Social Media is a fluid idea. MySpace, LinkedIn, Ning, Facebook, Twitter, blogging, and the other social media applications have a lot of mystery surrounding them.

1. Number one is that these are all just tools to be used. Used for what? To have a conversation.
2. Number two is that social media is mainly about being Social. That means having a conversation, even if that conversation is one to many. People do business with people, not faceless companies. Your profiles should not be a logo, but a real live person.
3. Number three is you need to be Transparent and Authentic.
4. Number four is that your Offline Marketing should be working With your Online marketing. It isn’t two separate strategies.  Online and offline need to work together.
5. Number five is that social media is about engagement, not self-promotion (or what I call puking). It is the sincere application of the Law of Attraction or as Zig Ziglar says, “If you help enough people get what they want, you will get everything you want.”

One of the best things you can do is to tell stories. Authentic stories about your customers, your employees, your company values or policies. People remember and can re-tell good stories. Isn’t that what you want?

Like BarCamp, the principles are simple: Give, Share, Learn, and Network. That’s what social media is in a nutshell.

In the session on Corporate Blogging at the AMA Tampa Bay‘s Web Strategies Summit today, I am presenting with Shawna Vercher of VTi-Web and the HuffingtonPost.

Rolling out a blogging platform too. Details here.

Talking with folks, my impression of social media  – all of it – blogging, podcasting, video, twitter, ning, Facebook – it’s all an experiment right now.

Social media impact is hard to measure – like, say, reputation management. But as @unmarketing says, “How do you ROI or measure your other business relationships?”

Right now, a social media experiment for a company would cost about $20K. But in 18 months to 2 years, it will likely cost 10x that. Get in now. Experiment. Fail. Try again.