Track conversations about your company. You need to know what’s being said about your company online. Trouble is, we’re finding in our research that most companies stop here. By monitoring conversations online, we can find the people inside and outside our companies that say smart things. Image by HubSpot via Flickr I

2) Understand the Influencers in your Market: Not just the major press and analyst influencers, but the bloggers and smaller influencers in the space who will most likely cause your message to be “discovered” if they join the conversation. Not only will this ensure a discipline of search-friendly practices, but it will guide your company culture towards one that thrives on the continuous creation of great content. We're pleased to present a guest post by Steven Woods , CTO of Eloqua and author of Digital Body Language, who shares his thoughts on where communication is headed -- and how marketers can prepare. Over time, the way in which communication happens has gone through some very interesting transitions.

Viral leverage:  Your customers and prospects trust independent experts far more than company spokespeople, as Edelman's Trust Barometer  shows every year, and gaining their support is far more likely to trigger social media sharing than anything you do directly. Identifying and reaching out constructively to the new influencers in your markets (bloggers, analysts, community managers, etc.) As B2B marketers invest more money and time in both thought leadership and social media, they risk missing a great deal of potential benefit they can achieve by bringing the two together in a holistic way.