social media

Today’s B2B marketers increasingly feel the pressure to quickly adopt social media and integrate it into their daily marketing activities. It’s not just the internal pressure from leadership but the constant bombardment of sales reps from the hundreds of vendors now pushing social media tools, analytics platforms, engagement platforms and lead generation programs. This pressure pushes most B2B marketers to make quick decisions based purely on resources and budget.

Rackspace’s Social Media Support Team this week took home a silver award for Front Line Customer Service Team of the Year at the seventh annual Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service. The award is an awesome recognition of our passion for customers and Fanatical Support.

What is social content? Most social media professionals will say that social content is the conversation that happens within Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. Yes, that is true. But what about the articles, whitepapers and technical documents that are typically attached to that social conversation? Is that content really social content or is it just content that you have posted on a social media community or network? Posting flat content on social media channels does not make it socially centric nor does it really do its part to compliment the conversation. (How come? Because it’s one-sided and doesn’t prompt engagement.)

Are you passionate about cloud computing? Obsessed with OpenStack? Or maybe you know nothing about cloud technology and are curious to see what all the fuss is about. If this sounds like you, head over to LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional networking site, and join the Rackspace community.

Last week, we presented at Salesforce’s Dreamforce 2012 conference on the topic of social sales and marketing enablement. Here is a brief overview of our presentation along with the slides.

Robert Scoble visits with Rackspace UK’s Online Marketing Manager, Emma Boyle to talk about social media and its impact on online marketing.

SharePoint mirrors the features that keep millions engaged on popular social networking sites to give organizations an out-of-the-box solution to spur enterprise collaboration and innovation. As the social medium grows, users want the same tools at work that they use in their personal lives to share vacation pictures, funny videos and other content. Many of the social features in SharePoint 2010 map directly to the features and functionality that workers already use to stay in touch with business contacts and friends on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

Robert Scoble sits down with one of his social media heroes to talk about social media and the real ROI with Phil Campbell, Director of Geekery with Fibrecamp.

Unlike traditional media, social media is a disruptive mode of communication as it allows users to participate and have their input, no matter the conversation. Occasionally, this disrupts one-sided conversations and can take the dialogue in another direction, originally unplanned by the person that began the communication. However, as we find that social media is becoming a bigger part of how people communicate, social marketers need to recognize this and build it to its advantage.