So I ran across some interesting stats last week when I picked up a tweet from Jeff Bullas on the 15 essential social media facts and figures for B2B Marketing.
Seems as if more B2B Marketers are engaged in Social Media then B2C marketers (actually data point from the article - 81 % of B2B companies have accounts on social media sites compared to 67% of B2C) which leads me to think Social Media has gone mainstream in B2B. That's a good thing yes but I don't feel like we are there yet.
Let me explain ...
I don't know how you feel but I certainly feel like everything I read about Social Media is the same old thing just a rehash of something else I read before. There doesn't seem to be anything really new. Sure Facebook changes its platform every Tuesday but I mean something more like groundbreaking ideas using social. Maybe that's because we are entering a stage where we are all including social in everything we do. It's no longer a social science experiment by a bunch of early adopters - it's just part of our everyday approach!
Also I am not seeing anyone really "killing it" with or in social media (sans Mark Zuckerberg of course). There seems to be tons of Social Media consultants and Directors of Social Media but will that party last? (see my post on Fire your Director of Social Media).
Furthermore everyone seems to have a book out on Social Media - heck I have 3 books on social media (2 out there and 1 on the way!) It's amazing to see so much written on this topic which leads me to believe the party is over.
So where do we go from here?
I guess we head back to the core of what we do as B2B Marketers and take these lessons learned in Social Media back with us and see if we can innovate. I once heard that innovation happens when people get bored with a technology - perhaps we are at that point now in social.