In 2008, B2B companies will follow suit, but it won’t be easy. User-Generated content needs to be used in a way that accomplishes specific marketing objectives, and oftentimes B2B companies meet those objectives through Resource Centers (whitepaper, case study, and guide downloads), web forms, giveaways, or surveys. None of these online marketing tactics allow for community building, commenting, rating, “digging”, or creating profiles.

Extending this to what we do as an online marketing company that works with other businesses (not consumers), we just launched our own site, eroi.com, and there simply aren’t any social networking tools built into our primary site. We have done a tremendous amount of Web 2.0 tactics outside of our main site – four distinct blogs with built-in RSS feeds, Pageflakes, delicious, and digg capabilities, our own Facebook Group page, MySpace page, YouTube Channel, and Flickr feeds, but we haven’t pulled them all together and integrated social networking tools into our primary site. As a self-fulfilling prophecy, we could look at implementing some of these tools into our site or, even better, our products. Online support can leverage the wisdom of other customers and allow searchable discussion threads for product support issues between multiple customers. B2B technology companies can learn from Salesforce, Google and Facebook and open the API to their products to allow for anyone to build modules that easily integrate into their online products.

I would love for you to take a look at the LemonYourWidmer site as the videos we loaded it with to start it off sure are a lot of fun. AND believe it or not 100% legitimate. After you see the golf chip shot (which took only 10 takes) you will know what I am talking about. If you have an idea of how to Lemon your Widmer, shoot it and load it up.

And of course it uses emailROI to power the front page Send to a Friend functions with a custom HMTL email template.

If you think of eROI as just an email ESP, you are missing the other 40% of our business: campaign sites, blogs, DM PIN campaigns, corporate sites, Web 2.0 application builds and advergames.

One company (Matchpoint) in our backyard came to us 6 months ago with an amazing concept – connect professional parents, highly-skilled and intelligent parents who are getting back into the workforce, with each other and ultimately to flexible, contract jobs. It has some elements to LinkedIn, but it is far more visually appealing, niche, and a hybrid full-service revenue model of having real regional managers place professionals in these jobs. Create your own profile on Matchpointcorp.com!

In Seattle, venture capital reporter John Cook, documents the top 100 Web 2.0 companies in the city alone. Here are the top 5:

Atomic Moguls: Next generation fantasy games. (New entry)

Avvo: Consumer-oriented online legal service. (Stealth)

Bag Borrow or Steal: Luxury goods borrowing service.

Beet Inc.: Online music. (New entry)

BeRecruited: Online sports recruiting site. (New entry)

Read his full blog posting with all 100 Web 2.0 listings >>

Here are some notes from his talk:
In 701 days, it marks the END of analog TV. The U.S. is going 100% digital.

Myth: With the consumers shift to online, media barons will become a thing of the past.
Reality: Everything about media has been democratized and the playing field has been leveled between media barons and user-generated content (quality, location, production value) EXCEPT Promotion. Big media companies still own the lions share of promotion and they always will so you need to respect it and leverage it (25% of all TV ads promote their networks own TV programs).

Consumers have always had control of their media consumption, but now consumers feel truly empowered and listened to. Media companies want to build that trust relationship w/ readers/viewers/consumers like a trusted friend or family member, so they are adapting their marketing and advertising to be more one-to-one. The new model for media is relationships + engagement with consumers.

CONTEXT (not Content) is King
Shelly gave a great example of the same content having a whole lot more value given the context it resided in, similar to good content being far more valuable on a nytimes.com versus noname.com site. Example:
1. Pawn shop sells a gold nugget for $25
2. Pawn shop w/ legitimate papers proving that this gold nugget is the last of the Machu Pichu treasures of its kind – $25,000
3. Same gold nugget w/ Incan treasure story being sold by Southeby’s starts at $25,000,000.

Top 10 Online Marketing Predictions for 2007
10. Social networking will get more and more niche. Social Networking has blanketed the news for the past 18 months because it works. YouTube and MySpace have built loyal communities through entertaining user-generated content and great tools for communicating with other like-minded people. However, Social Networking is going NICHE. People use specific tools to connect, recommend, rate, and communicate within their niche groups. For this reason, there are many types of Social Media now and there will be five times this many by the end of next year:

B2C: MySpace, Facebook, Gaia, Friendster, Second Life
B2B: LinkedIn, Jigsaw
Search: Digg, Delicious, Wink, Technorati
Shopping: Wists, ThisNext, Woot
Expert Communities: Blogs, Wikis
Mapping: Geosearch
Video: YouTube, TurnHere, Splashcast
Images: flickr

For this reason, there are many types of Social Media:

B2C: MySpace, Facebook, Gaia, Freindster, Second Life
B2B: LinkedIn, Jigsaw
Search: Digg, Delicious, Wink, Technorati
Shopping: Wists, ThisNext, Woot
Expert Communities: Blogs, Wikis
Mapping: Geosearch
Video: YouTube, TurnHere
Images: flickr

Today we have many online vehicles to move our messaging across the globe in a relatively inexpensive way, but it also leads us into new, unfamiliar waters of relinquishing some control. This may be the hardest part of the entire movement; where people outside of your ad agency or internal marketing group can make or break your message.
How have we approached it?

We have been fortunate to help many companies move from the sidelines to the frontlines of this next wave in marketing. We are not going to tell you that it hasn’t been without fear or trepidation on the parts of many VPs and Legal Counsels, but in the end it’s been an eye opener to the power you can unleash for your brand and campaign. So, before we dive into a quick overview of how your business might be able to use this medium, fasten your seat belt and throw some of your old notions to the wind, but not to chance.

Kettle Foods Dips Toe into Social Media
In the second year of the Crave campaign that was executed by Maxwell PR and eROI for Kettle Foods, all parties involved wanted to leverage the momentum of brand evangelism and consumer generated media. But what would be a simple way to move into this realm without releasing all control. The answer came in the form of the StraightUpFlavor.com site for voting on the next flavor of Kettle Foods chips. This provided a way for consumers to supply feedback to the company. After planning on the method of collection, the new site opened up to accept this media in an uncontrolled format. After the first week of results, Kettle Foods loved all of the consumer comments. Thus, the company has created a way to get direct consumer feedback for new concepts/flavors.

Jack Klugman Podcasts
Jack Klugman, the actor from the Odd Couple and Quincy MD, was releasing a new book on his life and friendship with Tony Randall. The national media tour was planned; book signing dates set and PR ready to roll. However, what about the audience that wouldn’t be hit through these channels? The idea for a TonyandMe Blog was born. This blog would allow Jack to create a new media strategy in a real grass roots way. Sitting down with his son over a long weekend, Jack started recording stories about the friends he had in his life and anecdotes about each. Besides sharing the stories with his own son, he was also able to share his stories online with many. The plan used RSS (Real Simple Syndication), Podcasts and grass roots efforts to let others pass and interact with his message. With a few calls to Itunes, Jack was placed in the home page rotation of featured content driving his podcast to unimagined highs and downloads. With this new organic visibility, small video clips were created from live events, old footage and interviews to keep the content library available and active and to keep the online audience engaged through the first few months of the book release and holiday season.

Mass Media and Our Love of Celebrities
DeliveryAgent approached eROI to help test the waters for a new site as well as support for the current paid effort for the ShoptheScene.com (NBC, ABC, Miramax, Project Runway, Queer Eye and more). A new blog and social media plan is what resulted. The idea was to use a blog to test efforts and define what types of media (text, audio and video) would be rapid drivers of organic search engine and social media traffic. A three tiered strategy was created as to not over extend the internal requirements of the DeliveryAgent team from current roles, and build a plan that could be ramped up or even killed off if deemed a liability. The use of a blog or disposable URL gives the ability to scale or kill a concept that is not ultimately tied to other sites or the brand.

How will you approach it?

There is a not a magic pill for getting into using social media for your online marketing efforts. In fact, many companies are just dipping a toe into the water through sites like MySpace, iTunes and technorati. These sites are good examples of the viable ways to spread content and allow others to use your content and comment on it. However, always remember that you should enter into this with a plan and a measurable outcome. Below is an example of a high level plan to launch a new consumer blog. The goal of the blog is to build a community, provide a platform for social dialogue, create a revenue stream with traffic and most importantly drive sales. Below is an example of Social Media campaign plan:

Month ZERO
• Create a working document that will organically grow and change based on where the consumer takes it.
• Create a compelling blog with content that has been back posted 3 months so it does not look like it is too new.
• Write a content plan and guidelines that will follow best practices for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for organic rankings.
• Train the team as to how to engage and approach the consumers and consumer feedback (comments) on the blog.

Month One
• Index with top Blog Search and Aggregation Engines.
• Set up RSS feed for individual subscriptions.
• Set Up Complimentary site and blog content notifications.
• Syndication of Content to Vertical and Influencer Sites and Portals.
• Create a del.icio.us Feed to allow “tagging of content” by peers.
• Send to a Friend System.
• Sign Up for Weekly Alerts and Email Newsletters.
• Allow a system to let consumers tell “us” about relevant news and stories.

Month Two
• Paid Blog Ad Strategy across complimentary blogs.
• Placement on the parent and children shopping sites for reverse link and traffic building.
• Online business development with DTI (Direct to Influencer) Blogs and Sites to grow blogosphere visibility.
• Increase the frequency of daily posts.
• Increase the amount of video and audio content.

Month Three
• Contests that grow with online team work and voting.
• Create Viral Buzz with Ad Agency Nationwide Contacts as influencers.
• Create a MySpace, Xanga.com, Friendster, Facebook and Hi5.com campaign with profile built around the authors or brand.
• Vertical Search Engine Shopping Feeds to bring awareness to products.

Month One to Three
• Evaluate daily traffic, referrals; RSS take/use rate, shopping/ad conversions and signups.
• Allow for flexible plan for months 4-6 based upon success.
• What you need to be cognizant of, no matter the effort, is that you will not have complete control

“For the first time in the history of our still evolving consumer societies, tens of millions of consumers are pro-actively telling and showing each other, and you, what they’re feeling and doing in the broadest sense of the word, all in a centralized online arena, in real time (it has never been easier to upload your LIFE CACHE), whether it’s on (mo)blogs or on picture and video sites. They want to connect, to share, to create, to show off. Add to that a slew of new search engines helping you navigate through Web 2.0 (there, we said it), and the ability to link postings to personal profiles (TWINSUMERS) to put things in perspective, and what you end up with is a completely new way of observing, of keeping a finger on the global pulse, of inspiring yourself. Regardless of whether you’re a CEO, a researcher, a planner, an entrepreneur, a designer, an MBA or MFA student, or a fellow member of GENERATION C.”