Mass media has shattered into niche, and from there it went social. Today, it's not enough that you might publish a blog about your little slice of reality. Now, readers need a friend/peer that they respect to actually recommend that they pay attention to that tiny snippet in your blog. It is here where the viral aspect of your message becomes extremely important.

So the lesson, I think, is to make sure your company is willing and capable sharers of expertise, and that they do it online, daily if possible. Decouple the "corporate" voice from communication and find ways for managers to actively and intelligently evangelize the brand by building their own personal brands online, within the context of the company message. If that means your CIO develops a following, go with it! The ones that build a personal brand and stay…they are PR gold.

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Looking back over the past year of pushing the social media agenda here from AgencyNext, my unscientific survey reveals that e-commerce people… or what I call me-commerce people… seem to be further along than most. Why is that, I wondered.

For starters, my guess is that people selling products and services primarily or wholly online get SEO. Two, they know that fresh content and a growing archive of relevant, keyword-searchable data helps SEO. Three, I think they understand how self-absorbed consumers are today… how needy, how vocal, how fed up, how opinionated, and how full of ourselves we've become. Four, many of these pure online plays don't have an existing traditional offline infrastructure they have to trash if they sell more, faster, and at a higher profit margin online. Five, the people who would have to trash the existing infrastructure are many of the same people who exist because of the old infrastructure.

I call it me-commerce, by the way, because with social media linked to an e-commerce site, buyers and prospects get more ways to make the site all about them. Or, as seen from their perspective, 'more about me.' That's as in: my view, my opinion, my point, my reaction, my review, my comment, my thread… me, me, me.

Just my two cents. Happy New Year everyone.

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