In this new market space carved out by social media, every product, every topic you can name from fashion to office supplies to politics  can be discussed, argued over and researched and bought as part of a vast conversation among people interested in it.

I’m in the market for an iPAd but before I purchase I ask around first-on twitter, facebook, via chat groups:  “What do you think? Is it any good? Has anybody checked it out? What’s the real battery life? Recommendations? Horror stories?

My friend is in the market for a good desk dictionary for her children and it’s off to Amazon.com but not just to whip out her credit card but to find first a large number of opinions already expressed.

“I love the look of this book and the publisher did a great job but I made a mistake of buying it without realising that it was first published over seven years ago."

"I’ve had this book for two days and my children and  I keep going back to it. What a wonderful reference."

On election night in Trinidad and Tobago I looked at TV with my husband and had heated discussions, but I spent as much time on Twitter conversing, laughing, sharing.

In all these conversations there is a lot of debate not just  about price (product), value ( service), but about the other currencies of location, position, reputation and every other quality  that is subject to rising and falling opinion.

When I think about it though, all this new buzz is nothing new, in one sense. The only advertising that was ever really effective was word of mouth which is nothing more than conversation. Now word of mouth has gone global.  The one to many technology which  brought significant benefits  to mass production and then mass marketing for years is  now available to ordinary Joe and Jane. You and I. And we’re eager to make up for up for lost time.

That’s why I think the the way Twitter and Facebook  worked during the T&T  elections and the evening of the results was so instructive. Advertising, media headlines and grandiose claims from the hustings had their part to play but  more importantly we  found ourselves connected to one another in a space  that enabled us just to explore  various realities behind the claims.

The sound of those conversations on social media threw into stark relief the monotonous, biased, self centered, and  many times inaccurate  drone emanating from  the usual channels and instead offered the pure sound of the human voice not the elevated speeches, or the headlines that are designed to sell papers.

Certainly not all of these voices were unbiased but  collectively  they told their own ‘truths’ based on their  real experiences. To some this is dangerous, it represents a loss of control.

On the other hand, I think the ability to share, reach out and seek the mass opinions and reflections of others in one social space  has all sorts of powerful implications not just for purchasing products or sharing our experience but also for  shaping how we receive and share  news. In looking at the whole Dudas catastrophe in Jamaica never once did I turn to  the newspapers as a first source but relied on the tweets of my regional colleagues to direct me to  other rich voices (sometimes first hand accounts) and conversations emanating from the Web.

To call social media a platform denies it hospitality. Whatever happens here is more than commerce, more  than content, more than push and pull and clicks  and traffc and e-anyhting. 

This is  a real place where people can go to learn, to talk to each other, and do business together

It is a bazzar where customers look for wares, vendors spread goods for display and people gather around topics that interest them.

It is a conversation at least and again.

1) We sit with company in  restaurants, movies and at the beach  with our eyes half glued to our mobile phones.

2) We used to pick up our mobiles to simply look busy, nowadays our mobiles are things that keep us perpetually busy. 

3) We  spend a good deal of  our time pecking away at  google, facebook, twitter, stumbleupon  etc

4) That our thumbs hurt.

5) That we constantly exchange action for stimulus, action for stimulus in the virtual fast lane.

6) That it is time we took back control.

You remember Lou Dobbs? 

He  was  the longtime CNN reporter who resigned from the network  due to mounting pressure  from media watchdogs and groups (representing Latinos and immigrants) for comments televised on the network. Many (liberals) alleged that those comments were defamatory. 

The Dobbs resignation though is a great case study (as told to  E politico)  of  how small social media budgets can create great impact.

The bold comments are my own.

Find the story behind the story to get the attention of mainstream press.             

“We would make an amazing ad to drive donations, yet too controversial for CNN to accept. If the campaign raising enough money to air the ad during "Latino in America" wasn't enough to generate press, then the placing, the inevitable rejection and subsequent runs on other networks would. All the while, MediaMatters and Presente.org would run their own petition to drop Lou Dobbs, thus building a narrative that appreciated the commitment of the coalition.”

2) Create multiple ads for your facebook platform, it keeps the message fresh and can be segmented for various  audiences.

“We needed to gain and keep the press's attention, so we deployed digital paid media to target media employees specifically. The Facebook feature "workplace targeting" was our primary weapon. 

We targeted all CNN/AOL-Time Warner employees with 500 points per day (the Facebook max). We ran dozens of different ads, testing message hooks from "Why did you let Lou Dobbs broadcast from a hate rally?" to "Why is CNN profiting off racism?" We even called out CNN's on-air talent by name: "Hey Soledad O'Brian, why don't you ask Lou Dobbs what it's like to be Latino in America," to ensure the CNN staff was sending screenshots between departments. We also workplace targeted the staff of the 25 biggest political and national news outlets in the country.

To those CNN employees, it must have seemed like we were making massive ad buys when, in fact, what we did cost us about $1,750. In a matter of days, about 900 mainstream media employees (one in four from CNN) had seen the TV spot and knew what we were up to.

The majority of the Facebook budget was spent running the ads to progressives and Latinos with a hard fundraising ask. ) Not only were we delivering about 500,000 ad impressions per day, but we were also raising money from our clicks. 

By the end, the ads were paying for themselves, which allowed us to spend much of this budget again on TV.

3) A combination of owned and earned media work in tandem and will help to reinforce your  strategy

“Within 24 hours, we also launched banner ads that paired the best performing imagery, hook and call-to-action from the Facebook ads on political blogs. 

We understood that blogs tend to break political news first and reporters read them compulsively. 

About $10,000 was enough to buy the entire available liberal blog inventory in both Atlanta and Washington, D.C., as well as all of the major Latino political blogs nationwide for over a week. 

More importantly, because bloggers approve the ads that run on their sites, these ads ensured sympathetic bloggers knew the message right away. This made the client's aggressive blog outreach much easier.”

4) Google remains a key element  in an on-line strategy

We also leaked the story of the digital buy to ClickZ -- one of the most well-read digital advertising publications. We choose them because an editor named Kate Kaye is the foremost journalist covering political digital ads, and they are exceedingly well syndicated and search engine optimized. (Anything that they post triggers dozens of Google Alerts.) This post led to a post by MediaBistro -- the insider rag for journalists -- and the story exploded from there.

Soon, we were the top return for Google, Google News and Google Blog Search for the phrase "Lou Dobbs."

Here  are  the takeaways

The size of the audience you reach online matters a lot less than reaching the right  audience, in this case not just reporters but also bloggers and activists who could help spread the word and keep the pressure on CNN.

Finally, careful targeting can make a campaign seem omnipresent and a far more potent force than it might actually be.

Marketers need to be aware  all these platforms  and include them  in their own strategic arsenal. When faced with an angry public marketers and communicators  should be ready to engage immediately and  not  be coming to terms with the functions and usage of social media.

Just came across another facebook page that looks as if it belongs in the corporate graveyard. 

Too much organisational speak. 

Too little engagement. 

Not enough meaningful content. 

The resource allocation seems poor. 

Brand custodians are forgetting  that social media is meaningless  without relevant, consistent, and useful content and while it is easy to get excited about all  the free distribution platforms, it is the content planning, the resource allocation  and the execution that requires careful consideration. 

The number one question you should be asking before pitching  your corporate   facebook page: Is what is our content strategy? The second is: how much will it cost  (content management is not free)?  And finally:  whose responsibility will it be to distribute the content?

If you have not even considered these questions then you might as well get your shovel all ready for the graveyard digging.

The fact is that many newsrooms are run by traditional minded journalists who resent new media’s transformation of old school reporting.

“ How can we trust these bloggers,” is a popular grumble among editors. And then there is the fear  of citizen journalists and that ‘their’ kind of reporting isn’t really journalism but more right wing/left wing perspective, knee jerk writing and sensationalism.

Some of that may be indeed be so, but if you’re an editor you would have to be living under a rock not to have noticed how social media has changed the way journalists communicate  with the public. 

For starters, Twitter (one of the fastest growing social communites)  is like a focus group on steroids. For a journalist it can  provide perspective, new angles for stories, quotes and even  a broadening  of  viewpoints. These insights are invaluable and  more important, critical for today’s news gathering procss.

I say its time editors stop this old vs new media fight. New media is here. Get over it.  Their  key  focus should be  how to integrate the two and more importantly how to build  a business model that sustains democracy’s most important asset. 

Oh yes, all that and getting the budget from the boardroom to make sure all  reporters have mobile technology.

Quick.  Do you have the answers? I bet I can guess.

You’re afraid of what people will say. 

You wonder if you’ll lose control. 

You think about who is going ‘man’ all the platforms? 

And you’re probably worried that if it works, if you really  get 500,000 people signed up on Twitter, what next?  

If I smacked right on top  the nail’s head, it’s only because you’re not alone. These fears are common among communicators as we grapple  with developing a social strategy for our organisations.  But the questions I think help to  zero us in our objectives. And that where we should start.

More questions though.

Should you go for  those 500,000 followers or fans?  Should  you try to have 30 “conversations” per day? And what if a customer complains, whose to respond?

Again, the answers in most cases must tie back to strategy. Social solutions must solve problems for the company not create more.   

So here’s the final round of questions. What is it about social media  that  excites you? And what causes you to be concerned?

If you’re a subscriber or  get this feed from RSS , I’d appreciate a visit to the blog’s comment  section to share your thoughts.  

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1. You don’t have to be strategic with social media. Tactics may be easy to do (I’ll start a facebook account, let’s get the CEO to blog) but it’s strategy that will allow you to define your objectives and  track and measure your results.  If you’re spending 40 hours a week on tactics and  3 hours  on strategy then  don’t be surprised when your campaign crumbles.

2. Social media is free. Not quite. Sure, the platforms are all free but they’re also like hungry beasts that require constant feeding. Effective content marketing is what distinguishes a great social media strategy/campaign. Consider, do the people on your team have the time and skills to do the feeding? If not, then outsource. But please don’t set up accounts unless you can commit the resources to providing regular updates and dialoguing with users.

3. If you build it they will come.  Go back to point 1. You might get giddy with excitement when you see the numbers on your Twtitter account rise. But wait. Are the folks there engaged? Are they sharing your links? Making your campaign viral?  Effective social media campaigns require you to engage on other  sites, reference other users, chat and  respond. They may come but the numbers are really irrelevant if most of the folks on your sites are passive.

4. So many platforms mean my messages will be diffused. Nope, it’s quite the contrary.  The best social media experts use one hub and diffuse  messages from there. Okay, here’s an example.  Create a post on your blog. Later, Twitter that same post to drive traffic there. A phrase from your blog can generate discussion on your facebook account. And you can even make  your post broadcast friendly and develop YouTube content. See  what I mean?  Four platforms, one base. And I have only just gotten started.

5. Social media is a great place to dump all the corporate stuff. Whoa!  It really isn’t. Remember this is an informal network and not a digital dumping ground for content. Conversation drives it. Put material  that is clear, concise and resonates with people.

The  list is very instructive but a misnomer because it should really be  entitled, Top 25 'Trini' brands on Twitter.

Still the the list a good one because it contains  all the dos and dont's marketers should employ when using social media.

Take a look at the final company rounding off the Top 25.  It's proud day  at Mango Media Caribbean.

I had an interview with the Trinidad Guardian newspapers this week; they wanted my take on the social media phenom, Twitter. Here's the transcript.

You twitter a lot? Do you love crafting messages in 140 characters or less?

Well, yes. But then I love everything social media. Twitter. Facebook. Blogging. Flickr. Squidoo. I am very active on all platforms but mostly proud of my blog (www.mangomediacaribbean.com/blog) where I write on PR, media and communication issues. 

With regard to Twitter, there are really two aspects above my love affair with Twitter

On the business side, Mango Media Caribbean's twitter interactions allow me to build the reputation of my 11-year strategic Public relations one tweet at a time, in ways I could not have imagined even three years ago. New Web 2.0 phenomena like Twitter provide marketers with the potential to gain rich insights into consumer behaviour and attitudes. Twitter for me is like a perpetual focus group on steroids.

I was reading just yesterday that firms who use and engage with social media have seen their profits grow by 25 per cent more than those firms who have not, and the reason takes them right back to their participation on the various social media platforms.

Twitter is a great and effective way to reach an audience, build a corporate image and in the end even generate sales. On the business side we connect with other global professionals in PR, we swap stories (of course in 140 words or less); we share links, our knowledge and promote the work we do. On Twitter you've got to be consistent, if you're concerned about having real connections.

How would you describe Twitter?

It's like a CB radio and having different channels on, all at once. The best thing is that you get to select the channels that are meaningful. On some channels are your friends, family, and on others business acquaintances, people who you find interesting micro blogging about their lives, interests and sharing news and information. My reliance on Google to find out what's happening in the world or even to search for

information has decreased since my participation on Twitter.

For instance when we lost power this week, I tweeted and asked my POS network if they too were without power, within seconds I found out from other Tweeters that the entire city was without electricity.

Are there any pros & cons?

Does it get too loud and too noisy sometimes with all the chatter going on? You bet, but you can always turn down the noise. I have interviewed candidates for jobs who first made contact with me on Twitter. Someone once tweeted their key points of the CV to me. More importantly I have a band of interesting 'friends" whose lives I participate in all on Twitter.

What works for me of course won't work for everyone. I tweet every day but much less on the weekends. I love to go on twitter when I get in the office and catch everyone's “Good-mornings". Other tweeters chime in with their greetings. The camaraderie is fantastic.

Sure, it gets distracting. Really there are two kinds of tweeters, those who are focused and disciplined and offer so much great content like Georgia Popplewell and Basant, two local Tweeters who I admire very much.

And then there are those who use it as a defence mechanism, an opportunity to stay busy while neglecting the things in real life. When I observe them going at it all day, I wonder if that's a good choice. Whatever, it is their personal choice and that's alright by me but I tend to be slice and serve my tweets very precisely. I run a successful PR firm so I've got to be focused. I do offer this disclaimer though I have a social media assistant who’s responsible for building our corporate side.

Any more advice for would be Tweeters?

Jump in and get involved. One reason I encourage people to just do it is that the act of doing it stretches your voice, hones it almost. It also narrows and broadens your focus (all at the same time) on the things and people you find interesting. It's easy just to sit back and observe or follow people like all the celebrities but I think that gives you a false sense of intimacy.

To the people who say to me that they didn't think they have anything interesting to say, I say to them: "What! Are you really that boring? Boring at dinner? Boring on a date? Boring as a parent? Boring as a student? Boring on your vacation? Boring at a football match? That boring? Really? When you position the question like that their answer is always, no.

You can find me on Twitter at judettepuglisi.