Social media. Social networking. Call it what you will, it’s inescapable – this necessity to be social. My friend Shan and I have a new music blog where we can ‘talk shop’ about all our favorite bands and artists and songs and more and yesterday we did a live blog via Twitter about the 2010 Grammy Awards.

Needless to say, it was exhausting. Not physically exhausting, but one of those emotionally exhausting tasks because there was the need to be ‘on,’ to be funny, to be smart and to keep a dialogue open with other followers, especially because they were new.

At my day job, I just helped implement a full social networking strategy for our B2B company. Such a venture for B2B is a bit bizarre – because we don’t sell directly to clients or customers, and work in a highly regulated industry, it’s a challenge to find out what content is relative and appropriate to share with our target audience(s). We don’t get to do the cool coupons, the enticing prize drawings in exchange for lead information, or really get to talk about our products because each state has their own rules and regulations about how we advertise.

Regardless, we are going to give Facebook and Twitter a go and see what type of audience we have out there that may be participating in social communities already. A preliminary search led to a small group of individuals who we could have guessed to be ‘cutting edge,’ however, the majority of our audience is an older generation and part of a large community that doesn’t adopt or implement such technological advances quite so easily as my peer group.

So what do we have to say or do? Well, instead of being product focused, we’re making it more about brand awareness and using each little ‘kiosk’ as an avenue back to our full-fledged website that gives everyone all the information they need. We currently manage a blog and communication center on this website, hosting sales ideas, important product news, or industry based news and links to current information. These blogs are then posted to Twitter as links and we update our FB fan page accordingly.

While many of our competitors have not ventured into this area of social media, we decided that it’s best that we show up and take part of the ‘conversation’ vs sitting it out and not taking advantage of the opportunity we may have to spread our brand, our story and our USP.

Individuals have been using social networking for numerous personal reasons but true business applications have been hard to imagine – more so as to how to generate actual revenue from such outlets. My belief is that social media allows business to grow its audience beyond what it imagines to be its target demographic – you reach many more people (for free) by using these tools and allow people who like your brand to become an ambassador, spreading the word for you.

And word of mouth is power. No matter the amount of money in a marketing machine, word of mouth can still bring a powerhouse to its knees. As was with the Grammys last night, Lady Gaga rebuilt the brand of pop behemoth this year through social media – creating a direct connect between artists and fan. While someone like Beyonce, who is more private in terms of personal life, opts for more traditional and straightforward channels toward her audience. While both had massive years, Gaga truly blew up in 2009 as a result of her cross-platformed approach by being technologically savvy  and ahead of the pack.

Returns for traditional businesses are harder to track than record sales, but the goal is the same – to revolutionize the way we use marketing and to think outside of the traditional formula of money equaling success when it comes to advertising and marketing revenue.