Who said the summer is supposed to be a slow time for M&A transactions had better be on vacation the last month. While the markets continue to keep a keen eye on Facebook share price fluctuations, the business world is witnessing a flurry of M&A activity in the social technology sector.

Simply put, it has been a very busy time in the social media world this summer.

In May 2012, Oracle bought Vitrue to add social media management to its arsenal. In early June 2012, Salesforce countered with the purchase of Buddy Media. But not to be outdone, a few weeks later Oracle announced it plans to acquire Collective intellect, a social intelligence company. These M&A transactions in the social technology sector come one year after Salesforce acquired Radian6, enabling both CRM giants to put together something powerful. With social CRM in sight, this social technology arms race is just the beginning of something very big in the coming years.

A few thoughts about this rush of M&A activity in the social CRM space:

Why now? Because the CRM giants – Salesforce and Oracle know what we have been saying all along: We’ve entered the age of the customer, in which companies must obsess over — and meet the dynamically changing needs of — their customers. In the age of the customer, successful businesses must be ready to connect with consumers everywhere they are. Social Media is the hottest today and any customer relationship focused technology must meet those requirements.

Why acquisitions? Because social technology startups have the innovation that big tech companies need. As the thousands of social media startups can attest, building social tools can be easy, but building successful social technologies is very, very difficult. These acquisitions are not about adding customers or immediate revenues. They’re about adding technology capabilities. None of these acquisitions mentioned above are wildly profitable companies; they are unique technologies that will help the CRM giants meet future market demands.

How will these technologies come together? Social CRM is hard. It requires access to social data, technology to filter, process, and analyze content, and tools to manage and apply insights. Although CRM companies had tools to help manage data, few were ready to capture, process, or apply social media. Through these acquisitions — monitoring and intelligence tools to capture and analyze social data and management and publishing tools to help apply social media — Oracle and Salesforce get a lot closer to social CRM. They’re now tasked with building the connectors between disparate platforms, but they at least have the pieces they need.

What’s next? For Oracle and Salesforce, the race is on to integrate their social CRM technologies into a product offering. Buying the pieces is certainly easier than having to build them, but integrating a social stack on top of their existing enterprise stack won’t be an easy task.

Through these acquisitions Oracle and Salesforce are leading the business world in getting ready for social CRM. It’s no longer considered a fad, definitely not just hype, and not going away any time soon. Businesses must care about social media because it’s clear that consumers already do.

For the rest of the market? It’s time to catch up.

Tradeseam is a social CRM startup that is likely to be a target of one of the CRM, ERP or any of the other enterprise technology competitiors, as Tradeseam has an full suite of social technology capabilities geared towards the small and medium business segment of the market.

The marketing and business world is still abuzz with two recent big stories. Facebook’s recent IPO belly flop and the soon approaching “fiscal cliff” in the US.

Lost in the shuffle was a story of a pizza joint in New Orleans that was paired with a Facebook ad expert who set up a marketing campaign to see if Facebook ads work for small business. The pizza joint owners spent $240 on Facebook ads and after asking every single customer how they heard about them, realized not one had come from having seen the ad on Facebook. Failure. Waste of money. End of story, right? No.

Here’s the story that people have missed. For small businesses — which create over two-thirds of net new jobs, and employ more than half of all working Americans — Social Media is less about advertising and more about “word of mouth”. The real story is that you, the small business owner, possess the the ability to influence and engage with users in spades — and can use it to grow your business.

You know your customers

We all do business with small businesses. Think about those you frequent on a daily or weekly basis: your dry cleaner, Web designer, wine merchant, day care provider, barber, or deli, to name a few. The person who owns the small business, or the employees, greet you by name, ask about your spouse or children, get you what you need instantly, and wish you a great day. We leave feeling good.

This is such a common occurrence, we don’t even think about how remarkable it is! This personal touch — or social experience — is the cornerstone of Social Media sites such as Tradeseam, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc.

Customers look to you for answers

Social Media is talking with your customers versus “marketing” at them. If a customer comes into your nursery, for example, and asks about a plant and soil conditions, you give the answer. This is what you, as the small business owner, do naturally every day. Why? Because it keeps customers coming back.

Now, take this engagement and put it online. When customers connect with you through Facebook, follow you on Tradeseam or recommend you to a friend, you have the same opportunity to help them, and keep them connected to your business even when they’re not physically doing business with you.

A bed and breakfast can post local activities on Tradeseam to help travelers plan their vacations. A landscaping company can share helpful gardening tips. A consultant can post a meaty report on Tradeseam to share with followers that could potentially become customers. A non-profit can post stories about its work in the community to build followers.

When you share helpful content online, your customers give it the “thumbs up,” comment on it, and pass it along to others. These actions are visible to their circle of influence (think about what you see in your own social media newsfeeds). As more people learn about your helpful business, they’re more inclined to connect and do business with you.

Tradeseam Engagements = Customer Endorsements

When people engage with you online and share your content with their networks, they pass along an implied endorsement. “I like (and trust) this business,” they’re saying. Engagement drives repeat sales (as existing customers stay connected with you) and it drives new business, as others learn about your business. Engagement and its implied endorsement build trust — trust you just can’t buy no matter how big you are or how much money you have.

Tradeseam makes it easy for entrepreneurs and small businesses to take these social engagements and put them online so you can build trust and “word of mouth” online – the most effective marketing tactic for every small business.

What is the definition of Social Media?

The Social Media definition is the use of technology to co-create, communicate and or collaborate with your constituents – friends, family, customers and or partners.

What has changed?

Just about everything  – if you studied marketing in the academic world, you most likely covered the 4 Ps of marketing – you simply created a product, determined a price for it, got it distributed in the market, and promoted the heck out of it. Today’s approach to marketing leans heavily on the 4Cs of marketing. Plenty of content created by users, aggregated and delivered in a context that makes it useful for consumers who are starving to connect with people, products and brands that they can coalesce around to build a community.

Social Media Marketing = Content + Context + Connection + Community

Is social media simply today’s hot thing?

Think you can sit on the sidelines to watch the social networking hype play out. Think again after you have considered the following statistics:

• The top social networking sites – Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn – collectively received more than 2.5 billion page visitors in one month alone. And the newest member –  Tradeseam grew by 500% in 2011.
• In fact, if Facebook were a country, it would be the third largest country.
• The newest social media for small business site called Tradeseam now hosts more than thousands of small business listings and reviews.

Not long ago, social media seemed so new and different that it was treated as an appendage of sorts- a kind of marketing that should be tried only by “experts”. While that view still exists within some small business circles, its become clear to most small business owner’s that social media is no longer marketing’s new thing. So rather than asking yourself if you should or should not Facebook, Twitter or Tradeseam, the question is how can Facebook or Tradeseam help you achieve your business objectives?

Read the Small Business Tradeseam starter guide on how you can feed the social media beast and you will see it pay dividends in helping you grow your small business.