Smart reputation management and, assuming for a moment that Angelina is as intelligent as this makes her sound, she has correctly identified the two illusions that social media creates.

1. That you actually know the people you follow or befriend or are linked to.
2. That those people are personally posting the content, that somewhere right now Ashton Kutcher (rather than his publicist or his publicist’s intern) is tweeting and you are one of the privileged five and half million who will see it.

While I’d like to believe that Shaquille O’Neal actually writes those hilarious yo mama jokes and have seen golfers tweet in between shots and know that some NFL teams have barred players from tweeting while they’re on the bench, does that really constitute friendship?

Admittedly, a lot of friendship is made up of inane conversations. One of the best things friends do is listen to you, even when you’re inane. That’s why lonely people talk to themselves.

No. What celebrities (or their publicists) have figured out is the increasingly fuzzy line between content and marketing. There are two separate but indistinct activities on social media: social media marketing and networking online.

Social media marketing is a new version of PR—awareness, attention and interest. Because I’m thinking of buying a new car, I see Jaguar on Twitter, which raises my awareness, makes me see them as a hipper company than I’d thought; they’ve got my attention and now I’m interested. But to be clear, they are not my friend anymore than Ashton is.

Networking online is hanging out with people you can’t be with right now. I have a friend, a genuine friend whom I see and share inane conversations with over lunch, who is obsessed with his dog. He and the dog are on Facebook all the time—cute pictures of the dog, what happened on this morning’s outing to the park, dog illnesses. Because he is my friend, I put up with this and having it on Facebook actually keeps it out of a lot of the luncheon conversations. Social media allows me to keep abreast of all things canine in his life and makes me smile. And if my friend said that Smack-i-licious Doggy Treats are the best and I had a dog, I would go buy Smack-i-licious.

Has he crossed the line from friendship to marketing or is he just doing what friends have always done: sharing an inane tidbit of information? In this case, it happens to be a product endorsement. He has become, in marketing parlance, “an evangelist.”

Social media pushes his evangelism out the same way that PR does and now we have an endorsement from a real-life person with friends and followers. If a happy customer will tell five people in person how great something is, think what that looks like with the now billions of people on social media platforms. That’s what Angelina is worried about, the power of that pyramid.

Andrew Davis, chief strategy officer at Tipping Point Labs, created the Influence Pyramid which shows how one message gains interest and momentum as it spreads down to consumers. But the 92% of consumers at the bottom of his pyramid are at the top of an even bigger pyramid. They have actual friends that they network with online.

That’s the third thing, the fuzzy thing, going on in social media: social media marketing and online networking overlap to create this entirely new and very powerful communication. Random bits of content are put in context and injected into conversations. It may not be friendship but it’s certainly a force to be reckoned with.

With more and more people jumping on the iPhone bandwagon, that future may not be too far off. Previous incarnations of the iPhone Bump™ app allowed users to share selected contacts and photos with a simple fist bump while holding their phones. But the latest Bump 2.o app allows users to also follow others on Twitter, send Facebook friend requests and LinkedIn connections AND compare iCal schedules—all via fist bump. Users can even send calendar invites, and continue to share information with people they have already “bumped” through a new chat feature.

So what does this all mean? With a simple app like Bump, it won’t be long before we can share document files, presentations or even carry out financial transactions through a simple hand gesture. Gone will be the days of waiting for file attachments to load to an email or logging into your online banking portal to transfer money. With new apps like Bump, people are finding it easier to connect with each other everyday—whether it’d be at a bar or a business meeting.

Maybe business meetings in the not-so-distant future will end with a fist bump, instead of a handshake.

Check out this great video from Bump Technologies about the Bump 2.0 makeover:

The new book, released June 2, gives writers guidelines for using social media like Facebook and Twitter as professional tools. It also features 42 entries on terms like app, friend and unfriend, click-throughs and smart phone, according to the Associated Press. The AP also changed “Web site” to “website” to better reflect the way it’s commonly used.

The AP’s decision to include the guidelines is evidence of the growing importance and relevance of social media to professionals. What began as a way connect with friends has evolved into a valuable business tool that writers can use to find sources, that marketers can use to reach a broader audience, and that businesses can use to build their presence online.

If there was ever a time to turn in your well-worn AP Stylebook for a new one, it’s now.  Check it out here: http://www.apstylebook.com/

For those unfamiliar, Foursquare is a social networking service that encourages people to explore the cities where they live and check in via their mobile phones. Users can then leave tips about their experience at a given location. (Ex: The teriyaki chicken wings are to die for here, but don’t expect to get a table after 7!) People can also earn reward points, special badges and even discounts from certain locations based on the frequency with which they check in.

Foursquare could be a great way for large national brands to tailor relationships specifically to local regions under their overall brand strategy umbrella. Applying region-specific touches wouldn’t only increase engagement and improve relationships with customers in a given area, but also with company employees, who could be called upon to come up with creative ideas according to local preferences.

A brand wouldn’t necessarily have to be telling people to check in at their place of business—people can’t just walk into a company like a financial services firm and check in regularly—but brands could promote a lifestyle in line with their target demo. For a financial company, for example, they could say, “The first ten people to check in from the golf tournament this weekend and leave a tip about the best hole to watch the action wins a sleeve of golf balls on us.”  This isn’t directly selling their service, but it would create a meaning relationship with the brand that customers value.

Foursquare would also be great for local contests and promotions. There could be fun weekend scavenger hunt-like races where the first person to check in at a given list of five places—consistent with the lifestyle/tastes a brand wants to cater to—wins a prize.

How large brands could use Foursquare may be hard to visualize without many case studies, but a few brands have already used the service successfully.

Pepsi used the Foursquare to support charitable endeavors. Foursquare has points leaderboards where the top explorers in each city are displayed based on who ‘checks in’ the most. Pepsi sponsored the New York City leaderboard and donated four cents for every point added to the board in a week to a local charity, raising $10,000.

Entertainment brands also are dabbling in interesting ways, allowing users to unlock themed badges and tips based on where they go based on a movie’s/character’s themes. For example, a recent Advertising Age article, “Beyond the Badge,”  mentions how followers of Valentine’s Day on Foursquare will see tips about the most romantic places and experiences in New York City, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles and Boston.

Using Foursquare as the only social marketing tool probably isn’t comprehensive enough to create an impenetrable relationship with your brand, but it could be a useful complement to your overall strategy that your competitors aren’t using. If nothing else, learning where people in your target demo check-in, and reading what tips they offer about specific locations, can teach you more about potential customers in a certain area and how to use other marketing and social media strategies to best connect with customers in specific regions.

Brands have historically fought back against Facebook for control over their official pages, but the recent changes have created more unease and confusion than ever. This is because with the introduction of the Open Graph and “Like” system of sharing user interest, also came the quiet launch of Community Pages.

Community Pages are unofficial and can be created by any user, but are not managed or moderated by a specific entity. Instead, these pages serve as hubs for information and status updates pertaining to one topic.

Aggregated content from Wikipedia and a stream of public user comments make community pages a cheap way for Facebook to extend content offerings. This strategy works well for broad topics like “cooking” or “hiking” but gets muddled when it comes to pages associated with brands or products, like “Coca-Cola” or “Starbucks Frappucino.”

Why Brands Should Be Worried

Currently, Facebook allows multiple iterations of the same brand name to appear as a Community Page, creating redundancy and ultimately diluting a brand’s official presence. Also, brands cannot control the appearance of logos and trademarks on these pages, possibly making it difficult for users to differentiate official brand pages from unofficial Community Pages.

In fact, many aspects of Community Pages widen the gap of control between brands and content. In Jeremiah Owyangs article entitled, How Facebook’s ‘Community Pages’ and Privacy Changes Impact Brands, he notes, “Community Pages only aggregate content (some which is out of context) and do not allow for two way dialog in the form of comments. Brands that have incorrect content on Community pages, or brand detractors are not able to respond directly.”

In addition, Facebook has made a subtle note that if a Community Page “becomes very popular (attracting thousands of fans), it will be adopted and maintained by the Facebook community.” It is difficult to say at what point this will occur, how users will react, and just how this will impact brands.

Finally, there’s the ultimate danger of Community Pages gaining popularity to a point where they become the primary brand presence, over their official counterparts. With no filter on streaming status updates, and open control of Wikipedia content, disgruntled customers could swarm a brand’s Community page, destroying the positive presence many brands have fought so hard to create.

The idea for that particular episode, which was the show’s highest-ranked since its parodies of the 2008 presidential election, began as a twinkle in the eye of Facebook fans across the nation. After 88-year-old Betty White’s role as a quirky grandmother in the 2009 film “The Proposal” and subsequent appearances in comedic skits on the Web and a Snickers commercial featured during the 2010 Superbowl, the social media-savvy generation decided they wanted to see more of Betty – and the way to do it was to promote their support of her through a vigorous Facebook campaign to get her on SNL.

This event – among others – demonstrates that interaction in the virtual world has gained increasing influence over events that happen in our tangible one.

And though users have growing real-time influence on others through social media space, this is by no means a one-way street. Recently, Facebook announced its plans to make location networking – made popular on social networking sites like FourSquare – an integral part of its site sometime in May, as reported by Advertising Age. This functionality, which allows users to virtually “check in” wherever they might be – the local Starbucks, the library,  – to keep friends and family abreast of their location at any given point in time.

Location networking on the large-scale, like through Facebook, a site with hundreds of millions of users, leaves open the opportunity for marketers and advertisers to reach consumers in real time, targeting their efforts based on where users are from one minute to the next. Though many of us have grown accustomed to seeing advertisements based on preferences we’ve listed in our social networking profiles, facing ads for businesses within a certain radius of where we’re sitting takes things to a whole new level.

Whether the location functionality becomes a mainstay of Facebook, à la News Feed, or more of a flop (FarmVille, anyone?), there’s no doubt that this minute-by-minute type of social updating has the potential to change the landscape of marketing and advertising in the social media sphere.

In an interview entitled Customer Service is the New Marketing (see video) Lane Becker provides insight on the power of building relationships with consumers via strong customer service focus using new technology. “Historically, customer service has actually been customer avoidance,” Becker says. But social media has made this tactic virtually impossible.

Companies can avoid the consumer, but it will negatively affect the company in the long run. Consumers and businesses in a social space will interpret the lack of engagement as a lack of concern.

More often, the issue doesn’t stem from a product problem, but rather a lack of understanding on behalf of the consumer. The backlash comes from people who are not clear on the purposes of a company’s actions.

Here are three ways to deal with unhappy consumers in social spaces:

• Listen and act quickly – Always be listening and engaging with the consumer. The social world is about immediate feedback and response—pay attention.
• Acknowledge their frustrations and ask questions – Get to the core of a problem by asking questions. Often misunderstandings can be resolved through simple interactions.
• Validate the issue and find resolutions – If your company made a mistake, own up to it and work to fix it; find common ground to show the consumer that while there might be nothing you can do, you understand where they are coming from and appreciate their feedback.

So why should we embrace the unhappy consumer? In social spaces, the unhappy consumer is a brand’s best friend. Companies build credit with other consumers (and perhaps even with the unhappy consumer himself) by addressing issues and complaints head-on.

Over time, the company won’t need to constantly monitor negative feedback. Loyal consumers who understand how and why the company makes certain decisions will do it for them.

Once a company dives into social media, it has to be ready for the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Brands like Zappos, Southwest Airlines, and WholeFoods have all passed the one million mark. Oprah snagged a million in just 28 days, and currently shares tweets with over three million people. Martha Stewart is pushing her following towards two million by offering prizes through a follower sweepstakes. But is there power in numbers? After all, you can never have too many followers, right?

Social media expert Chris Brogan—a man with quite a few followers himself—knows that numbers don’t always indicate influence. “Never ever ever look at my numbers first. Never. Never look at anyone’s numbers first,” says Brogan. “Decide whether the community responds and interacts and then determine if you’ve got an influencer.”

Across the web there’s countless stories of small, loyal fan groups outperforming the masses. Take for example the woman behind the “Oprah Effect,” who garnered more response from her blog’s 1,000 passionate followers than a well-known technology blog with nearly two million readers.

The idea that numbers aren’t tied directly to influence has long been suspected by social media users, and now a new study,  “Measuring User Influence in Twitter: The Million Follower Fallacy,” has offered proof that quantity doesn’t always equal quality.

With Twitter’s consent a group of researchers scanned over six million active twitter accounts, compiling information on three primary measures of influence: followers, retweets and mentions. The most followed were—no surprise—news sources and celebrity accounts. The most retweeted users were generally content aggregators like TweetMeme or TwitterTips. As for those with the most mentions, celebrities again topped the list.

Though this information is less than ground breaking, the final factor researchers examined, overall influence, turned up some unexpected results.

The group compiled a list of the top 100 influencers in each category. The resulting 300 “all-time influencials” included celebrities, news organizations, and powerful brands, but it also included regular people—users like you and me.

Additionally, the researchers found that very little overlap existed among the three groups. In fact, only 7.1% of top users led in followers, mentions, and retweets. In other words, although those with many followers are more likely to be mentioned and retweeted, a user’s following alone does not necessarily indicate influence.

But then the band’s label, EMI, disabled the video’s embedding feature in hopes of earning revenue from YouTube views. That meant people could no longer post the video on their own blogs or Web sites for their audience to watch—it could only be viewed on YouTube.

Big mistake. Views of the video plunged 90 percent, from 10,000 views per day to just over 1,000 a day. Ouch.

You can’t fault EMI for wanting to profit off the video’s success, but the revenue brought in from YouTube views was so minimal that it didn’t offset the success that comes with a viral video, argued the band’s lead singer, Damian Kulash in a recent op-ed, “WhoseTube?” published in The New York Times. The label underestimated the value of viral content and failed to understand the way information is shared on the Internet:

“Viral content doesn’t spread just from primary sources like YouTube or Flickr. Blogs, Web sites and video aggregators serve as cultural curators, daily collecting the items that will interest their audiences the most. By ignoring the power of these tastemakers, our record company is cutting off its nose to spite its face,” Kulash said.

He makes a point that all advertisers and marketers should take to heart: Don’t ignore the tastemakers. These online portals allow people to spread a message that resonates with them to a larger audience—people who follow their blogs, visit their Web sites and probably share their interests.

Content becomes viral not only because people like it, but also because it can be spread through a medium quickly and easily. So while a message might have the creative qualities it needs to become a hit with an audience, preventing people from sharing it hinders its ability to go viral.

The band’s latest video is a testament to the power of allowing people to share content. State Farm Insurance sponsored the band’s latest video, which allowed it to be embedded on any Web site (though the band has split from the label since then). “This Too Shall Pass” got 1.4 million views in less than 48 hours after it was released.

The discussion garnered over 650 comments from social media nerds like myself, who claim to manage anywhere from ten to a few hundred social media accounts, as either a hobby or for work.  And although the moderator’s intention was to uncover how many accounts the average consumer manages, the resulting data seemed to specifically reflect only expert social media users.

I posed the same question to my Facebook friends, who are more likely average users, and the responses were quite different and more accurately reflected the average user: some where between one and four social media accounts, including: Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

For the “average consumer”, it is nearly impossible to actively manage multiple social media accounts.  These users are bogged down by just managing email, online bank accounts, online credit cards and bills, online shopping accounts, etc.  This observation is important not only for the basis of more accurately describing the online user base, but also for marketers interested in reaching the masses through social networks.

It is crucial that marketers know their target market and most importantly, what social spaces they occupy. Social media is about quality, not quantity.  Merely having a social presence, does not mean that you are actively engaging with the right consumers.

While the moderator’s intentions were good, he posed the question to a particularly biased audience, resulting in a very narrow view of social media usage. To fully understand the average consumer, is to understand barriers to entry—which most discourage their involvement in complex networks?  Knowing which spaces users repeatedly enjoy engaging in is the first step in reaching an audience where they are most receptive.

So how about you?  How many social media profiles do you actively manage as a consumer?

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