Social Media B2B

With this week’s IPO of LinkedIn, which happens to be social network site that seems to be most synonymous with B2B social media, we could not ignore it. While I did not write a post myself, here are three perspectives about it. We round out this week’s posts with a couple perspectives on why social media matters to business and how it fits into your life. If you have other suggestions for posts that gave you a new perspective this week, please let us know in the comments below.

What the LinkedIn IPO could mean for B2B communicators
from B2B Voices
Tomorrow marks another milestone for social media with LinkedIn’s IPO. You can catch up on the latest news here: Forbes, Fortune, Deal Journal, TRB, Term Sheet, Mashable. But as this story in Bloomberg details, LinkedIn gets “70 percent of revenue from business subscriptions, a model that’s similar to Salesforce.com.” So perhaps instead of treating LinkedIn like social media perhaps its future is more like the CRM model. With that in mind I wanted to offer my thoughts on how it can make improvements as a better resource for marketing and sales.
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LinkedIn IPO… The Day B2B Social Media Goes Public
from B2B Marketing Blog
Today LinkedIn, one of the first social media sites goes public. Although not the biggest social media site (Facebook dwarfs it several times over) LinkedIn has a long history (at least in cyber years) and a respectable brand. Within the B2B world some can argue that its size, brand, and value are the same, if not more than Facebook and Twitter.
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Blowing Bubbles? What the LinkedIn IPO Means for You
from Social Media Today
The Mountain View, California-based company sold 7.84 million shares priced at $45 each, according to a statement released yesterday, and the stock has already more than doubled in today’s trading. LinkedIn has been a tremendous godsend to the investment banking community – which has been waiting patiently for the social media industry to finally start raining.
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Is Social Media a Waste of Time and Money for B2B?
from MarketingProfs
Janet, a senior executive at one of our B2B clients, recently said to me, “Social media just doesn’t feel like an important area of investment for us. We’re not selling to consumers, we’re selling to hardcore businesspeople. I think we’d be wasting our time and money.”
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How to explain social media to your spouse
from Grow Blog
I loved Amber Naslund’s recent post about the always-on, world of digital media. As she correctly said, The New World of Work Includes Social Media. But here’s the problem. That’s easy for ME to say. It’s easy for Amber to say. But is it easy for you to explain to your spouse? How do you explain why you always need to be tethered to the Internet?
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Jeffrey L. Cohen is the Managing Editor of SocialMediaB2B.com. Follow Jeff on Twitter at @jeffreylcohen or on Google+.