By Leyla Arsan , Lotus Marketing Services. As a small business owner who utilizes Social Media for her own marketing efforts, I often think of how I can better assist my B2B clients more effectively manage their social media efforts.  I start by clarifying what social media means to me; social media is not just Facebook & Twitter, those are just two components. This particular post will detail a few ways in which B2B marketers can utilize visual imagery and rich media to assist in social media marketing efforts. Flickr. I stumbled upon this inadvertently as I perused my Flickr analytics. MORE >>

In 2010 I wrote about why investor relations professionals need to use StockTwits , and Howard Lindzon sums up his approach to what they have done and the SEC’s announcement: “No matter what others call us or think, Stocktwits is a NEWSWIRE. 'Some of the biggest news the past two weeks in social media surrounded the SEC’s announcement and Bloomberg’s news around social media. But what does this mean for communicators? While this is a big win for Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, it means we need to be even more engaged as communicators with these platforms. MORE >>

As the use of social media by journalists and non-journalists has continued to grow we’ve been making the shift at the exchange to integrate the risks of social media with our spokespeople. Here are the areas that we have now included in all of our spokesperson training: Understand that your interview with a reporter may also end up being referenced in blogs, Twitter or Facebook. Keep in mind that even in “customer only&# meetings that information could be sent out via Twitter. Adding these new communication risks has been a challenge since not everyone uses these new tools. Allan. MORE >>

I had a great time at MarketingProfs’ SocialTech 2010 conference earlier this week drilling into B2B social media for high tech companies. was particularly impressed by the big-name brands represented at the event, from Facebook to Cisco, Microsoft to Xerox. For what it’s worth, I did not see a lot of large agencies represented. Jeremiah Owyang of Altimeter Group had the opening keynote. agree. At Weber Shandwick , we sometimes call the website a “home base” property and social media sites “outposts” of the brand. social strategy objective of 2011. Nobody’s really there yet. MORE >>

I’m a little slow on the uptake with this one but I wanted to flag Forrester’s report, “ Social Technographics: Business Technology Buyers ,” which came out about a month ago (April 28) and looks at the social media habits of business technology decision-makers. Good quantitative research into B2B social media usage is fairly thin. If you have access to the full report, it’s worth a review. Also a summary from B2B Online here. It shows, not surprisingly, that penetration of social media continues to increase. Obviously, individuals could select more than one category.). Flickr from LawsonComm. MORE >>