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Collective consciousness: by nature, social networks develop around a community's shared goals. Successful social media efforts must support those goals as well as those of the business.

Article Excerpt
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Social media represent a sea change that will affect every aspect of an organization, and nowhere is this more evident than in an organization's relationship with its customers. Customers, once solely at the receiving end of corporate communication, are now not only entering conversations with organizations but, more important, are increasingly entering into online conversations with each other about products and brands.

What defines social media?

Both professionally and personally, human beings naturally form groups based on affinities and expertise. We gravitate to people with whom we share interests. Most of us belong to real-world networks that formed organically, from book clubs to sports clubs. Not surprisingly, these networks rapidly migrated to the online world.

Online social networking has been around in various forms for nearly a decade, though it has achieved wide notice in the past few years. Online social networks take many forms and are created for many reasons. Despite their differences, online social networks commonly exhibit a number of the following concepts:

* Profiles: Each member in a network has an online profile that serves as his or her identity in the network. In the professional context, profiles often contain information regarding the individual's experience, education, interests and affiliations, as well as information about skills and resources.

* Connections: Online social networks typically enable people to connect with others in the network. In some cases, these connections are implicit, and derived from past actions (such as sending an e-mail to another member of the network). Other times, the connections are explicit, and are set up and created by the members themselves.

* Content: Content is the information created in, posted on and...

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