Digital marketing roundtable discusses the future of online advertising and the B2B foray into social media

The latest edition of the Knexus Digital Marketing Conversations podcast, hosted by Graeme Foux, CEO of Knexus Digital was released this week. Focusing on social media and, more specifically, on how brands can integrate social media effectively into their digital marketing activity, it features the opinion of some of the industry’s foremost experts.

Katy Howell, MD of online PR agency immediate future, Eliza Dashwood, of search agency Ambergreen, and Justin Rees, of online lead generation specialists Lead Point, all offer their own unique insights and points of view. In addition, the podcast covers the rise in popularity of applications in mobile marketing, with industry specialists Dusan Hamilton, of Inside Mobile, and Jonathan Newman, Director, Enterprise Web & EMEA eSolutions of Ingram Micro sharing their thoughts on what constitutes a successful application.

The podcast opens with a roundtable discussion on emerging hot topics and issues related to social media. The panel all agree that there has been a marked increase in brands jumping on the social media bandwagon, but for the wrong reasons.

“Thousands of brands are diving into social media looking only for reach and frequency, because this is what they are used to benchmarking against. Social media is not about broadcasting what a brand has to offer and it cannot be used as simply a mechanism for pushing out information. Social media is about listening to consumers, creating conversations and engaging with a brand’s targeted audience”, Katy Howell, MD of immediate future emphasises.

The discussion then turns to the efficacy of social media as a marketing tool for B2B industries. Referring to a range of recent developments and trends, such as Salesforce.com’s partnership with Twitter, SME e-businesses going online looking for information, and Twitter offering pro-versions of its service, the panel discusses whether there is an opportunity for B2B companies to engage with one another using social media. The conversation then moves on to the future of online advertising, following the recent release of Forrester research revealing that brands are planning to invest more of their marketing budgets in social media.

Finally, Dusan Hamilton of Inside Mobile, and Jonathan Newman of Ingram Micro look at the latest trend of developing branded applications specifically for the iPhone, and ask what return brands can expect from this.

Dusan Hamilton comments, “Due to the technologically advanced nature of the handset, brands are eager to explore some of the innovative ways its customers can instantly interact