Watch this battle unfold. The virtualization wars are just getting started.

On one side we have Microsoft, which announced changes in its licensing structures this week. The change reflects an understanding that the customer wants full access to its virtualization platform and not be charged a tax for that right to access it on a PC, no matter if it is at work or in their home.

And in true fashion, Microsoft is on the attack, Citrix at its side, in a full on fight with VMware for the virtualization market.

Sponsor

On the VMware side, we see a company ready to move into Microsoft's customer base by offering more than virtualization as witnessed with its recent acquisition of Zimbra. VMWare is gearing up to tap into the Microsoft Exchange market by combining its virtualization technology with the Zimbra email platform.

Historically, Microsoft has charged for separate licenses to access Windows operating systems in a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) environment. Until now, there would be separate licensing fees for people to access their virtual desktops from secondary devices like home personal computers.

The licensing issue in all of this gets complicated pretty fast. According to Simon Bramfitt:

VMWare, in smart retort, praises Microsoft for the move and bowing to "intense customer pressure."

Raj Mallempati, director, product marketing, calls it an opening for VMWare View. You know it's competitive when you see this kind of rhetoric:

By loosening up the restrictive desktop virtualization license policy (VECD), Microsoft has finally bowed to intensive customer pressure. This validates the acceleration in demand in the desktop virtualization industry that VMware helped start and continues to lead. Microsoft's move here is extremely positive for the industry.

But what is Citrix part in all of this?

At the beginning of the year, VMWare offered the opportunity to exchange Citrix XenApp licenses for VMWare View. In response, Microsoft and Citrix announced a partnership this week aimed right at VMWare with some pretty attractive licensing deals.

The promotion intends to undercut VMWare by reaching into its customer base with offers to trade in as many as 500 licenses in exchange for a Microsoft integration offered with Citrix.

To kick it off, the two companies plan a 100-city tour.

But what this really represents is Microsoft providing some flexibility in its virtualization licensing agreements. That move alone will help open up the market.

And VMWare? The company has 80 percent of the virtualization market. Any move on its customer base should be expected. VMware's vision for Zimbra is another matter. That's a battle it is taking right back to Microsoft - square on its home turf.

Let’s say it’s 2005 and online video is in its infancy. If you’re a Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim, how much would it cost to start up and run a video sharing site with the hopes of flipping it for more than $1.6 billion? As of this week we know, thanks to confidential Profit and loss information released as part of filings that have been made public in the copyright infringement case between Viacom and YouTube.

Based on those filings, we were able to put together some numbers about how much it cost to run YouTube leading up to the Google acquisition. During the first 18 months of YouTube’s operations, from February 2005 when the domain was first purchased through August 2006 when it was desperately seeking acquirers, the fledgling video company spent more than $11.5 million to grow its user base big enough to become attractive to Google.

Most of that money — about $8 million or so — went to paying for infrastructure needed to run the site, with a vast majority of that money going toward the site’s web hosting costs. In the three months from June 2006 through August 2006, the company was spending about $1 million each month on hosting costs alone, and that wasn’t even taking into account data center costs that YouTube was also paying for or ad serving costs as the firm began selling its own advertising.

In addition to web infrastructure costs, YouTube had other operating expenses and personnel costs to contend with. In the first 18 months of its existence, YouTube spent about $3.6 million on employee compensation, travel, facilities, costs and the like. By November 2005, its regular operating expenses were about even with infrastructure costs — at a little more than $130,000 per month, but not long after that, the company’s web hosting bills really started to take off as the video sharing site gained traction.

It wasn’t until December 2005 that YouTube started clocking revenue — a meager $15,000 during that month — and by that point, the company had spent more than $400,000 on operating and infrastructure expenses. But costs began to increase rapidly after that, and topped out at about $2.6 million during August 2006 — just two months before Google’s purchase of the company was made public.

YouTube was never profitable before the Google acquisition — in fact, it pulled in just $5 million in revenues during its first 18 months — but it came close in August 2006, which might have been one reason that Google had an interest in the firm. That month, it posted revenues of $2.5 million. The site did post a gross profit of more than $575,000 during the month if you don’t take into account its monthly operating expenses. Otherwise, with total opex of about $2.6 million, the site fell about $100,000 shy of hitting profitability.

The site raised about $11.5 million in two rounds of financing before being bought by Google in a deal valued in excess of $1.65 billion in October 2006 — which wasn’t a bad return on investment for YouTube’s investors or founders. Famously, though, YouTube has yet to reach profitability, in part because Google had remained committed to growing its user base after its acquisition.

As reported in Viacom’s filings, Google CEO Eric Schmidt mandated for the company to focus on aggressively growing the site, aiming “to grow playbacks to 1b/day [one billion per day].” That mandate remained in place until early 2008, when Schmidt decided the site should shift its focus to monetization of its video assets. Since then, the company has been increasingly focused on bringing more premium content to the site and increasing the number of videos it can place ads against. That focus means that the online video site might finally become profitable this year, according to some analyst projections.

Related content on GigaOM Pro:

Will Automated Rights Management Take Down Fair Use? (subscription required)

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

The key issue at the heart of Viacom's case against Google and YouTube, filed in March 2007, concerns whether an Internet service that probably knows that files are traded or shown illicitly or without license there, deserves the "safe harbor" provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that protect ISPs from liability for their customers' actions. In a summary judgment motion filed yesterday with US District Court in New York and unsealed this morning, Viacom is bidding to have the judge wrap up the case -- an obvious signal that it believes its case is already strong enough.

As US law stands now, a service such as Grokster or the original Napster (not the Best Buy division that today uses that name) is liable when it intentionally establishes its service for the express purpose of trading in illicit files. It's especially liable when it finds some way to advertise itself for that purpose. An Internet Service Provider such as Comcast or Cox is not liable when its service is used for accessing one of these sites, when it doesn't advertise or offer these services explicitly, and when a customer can access them without direct intervention from the ISP. And a video site such as Veoh is not liable when any measure it might take to stop customers from sharing illicit files may also conceivably infringe upon the free speech rights of other customers who may not be trading such files.

Google, the current owner of YouTube, has been arguing the Veoh case in its own defense. But Viacom's argument -- which courts have been wrestling with for over two-and-a-half years and which we now know today -- is that YouTube is a different, special case. It's more like Grokster, it argues, in that it was founded on the principle of gathering an audience around illicit files.

"Defendants are liable under Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. v. Grokster Ltd., because they operated YouTube with the unlawful objective of profiting from (to use their phrase) 'truckloads' of infringing videos that flooded the site," reads the opening passage of YouTube's founders single-mindedly focused on geometrically increasing the number of YouTube users to maximize its commercial value. They recognized they could achieve that goal only if they cast a blind eye to and did not block the huge number of unauthorized copyrighted works posted on the site. The founders' deliberate decision to build a business based on piracy enabled them to sell their start-up business to Google after 16 months for $1.8 billion. The Supreme Court in Grokster found no legal or societal justification for such intentional copyright infringement."

FOR MORE:

• Viacom and YouTube: Timeline of pertinent events by Tim Conneally

In a talking points document released today (PDF available here), Viacom cites various e-mails from various YouTube and Google executives, including YouTube founders Chad Hurley (CEO) and Steve Chen (CTO). Assuming these excerpts were not taken out of context, which is possible, they indicate that YouTube's founders were clearly building up a high-audience business with illicit files at their core, with the intention of selling out to somebody as soon as possible.

One excerpt has Chen suggesting that YouTube, apparently during its startup phase, "...concentrate all our efforts in building up our numbers as aggressively as we can through whatever tactics, however evil." Another suggestion, by an unnamed YouTube exec in response to an non-excerpted suggestion -- apparently asking, where should be get all this content -- reads, "Steal it! . . . We have to keep in mind that we need to attract traffic. How much traffic will we get from personal videos?"

And one excerpt attributed to Chen suggests that the whole legal process of handling DMCA takedown notices is so long and dragged on, that by the time YouTube should ever comply with one, it would be too late anyway: "But we should just keep that stuff on the site. I really don't see what will happen. What? Someone from CNN sees it? He happens to be someone with power? He happens to want to take it down right away. He get in touch with cnn legal. 2 weeks later, we get a cease & desist letter. We take the video down."

Viacom's argument that Google knows what kind of trafficking goes on via YouTube is substantiated by evidence in the form of e-mails, evidently sent prior to its acquisition of YouTube, from executives objecting to elements of what they perceived to be its business model. One message from Google's then-VP of Content Partnerships David Eun (now with AOL) to CEO Eric Schmidt cautioned, "I think we should beat YouTube . . . but not at all costs. [They are] a video Grokster." And in another excerpt, an unnamed Google executive asks, "Is changing policy [to] profit from illegal downloads how we want to conduct business? Is this Googley?"

Evidence cited in Viacom's motion for summary judgment tells the story of how Google Video failed to be competitive against YouTube, even though its engineers persisted with efforts to filter out illicit content. One memo cited says Google Video may have been throwing out 90% of its uploads, for containing suspected copyrighted material or for being generally indecent.

"But Google's good intentions and compliance with the law were not paying off," Viacom argues. "YouTube was way ahead of Google Video in the race to build up a user base. Google executives understood that YouTube's success was largely due to what they euphemistically labeled its 'liberal copyright policy' of freely allowing infringing material. Losing the user race to YouTube because of the latter's copyright infringement, Google Video executives engaged in a 'heated debate' in 2006 'about whether we should relax enforcement of our copyright policies in an effort to stimulate traffic growth.' A top senior executive, Peter Chane, Google Video's Business Product Manager, argued point blank that Google Video should 'beat YouTube' by 'calling quits on our copyright compliance standards.' Chane specifically advocated switching Google Video to YouTube's 'reactive DMCA only' policy because 'YouTube gets content when it's hot ([Saturday Night Live's] Lazy Sunday, Stephen Colbert, Lakers wins at the buzzer)' and it '[takes us too long to acquire content directly from the [legitimate] rights holder.'"

It is that statement which Viacom appears to present as a smoking gun: a suggestion from a Google Video executive that it should acquire its competitor solely because its allegedly illegitimate business model is more successful than its own, legally compliant one.

In Google's memorandum in support of summary judgment in its favor, filed after Viacom, its attorneys do not take the tack or rebutting Viacom's scorching citations -- which, if substantiated, could theoretically become the basis for future criminal complaints. Instead, Google reiterates the argument that it's a service provider which, like Veoh, is entitled to safe harbor since it looks the other way, and does not actively seek infringing uploads.

Citing the Veoh finding, Google's attorneys argue, "What matters is that Veoh 'established a system whereby software automatically processes user-submitted content and recasts it in a format that is readily accessible to its users...Inasmuch as this is a means of facilitating user access to material on its Web site,' Veoh did not lose the safe harbor 'through the automated creation of these files.' YouTube is indistinguishable from Veoh in these respects."

YouTube, Google argues, did not have direct knowledge of the circumstances whereby the specific content Viacom claimed was infringed upon (much of it from Paramount) was shared with YouTube users. Since Viacom's arguments must, at some point, focus themselves upon the specific infringing of the content in question, the DMCA protects YouTube on that count as well, Google continues. But all that may be moot, Google points on, by virtue of the fact that under current US law, the alleged infringers must have directly profited from their actions. YouTube gains revenue through advertising.

Writes Google, "A service provider loses safe harbor eligibility only if the plaintiff can show both that the service provider had the right and ability to control the alleged infringements and received a financial benefit directly attributable to those infringements...As with knowledge, the DMCA's control inquiry is specific, not general. The analysis focuses on the service provider's legal and practical control over the particular infringing activity at issue. The statute's text makes that clear: The question is whether the service provider has the right and ability to control "the infringing activity" alleged by the plaintiff and to which a financial benefit is directly attributable."

A number of declarations in support of both motions were filed today. One supporting Google was particularly interesting, because it goes to specifically that last paragraph: It's from the owner of a marketing firm who promoted the works of recording artists who appear on MTV, a Viacom property. He claimed that some of the very works Viacom claimed were infringed upon through unauthorized uploading to YouTube, actually were authorized by none other than MTV itself, as part of the promotion of the artists under his contract.

If Google's interpretation of the law is affirmed, and if this gentleman's claims are proven, then this whole case could become history faster than a judge can even say "summary judgment."

Palm is reporting dramatically lower sales of its WebOS-based smartphones. It seems the once-dominant maker of PDAs has nowhere to go but down and its plummeting fast, making it a potential target for acquisition by a smartphone competitor.

Nuance is killing the SpinVox service, informing its users, which are located in the UK, via text that their accounts will expire within a week. The move — which prompted an outcry on Twitter — marks the end of a very popular voice-to-text service from a very controversial company.

SpinVox was founded in 2003 as a London-based startup aimed at transcribing voicemails into text. The company landed $200 million in funding — including $100 million at a $500 million valuation two years ago — thanks to a customer base of large carriers, which resold the service to their users. But the wheels started to fall off last year when SpinVox struggled to repay a $48.8 million loan and allegations surfaced that transcriptions were being done by call center staffers — not a speech-to-text algorithm, as the company had claimed. Nuance ended up pocketing SpinVox last December for a mere $102.5 million in an effort to better compete in the voice recognition space against Google and Microsoft.

The acquisition was largely driven by SpinVox’s list of corporate customers, which includes Bell Mobility, Rogers Wireless, Vodafone Spain and Skype. Nuance, in explaining its decision to shut down SpinVox’s service, said its mission is to market offerings “as a standard feature in mobile service plans locally and globally.” Indeed, pulling the plug on the consumer service is logical given SpinVox’s inability to develop a viable business model. But as all those tweets indicate, investors aren’t the only ones hurting from SpinVox’s demise — so are many of its soon-to-be former users.

Related content from GigOM Pro (sub req’d):

How Speech Technologies Will Transform Mobile Use

Image courtesy Flickr user jp.ubiqua.

Palm shares plunged in late trading Thursday after the company posted yet another dismal quarter and warned that revenue for the current one will fall far short of Wall Street expectations. The company will have to take substantial charges to help its carrier partners eat through excess inventory, and whatever luster once existed for its flagship Pre is long gone. The question now is, who’s going to pick up Palm?

Palm’s last-ditch gamble on webOS has been a disaster. The operating system — which debuted last summer on the Pre — has received solid reviews, but an utter lack of effective marketing from Sprint — and more recently, Verizon Wireless — shackled handset sales. And an upcoming partnership with AT&T — which looked to be Palm’s last chance at redemption — is reportedly fizzling already after the carrier delayed the launch of webOS handsets, slashed its order and cut its marketing budget.

So what are Palm’s options? CEO Jon Rubinstein is projecting a “stay the course” attitude, saying better training of Verizon Wireless sales staffers will begin to pay off — a questionable theory given the flat-line demand for the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus so far. Producing a tablet would be an interesting strategy, as James over at jkOnTheRun suggested yesterday. But the market for tablets is still very uncertain, and there’s little reason to believe Palm can move a different kind of hardware when it can’t sell phones. So a suitor will likely sweep in and pick up Palm, snatching up webOS — the company’s most valuable asset — and a sizable patent portfolio. Here’s a quick rundown of the most likely (or most highly speculated) candidates for acquiring Palm — including their odds of doing so:

• Google : The most intriguing play on the board, Google might be compelled by Palm’s patent portfolio, as Gizmodo noted yesterday. What’s more, Google and Palm both operate Linux-based mobile operating systems, which would make it easy for Google to cherry-pick the best features from webOS and add them to Android. Google could easily afford Palm, and as a bonus would keep it from falling into the hands of a competitor. Odds: 7-1
• Dell : The Texas computer vendor joined the smartphone space a few months ago, launching handsets in Brazil and China, and will soon launch an Android-based device through AT&T. But its late entry means Dell will have a hard time differentiating its hardware, and coming to market with its own mobile operating system, app store and developer community could be a great way to stand out from the crowd. Odds: 7-1
• Hewlett-Packard: HP’s tiny smartphone business is dissolving in the superphone era. Picking up what amounts to a turnkey mobile OS would be a huge — if costly — move to attract attention and breathe life into its mobile business. Odds: 11-1.
• Nokia : Nokia has long been mentioned as a potential buyer for Palm, but successfully marrying the two has become an increasingly difficult proposition. Nokia already claims the world’s most popular smartphone OS in Symbian, and its Maemo — um, sorry, I mean MeeGo – operating system appears to be its long-term strategy. What’s more, Ovi has gained impressive traction in recent months. Adding another platform to the mix would only serve to distract Nokia just as it finally appears to be regaining its focus. Odds: 25-1
• Motorola : Another hardware maker that might be compelled by the idea of owning its own OS, Motorola’s $8 billion in cash ensures plenty of capital to pocket Palm. Yet despite what Om suggested earlier this year, taking on a mobile operating system would likely be more than Motorola could handle, given its difficulty in regaining its once-dominant market share in smartphones. Marriages of two weak players from different spaces rarely end up happy. Odds: 30-1
• Microsoft : Palm and Microsoft seemed like a great fit just a few months ago. But that was before the gang from Redmond went public with its plans to scrap Windows Mobile in favor of Windows Phone, an impressive, consumer-targeted platform set to debut late this year. Windows Phone may fail gloriously, but there’s no reason to bring another OS into the fold — and webOS is largely considered to be Palm’s most valuable asset. Odds: 35-1
• Cisco : An acquisition of Palm would enable Cisco to immediately expand beyond infrastructure into the mobile consumer market. Such a move wouldn’t exactly be unprecedented for Cisco, which last year bought the maker of Flip Video camcorders for $590 million, but maintaining a mobile operating system is a far more sophisticated endeavor than simply churning out camcorders. Odds: 40-1.

This is only a partial list, of course, and new potential suitors are sure to emerge as Palm begins to circle the drain. The clock is ticking, and there’s almost no hope Palm can reverse course at this point. So someone in the mobile space might be able to do very well by picking up a dying company at a cut-rate price.

Related content from GigOM Pro (sub req’d):

Could Games Redeem Windows Mobile and Palm’s webOS?

Image courtesy Flickr user nathangibbs.

The Numbers Behind the World’s Fastest-growing Web Site: YouTube’s Finances Revealed; Viacom releases YouTube’s finances from before the Google acquisition. (MediaMemo)

Hulu’s Ad Sales Team Is Undercutting Its Parent Companies; Hulu’s sales team is “actively subverting” the ad sales of its parent companies, which are also trying to sell ads for their shows, according to a source. (The Business Insider)

ITV Goes Cold on YouTube, Hulu; a senior ITV executive says that the broadcaster has “no plans” to do output deals to put its programming on video-on-demand aggregation services such as Hulu, YouTube, SeeSaw or MSN Video Player. (paidContent)

Madison Avenue Finds Old and New Media Can Coexist; more marketers are turning to web video, but many are increasingly doing so along with — rather than in place of — television. (NY Times)

Indie Web Producers Try to Overturn BBC’s Online Cull; Pact (the Producers Alliance for Cinema and Television), which represents independent online multimedia producers that have work commissioned from the BBC and others, urges the BBC not to cut its investment in digital media. (paidContent:UK)

The Guardian Finds Video Success With the Contextualization of Content; the newspaper has been innovating with online video since 2006, has invested heavily in video operations in its new headquarters and is finding traction with its own brand of journalistic video. (Beet.TV)

Here’s today’s wacky theory: Maybe the reason Viacom has gone after YouTube so litigiously is because YouTube is “the one that got away” — and anyone who’s ever had an unrequited crush knows how much it hurts to see something special slip through one’s fingers.

In today’s blog post by YouTube Chief Counsel Zahavah Levine, Levine takes issue with some of Viacom’s accusations towards YouTube,, given Viacom made repeated attempts to acquire YouTube before the Google deal happened:

According to CNET, Viacom was in fact serious enough about acquiring YouTube that it extended an offer prior to Oct. 9, 2006, when the deal was announced. What they proposed was that the two companies buy it together as a partnership, and thus “Viacom [would legitimize] the content on the site by providing content and developing a business model,” former Viacom exec Adam Cahan told CNET writer Greg Sandoval.

Before Google bought YouTube, Viacom was looking at the site, and even cautiously saying so publicly: On Oct. 4, 2006, Viacom Founder Sumner Redstone told Charlie Rose that YouTube was a potential acquisition as opposed to Facebook. “It’s a very good company,” he’s quoted as saying (video embedded below).

Five days after that interview, though, Google officially announced it would acquire YouTube for $1.65 billion. And five months after that, Viacom took its first legal action against YouTube, demanding that more than 100,000 clips be removed.

It’s interesting to consider what might have happened to YouTube had the Viacom acquisition occurred. You probably wouldn’t hear talk like “YouTube has become a metaphor for the democratizing power of the Internet and information” (per today’s blog post by YouTube Chief Counsel Zahavah Levine) if the site hadn’t remained independent from big media.

Instead, YouTube might have resembled MySpace following its acquisition by News Corp, working overtime to promote its parent company’s media properties. YouTube’s allegation that Viacom used YouTube as a promotional device after the Google acquisition only supports that theory.

Perhaps as an apology, Google offered Viacom $590 million for a licencing deal (per Peter Kafka on Twitter). But that doesn’t change the fact that like a cheerleader with too many options, YouTube decided to go with someone else to the prom. And so in the Viacom filing made public today, Viacom attacked YouTube’s principles and ethics with statements like:

You have to admit, that kind of sounds like something a bitter ex would write.

Related GigaOm Pro Content (subscription required): Will Three Strikes Laws Take the Field in U.S. Copyright Ballgame?

The B2B Marketing series is supported by the MarketingProfs B2B Forum, where you’ll learn the ins-and-outs of social media as part of your overall B2B marketing mix. Register today!

*Additional reporting by Tamar Weinberg

When we write about how companies or individuals are using social media in their marketing strategies, it’s usually in the context of a business to consumer relationship. However, business-to-business (B2B) marketing is really getting a boost from social media as well. According to a recent study, 60% of B2B marketers plan to increase social media marketing spending this year.

As we discussed earlier this week in the context of PR professionals and social media, even non-B2B-centric services like Twitter and Facebook can still offer great opportunities for B2B shops. Sometimes, the approach is the same as it would be in non-B2B marketing, sometimes it can be very different.

Figuring out how to best implement and harness social media in the course of B2B marketing can be difficult but we’ve put together ten tips to help get you on the right track!

This may seem like a no-brainer, but plenty of businesses and even B2B marketers aren’t on Twitter. Get an account on Twitter and start engaging. While having profiles on other social media platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn can be equally important, Twitter remains one of the best ways to find and engage with others.

How do you do that? Start by searching for phrases relevant to your business and by monitoring those searches regularly. Look at what people are saying and join in the conversation. If people aren’t necessarily looking for your business offerings right away, start joining other conversations of interest. The more you build bridges, the more likely you are to be noticed.

Second, use hashtags. The #B2B hashtag, for example, will connect you with several other like-minded businesses who are also trying to leverage Twitter to build an online presence. Don’t overdo it, though. There are some people #who #tweet #like #this.

We’ll discuss this in the next point, but consider Twitter to be an informal medium. With social media, businesses can (and should) be human again. That’s why it’s safe to use Twitter not just for pure self promotion but to build a meaningful relationships with those who you are likely to do business with you in the future. If you feel comfortable using your business Twitter feed to talk about what makes you tick (versus purely promoting your business), you might be pleasantly surprised to see that your audience might very well be receptive to that messaging.

What’s great about Twitter, especially from a B2B perspective, is that you can follow just about everyone. Take advantage of the opportunity to follow your industry influencers, connect with potential customers, and keep a heads up on the competition.

A great example of Twitter usage from a B2B perspective is @salesforce. Salesforce has used its Twitter feed to share relevant news, to empower current customers, and to offer customer support.

Social media works best when it is personal and authentic, and thus, it’s important to make sure that the way you communicate when using social media tools comes from a personal and authentic place.

Kevin Dugan, the Director of Social Marketing for Empower MediaMarketing recently wrote a blog post about finding your social voice. I spoke with Dugan about establishing a social voice, and he had this to say:

“It is critical that brands understand a social voice is different from brand voice. Social voice reinforces the brand voice indirectly. Social voice doesn’t follow communication guidelines or identity standards. That’s because a social voice equates to a person. A brand voice is anonymous while a social voice can be found on Google. They must also have an understanding of the brand and a passion for it.”

Social networks are now helping to put the “human” back in businesses again. The traditional messaging of yore has been replaced by businesses who actually appear to show that they care about their customers. With a social voice, informal is perfectly acceptable. Having a social voice, as opposed to just a generic “brand voice,” is an important step when connecting with potential customers. Prospective customers want to connect with businesses who think just like them.

Just because your clients are other businesses doesn’t mean that the “social” aspect of social media needs to disappear.

LinkedIn is continuing to get bigger and bigger — and it continues to be a great resource for businesses and employees to connect with one another.

One of the best things about LinkedIn is the Shared Connections feature. This feature makes it possible to find people — like potential clients — and then see what connections you have in common. Shared Connections then makes getting a virtual introduction that much easier.

Building up a strong LinkedIn network and being willing to introduce others (in good faith, of course — always use your best judgment) can also increase what opportunities you can get in the future.

B2B marketing is often built through trust and word of mouth. Having a shared connection is a great way to start establishing some of that trust from the very beginning.

LinkedIn also has a community of active participants. LinkedIn Answers serves as a knowledge base where business representatives can establish authority and expertise by participating in the ongoing discussions. LinkedIn Groups is an opportunity for business professionals to interact with other topics relevant to his/her interests. One business successfully used LinkedIn Groups as a way to build business leads. This business opted to engage in relevant industry discussion and offered business services when requests were made, thereby bringing in a highly targeted business lead. Actively participating in LinkedIn is often one of the best ways to not only help people out, but also to make a connection for your service and even generate leads.

Answering questions across LinkedIn Answers and LinkedIn Groups doesn’t mean to simply put out the marketing blurb, but to really engage and offer feedback and solutions. Again, social media is most effective when it is genuine.

Social media provides the opportunity for companies to promote themselves but also to welcome commentary from a community of peers. By starting a blog, you give your readers an opportunity to see you with your social voice outside the typical corporate website’s newsroom. Blogs become platforms where you can announce new product releases, share personal company stories, answer any specific questions from your customers, and empower customers to achieve success with your products and service offerings. Blogging can also establish business professionals as thought leaders in their field, thereby aiding with client acquisition.

Blogs can build up qualified prospects through search engine rankings too. Be sure to update your blog regularly with valuable content and follow up with the comments written on each individual post.

Social media means that content is being posted everywhere, and businesses have a unique opportunity to gather intelligence to make well-educated and informed business decisions. Google Alerts is a great tool to keep up with what’s happening in relation to your company, your industry and your competitors. You can get updates via e-mail or in RSS (and even in real-time) about new search results or news stories for a certain query or topic.

Further, free tools like Social Mention and YackTrack will monitor the social sphere for other mentions of your business on social sites, especially. BackType will take that a step further and monitor phrases in comments on blog posts. All of these aforementioned services can be emailed to you in a daily digest format which your team can evaluate to find opportunities.

If you don’t already have alerts set up on these services for your company name, do it now. Also set up a more generic alert for your industry as a whole to see what people are talking about. If you want to see what your competition or other big industry players are doing, add those to the mix as well.

Monitoring can also be useful because you can then highlight the big stories on your own social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, Google Buzz, etc.

While you don’t want to be creepy (see below), it’s important to not let potential opportunities slip by when using social media. If you’ve answered someone’s question on LinkedIn or on Twitter, don’t be afraid to reach back out to that person to ask if they have any follow-up questions or if you can send them more information. There’s an abundance of opportunity to strengthen a business relationship but it starts by initiating and then making sure that your business is fresh in your prospects’ minds.

Staying engaged and staying communicative is really important. Social media is not about setting it and forgetting it. It’s about being social, so don’t be afraid to reach out and check back in with potential leads you meet using social media. Similarly, don’t be afraid to direct message your followers on Twitter when an opportunity presents itself. They followed you because they want to hear from you. Use that opportunity to your advantage but don’t overdo it. Auto-DMs are a no-no.

If you’re going to blog, don’t leave that blog stagnant. Provide valuable content on a regular basis. Give employees of your company an opportunity to help build your brand. You can get a lot of great blog content by involving many company employees in the process. Similarly, get many employees of your company to utilize the social networks and to be continually responsive to customer inquiries. Remember, the more visible you are on the social networks, the more likely you are to be remembered when another business actually needs to utilize your services.

After you’re involved enough in the social space, you’ll likely see tweets, retweets, traffic, and social network links that point to various parts of your company website. Take a look at your website analytics and start seeing where you’re making a difference, especially as it relates to ROI measurement. Don’t lose sight of your business metrics and start considering practical social media measurement to assess clickthroughs, popularity of links, and other important metrics.

As part of measurement, consider using URL shorteners. Not only do they make links more manageable (and limit the number of characters in a Tweet or Facebook message), they also can be a great way to track data as many URL shorteners provide valuable statistics about the performance of each individual shortened URL. Monitor this data throughout the process with your main website analytics package to see if your message attached to the shortened URL resulted in conversions.

When looking at conversion trends or successful tools in building leads with social media, reviewing analytics data is crucial. It gives you insight into content that performs very well in the social space but also through other marketing techniques, such as search engine optimization. Use the data as an opportunity to improve your content or your social media/search marketing efforts.

B2B social media marketing is often about connecting with the right people and about building relationships. Social media makes both of these actions simple and painless. Being aware of who the influencers in your industry are and then following them, whether it’s on Twitter, Facebook or their own blogs, is the first step to building a connection with those influencers. With a genuine relationship, these influencers may be able to help you make your mark in the social media marketplace. This is especially true of influencers who may already have your target audience at their disposal.

This doesn’t mean you need to retweet every tweet or share every blog post on Facebook, but it does mean that you should be aware of who the movers and shakers are. By following them and then reaching out when appropriate or just to get to know them further, you have a much better shot at getting some attention.

Even if you’re not necessarily connecting to influencers, social media affords the opportunity to connect with other people in your industry and your customers. Use the various social media platforms as an opportunity to connect with these industry colleagues and peers and build upon each other. Consider celebrating your colleagues’ or customers’ success. Make it known that you’re here to help them — not just yourself. Repeat this process with anyone of interest and you’re bound to attract eyeballs.

Sometimes, the hardest part of social media is sticking out from the sea of other users. Giveaways and promotions are a great way to help differentiate yourself and your business. Using Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, you can target your desired customer base and then let them know (if appropriate) about different promotions or giveaways related to your product. If you offer a service, consider giving a free year to a loyal customer. If you manufacture products, give some away.

Offer a coupon on your company’s Facebook Page and pair it with a lead-generation form for future contact. Let people know on Twitter about specials or contests that are going on and follow-up with those that show an interest. Perhaps you can have a retweet contest where you can monitor responses or host some trivia on your Facebook Page. You can also open an online survey to get feedback about your offerings and reward participants. The possibilities are endless. Creativity in this capacity breeds success.

Companies like Wildfire make it really easy to build these sorts of promotions directly inside your own social media channels.

If you use social media like a keyword searching robot, you are going to come across as creepy and turn off potential clients. Don’t be creepy.

Use best judgment and common sense when approaching people using social networks. If you wouldn’t want to be approached the way you are approaching another user, don’t use that approach. It’s as simple as that. Social media etiquette isn’t much different than real life relationships, so what won’t work in “real life” probably won’t work online.

Respecting boundaries doesn’t mean you can’t still answer questions, engage and follow-up with potential leads, it just means that if it’s clear that the other party isn’t interested, or more importantly, if the context of their communication really doesn’t involve or seek out input from your company, don’t do it.

Context is really important in social media and it is something that is very, very easy to overlook. While we think that using keywords and Google Alerts are good methods for keeping atop of your field, that doesn’t mean you can automate your responses or just go into autopilot based on those alerts.

There are many different social media marketing opportunities for B2B, and there’s great potential for success as more companies jump on the social media bandwagon. How do you use social media in B2B marketing? What tips can you suggest to others? Let us know!

Drive sales and make social media work for you at MarketingProfs B2B Forum! You’ll learn the ins-and-outs of social media as part of your overall B2B marketing mix – from integration and engagement to measurement. Get 1-on-1 access to the best and brightest B2B marketing stars who will share best practices and FREE advice! Plus, our loyal attendees say our events are ridiculously fun, interactive and the kicker is – we have the best Freebies in the biz! (no keychains here...FREE industry research reports & memberships—stuff to help you really drive sales in 2010!) Register today!

(Photo Courtesy of visual.dichotomy on Flickr)

Tags: b2b, b2b marketing, b2b marketing series, facebook, linkedin, MARKETING, twitter, wildfire