Back in November, I set out to write a post to highlight businesses that were using LinkedIn's company page features effectively. Needless to say, I couldn't find enough examples to create a compelling post, so in my dismay, what I actually ended up writing was, " 11 Reasons Your LinkedIn Company Page Sucks.". We recently reported that, in a study of the over 5,000 inbound marketers where we pitted LinkedIn against Facebook and Twitter, LinkedIn proved to be the most effective social media channel for lead generation -- 277% more effective, in fact. MORE >>

As such, they're beginning to slice and dice thought leadership content into blog posts, tweets, videos, and the like -- and use  Twitter ,  LinkedIn ,  Facebook ,  YouTube ,  SlideShare  and other platforms to promote that content as widely as possible in the social sphere. In fact, isn't this just a more refined version of the same old one-way broadcast mentality? Identifying and reaching out constructively to the new influencers in your markets (bloggers, analysts, community managers, etc.) This all seems fine, but I think it's far too limited a view. Make sense? MORE >>

They have created multiple private or gated communities to serve the specific member-driven needs in each segment. They chose social media as a broadcast channel, creating and supporting a crowd-sourcing effort to engage their market, gather input and capture client testimonials to help grow their user base. For example, if you need to reach senior professionals, LinkedIn is more likely to be a productive environment than, say, Twitter. Thank you for reading Building Online Communities for Business by Leader Networks. Here is my point of view. MORE >>

In B2B marketing, creating and managing your own LinkedIn group for your brand is a great lead generation strategy. LinkedIn groups draw prospects to you in several ways: 1. Grow a community of advocates. At HubSpot, we've learned a thing or two about building and moderating LinkedIn Groups through our LinkedIn groups , including: - Inbound Marketers. Here are some "tips from the trenches" that will help you kickstart, grow and maintain a LinkedIn group of your own. Tips for Managing LinkedIn Groups. Check out Flickr's community guidelines. MORE >>

A year ago, the #Nifty50 honored 50 remarkable men and women on Twitter. Not only leaders in their professional lives, nearly all these women use their social profiles to express their passions outside the workplace, which range from NASCAR, art, travel, billiards, wine and music to community service, politics and, of course, family. As with this year, we will be asking our community to nominate their favorite leaders in this field. We’re proud to acknowledge these 50 women from 41 different organizations as the top #Nifty50 women of technology on Twitter for 2012. MORE >>