Everyone seems to have dusted off their crystal balls the past few weeks as the predictions for social media in 2012 are plentiful. So, what am I looking at in 2012, a year clouded with economic uncertainty and promises for social media nirvana? What we’ve learned from the past few years of doing social media is that we have become our own media aggregator with original content that cannot be captured anywhere else. Both of these additions have been much needed and further enhance LinkedIn as a social business platform. MORE >>

just finished reading The B2B Social Media Book : Becoming a Marketing Superstar, by Kipp Bodnar (day job at HubSpot ) and Jeffrey L. Despite the title, it doesn’t try to encompass everything you need to know about B2B social media marketing.  Rather, it tries to open the lock box to social media lead generation. Frankly, that’s the way we’re going to get a lot of B2B companies to start to take social media more seriously. Aaron:    You both obviously have a lot of passion for B2B marketing in general, and social media specifically. MORE >>

With one small update, LinkedIn made the company pages more releevant and more competitive with other social platforms last week. As next steps, if you play a role in your company’s social media efforts you will want to connect with your company’s page administrator and gain access if you have not already. What’s your “I” in social media? The new company updates feature allows the administrator for a company’s page on LinkedIn to now add news and share links that feed into the page’s stream. CME Group on LinkedIn. Why does this matter? MORE >>

Last week I spoke at the European Corporate Communications Social Media Summit on tracking influence and the non-financial ROI. The topic has been a key issue for ou r industry in 2011 as offerings such as Klout , Peer Index and the Social Business Index have garnered plenty of attention — both good and bad. and I’ve also written about the Social Business Index. Take a read at what Vann Morris wrote about the value of B2B relationships in social media if you want to learn more. Social Media Impact Takes Awhile to Gauge – KD Paine. MORE >>

In 2006 I took a leap of faith and decided it was time to outsource a key part of our website — the media room. When we launched the new media room later that year we had a more dynamic landing page for journalists, analysts, educators and customers who were interested in reading news from the company. Part of that redesign allowed us to immediately add social media functionality, video content, integration between the newswire and our site, and the company’s first RSS feed. Integration with Open Markets and Social Media. Banner Updates. MORE >>