We are excited to share our annual report on the State of Social Media Marketing - Top Areas For Social Marketing Investment and Biggest Social Marketing Challenges in 2012. The team at Awareness connected with 320 marketers from a cross-section of industries, company sizes and levels of social marketing experience. Our annual State of Social Media Marketing report comes with insights from those leading the efforts at the C-level and those who manage the social marketing function within their organizations, as well as a number of business leaders who are helping to bridge the social gap within their enterprises. Here are some interesting findings and insights that are contained in this report from our CEO, Brian Zanghi. 2012: The Year of Growing Social Marketing Maturity Social marketing is entering a stage of maturity and with it, savvy, socially-oriented businesses are starting to embrace social as part of their companies' DNA. This transition comes with an understanding that siloed approaches to social marketing are not effective, and a realization that scale with social marketing comes with the adoption of new organizational structures, processes and technology infrastructure that can help the enterprise scale and opt ...

Yesterday afternoon Jeremiah Owyang and the team at the Altimeter Group released a report on the social media management space. One of the fastest growing industry segments, social media management is becoming a core business practice that is in dire need of a comprehensive strategic framework, and corresponding organizational setup, best practices, workflow, infrastructure and measurement. As a growing space, social media management is still in the process of being defined and reports like Strategy for Managing Social Media Proliferation are the beginning of an industry-wide conversation toward creating common standards to make it an accepted business practice. What this report highlights is the need for a strategic approach and a well-rounded way of analyzing the opportunities in social media for true business impact. As I read the report I couldn't help but think of how fast this space has grown in such a short amount of time. The market defined in Altimeter's report is less than two years old and what struck me most about the insights presented in the report is that where the space is today is irrelevant. What matters most is where the space is going and the vision of the vendors presented in the report. We see the marke ...

As we embark on 2012, the team at Awareness, Inc. consulted with the best and the brightest in marketing, strategy, technology, business and social media to help us identify the top news, analysis and trends resources for social marketing and social technology. Our industry is among the most dynamic, with many voices reporting, analyzing and advising on social technology, social media developments, successes, and best practices. To help you navigate the active social news space, we compiled this Ultimate Guide to the Top Marketing, Technology and Social Media Resources. This guide aggregates resources quoted by leading strategists such as David Meerman Scott, Brian Solis, Erik Qualman, Jason Falls, and Jay Bear, top analysts and influencers Jeremiah Owyang, Debi Kleiman, Laura Fitton, David Berkowitz, brand leaders such as Ekaterina Walter, Michael Pace, and Pam Johnston, and agency visionaries Steve Rubel, Mike Troiano, and Jonas Klit Nielsen in our free report on 2012 Social Marketing and New Media Predictions, to name just a few. The Ultimate News Resource Guide also contains the collective input from over 300 marketers from a cross-section of industries, company sizes and levels of social marketing experience (we recently ...

On our quest to understand the state of social marketing dynamics, we invited author and marketing strategist Adam Mertz (@theMetz) to share his insights about what's at the heart of social marketing – the social customer. In his book The Social Customer: How Brands Can Use Social CRM to Acquire, Monetize, and Retain Fans, Friends, and Followers, Adam explains the advantages of socially-minded companies, which proactively manage the social customer. We were excited to have Adam offer an hour-long webinar on the principals covered in his book – watch the webinar here. Let's start with who the social customer is. Adam defines the social customer as anyone who uses social media at least once a month. Others like Michael Brito (@Britopian) have gone as far as defining six types of social customers. And if you've read Brian Solis' (@briansolis) recent blogpost The State of Social Marketing 2011-2012, then you know he talks about the social customer as "someone who first goes to their social networks of relevance to learn about products and services". If you are wondering how many of your current customers are social customers, follow Adam's recommendation and use this free Social Technographics Profile Tool from Forrester Resear ...