Laura Ramos [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.]