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The Planck space telescope, which is surveying the entire sky in four massive sweeps, has nearly finished its first scan. Rotating in orbit, Planck

Universal Music Group will drop the prices on the majority of its new CD releases to between six and 10 dollars. This plan — dubbed the Velocity program — will go into effect in the second quarter of this year.

UMG hopes this plan will at least slow the serious decline in CD sales that has been going on since MP3s and other digital music downloads came on the scene.

While UMG has its hands in music downloads and streaming, too, the profit margins are usually better with CDs. UMG claims that its cheaper CD plan will maintain a 25% profit margin.

Up until now, most new CDs have actually been more expensive than their download counterparts. If the price comes down, consumers will be more likely to purchase the goods. It’s a simple economic principle. But to try to incentivize music fans even further, UMG plans to load the jewel cases with “deluxe” content that you won’t usually get with online purchases.

We’re not going to complain about lower prices. We welcome anything that reduces consumers’ expenses. But do you think this will actually make a difference? A couple of us in the Mashable office haven’t bought a CD in years — if you’re the same, will UMG’s plan turn you around?

Will you buy “deluxe” CDs for under $10?polls

[img credit: lrargarich]

Reviews: Mashable

Tags: CD, CDs, digital downloads, music, umg, universal music group

There has always been a vibrant ecosystem around financial data. Financial institutions, such as hedge funds and investment banks, pay thousands of dollars for quantitative tabular data (financial data in spreadsheets). But now, the web has provided a mechanism to distribute and publish large amounts of data, but much of this data is raw (meaning, it’s not built into a spreadsheet format) and hard to find in a Google search. An finding the data, and then putting the data into a format that is easy to digest can be a laborious task. Y Combinator’s Data Marketplace is hoping to change this by providing a platform where financial professionals can request data sets and then data aggregators/consultants can then find and format the appropriate data.

Founded by two former analysts at investment banks, Data Marketplace is essentially the middleman in helping financial organizations find quality data on the web. Users can submit requests to Data Marketplace, and the site will send those requests to its database of 200,000 data aggregators, programmers, and consultants who specialize in finding financial data and essentially transferring it into a readable format.

Providers then post data resources to Data Marketplace, provide descriptive metadata, and also set a price. The stored metadata is used to help consumers find relevant data through traditional search engines and when browsing Data Marketplace. Data can also be posted on the site without a request, that users can search for. For example, here’s a data set of a complete list of Wal-Mart Store Locations, which is priced at $30.

Prices range for data, and can be anywhere from $5 to several thousand dollars. Data Marketplace co-founder Matt Hodan tells me he spent $10,000 in on year on data at one of the financial organizations he worked for. Data Marketplace takes a 14% cut of each transaction on the site, from the provider. Data Marketplace handles all of the payment processing and allows users to directly purchase and download resources in an accessible format online.

Hodan says that current models for selling and distributing data online are inefficient and expensive for financial organizations. Users only pay for what they need as opposed to plans or buying bundles of information. And providers don’t have many platforms where they can sell their data in a marketplace.

Data Marketplace is similar in some ways to Factual, which is a Wikipedia-like site for open data, and InfoChimps, which takes a more collaborative approach to open data.

CrunchBase InformationData MarketplaceInformation provided by CrunchBase

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A bitter controversy is brewing over a captive colony of endangered Virginia big-eared bats, founded inNovember as a hedge against disease driving the species to extinction in the wild.Of 40 bats put in the colony, only 10 have survived.

Location is heating up and Apple wants in on the action.

Some people don’t like the idea of Google having any data about them. Unfortunately, if you visit a site tracked by Google Analytics (and chances are you hit several each day), you have no choice. But soon, you might.

Google is testing a browser-based opt-out solution for Google Analytics, they briefly note today on the Google Analytics blog. Specifically, this would be a “global browser based plug-in to allow users to opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics.” They note that engineers are finalizing and testing the funtionality.

How exactly this will work globally across all browsers remains to be seen. While Firefox and Chrome allow for easy use of plug-ins, Internet Exploerer and Safari are a bit more complicated. Still, if you’re a user who really cares about Google not tracking this information about you, it will probably be worth it to you to install this thing.

Of course, the other question is what this means for site owners. While it’s unlikely that a lot of users would install something like this, what if they did? That could drastically cripple the entire point of Google Analytics.

[image: Paramount Pictures]

[thanks Michael]

CrunchBase InformationGoogle AnalyticsInformation provided by CrunchBase

For the past couple of years now, when talking about the Apple TV product, Apple likes to throw out the word hobby. It's as if they're ashamed of the device. And considering sales are anemic next to Macs, iPods, and iPhones, it's no big surprise that they talk this way.

Universities crumble, religion withers, "dream logic" reigns. In a long essay for cerebral Web magazine The Edge, David Gelernter explores the future of the Internet, which he says is about to take on a far more significant role in human society.

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So in 2008, a company called Integra Communications filed for a “Nexus” trademark having something to do with voice and data telecommunications. Along comes Google a year later and files for “Nexus One.” Trademark office says no go. I’m not really surprised at this; it’s not really their job to determine which is the better or more popular product, but rather whether it is possible for the two trademarks to be mistaken for one another. Oh god! Will you have to scribble out the name of your phone now and write something else?

Continue reading…

BullWhip's plans are to have celebrities such as Angelina Jolie eating a hot dog or Eliza Dushku with two big slabs of Angus steak on her breasts. Britney Spears and Paris Hilton have also been contacted to fight in a tub of hamburger. BullWhip, a meat company from Southern California is in the fighting ring against PETA for the domain Sex.com.

Google has released the Google Buzz widget for Android, which will make updating your status or tagging your location easier.

Google first launched Google Buzz for mobile about six weeks ago, and while the overall Buzz platform has undergone some changes and refinements, the mobile aspect of the service hasn’t really changed — until now.

One of my favorite Android features is that certain programs will let you use home screen widgets for easy access. This is most useful in a search or a social context — which is why having a widget for Google Buzz makes total sense.

The widget is only available in English right now, and it requires at least Android 1.6. Search “Google Buzz” in the Android Market to download the app. Once it’s downloaded, it can be added to your home screen the same way you add any other widget — click on your home screen menu, click on “add” select “widgets” and then select the option for Google Buzz.

When you use the widget, you can choose to either add a photo or series of photos or to declare your location and make your update public or private. Android users — does a Google Buzz widget make you more likely to use Buzz? Let us know!

Reviews: Android, Android Market, Google, Google Buzz

Tags: android, buzz widget, google buzz

We’re still poring over the hundreds of pages of documents that were just released in the YouTube/Viacom litigation. One document that offers extensive insight into YouTube’s early operations is Viacom’s Statement of Undisputed Facts, which contains quite a few emails from the site’s three founders: Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim (sometimes referred to as YouTube’s ‘forgotten’ founder). For what it’s worth, YouTube dispels the notion that these were really undisputed; a YouTube spokesperson said “This statement of undisputed facts is a statement of undisputed fiction.”

One of YouTube’s defenses in this case is that it has virtually no way to tell if a piece of content has been uploaded with the authorization of its owner. Which is true — Viacom has even admitted that it requested that YouTube remove many of the videos that its own personnel had uploaded. Because of the DMCA, YouTube was allowed to keep this potentially infringing content online provided it responded in a timely manner to takedown requests.

But these Emails, at least as presented by Viacom, don’t make it sound like YouTube’s founders and employees were necessarily worried about depriving content owners of videos they may have rightfully uploaded. Sometimes, it sounds like they’re pretty sure that they weren’t authorized, and were just relying on the fact that they didn’t have to do anything until they received a takedown notice. Instead, they were worried about prematurely cutting off the bulk of their traffic.

There’s some talk of creating the perception that YouTube was concerned with patrolling such content. In one memorandum, Jawed Karim told YouTube’s Board of Directors that the 10-minute length restriction the site was imposing would “reinforce the official line that YouTube is not in the business of hosting full-length television shows”, but that it “probably won’t cut down the actual amount of illegal content uploaded” because users could easily split shows in half or upload the “Juiciest bits of television shows”. Which begs the question, what was the point? Also, note that he refers to it as “the official line”.

Of course, YouTube says this is all “undisputed fiction”, and they’ll probably argue that the quotes were taken out of context (and they may well have been). If YouTube did follow the DMCA to the letter of the law (regardless of their underlying motivation), they may not have much bearing on the case.  And there’s also the fact that Viacom is being hypocritical with all of this, because it too offered user-generated video sites that relied on the DMCA, and it uploaded many videos to YouTube itself.

But it makes for some very interesting reading.

Here are from some of those early Emails and IM conversations (you can find the full document here:

On July 4,2005, YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley sent an email to YouTube co-founders
Steve Chen and Jawed Karim titled “budlight commercials,” stating “we need to reject these
too”; Steve Chen responded by asking to “leave these in a bit longer? another week or two can’t hurt;” Jawed Karim subsequently stated that he “added back all 28 bud videos. stupid. . .,” and Steve Chen replìed: “okay the video they upload, first, regardless of people are going to be telling people about the site, therefore making it viral. they’re going to drive traffic. second, it adds more content to the site. third, we’re going to be adding advertisements in the future so this gets them used to it. I’m asking for a couple more weeks.”

In a July 10, 2005 email to YouTube co-founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen,YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim reported that he had found a “copyright video” and stated: “Ordinarily I’d say reject it, but I agree with Steve, let’s ease up on our strict policies for now. So let’s just leave copyrighted stuff there if it’ s news clips. I still think we should reject some other (C) things tho. . .”; Chad Hurley replied, “ok man, save your meal money for some lawsuits! no really, I guess we’ll just see what happens.”

In a July 19, 2005 email to YouTube co-founders Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim, YouTube co founder Steve Chen wrote: “jawed, please stop putting stolen videos on the site. We’re going to have a tough time defending the fact that we’re not liable for the copyrighted material on the site because we the co-founders is didn’t put it up when one of blatantly stealing content from other sites and trying to get everyone to see it.”

In a July 23, 2005 email to YouTube co- founders Steve Chen and Jawed Karim, YouTube cofounder Chad Hurley responded to a YouTube link sent by Jawed Karim by saying: “if we reject this, we need to reject all the other copyrighted ones. . . . should we just develop a flagging system for a future push?”; Karim responded: “I say we reject this one, but not the other ones. This one is totally blatant.”

In an August 9, 2005 email to YouTube co-founders Steve Chen and Jawed Karim, YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley stated: “we need to start being diligent about rejecting copyrighted/inappropriate content. we are getting serious traffic and attention now, I don’t want this to be killed by a potentially bad experience of a network exec or someone visiting us. like there is a cnn clip of the shuttle clip on the site today, if the boys from Turner would come to the site, they might be pissed? these guys are the ones that will buy us for big money, so lets make them happy. we can then roll a lot of this work into a flagging system soon.”

On August 10,2005, YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim responded to YouTube co-
founder Chad Hurley (see SUF i1 (previous para)): “lets remove stuff like movies/tv shows. lets keep short news clips for now. we can become stricter over time, just not overnight. like the CNN space shuttle clip, I like. we can remove it once we’re bigger and better known, but for now that clip is fine.” Steve Chen replied, “sounds good.”

In response to YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley’s August 9, 2005 email (see SUF i146) YouTube co-founder Steve Chen stated: “but we should just keep that stuff on the site. I really don’t see what wì1 happen. what? someone from cnn sees it? he happens to be someone with power? he happens to want to take it down right away. he get in touch with cnn legal. 2 weeks later, we get a cease & desist letter. we take the video down”; Chad Hurley replied: I just don’t want to create a bad vibe… and perhaps give the users or the press something bad to write about.”

In a September 1, 2005 email to YouTube co-founder Steve Chen and all YouTube
employees, YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim stated, “well, we SHOULD take down any: 1)movies 2) TV shows. we should KEEP: 1)news clips 2) comedy clips (Conan, Leno, etc) 3) music videos. In the future, I’d also reject these last three but not yet.”

On September 2,2005, in response to an email from YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley reporting that he had taken down clips of the TV show “Family Guy,” YouTube co-founder Steve Chen stated: “should we just assume that a user uploading content really owns the content and is agreeing to all the terms of use? so we don’t take down anything other than obscene stuff?”

In a September 3,2005 email responding to YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley’s concern
that “the site is starting to get out of control with copyrighted material” (see SUF i154),
YouTube co-founder Steve Chen stated to the other two YouTube co- founders that, “what’s
the difference between big-boys/stupidvideos vs youtube? . . . if you look at the top videos
on the site, it’s all from this type of content. in a way, if you remove the potential
copyright infringements, wouldn’t you still say these are ‘personal’ videos? if you define
‘personal’ to be videos on your personal harddrive that you want to upload and share with
people? anyway, if site traffic and viralìty will drop to maybe what it is. . . i’d hate to prematurely 20% of attack a problem and end up just losing growth due to it.”

In response (see SUF i155), YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim wrote: “well I’d just remove the obviously copyright infringing stuff. movies and tv shows, I’d get rid of. . . .leave music videos, news clips, and clips we’ll of comedy shows for now. I think thats a pretty good policy for now, no?”

In a September 3,2005 email to the two other YouTube co- founders, YouTube co-founder
Steve Chen responded to Jawed Karim’s suggestion that YouTube remove “obviously copyright infringing stuff’ (see SUF i156) by stating that “i know that if (we remove all that content. we go from 100,000 views a day down to about 20,000 views or maybe even lower. the copyright infringement stuff. i mean, we can presumably claim that we don’t know who owns the rights to that video and by uploading, the user is claiming they own that video. we’re protected by DMCA for that.we’ll take it down if we get a ‘cease and desist”‘; Jawed Karim replied: “my suggested polìcy is really lax though. . . . if we keep that polìcy I don’t think our views will decrease at alL. “

In a September 4, 2005 email to YouTube co- founder Jawed Karim and others at YouTube, a YouTube user stated: “Jawed – You have a lot of people posting Chappelle Show clips and stuff like that. Aren’t you guys worried that someone might sue you for copywrite
(sic J violation like Napster?”; Karim replìed: “ahaha.”

In a September 7, 2005 email, YouTube co-founder Steve Chen wrote to YouTube cofounders Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim, and Roelof Botha of Sequoia Capital (and later a
YouTube board member) that YouTube had “implemented a flagging system so you can flag a video as being inappropriate or copyrighted. That way, the perception is that we are concerned about this type of material and we’re actively monitoring it. The actual removal of this content will be in varying degrees. We may want to keep some of the borderline content on the site but just remove it from the browse/search pages. that way, you can’t find the content easily. Again, similar to Flickr, . . . you can find truckloads of adult and copyrighted content. It’s just that you can’t stumble upon it, you have to be actively searching for it.”

In a January 25,2006 instant message exchange, YouTube co-founder Steve Chen
(IM user name tunawarrior) told his colleague YouTube product manager Maryrose Dunton
(IM user name maryrosedunton) that he wanted to “concentrate all of our efforts in
building up (YouTube’sJ numbers as aggressively as we can through whatever tactics, however evil,” including “user metrics” and “views,” and “then 3 months, sell it with 20m views per day and like 2m users or something. . . I think we can sell for somewhere between $250m – $500m . . . in the next 3 months. . . and there *is* a potential to get to $1 b or something.”

In a February 17,2006 instant message conversation, YouTube systems administrator Bradley Heilbrun (IM user name nurblìeh) asked YouTube product manager Maryrose Dunton (IM user name maryrosedunton), “was it me, or was the lawyer thing today a cover- your-ass thing from the company?” Dunton responded, “oh totally. . . did you hear what they were saying? it was really hardcore . . . if we even see copyrighted material on the site, as employees we’re supopsed (sic to report it”; Heilbrun replied, “sure, whatever,” and Dunton said “I guess the fact that I started like 5 groups based on copyrighted material probably isn’t so great”; in response Heilbrun said “right exactly. . . but it’s a cover your ass . . . so the board can say we told maryrose not to do this.”

In the same instant message conversation,YouTube product manager Maryrose Dunton
(IM user name maryrosedunton) reported the results of a “lìttle exercise” she performed
wherein she “went through all the most viewed/most discussed/top favorites/top rated to try and figure out what percentage is or has copyrighted materiaL. it was over 70%.” She added, “what I meant to say is after I found that 70%, I went and flagged it all for review.” When deposed, YouTube product manager Maryrose Dunton confirmed in reference to the February 28,2006 instant message exchange with YouTube co-founder Steve Chen (see SUF i195) that she was being sarcastic and did not actually flag any of the copyrighted videos for review.

CrunchBase InformationYouTubeViacomInformation provided by CrunchBase

Not everyone can afford a personal assistant to reschedule their meetings, but we can all use Smart Rescheduler. The new Google Calendar Lab gadget automatically works to suggest the best times to reschedule a calendar event.

The experimental addition was added to Google Calendar today and can be enabled via the Labs section. Upon installation, the feature will appear alongside users’ calendars and allow them to select individual events to reschedule.

Here’s how it works: Clicking “Find a new time” prompts the gadget to check the calendars of scheduled attendees, allowing it to recommend the best dates and times to reschedule based on Google’s search ranking algorithms. Users can select from any of the returned results or fine-tune the suggested options by adjusting event parameters around date and time, or by marking attendees as optional.

The Smart Rescheduler is a simple utility that should make the busy day-to-day lives of Google Calendar users more organized and less chaotic.

Reviews: Google

Tags: Google, Google Calendar

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Blippy is always fun to write about because so many people are enraged by its very existence. But all that rage apparently hasn’t stopped the company from getting lots of investor attention. In addition to landing a bevy of top tier angels and venture capitalists in their first round of financing, we’ve now heard that Blippy is preparing to close on a new round.

August Capital partner David Hornik is leading the round. And the valuation is “totally absurd” says one source. Another puts it at $50 million, although that may be a little on the high side. Regardless, that’s not bad for a site which only launched publicly two months ago. Update: Yet another source says “high 30s” on valuation, and we think that’s about right.

Blippy wouldn’t comment on this story. I reached David Hornik (he seemed to regret having answered the phone). All that he’d say is that he loves Blippy, but he would neither confirm nor deny an investment.

If you’re not already familiar with it, Blippy is a Twitter-like service where users post everything they purchase. You can hook up your credit cards and various online services (Amazon, iTunes, Zappos, etc.), and details about everything you buy are posted. You can see my account here – I’ve linked it to my iTunes. See our Blippy launch post for more details.

Lots of people love posting and discussing their purchases on Blippy. But lots of other people just hate the idea of the service as an insane invasion of privacy (albeit one that people voluntarily enter into). Read the comments on any of our Blippy posts to see examples of that indignation.

Putting all that aside, though, if enough people start using Blippy they are going to be able to monetize the heck out of it. Advertisers will see exactly what users are buying and be able to target them with ridiculous precision. In fact, the data is so deep and rich that Amazon is already threatened by the young startup.

CrunchBase InformationBlippyAugust CapitalDavid HornikInformation provided by CrunchBase

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The B2B Marketing series is supported by the MarketingProfs B2B Forum, where you’ll learn the ins-and-outs of social media as part of your overall B2B marketing mix. Register today!

*Additional reporting by Tamar Weinberg

When we write about how companies or individuals are using social media in their marketing strategies, it’s usually in the context of a business to consumer relationship. However, business-to-business (B2B) marketing is really getting a boost from social media as well. According to a recent study, 60% of B2B marketers plan to increase social media marketing spending this year.

As we discussed earlier this week in the context of PR professionals and social media, even non-B2B-centric services like Twitter and Facebook can still offer great opportunities for B2B shops. Sometimes, the approach is the same as it would be in non-B2B marketing, sometimes it can be very different.

Figuring out how to best implement and harness social media in the course of B2B marketing can be difficult but we’ve put together ten tips to help get you on the right track!

1. Use Twitter Effectively

This may seem like a no-brainer, but plenty of businesses and even B2B marketers aren’t on Twitter. Get an account on Twitter and start engaging. While having profiles on other social media platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn can be equally important, Twitter remains one of the best ways to find and engage with others.

How do you do that? Start by searching for phrases relevant to your business and by monitoring those searches regularly. Look at what people are saying and join in the conversation. If people aren’t necessarily looking for your business offerings right away, start joining other conversations of interest. The more you build bridges, the more likely you are to be noticed.

Second, use hashtags. The #B2B hashtag, for example, will connect you with several other like-minded businesses who are also trying to leverage Twitter to build an online presence. Don’t overdo it, though. There are some people #who #tweet #like #this.

We’ll discuss this in the next point, but consider Twitter to be an informal medium. With social media, businesses can (and should) be human again. That’s why it’s safe to use Twitter not just for pure self promotion but to build a meaningful relationships with those who you are likely to do business with you in the future. If you feel comfortable using your business Twitter feed to talk about what makes you tick (versus purely promoting your business), you might be pleasantly surprised to see that your audience might very well be receptive to that messaging.

What’s great about Twitter, especially from a B2B perspective, is that you can follow just about everyone. Take advantage of the opportunity to follow your industry influencers, connect with potential customers, and keep a heads up on the competition.

A great example of Twitter usage from a B2B perspective is @salesforce. Salesforce has used its Twitter feed to share relevant news, to empower current customers, and to offer customer support.

2. Figure Out Your ‘Social Voice’

Social media works best when it is personal and authentic, and thus, it’s important to make sure that the way you communicate when using social media tools comes from a personal and authentic place.

Kevin Dugan, the Director of Social Marketing for Empower MediaMarketing recently wrote a blog post about finding your social voice. I spoke with Dugan about establishing a social voice, and he had this to say:

“It is critical that brands understand a social voice is different from brand voice. Social voice reinforces the brand voice indirectly. Social voice doesn’t follow communication guidelines or identity standards. That’s because a social voice equates to a person. A brand voice is anonymous while a social voice can be found on Google. They must also have an understanding of the brand and a passion for it.”

Social networks are now helping to put the “human” back in businesses again. The traditional messaging of yore has been replaced by businesses who actually appear to show that they care about their customers. With a social voice, informal is perfectly acceptable. Having a social voice, as opposed to just a generic “brand voice,” is an important step when connecting with potential customers. Prospective customers want to connect with businesses who think just like them.

Just because your clients are other businesses doesn’t mean that the “social” aspect of social media needs to disappear.

3. Take Advantage of Opportunities on LinkedIn

LinkedIn is continuing to get bigger and bigger — and it continues to be a great resource for businesses and employees to connect with one another.

One of the best things about LinkedIn is the Shared Connections feature. This feature makes it possible to find people — like potential clients — and then see what connections you have in common. Shared Connections then makes getting a virtual introduction that much easier.

Building up a strong LinkedIn network and being willing to introduce others (in good faith, of course — always use your best judgment) can also increase what opportunities you can get in the future.

B2B marketing is often built through trust and word of mouth. Having a shared connection is a great way to start establishing some of that trust from the very beginning.

LinkedIn also has a community of active participants. LinkedIn Answers serves as a knowledge base where business representatives can establish authority and expertise by participating in the ongoing discussions. LinkedIn Groups is an opportunity for business professionals to interact with other topics relevant to his/her interests. One business successfully used LinkedIn Groups as a way to build business leads. This business opted to engage in relevant industry discussion and offered business services when requests were made, thereby bringing in a highly targeted business lead. Actively participating in LinkedIn is often one of the best ways to not only help people out, but also to make a connection for your service and even generate leads.

Answering questions across LinkedIn Answers and LinkedIn Groups doesn’t mean to simply put out the marketing blurb, but to really engage and offer feedback and solutions. Again, social media is most effective when it is genuine.

4. Start a Blog

Social media provides the opportunity for companies to promote themselves but also to welcome commentary from a community of peers. By starting a blog, you give your readers an opportunity to see you with your social voice outside the typical corporate website’s newsroom. Blogs become platforms where you can announce new product releases, share personal company stories, answer any specific questions from your customers, and empower customers to achieve success with your products and service offerings. Blogging can also establish business professionals as thought leaders in their field, thereby aiding with client acquisition.

Blogs can build up qualified prospects through search engine rankings too. Be sure to update your blog regularly with valuable content and follow up with the comments written on each individual post.

5. Monitor Your Industry

Social media means that content is being posted everywhere, and businesses have a unique opportunity to gather intelligence to make well-educated and informed business decisions. Google Alerts is a great tool to keep up with what’s happening in relation to your company, your industry and your competitors. You can get updates via e-mail or in RSS (and even in real-time) about new search results or news stories for a certain query or topic.

Further, free tools like Social Mention and YackTrack will monitor the social sphere for other mentions of your business on social sites, especially. BackType will take that a step further and monitor phrases in comments on blog posts. All of these aforementioned services can be emailed to you in a daily digest format which your team can evaluate to find opportunities.

If you don’t already have alerts set up on these services for your company name, do it now. Also set up a more generic alert for your industry as a whole to see what people are talking about. If you want to see what your competition or other big industry players are doing, add those to the mix as well.

Monitoring can also be useful because you can then highlight the big stories on your own social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, Google Buzz, etc.

6. Be Consistent and Don’t Be Afraid to Follow Up

While you don’t want to be creepy (see below), it’s important to not let potential opportunities slip by when using social media. If you’ve answered someone’s question on LinkedIn or on Twitter, don’t be afraid to reach back out to that person to ask if they have any follow-up questions or if you can send them more information. There’s an abundance of opportunity to strengthen a business relationship but it starts by initiating and then making sure that your business is fresh in your prospects’ minds.

Staying engaged and staying communicative is really important. Social media is not about setting it and forgetting it. It’s about being social, so don’t be afraid to reach out and check back in with potential leads you meet using social media. Similarly, don’t be afraid to direct message your followers on Twitter when an opportunity presents itself. They followed you because they want to hear from you. Use that opportunity to your advantage but don’t overdo it. Auto-DMs are a no-no.

If you’re going to blog, don’t leave that blog stagnant. Provide valuable content on a regular basis. Give employees of your company an opportunity to help build your brand. You can get a lot of great blog content by involving many company employees in the process. Similarly, get many employees of your company to utilize the social networks and to be continually responsive to customer inquiries. Remember, the more visible you are on the social networks, the more likely you are to be remembered when another business actually needs to utilize your services.

7. Leverage Your Analytics for Business Metric Measurement

After you’re involved enough in the social space, you’ll likely see tweets, retweets, traffic, and social network links that point to various parts of your company website. Take a look at your website analytics and start seeing where you’re making a difference, especially as it relates to ROI measurement. Don’t lose sight of your business metrics and start considering practical social media measurement to assess clickthroughs, popularity of links, and other important metrics.

As part of measurement, consider using URL shorteners. Not only do they make links more manageable (and limit the number of characters in a Tweet or Facebook message), they also can be a great way to track data as many URL shorteners provide valuable statistics about the performance of each individual shortened URL. Monitor this data throughout the process with your main website analytics package to see if your message attached to the shortened URL resulted in conversions.

When looking at conversion trends or successful tools in building leads with social media, reviewing analytics data is crucial. It gives you insight into content that performs very well in the social space but also through other marketing techniques, such as search engine optimization. Use the data as an opportunity to improve your content or your social media/search marketing efforts.

8. Find and Follow Industry Influencers

B2B social media marketing is often about connecting with the right people and about building relationships. Social media makes both of these actions simple and painless. Being aware of who the influencers in your industry are and then following them, whether it’s on Twitter, Facebook or their own blogs, is the first step to building a connection with those influencers. With a genuine relationship, these influencers may be able to help you make your mark in the social media marketplace. This is especially true of influencers who may already have your target audience at their disposal.

This doesn’t mean you need to retweet every tweet or share every blog post on Facebook, but it does mean that you should be aware of who the movers and shakers are. By following them and then reaching out when appropriate or just to get to know them further, you have a much better shot at getting some attention.

Even if you’re not necessarily connecting to influencers, social media affords the opportunity to connect with other people in your industry and your customers. Use the various social media platforms as an opportunity to connect with these industry colleagues and peers and build upon each other. Consider celebrating your colleagues’ or customers’ success. Make it known that you’re here to help them — not just yourself. Repeat this process with anyone of interest and you’re bound to attract eyeballs.

9. Use Social Media for Giveaways and Promotions

Sometimes, the hardest part of social media is sticking out from the sea of other users. Giveaways and promotions are a great way to help differentiate yourself and your business. Using Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, you can target your desired customer base and then let them know (if appropriate) about different promotions or giveaways related to your product. If you offer a service, consider giving a free year to a loyal customer. If you manufacture products, give some away.

Offer a coupon on your company’s Facebook Page and pair it with a lead-generation form for future contact. Let people know on Twitter about specials or contests that are going on and follow-up with those that show an interest. Perhaps you can have a retweet contest where you can monitor responses or host some trivia on your Facebook Page. You can also open an online survey to get feedback about your offerings and reward participants. The possibilities are endless. Creativity in this capacity breeds success.

Companies like Wildfire make it really easy to build these sorts of promotions directly inside your own social media channels.

10. Don’t Be Creepy

If you use social media like a keyword searching robot, you are going to come across as creepy and turn off potential clients. Don’t be creepy.

Use best judgment and common sense when approaching people using social networks. If you wouldn’t want to be approached the way you are approaching another user, don’t use that approach. It’s as simple as that. Social media etiquette isn’t much different than real life relationships, so what won’t work in “real life” probably won’t work online.

Respecting boundaries doesn’t mean you can’t still answer questions, engage and follow-up with potential leads, it just means that if it’s clear that the other party isn’t interested, or more importantly, if the context of their communication really doesn’t involve or seek out input from your company, don’t do it.

Context is really important in social media and it is something that is very, very easy to overlook. While we think that using keywords and Google Alerts are good methods for keeping atop of your field, that doesn’t mean you can automate your responses or just go into autopilot based on those alerts.

Your Tips

There are many different social media marketing opportunities for B2B, and there’s great potential for success as more companies jump on the social media bandwagon. How do you use social media in B2B marketing? What tips can you suggest to others? Let us know!

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