With minimal promotion (barely a couple of hours before the chat) we got about a dozen people participating and helping shape the chat going forward.

First, about the chat – the objective is to bring B2B marketing community on Twitter together while discussing topics relevant to us as B2B marketers. There are many great chats on Twitter, but none specifically focused on B2B, so the #B2BChat fills this gap.

About the moderators, under the umbrella of @B2B_Chat:

• Jeremy Victor (@JeremyVictor) is the founder of Make Good Media and Editor In Chief of B2Bbloggers (@b2bbloggers)
• Kent Huffman (@KentHuffman) is CMO of BearCom, a wireless solutions provider in Dallas TX, and also tweets as @WirelessWoman, bringing together wireless community on Twitter
• Ksenia Coffman (@KseniaCoffman) is marketing manager at Firetide, a wireless infrastructure company in Silicon Valley; she tweets for @Firetide

We started off discussing key challenges facing B2B marketers today. A few take-aways:

1. We are still grappling with the role that social media should play in the marketing mix. Nobody advocates ignoring it, but setting priorities and allocating the time can be a challenge.
2. Dealing with squeezed/reduced budgets and headcount resulting from the 2009 recession and at the same time dealing with the increased need to produce new content on a regular basis for all the phases of the buyer process …  what @JeremyVictor is calling the “2010 B2B Marketers Dilemma.”
3. Content creation demands for the new channels can also be overwhelming, creating a marketer’s dilemma in the form of the old-fashioned ‘writer’s block,’ as @joezuc pointed out.
4. Tying in social media with lead generation (or even determining if it can be done) is also a challenge. @b2bento commented: “Convincing clients that Social media is NOT another demand generation channel [is a struggle]. Without crossing the thought leadership and engagement bridge – jumping to lead generation is suicidal.”
5. Social media resource allocation and understanding the changing nature of the digital buyer

The second item on the agenda was to discuss expectations and the chat format going forward. The feedback was to center each discussion around a particular topics. Some of the suggestions:

• Facebook for B2B marketing.
• Integrated marketing and not fall into a social media only focus –
• How Print Advertising is being thought of right now
• Marketing Software
• Direct mail
• Marketing dashboards
• Email marketing
• CRM software to monitor multi-channel efforts

Other topics for consideration: setting up user groups and best practices working with the sales teams. All ‘core’ B2B marketing tactics – no fluff here. On the other hand, we will explore how integration with social media and implementing viral campaigns can benefit our traditional strategies – we are not luddites after all.

It is important to point out direct mail elicited quite a conversation! Here are a few tweets to prove it.

What can you expect next from #B2BChat? Weekly conversations on the topics that interest you – the B2B marketer: thoughts, questions, opinions and best practices that will help you do your job better, while connecting you with the business to business marketers on Twitter.

Follow @B2B_Chat for updates and join us on every Thursday at 8 pm ET. Topic for the next discussion will be posted shortly! DM or @ relply to @B2B_Chat with questions and suggestions for upcoming topics.

Join us!