With more than 812 million users on Facebook at the time of this writing, social media are clearly more than a passing fad. As useful as social media have become for business-to-consumer (or B2C) marketers, what is their relevance for business-to-business (or B2B) marketing?

B2B marketers have said generating leads is their top goal for 2012. And converting qualified leads into paying customers is their biggest challenge. This is the finding of a survey of about 1,750 B2B marketers, conducted by MarketingSherpa in June 2011. (See chart.)