1. Start anew. Social media is wired differently & is about one-on-one conversations. Do not extend your traditional mass messaging to social media. It rarely works.
2. Read the Cluetrain Manifesto. Subscribe to the Robert Scobe, Seth Godin & Guy Kawazaki Blogs. Read "Boing Boing" & the "Huffington Post".
3. Create your own blog. It's easy & free. I recommend wordpress.com, but there are other options too, like Google's blogger.com.
4. Choose a URL which is easily recognizable & findable. Try to include your brand name in it.
5. Invite all your customers to your blog. Link it to everyone who matters in your industry.
6. Post fast & frequently, both good news & bad. If your customers do not find out the bad news from you, they will probably hear about it from your competitors.
7. Talk in a human voice. Be warm & personal. Be imperfect. It is real-time conversation between two human beings, not the perfect ad copy of traditional marketing.
8. Keep your blog lively. If you had a customer event, create a few videos & post them on YouTube and put up a link For Photographs, use Flickr or Picasa. Submit interesting posts to digg.com. Later, extend your social media presence to Twitter.
9. Earn trust. If you don't have all the answers, do not pretend that you do. Instead, help your customers find answers elsewhere. They will come back to you for more.
10. Act on your customer's voices. Under promise and over deliver.
