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With communities in the driver seat over product, a shift will happen as communities can define the spec of future products and therefore multiple brands will bid for their business. As a result, we should expect the agency model to flip over, where PR agencies start to represent communities of customers -rather than brands.

When considering the tools of social media and how they relate to your business communications needs, it's important to think about two parts of the equation: possibility + function. These tools open up new ways to communicate, which is great. It also means that you have to consider what the functional goal of that communication means to your need.

Principles of building communities online.

How your website is a communication tool

Quit treating your website like a brochure! You can communicate to your visitors with video, audio, written word, and even in a conversational manner through blogs and discussion forums. If you have the option of communicating so clearly to your visitors … why aren't you?

We are always talking about building a community. It's the first thing we recommend for many reasons... This is a good overview on how to find, build, and grow your online community

In social media, who you know - or who knows you - can certainly make all the difference. That's why figuring out who to connect with and taking the time to build relationships with these people is key to leveraging the power of social media.

We've been saying this for years... Even "local" businesses need a web strategy.. Does yours?

In these stats lies a big - but fleeting - opportunity: serving local businesses by helping them use online well. By this, I don't mean doing what local newspapers have been doing: trying to sell them display or directory ads, just as they did in papers but in a new medium. Instead, I mean redefining what it means to help them succeed online. This might mean helping them place ads smartly on Google with good SEO (see Fred Wilson's tweet out of our New Business Models for News Summit at CUNY). It might mean finding was to help local businesses interact more meaningfully with their own communities.

Situation: You run a social media program at a corporation, and you need to measure to improve your program, but more importantly to show to your bosses that this 'new media' program is worth it's weight. Challenges: You see the immediate value of a community program but your management is unconvinced. Furthermore, the brand police and the traditional hard-liners don't like your 'open-thinking' type of revolt. There may be other challenges too: lots of activity but few people, or you simply don't know where to start. Goals Deliver a report that demonstrates the value of a social media program as well as helps you improve the program over time.

Great overview on how to measure the social media aspect of your business's web strategy...

At a recent social media workshop a participant asked me to reveal my social media routine - how I track, converse, communicate and otherwise curate all my various social media activities. I paused to think about it for a while because I never really considered what I do a routine, but it occurred to me that, in fact, I do have a systematic approach to social media. (No surprise really, I'm a systems thinker and I just do it habitually - ask my wife, I have a system for making the bed and loading the dishwasher.)

It's a great idea to create social media systems, or "processes" that allow you to automate some research and setting time and tasks for different aspects of social media - whether listening or interacting.

Great social media strategies for resaurants

The financial crisis is likely to hit the fine dining industry very hard. Already there have been reports of exclusive London restaurants slashing their prices in order to maintain a steady flow of clientele and therefore subsequent cashflow. Competing on price, however, is never a wise, or usually profitable, strategy, so dining establishments need to look for alternate ways to bring in the customers. One easy way is to develop a social media strategy to connect with your customers and create a community of regular diners.

How Wal-Mart got social media wrong and how they fixed it

Rather than forcing the message with their own branded community, fake blogs, and corporate blogs, Walmart gets it right by creating a platform for customers and pundits to tell their story

Andy, you may want to add the tag "groundswell" to your bookmark.

Great ideas to add to your blogging strategy

You're responsible for the direction of your online strategies for your company or organization, specifically using social media and computing tools to reach, connect, and build communities around your brand. Most folks at your company know this space is important, but don't know how to do it, they are relying on your expertise to think holistically, integrated, and strategically.

Here is advice from Bing's webmaster on how to best build links and improve your search engine performance - in a nutshell, treat your website like a brand. Excellent article and a good read.

Can businesses today really create sustainable revenue and long-term profit around regularly publishing professional-quality online video, and keep their production costs well below the standards of broadcast-quality? Yes, if they're willing to be what I call "videoratis" - a video professional and publicist skilled at more than one job that relates to their business and their online community.

We always talk about how budgeting your time for web strategy development is as important if not more important than budgeting money. This is a great post on how you can manage your time most effectively.

Effective social media management is quickly becoming a key skill in the 21st Century and will help you to be more productive as the way we use the Internet to communicate develops. Here's some simple steps you can take to manage your social media time more effectively:

Use your advertising to start conversations, create content that builds trust and community and you'll harness the ever effective power of advertising for generating leads and sales, you know, until the next new thing comes along.

Guidelines for marketing with social media aren't all that new. In 2006 five members of the digital marketing community collaborated on 16 rules for "social media optimization". Fast forward to nearly 2010 and social media has begun to take a more significant role in the marketing mix.

Another Blog Search tool for information and inspiration!