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Your business is considering a social media strategy and your consultant keeps buzzing about ten thousand (or some other ridiculously high number) of fans over night. You keep thinking to yourself "This is too good to be true; sure, he's done it for other people, but my brand?"  You're right. It is too good to be true, for a few reasons:

33 reasons your business should be engaged in social media outreach to your customers. (Original post here[http://socialnomics.net/2009/11/12/social-media-roi-examples-video/])

After reviewing some site stats today, we've noticed that kurl.it[http://kurl.it/] (our URL shortening service) has been used over 2,200 times (i.e. - people who have clicked on a kurl.it link). Not bad for a small in-house system we set up and haven't been pushing too much (get ready for that to change, though!).  Thanks to everyone who used it and we look forward to providing you some very interesting features in the future.

Recently, Ben & Jerry's, the iconic Vermont ice cream manufacturer decided to re-release one of their flagship product "Chubby Hubby" as "Hubby Hubby" for the month of September in Vermont as a show of support for Freedom To Marry in honor of the Vermont legalization of same-sex marriage. While my general view of the issue doesn't matter (marriage is a church matter, not a matter of the state), I would like to applaud Ben & Jerry and the folks of Vermont for taking progressive stance on the issue. This product change prompted me to ask the lesser controversial question of "When is it acceptible to alter a flagship product to meet a perceived social need?"

"I twittered her, but she won't tweet me back..." Awesome. Too funny!

No, seriously. The rules are simple. We'll select 5 of the first 100 Facebook fans and send you a t-shirt.

As a part of my job and as a way to provide you with information, I'm constantly following Twitter conversations about Social Media and I've noticed that a lot of people are finally getting it, and that a surprising number of people *almost* get it. Like this image from headstreampr.com - a company trying to position themselves within the media-verse as a go-to company for social media and public relations integration. Take a look at the image and see if you can tell what's wrong (hint - just think about my previous post "It's about the conversation[its-about-the-conversation/]"):

I found this fascinating quote today about saying "Thank-you" to people who follow your brand or company through social media:

It is truly astounding how quickly social media is overtaking conversation, advertising and practically every electronic interaction between people.

The mantra of marketing, since, well, marketing began, is "know your customer".  This has ballooned into a multi-million (if not billion) dollar per year business centered around customer polling, website metrics, and customized marketing platforms to touch every potential customer.  And yes, we're vying for our piece of that pie.