Working in b2b though, the tools are more ambiguious.

Using Facebook for example if you make widgets that go into someone else’s larger widget simply because ‘everyone’ has an account feels a little indiscriminate and untargeted to me. Do business buyers really want companies badgering them in their downtime. Or do we assume that no-one has downtime anymore?

There is a definate strategy in having active profiles on all the major sites you have cited but we come back to where your audience congregates online and how you serve content to them.

This might include webinars, white papers, blogs, hosted presentations and scores of other content.
There isn’t quite a one-size fits all for all sectors…yet.

One area where I’d offer a bit of caution. Your comments about the number of participants on Facebook, Twitter, etc. do not equate to audience/circulation figures for “old media.” The fact that there are 500MM members on FB or 100MM on Twitter does not mean that your message reaches that huge number…it only means that’s how many people are using the service.

A brand’s effective social reach starts with those who follow the brand, then is only extended should they share your messages with their broader network, creating the virality effect. That number could be huge. It could also be small if the brand’s social graph is not optimized and maximized.

Put another way, looking at membership numbers of social media and comparing them to media audience/circulation figures are not the same thing. Each channel has a role to play, and it’s a marketer’s job to figure out the appropriate role for the brand they are marketing.

Having said that, I’m a dedicated follower of your material…keep up the great work!

Ted
@tedlsimon

One area where I’d offer a bit of caution. Your comments about the number of participants on Facebook, Twitter, etc. do not equate to audience/circulation figures for “old media.” The fact that there are 500MM members on FB or 100MM on Twitter does not mean that your message reaches that huge number…it only means that’s how many people are using the service.

A brand’s effective social reach starts with those who follow the brand, then is only extended should they share your messages with their broader network, creating the virality effect. That number could be huge. It could also be small if the brand’s social graph is not optimized and maximized.

Put another way, looking at membership numbers of social media and comparing them to media audience/circulation figures are not the same thing. Each channel has a role to play, and it’s a marketer’s job to figure out the appropriate role for the brand they are marketing.

Having said that, I’m a dedicated follower of your material…keep up the great work!

Ted
@tedlsimon

Mr Bullas laid out the statistics and reasons for why PR pros need to take social media seriously in this excellent post. Now it’s time to step up and own it.

I am totally sold on Twitter as a promotions and networking/troubleshooting tool and more…I am growing followers every week steadily – nearly to 3,000 which is a sizeable specialised legal network that is global and of real value – and it cost only time really – *hat tip* to long my suffering wife – I predict we will be dumbing down the design elements to our sites in the next 12 months as the widgets and CMS apps get more and more amazing …. e.g. I love my Posterous – sheer genius if u think Tweetdeck is good.

An excellent example of the effectiveness of social media is Australian businessman Simon U. Ford. Ford sold several thousand copies of a social Ebook in 24 hours. As befits a social media expert, Ford’s marketing efforts utilized only social media.

Study after study of Gen Y has shown that social media is the best, and perhaps only, way to reach them. Any marketer who isn’t such sites as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Digg to reach those people doesn’t deserve to get paid.