Of course, LinkedIn has its place, but what do B2B services really need to concentrate on if they want to have a viable social media presence? In no particular order, let’s take a look at the value of social media from a B2B point of view.

This article presents five tips for social media marketing in the B2B space. Some interesting points -- I always like to bring it back to the fact that real people are behind both B2B and B2C purchase decisions. Remember to treat them as such and you're already one step ahead.

It’s worth also mentioning that Nestlé shares dropped significantly during the first six hours of this event. How’s that for ROI on social media – and not the kind any business wants to replicate.

Threatening to delete amended Nestle logos? Deleting comments posted on the Nestle fan page? Sarcastic comments by the Nestle social media coordinators on Facebook? Whomever is behind the Nestle Facebook fan page is extending the failure of a company to social media. Pro tip: don't follow this example. Ever.

Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley responds to a panel question at SxSWi regarding sites like pleaserobme.com. He's right, if you don't want people to know where you are (publicly) don't choose to notify the public! Simple step.

The most fun — and still useful — panel I’ve attended at SXSW Interactive so far was Saturday’s How to Create a Viral Video. It doesn’t get much better than the three viral experts that Flux creative director Jonathan Wells brought together:

• Damian Kulash, frontman of rock band OK Go
• Margaret Gould Stewart, head of user experience at YouTube
• Jason Wishnow, director of film and video, TED

The tone for the session was set when Damian Kulash teed up “the definition of viral video”: Boobies and Kitties, which presents the view with 30 seconds of plunging necklines, 30 seconds of saccharine-sweet kittens and 30 seconds of kittens stuffed into bodacious cleavage. With such quality artistic contributions to our cultural good, who needs Quentin Tarantino?

Once we were all laughing, the panelists proceeded to illustrate answers to the 30 million-page-view question: How do you create videos so compelling that your viewers become part of the distribution process?

1. Hit people on an emotional level.  TEDTalks are 18-minute taped academic lectures, which could easily be “online suicide” but instead have been viewed by 230 million people to date. According to Wishnow, the production quality — shooting in HD, using multiple cameras, actually being able to see details on the supporting visuals — enhances the “talk of their lives” feeling that TED is going for. The real key to viral success, though, is the ideas that genuinely inspire the speakers and their work, he says. Content that taps into viewers’ emotions travels farthest.
2. Go for a sense of wonder, optimism and surprise. OK Go’s approach to viral video is to “think of the craziest ideas they can come up with and figure out if we can pull them off,”  said Kulash. This has led to masterpieces like “Here It Goes Again” (the treadmill video that inspired a whole host of fantastic spinoffs), “A Million Ways” and the Rube-Goldberg-inspired “This Too Shall Pass,” which recently led to the dissolution of the band’s contract with EMI. Damian’s advice — to embrace cleverness and the element of surprise — jives with recent research out of the University of Pennsylvania about what compels people to share. “The fact is, humans like to share good news. So Debbie Downer won’t work,” said Margaret Gould Stewart. “We are trained to put things in buckets. So when you mix cookie monster with German metal, it’s really funny!”  Oh man, is it ever.
3. Think about production value. While high production-values work for TED, less high-tech videos can also be an effective content strategy. Your video doesn’t have to be pixel-perfect. It should have appropriate production values, depending on the content and context.
4. Have people participate in the things you make — if not in the actual shooting of the videos, then after they go public. Solidify your community by getting into the comments and engaging directly in what’s happening with your content. Create conversation between the creator and the audience, and encourage satire and offshoots.
5. Make it easy to embed your videos. More than half of YouTube traffic comes from those who grab a video’s code and tweet about it or integrate it into their Web sites and blogs. “If you don’t make it easy to embed, you are hamstringing your video,” Stewart said.
6. Mind your metadata.  Embed key search terms into the titles of your videos. If you’re creating parodies, include the same key words in your video’s title as in the original. Surround your video with supplemental material such as additional video material and still images. Paying attention to metadata details will aid with search engine optimization.

To conclude this hilarious session, our esteemed panelists grabbed a video camera and climbed up on top of the panel table to recreate the infamous surprised kitty video with us, the audience, playing the role of kitty.  What the result (below) lacks in production quality, it makes up in on-the-spot charm. Viral-to-be, for sure.

Image credit, Merritt Colaizzi

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Related posts:

1. Viral does not always equal video
2. Live from SXSW: Fortune 500 experiments in social media
3. Andy’s Answers: How to successfully use video blogging

Merrit Colaizzi has some great tips here, but as I heard in another SxSW panel, you can't create a viral video -- video only becomes viral after it's been released and is spread by fans. The points in Merrit's piece should all be considered nonetheless.

In my opinion Comcast has it figured out. Frank Eliason uses a touching personal story to make a great point about why it's so important to represent businesses on social networks with real people. Hiding behind a logo and generic bio is contrary to the reason social networks exist...to allow real people to connect with others they know or are interested in.

Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley was a special guest panelist at a social/new media session by Brian Solis. In this clip Dennis talks about some of the basic ways businesses are using Foursquare. I had great seats for the panel discussion and have more video to post, including a touching personal story from Frank Eliason of Comcast.

Great overview by the Social Media Examiner on how to better engage Facebook fans. Asking fans to participate or giving them a forum to share their opinion is a simple first step. Remember, you shouldn't use Facebook (or any social media platform for that matter) to simply blast corporate messaging that doesn't provide value to your fans and followers.