eMarketer’s report, “Marketing on Social Networks: Branding, Buying and Beyond.” However, the vast majority of examples reference high profile consumer brands, high profile celebrities or high value B2B brands where users welcome to opportunity to follow their favourite celeb, consumer brand or company. But does all this work for small and SME B2B companies?  It seems it does but is different.  Social network users can easily track key SME suppliers with whom they have a particular interest or dependences. Many companies are setting up micro communities ‘of interest’ within established social networks such as Linkedin and Twitter but less so Facebook.  The big difference is the numbers involved; major consumer brands count in many hundreds of thousands whilst SME B2B companies have lower numbers (often counted in tens) of more focused users. The evidence is that using social media does lead to revenue increases. In one example I saw recently a webinar series was promoted using traditional channels such as search, Google PPC ads and PR as well as through Facebook, Twitter and a blog.  They tracked the inbound registrations that came through each channel and discovered that as many people registered via social networks as through search engine marketing. They also found that leads generated through social media were twice as likely to become sales opportunities. Whilst this is a great example, not many marketers benchmark Social Media against other channels to prove its worth.  Some interesting research done by Altimeter Group found that the most valuable brands in the world are experiencing a direct correlation between top financial performance and deep social media engagement although it’s too early to prove the link. Whilst the big guys have dedicated teams of experts who are creating the automation tools and techniques to maximise its impact the challenge for small and SME companies will be one of know-how and resource. >