By Eric Krell
Social media discussions are, by nature, public. So, it should come as no surprise that consultants share their approaches with competitors whenever they talk on the telephone about their new social media offerings with business writers. Chances are that the agreeable public relations professional facilitating the media call works for a firm that already has logged hundreds of hours on social media campaigns. There's also a pretty good chance that this business writer has published an e-book on social marketing and hung a shingle as a "social strategist."
These scenarios exaggerate the current social media gold rush, but not by much. (Go ahead and search the term "social strategist" on LinkedIn.) The enterprise social platforms market, which represents one of many components of corporate social media spending, was a mere $370 million in 2009, according to IDC; by 2014, this spending should surpass $2 billion.