[Posted by Laura Ramos]
At the end of May, we opened up nominations for the 2009 Forrester Groundswell awards. Well, the contest closes SEPTEMBER 2 — that’s less than a month away — and so far we have just 4 (ONLY 4!?!) submissions in
the B2B categories. C’mon folks, I know there are plenty of B2B
marketers out there doing interesting things in social media. You now
have less time to submit, so shake out of the summer doldrums and show
us how you use social media to listen to, talk with, energize, and
spread success among your customers and prospects.
Just to refresh your memories, this year the Forrester award
committee divided the categories for the prototypical groundswell
objectives (listening, talking, energizing, supporting, embracing) into
business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B).
Specifically for B2B, we added a new category, “spreading,” to
recognize social applications in which you promote ideas, products, or
best practices to employees of a company, then get them to similarly
promote their successes with others at that company or in their
respective/broader industries — thus speeding adoption of your
technologies or services through social channels and activities your
customers engage in internally or through business partners. Right
now, we have 3 submissions in the Supporting category and 1 in
Embracing.
That leaves a lot of room for more entries and more winners.
Share with other B2B marketers what you do to listen to customers
and prospects tell you what they like and don’t like about your
products or services. How are you using social activity to talk with
them via video, podcasts, integrated online media, and other social
channels? What are you doing to energize customers — and encourage
them to join and participate in your events like IBM did with LinkedIn,
Facebook, Twitter, and a myriad of other social venues at their May 2009 IMPACT conference?
Big companies or small, if you sell highly-considered products with
long sales cycle through direct or partner channels, it time to share
your social media successes and nominate your campaign, online site,
community, or marketing programs for a 2009 Groundswell award.
The submission form is here. And mark your calendars: the entry deadline is September 2, 2009.
(You can also check out the current award submissions on the Groundswell site; might give you some ideas about what other firms are doing.)
