New: Social Buyer Profiles and Groundswell Nomiations for B2B

[Posted by Laura Ramos]

Social media continues to be a hot topic in 2009. If you have been following my posts on this subject, here are two developments that may interest you.

Try Out Forrester B2B Buyer Social Profile Tool

Social media give a voice to buyers who can now describe their experiences, accomplishments, and disappointments to a global audience. Earlier this year, Oliver Young and I published Forrester's first research describing the social behavior of technology business buyers. We surveyed more than 1,200 business technology buyers and found that they exceed all previous benchmarks for social participation.

If you'd like to know how social media fits into the marketing mix based on how willing your target customers are to engage in social activity, can use the Social Technographics® profiles of B2B buyers tool. This tool can help decision-makers to design marketing programs that not only capitalize on emerging social behaviors but also fundamentally change the nature of the marketing relationship between B2B buyers and sellers. Try it out for yourself and let me know what you think.

Forrester's Nominations for Groundswell Awards Are Now Open

For the third year in a row, Forrester will recognize the most effective social technology applications at the Forrester Groundswell Awards. Starting now, anyone is free to submit an entry and I'd like to encourage those of you using social media in your business marketing efforts to consider doing so.

The submission form is here. The entry deadline is September 2, 2009.

If you're going to enter, please read the Forrester Groundswell Awards Rules before submitting your entry. You can submit each entry only once, and once submitted, you cannot modify it. Sorry, but that's the rule.  I plan to blog and write about the most interesting ones, regardless of who wins. Although, judging from past winners, this year is bound to include many new and interesting examples.

This year the Forrester award committee divided the categories for the prototypical groundswell objectives (listening, talking, energizing, supporting, embracing) into business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B). Specifically for B2B, we added a new category, "spreading," to recognize social applications in which you sell ideas or products to employees of a company, then get them to sell others at that company -- thus speeding adoption of your technologies or service sthrough social channels and activities your customers engage in internally. Besides the objectives categories, we also include a category for pro-social applications ("social impact") and applications within an enterprise ("managing").

That's 13 categories in total, so while we expect even more entries than the 150 we received last year, there are more ways to win this year. To learn more about the awards and how to submit your applications, please visit the Groundswell microsite.

[Cross-posted from B2B Marketing POSTs by Laura Ramos.]

Comments

[Josh Bernoff]

B2B is the hotspot for social media. Based on both the number of users among B2B buyers and the level of activity of B2B companies (especially tech), this is where the most fascinating examples are coming from.

I expect the new B2B categories in the Forrester Groundswell awards to attract a lot of interest. Looking forward to seeing what comes in!

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