predict that as the novelty factor continues to fade, the focus will fall on the things people are accomplishing with social media tools and not the tools themselves.

I'll be honest; I didn't either.

Thankfully, John Overridex at Geek-o-pedia did and was willing to share them with us!

As you can see, three of his four resolutions - to be more focused in social media efforts; to integrate social media with "other tools in the marketing arsenal;" and to rely on more meaningful metrics - are essentially a recommittment to acknowledged best practices and are pretty much in line with what Jeremiah Owyang has identified as "social media trends for 2010."

The fourth resolution however - to be continuously innovative with regard to social media tools and tactics - struck me as particularly forward-thinking and, well, novel.

There is certainly a lot out there that hasn't been tried, but there's also a lot that just hasn't been tried everywhere yet. When seeking out new uses of social media, Overridex reminds us, a tactic which might be old-hat in one industry could be cutting edge in another.

That means you've got to find out what others are already doing elsewhere and use their experiences to rethink your own approach. The trick is, of course, to never stop finding out what else other people are doing. They can always teach you something.

While seconding this resolution, I would also encourage folks to take this re-thinking at least one step further. Yes, do as Overridex recommends and continue to invent new uses for your current social media tools (Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn). This is certainly a good idea and the potential of these tools is far from exhausted.

But don't forget that it's not just about using old tools in new ways, it's also about discovering and using new tools.

Accordingly, I hereby resolve in 2010 to discover me some new social media tools and put 'em to work.

And what is your social media resolution?

I guess this is what the long tail is all about. Tooling around the interwebs (or was it the Twittersphere?) I came across this post, "Texas Instruments E2E Community Blows Open the Case for B2B Social Media Investing" by Rohn Jay Miller from December. The post gives a very detailed run-down of the work Devashish Saxena has done developing an online community for engineers working with TI's products.

I encourage you to read Miller's entire post but wanted to share this paragraph because it illustrates at least one benefit of engaging and developing your communities: They are content engines.

The brilliance of the E2E community is that it took this huge number of client engineers and moved their questions and dialogue with TI engineers into this community.  Not only does this get more brains contributing ideas, and not only does it build the TI brand in the minds of those client engineers, but—here’s the true genius:  instead of answering a question once, the answer gets indexed by the search engines and 100 engineers can find the answer when they begin their research.

The words the keep ringing in my head are "instead of answering a question once." Think of all the questions being asked and answered in tech support communities focused on your products. This is truly valuable content. Are you making the most of it?

Social media are "not so much about communication as they are about community," Forrester's Laura Ramos told me when we discussed the fundamentals of community marketing.

For most companies, especially in IT, online community begins in discussion threads and support forums. The challenge is to "expand this so it becomes more personal," Ramos says.

So, what makes this online experience more "personal"? Ramos recommends the following:

1. Allow for profiles.
2. Allow for the creation of special groups.
3. Allow for collaboration (and not just threaded).
4. Allow for personal recognition via a rating system.

Ramos had corrected me when I suggested that rating individual responses was an important part of an online community platform. You have to be able to rate the people, she insisted.

"Recognition is huge," she continued. "That's the capital. That's the currency."

I was reminded of this last point when I visited Intuit's "Start and Grow Your Business" Community, which prominently features a "Leader Board" of those who have accrued points by answering questions posed by other members. I was amazed to see that some people - like raywhite28 or qbteachmt - had actually answered over 10,000 questions. Talk about participation!

Kira Wampler helped launch this "community for budding entrepreneurs" and, as it turns out, will be participating in a panel devoted to community marketing at SocialTech 2010.

As you consider integrating community into your business via social media, what questions would you ask Laura or Kira? Heck, what questions are you asking yourself?

Robert Scoble is going to be one of our keynote speakers at SocialTech 2010. I've been following him on Twitter for a while but have been paying extra attention to his Tweets in the run-up to this event so I came across this one today: "I'm looking at http://www.gatesnotes.com/ and rethinking my own blog. Really great format to focus attention on things."

"The Gates Notes" is, as you might have guessed, a blog where Bill Gates publishes his thoughts on a number of global issues and I can understand why anyone would be intrigued by its design and content.

Of course, after a few minutes it occurred to me that Scoble isn't just anyone, he actually knows Bill Gates.

Now, I'm not saying that that's the main reason to join us in San Jose (or online) to hear Scoble (and a ton of other B2B hi-tech marketers) speak, but it's not nothing.

I mean, do you know Bill Gates?

One of our speakers, Tatyana Kanzaveli, has set up a Google Wave and was kind enough to explain in detail how she did it. If you are on the Wave and want to check it out, search for tag "SocialTech2010." The Wave is public.

Also, we told you about the list of SocialTech 2010 speakers that you can follow on Twitter. Now the event itself has a Twitter stream that you can follow as well @socialtech_mp.

More later!

Over the last seven days, Brian Solis has posted at least two articles (he has in point of fact published a lot more) that should be of interest to B2B marketers working with social media.

The first appeared last Friday and was a rundown of Business.com's "2009 Business Social Media Benchmarking Study." One thing that the study seems to indicate, as Brian points out, is that B2B companies are "much more rigorous in the world of social media than those in B2C." Indeed, according to the numbers presented in the study, B2B companies tend to be more social: 81% maintain profiles on social networks (compared to 67% in B2C); 75% participate in Twitter (49% in B2C); 74% host blogs (55% in B2C), etc.

The only place that the numbers reverse themselves was in the case of advertising on social networks with 54% of B2C respondents doing so compared to 42% of B2B respondents. And let's face it, advertising ain't always that social.

First thought: It makes sense to me that B2B companies are making greater use of social media in part because B2B marketing involves a lot more lead nurturing and ongoing engagement with potential clients than B2C marketing. Right?

The second post appeared 4 days ago on Mashable.com and laid out the 10 Stages of Social Media Business Integration.

While this post was mentioned in 2642 Tweets (2642!) and got 40+ complimentary comments, it raised more questions than it answered for me, and not just about whether the list of stages was descriptive or prescriptive.

First of all, does social media integration at most companies really follow a linear, step-wise course where the measurement of business metrics and ROI only happens at the "highest" stage?

Similarly, do businesses really start with "Listening and Reporting"? Isn't it even more common for businesses to jump in sort of willy-nilly before getting systematic and circumspect about their social media activities?

Finally, for "Stage 7: Community," Brian writes, "Community is an investment in the cultivation and fusion of affinity, interaction, advocacy and loyalty."

While community development, community marketing, community engagement, etc., are all important components and sought-after results of effective social media programs, is "community" really an investment in anything? Isn't it more like a complex social formation that includes community members, community "space" (virtual or physical), and a set of implicit and explicit norms defining membership, roles, and types of interactions between community members?

It seems to me that defining community along these latter lines gives people a better framework for thinking about ways to engage or build community.

Maybe if we can get Brian to SocialTech 2010, I'll be able to talk this through with him in person.

In case you didn't already know, LaSandra will be speaking at MarketingProfs B2B Forum in Boston, May 3-5. See her there!

With the launch of their ASR 1000 edge router, Cisco was willing to try something different. Because they wanted to use the launch as an opportunity to increase Cisco's "share of voice" on the Web, they decided to go with an online strategy that would build over time and rely on a lot of non-traditional launch methods such as virtual worlds, embeddable widgets, and 3D games.

The result was a launch that came in at a sixth of the usual cost and reached 90 times as many people.

One of the brains behind this launch was LaSandra Brill, Cisco's Sr Manager, Digital & Event Marketing, who will be speaking at SocialTech 2010. For a great recap of the launch, I encourage you to check out this presentation posted to LaSandra's blog. If you don't have time, but are impressed by the results just mentioned, here are three lessons learned from the ASR 1000 launch process (and, btw, Cisco used similar tactics for the launch of ASR 9000 where they spent a little less money and reached a few more people, according to LaSandra):

1. Avoid Hidden Costs - When creating videos, for example, make sure that they are royalty-free so that they can be readily repurposed across the social media spectrum.

2. Test, Test, and Test Some More - Getting the embed link tracking on the widget (a virtual briefcase containing video, data sheets, etc.) to work properly took longer than expected.

3. Use Humor to Generate User Generated Content - Cisco got people talking on Facebook by asking them to generate "Top 20 Signs that You Are an Internet Addict."

Anyway, I'm sure you have a lot of questions about the details of this launch strategy, which is why you ought to consider attending SocialTech 2010 so you can ask LaSandra yourself.

I'm just sayin'.