Social & Mobile

Although BtoB companies are beginning to implement practices and processes that tie social media efforts to revenue, marketers are still struggling to determine which networking tactics are most efficient in building relationships and increasing word-of-mouth. While cold calls and batch-and-blast marketing are still prevalent in the space, social media web sites and applications including LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook are beginning to contribute to prospecting and mining customer connections.

More than 40,000 sales and marketing professionals gathered this week for Salesforce.com’s annual Dreamforce Conference at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, CA, and social media took center stage at the event.

Salesforce.com unveiled the “social enterprise,” a new framework of apps and innovations leveraging social, mobile and open cloud technologies to revolutionize companies’ relationships with their customers. The social enterprise launch included the release of Chatter Now, Chatter Approvals, Chatter Customer Groups, Chatter Service and Data.com.

Silverpop recently announced the launch of Social Sign In, a new feature designed to help site visitors leverage social identities during the sign-in process. Through a partnership with Janrain, a provider of social identity management solutions, Silverpop customers can now offer their site visitors an alternative to web form completion. Entering a one-year exclusive agreement, Janrain selected Silverpop as its premier marketing automation provider.

HubSpot announced yesterday its acquisition of Oneforty, a social media marketing company based in Cambridge, MA. Oneforty developed a directory of social media applications that will be merged into the HubSpot App Marketplace. Additionally, Oneforty’s social media marketing tool called SocialBase also  will be incorporated into the HubSpot product.

News of the acquisition comes just two months after HubSpot acquired marketing automation provider Performable. In March 2011, HubSpot received $32 million in Series D funding from Sequoia Capital, Google Ventures, and Salesforce.com. “Having Oneforty join our team and working with them on transforming marketing is exciting,” said HubSpot CEO Brian Halligan. “The combined social media expertise of HubSpot and Oneforty will benefit all of our customers.”

With content marketing emerging as a key part of demand generation programs and strategy, marketers are challenged to develop a deeper understanding of how to effectively engage prospects and encourage content sharing.

Given the popularity of Farmville-type gaming, and the increasingly critical need to create more interactive BtoB brand experiences, “gamification” has become a hot topic of discussion to drive engagement and quality leads. During Custom Media Day, hosted by the Custom Content Council and Content Marketing Institute July 27 in New York City, the sessions focused on extending the life of your content collateral. Chris Sullivan, Regional VP of Sales at gaming platform provider Bunchball, shared key insights into how gamification is helping brands integrate game dynamics into their web sites, services, community, content or campaigns to drive participation.