Because people have developed trust, they are communicating as open human beings and making connections. Twitter, Second Life, Facebook, etc. are all just conduits and catalysts for this rather wholesome process. Don’t worry about the purpose, or getting it right (there are better approaches, but just play a bit; you don’t even have to be yourself… people will help you along). 

You really can’t screw it up too bad because how the platforms are used will be radically different from person to person. Like Second Life—just stop mass marketing.  Start creating or sponsoring wholesome and good things and let nature take its course.  Evangelists, fans and friends will form if you are just receptive and make an investment into the people. Loosen up—let them have control.”

Wayne Porter
Social Media & Security Researcher
Co-Founder Revenews.com

“Today, they (marketers) are at an intersection of opportunity and challenge. Their opportunity is to become content producers on par with the mainstream media that have long been the gatekeepers. The challenge is that the online marketing world still lacks consensus on how to measure online success…

The ever-increasing influence of search and recommendation engines only raises the stakes as Google has become the universal home page, an army of consultants has sprung up to figure out how to beat the system. Marketers that hew too closely to their recommendations risk delivering boatloads of traffic to content that is, well, junk.”

Paul Gillin
Social Media Expert & Author, The New Influencers
(via B2BOnline)

“When you look at places like Myspace and Facebook… the teenagers aren’t scared of pedophiles.  They aren’t running away from people that can exploit them that way—they’re running away from marketers and advertisers.  That’s one thing that we have to be respectful of and aware of… as business people, marketers or people that want to get word out about organizations or causes… so that when we approach these different networks we do it in such a way that it’s not offensive. In some cases it can be offensive by us just being there…

Innately the people who participate in these networks—right off the bat—do not want this to be a place where businesses go in to try and sell them something and conduct business.  This is a place where they go for refuge… to socialize… to meet people and to share ideas and build relationships with people personally.”

Giovanni Gallucci
Social Media & Online Community Expert
Gallucci.net
(via Phil Windley’s IT Conversations interview)

“I was surprised when getting involved with this conference how many people could not distinguish between strategy and tactic.”

Kevin Ryan
Incisive Media / Search Engine Strategies

“Affiliate marketing programs are commonly used by large and small companies as a low-risk means of obtaining new customers. However, some affiliate marketers have been plaguing search engine marketers for years....

When your ad is competing against an affiliate ad, the one with the higher quality score wins, so a bidding war begins for visibility. As a result, costs per click increase and the advertiser is the loser....

Do not be afraid of affiliate programs. Enact an Affiliate Rules of Engagement that prohibits using paid search as a channel.”

Janel Landis
SendTec Inc.

“Virgin real-time data + arbitrage identification algorithms + understanding investor flaws + algorithms to target mental flaws + direct and indirect market influence = $

As I see it, competitive forces between traditional publishers, market saturation from the bottom, and market influence from the likes of data hoarding companies like Google are going to quickly commoditize anything that is sold as information. To survive you need emotional touch-points that consumers share.

A friend of mine was a leading affiliate for an information product, selling over $300,000 worth of someone else’s service. How did they reward him? They cloned his sales channel and killed his business model. Everything that is not a memory, brand, or experience is becoming a commodity. What prevents you or I from becoming a commodity?”

Aaron Wall
SeoBook.com