"Blogs, wikis, podcasts, vodcasts, social networks, mobile[s] … webinars, e-newsletters, print magazines, trade shows, RSS feeds, industry websites …" These are just some of the channels now available for meeting and greeting B2B prospects and customers, reports Stacy Whisel in a post at the B2B Insights Blog. So, with the enormous array of social options out there, how can marketers determine which channels might actually deliver contacts for their business? "In the B2B market, [that answer] varies widely and can change often," Whisel advises. Oh, swell.

But hold on: she then offers eight interesting tips for "getting a good handle on where your audience lives online." Among them:

• Utilize sites like Technorati or BlogPulse to search your company name and keywords to find out if you're being blogged.
• Get Google news alerts for your company name and keywords.
• Ask your own technical staff where they go to follow the industry and get information.
• Identify your industry's gurus and opinion leaders; conduct a Google search to determine if they are blogging. If they are, sign up for their RSS feeds.
• Identify your industry's lead-generation sites, and evaluate the presence of your competitors.

Finally, there's the old standby: Survey your customers and prospects, and just ask them.

The Po!nt: Know your place(s). The digital universe is vast and growing; a good way to find customers in it is to identify a few core channels, and work out from there.

Source: B2B Insights Blog. Read the full post here.

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