We all know that social media usage has ramped up explosively in recent years, for personal networking and to support consumer decision-making.

Like, say, "What do you think about Apple's new iPad?"

That's all well and good for consumers, but is social media being relied upon as a trusted source of information for business decisions? That's one key question that Don Bulmer and Vanessa DiMauro tried to answer in a global study conducted as part of a SNCR fellowship.

Vanessa has offered the full report for download, but I'd like to share and comment on some of the highlights in this post. I think this study is significant because nearly 1/4 of the 356 respondents were CEOs, and 50% were VP or higher level. Clearly these are the levels where decisions are made or heavily influenced.

At a local meetup organized by Tatyana Kanzaveli, Esteban Kolsky did his usual masterful job moderating a panel of "sentiment analysis" experts from Attensity, Bing, and Scout Labs.

A few highlights from a excellent discussion...

For those not familiar with the term, sentiment analysis means the use of text mining/analytics to help determine whether written text has a positive or negative tone (hence, sentiment) and why the writer was happy or mad.

Text mining has a long history and lot of complicated algorithms at the core, but in recent years the explosion of social media has ramped up interest. The massive amount of content generated by users on Twitter, blogs, forums, etc. is an excellent opportunity to gain insight, learn about developing problems before they show up on CNN and improve the user experience.

So for example:

Many moons ago when I was a PRM consultant/analyst, one of the pioneering vendors was called Partnerware. Well, Partnerware didn't make it, but Sham Sao, the VP of Marketing at the time, has gone on to a nice career in marketing. First to a recruiting/staffing company called Deploy Solutions, and then to OneSource where he has served as CMO the past couple of years.

I caught up with Sao recently for an update on OneSource, one of the oldest and biggest players in a huge industry for business information typically used in B2B marketing and sales. OneSource has been making some strong moves to stay on the leading edge of the industry.

Said another way, the company is working hard to avoid being called a "dinosaur" by some of the new breed of lower-cost information services that use automated web mining techniques (e.g. ZoomInfo) or user-generated contact information (e.g. Jigsaw).

OneSource used to be called Lotus OneSource as part of IBM. After a management buyout in 1993, the company went public. While the delivery model has been updated over the years, the key value proposition has always been living up to its name—being the one source for a wide variety of high quality business information.

Breaking news! On Friday, Feb. 19th at 11 a.m. ET, Tiger Woods will be making a statement for the first time since his car crash 3 months ago that set off revelations about his marital "transgressions."

Oh wait, this is not the Golf Channel. Unfortunately, this media event will just be a statement -- Tiger won't be answering any questions. Doesn't he get it? This is social age! Where's the conversation, Tiger?

Well, the CRM industry can't compete with a scandal, but SaaS pioneers RightNow and Salesforce.com both made significant "social business" technology announcements today. Not that you'd see "social" used much in either case.

You can read up on the announcement details in the press releases (see links below), but in broad strokes...

• For RightNow, the key theme is deeper integration.

  In the Feb '10 release, RightNow's Cloud (social media) Monitor can pull input from external blogs and web sites via RSS feeds, plus gather insight from company-run communities. MySpace and Facebook coming later this year.

  For company-run communities, customers can now add value to the RightNow knowledgebase by commenting and rating answers, or by linking forum content to a CSS system. Nice example of unstructured content adding value to existing structured information.

  Read more »

In the past few years prospects have empowered themselves with all kinds of web and social information, which has upped the ante for those trying to improve marketing/sales performance. One response in B2B circles is to invest in better lead management tools to generate and qualify leads, then hand them over to sales in a more "sales ready" status.

There's been tremendous activity for B2B solutions, but B2C? Not so much.

Nick HedgesBut there is hope for B2C marketers. Recently Nick Hedges, SVP Sales and Strategy at Leads360 briefed me on what his company is doing to help B2C marketers improve lead management and ultimately drive top line revenue more efficiently.

One obvious difference from B2B is that B2C marketers are usually handling much higher transaction volume with small deal sizes. Efficiency is key. Some of Leads360 clients, for example, are in the financial services industry. Like mortgage brokers that buy many thousands of leads from LendingTree and other sources.

Time is money

In mid-2007 I first wrote about Infusionsoft, a new "CRM" company that launched to target small businesses. What piqued my interest was the fact that Pat Sullivan was involved on the board. He is the pioneer behind ACT! and still has the passion for small businesses.

My concluding comments:

I think Sullivan's involvement is a positive sign that there is a real opportunity in the small business CRM market in general, and for Infusion Software in particular. It will be interesting to watch what happens in the months ahead. If VCs pump in some funding, look out!

Well, VCs did pump in some funding. First Mohr Davidow Ventures, which CEO Clate Mask says shared his vision to focus on small businesses and resist the temptation to move up-market. Then more recently in a 2nd round in 2009, vSpring Capital.

So what's happened in the past couple of years? Well, Mask says they've stayed true to their small business focus, with 97% of their 5,000 customers having less than 25 employees. In fact, 80% have less than 10 employees. Mask goes so far to say they won't do deals with companies greater than 100 employees and he's pretty "militant" about enforcing that guideline.

Way back in 2001 (gee that seems like eons ago) I had the pleasure of keynoting a CRM conference in Singapore, speaking about PRM. Preceding me on stage was this Oracle executive named Lisa Arthur. And if memory serves she got even better speaker evaluation scores than I did. Drat!

Well, a few months ago Arthur popped up again, this time as CMO of Aprimo. Turns out that after our paths crossed on the other side of the globe, she went on to lead Oracle CRM marketing, then all of services marketing. Huge jobs. After serving her time at Oracle, Arthur become CMO at Akamai followed by a stint in consulting.

In August 2009, Arthur joined Aprimo as their fearless marketing leader. Aprimo, founded in 1998, has a good reputation in marketing circles, but their industry profile has been a bit low key. In the announcement Arthur said that "Aprimo is the best kept secret in marketing,"—quite a statement for a company that sells, um, marketing solutions.

This morning's San Francisco Chronicle newspaper reported that teens prefer Facebook. And that they are spending less time blogging.

Now, my son Matthew is an excellent writer and also a heavy Facebook users. But emails, blogging or even Twitter are not popular with him or his peers. That's why the stats collected by Pew Research Center last summer came as no big surprise.

I've been hearing for the past few years that MySpace was no longer cool with the kids. Maybe it still is with middle schoolers, but in high school, Facebook rules.

The drop off in blogging surprised me a little bit. In 2006 28% of teens (age 12-17) and young adults (18-29) blogged regularly. By mid 2009 that had dropped about half. One factor, says Pew, is that MySpace encourages members to blog while Facebook features short status updates.

Twitter is kind of an odd duck. One might think that youngsters would gravitate to the next big thing in social media. Especially when celebrities and artists are jumping on board. But, no. Only 8% of online teens say they've ever used Twitter. Instead, 2/3 send text messages.

Great, nobody writes letters anymore and soon, no more emails. Wait, maybe that's a good thing. But one has to wonder what this means for the work world in the next few years.

This month marks the 10th anniversary of this community. What a fabulous experience it has been for me!

Please indulge me as I reminisce about what's happened over the past decade. Join me for a look back to recognize those who helped launch and support the community. Together, we've created a special place to learn what it takes to build a customer-centric business.

The pioneers

After a 15-year career at IBM and then 3 years running a technology reseller, I took the plunge in 1998 to become a CRM consultant. Why? Because CRM seems like a wonderful blend of business strategy, customer-centric thinking and technology.

Well, as some may recall, my early days were spent mostly as an expert in PRM (Partner Relationship Management), which was an emerging niche in the late 1990s. But I also found time to start a general CRM newsletter ("On the Front Line") in mid-1998. And then an email-based discussion forum ("CRM.Talk") in 1999.

Both grew like crazy, but were hobbies that I supported as a sideline to my "real" business as a PRM analyst/consultant. Read more »

I'm partnering with Andy Rudin of Outside Technologies in a very interesting study of sales risks.

In other words, what are the factors that keep sales reps and organizations from meeting their revenue objectives?

If you are involved in sales or other direct revenue producing activity, please take 15 minutes to share your input. It will help us advance our thinking about the risks that matter and what can be done to mitigate them.

Of course, you'll get a copy of the results in a detailed white paper after the research is complete.

Still need some encouragement? Then how about this...

As soon as you finish the survey, you'll get a free download of these two white papers:

• Five Tactics to Manage Sales Risk, by Andy
• Best Practices to Improve Sales Productivity, by yours truly

To take the online survey, just click this link and follow the instructions.

http://www.customerthink.com/survey/salesrisk

Thanks!