William, I agree with most of your comments, but still am seeing only anecdotal evidence that social media is good for B2B lead generation.

Everyone: If you have quantifiable evidence of social media’s role in the generation of qualified, sales-ready leads (not just visits and subscriptions), I’d sure like to hear about it.

- Mac

To add to that thought; There is a shift in the way the approach, regarding strategy and implementation, is also changing.

We, as people who tout marketing expertise, are no longer able to just ‘push the brand’. The shift in the medium and the message concept has put the ‘power of brand’ on an equal playing field with the message receiver.

As such, the message receivers have now become more inundated with marketing messages thrown at (us) from every direction, and we (collectively) are being more cynical than ever, demanding more and more quantification before a decision will be made.

Dianne speaks volumes about how it is no longer applicable that we, as marketing professionals, can rely on traditional forms of message pushing.

It is now more important than ever to hyper-focus on the tasks that will match how the message is being received. White papers, blogs, client referrals, e-mail campaigns and social networking are crucial for lead-generation. SEO, PPC and a host of other modern tools, such as one of the latest “conversion optimization”, are there, but convincing the c-level ‘boss’ that it is a worth the time (and money) to move away from traditional marketing is getting easier.

Keep up the good work Mac on bringing awareness of crucial modern techniques to the forefront of our nimble marketing minds.