An excellent infographic by the team over at Eloqua looking at breakthrough technologies and processes that forever changed one segment of the world: B2B Marketing professionals.

A new set of stats show that two out of every three people agree that social media should be banned in the workplace.  Simply Zesty brings us some interesting visuals on how social media is seen at work (in the UK…but let’s be honest, it’s probably similar in the US!)

Ever wonder the who, what, where of electronic lovers in the US? Bundle shows us some cool stats.

A study released last month by MarketingProfs and the Content Marketing Institute highlights some significant numbers in the area of content marketing for the B2B industry.  In short, content production has become and will continue to be a major piece of the marketing mix for B2B marketers.

There are several high-level takeaways from the report:

• Content marketing is still very widely used.  90% of B2B marketers used some form of content in their marketing program in 2011, and no individual industry reported lower than a 70% adoption rate.
• More budget is being spent on content marketing. While the above stat has changed little from 2010, 60% of respondents said they were going to be increasing spend on content marketing over the course of the next 12 months.
• Content type is varied. Marketers are using a mix of content creation and content curation in their programs.
• Perceived effectiveness of content type is interesting. Visual content – in-person events, webinars, video – seem to be the most successful pieces of content, while informational/written pieces – case studies, eNewsletters, white papers and blogs – are also considered very effective as whole.
• Creating valuable and consistent content proves challenging.  Among B2B marketers largest challenges in content production are creating content that engages prospects (41% of respondents reported this as their largest challenge), and creating enough content (20% stated this as their largest challenge).
• Marketers are using content marketing to meet multiple business goals, including brand awareness (69%), customer acquisition (68%), lead generation (67%), and customer retention/loyalty (62%).
• Content production is being outsourced more this year than last.  62% of B2B marketers use outsourcing for content marketing, a substantial increase from last year’s 55%.

Some of the more specific statistics are quite interesting as well:

• The top 5 most popular tactics are article-posting (79% of respondents), social media (74%), blogs (65%), e-newsletters (63%) and case studies (58%).
• B2B Marketers are still using Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook as their top three distribution networks.
• Respondents designated as “best in class” designate 31% of their budget to content marketing, compared with 18% for those not describing themselves as effective content marketers.

Related articles

• B2B Marketers Are All About Content Marketing (revenews.com)
• B2B Content Marketing Statistics: 2012 Budgets, Benchmarks and Trends [Research Report] (bjconquest.com)
• Awesome Content is Key to B2B Social Media (socialmediab2b.com)

I’ve finally gotten around to reading ComScore’s 2011 Social Report that came out in late December.  There are some great, granular pieces of data taken from March 2007-October 2011.

Some key stats:

• Social Networking is the most popular online activity. 1 in every 5 minutes of time online is now being spent on social networking sites (up from only 6% in early 2007), reaching 1.2 billion people total.
• Facebook is important. Facebook takes up the largest part of this time, reaching 55% of the worlds’ online population in October. Facebook also has incredibly high engagement, with 3 out of every 4 minutes of users’ time on social networks being spent on it instead of other networks, and taking up every seventh minute of people’s total time online.
• Twitter has grown by 59% in the past year and reaches 160 million monthly unique users worldwide.
• Microblogging is making a run.  LinkedIn has grown by 55% to nearly 100 million, while Tumblr is up 172% to nearly 40 million.  Google+ now has 65 million users worldwide.
• More and more people want to share around interests, not just the close social relationships.
• Social Networks are continuing to reach all age groups, not just the youngins. The 55+ age group continues to be the fastest growing demographic in terms of social network usage, which increased by almost 10% since July 201.
• Women continue to lead men in engagement across the world — by 2 hours or 30% per month in North America and Europe.
• What about email? Email usage has been declining in usage among younger age groups, a trend that’s not likely to change.

You can download the full report here.

Related articles

• 95% of online Indians spend time on social networking sites (socialmediaalley.wordpress.com)
• 6 Compelling Social Media Stats Marketers Should Know [Data] (hubspot.com)
• ComScore: Top 10 Need-to-Knows About Social Networking and Where It’s Headed (bespacific.com)

This great timeline from Tatango shows how text messaging has changed the way we all communicate over the last 19 years.

This is a fun way to start off your week!  A few bloopers from some of the names we all know and love during their interviews for MarketingProfs Take 10 Author Series video shoots. Features best-selling authors Guy Kawasaki, David Meerman Scott, Sandy Carter, Sally Hogshead, Nancy Duarte, Mitch Joel, Mignon Fogarty, and Brian Solis. Enjoy!

I took a few minutes to layout initial thoughts to @garyvee’s suggestion that there’s no such thing as social media, and that social media was the same thing as the internet.

Here’s the two-minute clip of his thoughts:

I have a few more refined thoughts on the matter here:

[Please note, I'm going to ignore the fact that the internet is actually the network upon which everything we're really talking about rests on. Minor technicality, I'll let it slide.]

Yes, social media has gotten to be a very broad word, maybe too big for it’s britches, and applied to a lot of different things.

I agree that the term “social media” has lost meaning since we started using it years ago.  Everything’s social media this, social media that, new tools pop up every day, and people use the term “social media” for a TON of internet “things” out there.

No, social media is not the same as the internet. It’s about whole vs part.

Even so, there is still a difference between social media and the internet, and that’s the social part.  Social media, as I said, still encompasses the parts of the internet that allow you to connect directly (and usually publicly) with others.  I can be on a website that gives me no option to connect to anyone else directly, unless I choose to email that URL to someone, or copy/paste into Tweetdeck and share it.  I took part in a social media act by getting that URL onto Twitter, but it doesn’t mean

I think what he means is that social aspects are making their way into more and more parts of the internet.

I get what Gary’s saying.  But what’s really happening is that social features are being integrated into more and more parts of your online experience.

The internet is becoming so social, that there are now much fewer places online that are not social, that don’t give us options to connect with others immediately and directly.  Soon, the internet may be completely social, there will be no point to keep using the word “social media” because it encompasses everything that’s happening on the internet, and we can come up with the next big huge word to describe something phenomenal and earth breaking.

Great infographic on social engagement on the part of CEOs, from Voltier Digital.

Related articles

• Infographic of the Week: Understanding Viral Content Marketing (othersidegroup.com)
• Infographic of the Week: Unique US Audience Composition Index to Social Networks and Blogs [INFOGRAPHIC] (othersidegroup.com)

Well, some of you thought our content was pretty good!  Here are some of the top posts of the year from Ad Your Comments Here.

1. Your Outposts: Going from centralized to a “decentralized federation” (August) – Putting some structure around as institutional social media program that supports the whole as much as the parts.
2. Bernie Fine, Communications, and PR Crisis Management (December) – Some of my thoughts on communication in the wake of dealing with a sex scandal at SU.
3. Person-brands + Social CRM = Personal Relationship Management (April) – Combining the concepts of personal branding and social CRM into PRM.
4. Best Buy’s CEO on Learning to Love Social Media (February) – A summary of a great HBR article on Best Buy’s CEO’s transition to social media enthusiast.
5. Infographic of the Week: A Visual Guide to SEO (October)
6. The Rise of the Individual Brand (February) – We take personal branding seriously here, and it’s becoming ever more important in business today.
7. Social media, journalism, personal branding and value. What does it all mean? (April) – You’ll just have to read this one!
8. The Role of a Social Media Communicator During a Crisis: A “conversation” with @Chrisbrogan (November) – Additional thoughts on team management in a PR crisis and what my role was.
9. Getting Your Content Published (November) – A quick interview by WebProNews at the BlogWorld LA conference in November.