Over at the Collective Intellect blog, I wrote a piece on targeting, and how social media engagement now means that marketers have a better way to target consumers. This piece was inspired in part by a presentation at the Colorado Business Marketing Association last Wednesday by Matt Preschern from IBM.

Monitoring social media to determine campaign direction works for both the B2B and B2C side, it just manifests differently in terms of the behavioral targeting and tactics:

B2B marketing: For B2B, targeting is more focused on finding out what the key influencers for a specific topic — such as virtualization, or PC security — are talking about in relation to the issues. what are the top themes they are discussing right now? Then you can base a lead generation campaign strategy directly on the issues that are of top concern to the influencers and the people who read them, and nurture those leads through a longer sales cycle by constantly understanding the top issues.
B2C marketing: For B2C, targeting is focused more on sub-groups within an area, such as new runners or skiers within the communities that discuss running and skiing. Or, scrapbookers who are tied in to the crafting communities. What are their issues? What kinds of themes are hot right now? How are the sub-groups interests and concerns different from the total group. In B2C, instead of building out white papers or webinars, you might offer coupons, training techniques or discounts to events.