About Social Media Today
- social selling
- sales process
- sales
- online community
- marketing
- lead generation
- customer service
- crm
- branding
- events
- Trending:
- SalesChaosTV
- Planning for 2012
About and Contact Us
The Customer Collective is an editorially independent, moderated blogging community for elite sales and marketing executives. Our particular focus is the impact of social media on all aspects of the 21st century sales cycle. Today’s best marketers are constantly engaged in conversation with their customers. By shedding fresh light on issues such as advertising, branding, lead generation and management, marketing, relationship management, sales process, social selling and the ever-important trust factor, we aim to show how marketing organizations can become smarter and more focused in the 21st century.
There are plenty of ways to get involved. First, sign up for an account on this site. Next, tie your existing blog's RSS feed directly into our site so that your posts are pushed to us automatically; manually submit exclusive content with our easy to use content creation platform; sign up for updates via RSS or email; follow us on Twitter @yourcustomers and join us on LinkedIn to keep up to date on all of our new content and events.
This site is owned managed by Social Media Today, LLC.
Social Media Today, LLC
» Read about our brand and business modelSocial Media Today LLC helps global organizations create purpose-built B2B social communities designed to achieve specific, measurable corporate goals by engaging exactly the customers and prospects you most want to reach.
Premium content produced by Social Media Today» The Economic Stimulus Package
» The Coming Change to Social Media
» Recession Sales Strategies
We help large companies leverage the enormous power of social media to build deeper relationships with potential customers and other constituencies that influence the development of new business. We have found that our primary metrics of success are levels of engagement and business leads. One thousand people who come regularly and might buy an SAP, Oracle or Teradata system some day is better than a million people who definitely won't.
Our company, Social Media Today LLC, is a battle-tested, nimble team of former journalists, online managers, and advertising professionals who have come together to make a new kind of media company. With our backgrounds, and passions for, business-to-business and public policy conversations, we’ve decided to focus our efforts there. For these conversations we’d like to have, we’re assembling the world’s best bloggers and we provide them with an independent “playground” to include their posts, to comment and rate posts, and to connect with each other. On our flagship site, SocialMediaToday.com, we have brought together many of the most intriguing and original bloggers on media and marketing, covering all aspects of what makes up the connective tissue of social media from a global perspective.
Read about what we do [PDF]
Watch CEO Robin Carey talk about Social Media Today
Social Media Today's MyVenturePad.com case study at WOMMA 09
Listen to Robin Carey moderate "Bloggers, Buzz, and Business Leads"
What We Do
Our offerings for sponsors are detailed, varied and have been developed over the past year with the cooperation of our founding clients. These include everything from a comprehensive, long-term engagement with clients with the purpose of marrying great content from leading bloggers to specific goals, whether those are to build influence, to create measurable buzz, or to generate contacts and sales leads.
eMarketer says "Social network advertising to account for 10.8% of online market" (read this article). Marketing Profs says "Digital media is trouncing traditional channels among up-and-coming Millennials: 81% of affluent Gen-Y adults use Facebook every day—roughly double the number who read newspaper content (45%) or watch TV (44%) daily, according to a new study by L2. Moreover, 45% of such consumers read at least one blog every day."
We are also now happy to offer several specific, short-term programs in which we co-create content with sponsors, leveraging a model we call "meta-conversation." These programs include:
- Surveys of our members
- Branded "sub" communities
- White papers developed with leading bloggers
- Hosted video programs
- Podcasts of leading bloggers or other “influentials”
In developing our content assets, we make use of our site networks and the extended blogger networks we have developed for our sites for continued syndication and conversation. These assets will help your company or client connect to bloggers, to your customers and your prospects… and we will help measure those results.
You can find details about sponsorship and advertising in our media kit.
What We've Done
We launched the company in November 2007 with Social Media Today and The Energy Collective sites already built and operating as prototypes. Since then we have added MyVenturepad and The Social Customer with SAP as the lead sponsor, SmartData Collective, with Teradata in the lead, and Sustainable Business Forum supported by DuPont.
We’d be delighted to talk you about how you can create a successful, purpose-built BtoB community for your organization.
Social Media Today buzz
Christian Science Monitor talks about niche social networks with Robin Carey. Read it now (we're on page 2) »
SAP Wins AMI Partners 2010 Award for Best-in-Class Social Media Marketing on MyVenturePad. Read the write-up by Mark Lazen »
Oracle CRM wins award for TheCustomerCollective, launched by SMT with Starcom. Read it now »
Forbes.com interviews Robin Carey about Social Media Today and our other communities. Watch it now »
The New York Times Dot Earth blog calls The Energy Collective "is a valuable aggregator of views on one of the prime challenges of our time." Read more »
The Case for Third Party Online Communities by Johnathan Salem Baskin. Read it here »
Business Owner's Toolkit interview with CEO, Robin Carey. Listen now »
Robin Carey talks with Small Business Trends about what makes our communities what they are. Read it here »
"The success of the Social Media Today is due to their team's relentless pursuit of client value using the newest social media tools. Their ability to innovate a business model over two years ago, when most pundits said that social media had little or no business value, is truly remarkable and has stood the test not only of time, but of the most rigid standards for success."
- Don Bulmer, VP, Global Communications, SAP AG
"Social Media Today is the smart leader for insight about where media, marketing and technology are now and where they are going."
- Paul Greenberg, author of CRM at the Speed of Light
"This has given us the platform to have a deeper relationship with our customers and has helped them better serve their customers."
- Alana Zamora, Director, North America Advertising, Oracle Corporation
About CEO Robin Carey
In 2007, Robin Carey founded Social Media Today, LLC, one of the first companies to manage online B2B communities that connect large organizations with people they want to influence. A veteran of the big-book print media world that included Fortune, Newsweek and BusinessWeek, she had built her reputation on architecting powerful strategies that delivered to blue-chip corporate clients and their agencies ways to corral and connect with their customers, and equally importantly, their customers’ trusted influencers. As traditional media went digital, and the internet went social, Robin was one of the first to realize that the emerging social media platforms offered huge promise to corporations seeking to interact directly with, and learn from, their customers, their employees, and experts from the Ivy Towers, the Street and the Hill.
SocialMediaToday.com was the first platform, and quickly became one of the leading communities for journalists and marketers looking to exchange information on this brave new world of social media. It was soon followed by theenergycollective.com, which has become a leading aggregation of international energy experts. Other platforms include MyVenturePad, TheSocialCustomer, SustainableCitiesCollective, TheCustomerCollective, GoverningPeople, and others. Online conversations are led by experts in their categories, many of whom are former journalists who see this new media model as the way of the future.
Robin was an Echols Scholar at the University of Virginia. When she is not bringing together communities, she's bringing together individuals and organizations to assist in her work as co-chair of the Women's Refugee Commission, based in New York. She also serves as an Advisor to the Society of New Communications Research.
Contact Us
For sponsorship, media, advertising, and promotion inquiries:
Robin Carey, Founder and CEO
robin@socialmediatoday.com
973-763-2829
Editorial inquiries:
thecustomercollective@socialmediatoday.com
If you're wondering why your posts are not being published, please read our FAQ before contacting our moderation team. Thanks!
For site technical support:
tcc_support@socialmediatoday.com
Please provide your name, the name of the site you're inquiring about, and a full description of the issue you encountered.
Advertisement
Ardath Albee is CEO and B2B Marketing Strategist for her firm Marketing Interactions and an author. More »
Dave Brock is President and CEO of Partners In EXCELLENCE, a global consulting company. More »
Charles Green is founder and CEO of Trusted Advisor Associates and an author. More »
Paul Greenberg is the author of the best-selling CRM at the Speed of Light and President of The 56 Group, LLC. More »
Gavin Heaton is the author of one of Australia's leading marketing blogs. More »
Jill Konrath is a recognized expert in B2B sales and the author of Selling to Big Companies. More »
Kendra Lee is author of the awward-winning "Selling Against the Goal" and a popula speaker on sales prospecting/lead generat More »
Mike Merriman is Director of Strategic Service at MZinga and has an extensive background in product development and management. More »
Natalie Petouhoff Dr. Natalie serves as the Chief Strategist for Social Media, Digital Communications and Measurement at Weber Shandwick More »
Anneke Seley is the CEO and founder of Phone Works, a sales strategy and implementation consultancy, and an author. More »
- YOU
- Ardath Albee
- Bob Apollo
- David Armano
- Trish Bertuzzi
- Dave Brock
- Brian Carroll
- Krishna De
- Jonathan Farrington
- Josiane Feigon
- Francois Gossieaux
- Charles Green
- Paul Greenberg
- Marc Hausman
- Matt Heinz
- Adam Honig
- Patrick Kitano
- Craig Klein
- Christopher Koch
- Jill Konrath
- Simon Mainwaring
- Christian Maurer
- Paul McCord
- David Meerman Scott
- Sharon Drew Morgen
- Tisha Oehmen
- Natalie Petouhoff
- Augie Ray
- Matt Rhodes
- Lori Richardson
- Kelley Robertson
- Lee Salz
- Todd Schnick
- Anneke Seley
- Koka Sexton
- Paul Simon
- Dave Stein
- Sivaraman Swaminathan
- Dale Underwood
- Greg Verdino
- Mike Volpe
- Dan Waldschmidt
- Tony Zambito
No events listed
“I hope you know how much I respect you personally and professionally Francois, but I have to disagree based on what I am seeing in the market.Last year, and the year before, I was very much in agreement that the term Social Business should not be hijacked and in the process disrespectful of the great work of Dr Yunus. In fact, I wrote about this, spoke about this and occasionally passionately and ...”
“There is a difference between hearing and listening. One problem that sales people make is that they only hear but they do not listen to what the prospect is saying. When talking with the prospect, one should focus on that person alone, understand what they want and what they are trying to say. These 3 things are often ignored but if this is taken by heart, the results will be better.Great ...”