"In today’s proactive culture, people do not want to be spoon-fed content, forced to watch commercials, be restricted by paid programming or bombarded by points-of-view they don’t agree with. What they do want is an a la carte menu—the ability to pick and choose the content they consume the way they pick and choose what to eat, drive, and wear.”

Carla Ranno and Shana Lory

“When marketers see social media as yet another channel to drive a message down, they’re missing the boat. Worse, they’re making themselves look insensitive, unpleasant, and not worth the community’s time. It’s a lose-lose. Take the time to understand the digital natives, and your results will be MUCH better.”

Chris Brogan
Vice President, Strategy and Technology
CrossTech Media

“To succeed, we need to stop standing between them (consumers) and their content and actually be the content they want to see.

When it comes to video, advertisers and agencies need to focus their energies on producing content that has sufficient appeal to attract, engage, and retain the consumers with whom they hope to build lasting relationships.”

Greg Verdino
Crayon

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)