The past three months have been rather busy.

In addition to our assigned externship projects, we have also been split into different groups, with team members across different time zones, and given two moreprojects.

One of the projects involves Social Media. My group is developing a Social Media campaign for a Scottish based entrepreneur who has designed a fun, interactive fitness game for kids at primary schools and sports teams (business market). His long term vision is also to create a consumer product for home use. Our role is to develop a campaign in support of his vision.

The evolution of social media has been remarkable in the last few years. Initially viewed as an online fad for teenagers, over the years social media has proved its staying power by evolving across the architecture of business and communications; being the dissemination of information and influence.

A great example of this involves the recent months of political turmoil north of Africa. As riots spread across Iran, Egypt and now Libya, social media proved to be a significant channel for instigating change. Protesters used social media to broadcast their vision, share their stories and even tweet schedule updates for the next protests. It gave resourceful individuals, citizens, reporters a medium to communicate instantly.

In business, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are fast becoming tools for businesses to drive brand awareness. In August 2010 Gap teamed up with popular group-buying site Groupon to offer a nation-wide deal: $50 worth of apparel for just $25. By the end of the day 441,000 groupons were sold, bringing in $11 million. This raises the question; can this also work in the business to business (B2B) sector?

B2B social media is still in its infancy, but the potential remains. B2B marketers address a much smaller number of customers who spend larger amounts of money per purchase and to whom personal relationships are much more important.

Social media can essentially build your brand reputation as an industry expert. It drives lead generation, online searchability and helps you keep a tab on the competition. It can also be a real driver for marketing campaigns.

Here’s an example; when Cisco decided to introduce its new Aggregated Services Router ‘online’ to its target audience (network engineers), they leveraged their presence online using blogs, videos and tweets. Their efforts resulted in an attendance of over 9,000 people, (90 times more attendees than in the past) with three times as many press articles, all costing a 6th of their traditional launch channels (saving over $100,000).

That’s certainly something worth thinking - or tweeting - about, dont you think? 

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P.S Incredibly enough, shortly after writing this blog, I received news that I would be working on a Social Media campaign with ‘Ciqual’ for my second externship! I can’t wait.