My presentation from last week's Social Media Forum with some hands-on advice on how to create and manage content on social media.

In the Validation Era, intimacy is in and publicness may be out - or at least on the decline. Quality is the new black. What this means that both individuals and businesses will need to increasingly work harder to earn their way in and remain in our stakeholders' circle of trust.

Read this interesting article by Steve Rubel where he describes that the democratization of content creation has resulted in information overload. And as a consequence, that we are entering a new era where more intimate connections and true expertise will be valued much higher.

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Excellent post on how the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® can help businesses in building effective social media teams:

As social media starts to weave itself into the fiber of corporate culture, companies are beginning to recognize the need to make organizational changes in order to evolve as social businesses. It might make more sense to organize social media teams based on employee personality and the nature of the role vs. physical location or departmental boundaries.

One tool that could be helpful in maximizing human resources potential around social media is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI®). By connecting employee MBTI personality preferences to responsibilities you get a better understanding of which employees across the organization might be best suited for specific social media tasks.

Using MBTI during the social media team building process allows organizations to:

1. Identify different employee strengths
2. Help employees develop their careers within the organization
3. Build more effective teams by matching roles to the most suitable employees
4. Increase employee retention and reduce costs related to turnover

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Organizations will realize that for something (social media) to feel sexy there is a lot of work that needs to happen behind the scenes.  Time to pay the piper, as they say, and begin to build integrated platforms that can leverage social channels in constructing healthier, better relationships with customers.  Despite the focus on tools and technologies, leaders will begin to realize that it is just about processes and people with support from technology.  Want to get ahead? Plan, plan, plan – then roll up your sleeves and start doing, strategically speaking.

Esteban Kolsky - @ekolsky

Read more on innovation and disruptive technologies in Constellation’s Research Outlook For 2011

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“We don’t assign metrics to it. It’s really just about our unwavering belief that making the customer happier is going to win in the long run.”

Tony Hsieh - CEO of Zappos - on the fact that he isn’t measuring, not even looking for a ROI of all the time and effort the company is spending on offering true customer service and interaction, mainly through social media.

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Recent research by internet marketing firm Hubspot reveals a significant positive relationship between blogs and leads. Looking at blog usage and blog size they came to the following conclusions:

Blogs need to reach a critical mass of 20 to 50 articles to generate leads

• Grow indexed pages in Google more rapidly than by adding website pages.
• Increase the number of keywords marketers rank for in Google.
• Generate inbound links.
• Increase repeat visitors.

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27-year old rapstar Lil’Wayne – aka Weezy – is sitting out his one-year prison sentence for possession of illegal weapons. But that doesn’t keep the man from reaching out to his fans. Determined to turn this predicament into a golden opportunity, he launched the blog Weezythanxyou.com a couple of days ago. The rapper promises weekly updates from behind bars by sending out letters which will be published on the blog by his co-workers.

One year can be a very long time, especially in the entertainment business (and when you’re in prison obviously). But Lil’Wayne makes clever use of social media to keep his fans engaged and let them await the day of his release with great anticipation. He even manages to turn it into a genuine movement, represented by the countdown clock on his blog, the Free Weezy merchandise and the buzz on Twitter.

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