Looking back on last year’s holiday/year end post with equal parts amusement and disbelief that I could be that corny, I decided this year to focus more on what caught my eye as going right in the B2B digital world.

Call it the “12 Forays of Business.” A loose holiday association, I know, but sung in the right key you will get the idea.

• The first foray of business: An outage of a digital degree. I, for one, was amazed on multiple occasions how much our business has come to rely on technology. Whether Twitter goes down, the Internet connection slows to a crawl or the web server that houses your website sets off the office smoke alarm, it all underscores just how important digital work is to our everyday interactions as companies and as stewards of B2B brands.
• The second foray of business: Businesses have used social media to leverage customer relationships online through active conversation. Companies publically ”making peace” with scorned users also benefit from the resolution being resolved before the eyes of potential customers.
• The third foray of business: Crowd-sourcing and audience engagement. I am now accepting “french hen” business references via the comment section.
• The forth foray of business: With substantial growth and a recent redesign, Twitter continued to impact the daily life of your customers. Millions of potential leads (read “birds”) tweet (read “call”) insights, news, preferences and opinions of untold value to marketing departments who care to listen.
• The fifth foray of business: It isn’t often that a new major social network comes onto the scene. But Google+ brought with it another opportunity to engage with an audience eager to participate in conversation and share content. The key feature touted by ol’ Google? The ability to segment a network into Circles. Rings even.
• The sixth foray of business: Were there disappointments in digital business through 2011? Sure, some companies really laid an egg. Some of the most notable include the rise of social media parodies as a form of public criticism, company’s daily deal offerings actually being too successful, and of course Netflix separating and promptly reuniting business units. But most importantly, companies are rightfully allocating time and attention to the medium. No year is without its "mistakes.”
• The seventh foray of business: With new tactics, media and methods to measure the success of marketing programs, it’s easy to see how marketers get overwhelmed or even a case of data paralysis. The folks that do it right are using the tools that make the most sense for their market and analyzing specific data directly related to a refined goal. It’s not enough to keep your head above water; you have to swim.
• The eighth foray of business: There is no question that we live in the days of data. We have customers opt-in; we survey, test and target; analyze and optimize. Companies also are finding a treasure trove of information within their own walls. Sales and marketing staying in tandem with and diligently leveraging CRM technology lets your company milk the data available for all its worth.
• The ninth foray of business: There is no escaping the economic situation we all faced in 2011. Budgets may have tightened and there were plenty of unknowns. But we’ll call the glass of eggnog half-full. These variables force us to be resourceful and creative with our messages. Few things can encourage high-return creativity like these pressures. So what if we have to do a little dancing?
• The tenth foray of business:  New gadgets, smart phone adoption, network proliferations all continued to drive B2C and B2B audiences to any number of mobile devices, screen sizes and operating systems. CMOs (instead of lords) are and should continue leaping into mobile spaces.
• The eleventh foray of business: It would be impossible to discuss 2011 without mentioning social media in a larger sense. Agencies and tech companies sounded the call (dare I say they were “piping”) and businesses went to market with engaging, and even fun, efforts.
• The twelfth foray of business: That drum beat you hear? It’s the trends we discussed above marching into a new year on the momentum of technology adoption and eleven-plus positive advancements in the B2B marketing space.

So, looking back over the year, there is a lot to reflect on as we have our holiday parties and prepare to hang a new calendar in our cube. It’s been an exciting year. Best of luck in 2012. And wish me luck on finding correlations between business terms and figgy pudding for next year.

Happy Holidays.