I’ve been on the speaking circuit on social business. If you skim my recent slides you’ll see many of the same points you make in your blog post. http://www.slideshare.net/bernbay/4-marketing-trends-brands-can-not-ignore.

You may remember me mentioning to you that I’m working on creating a new social business internet TV show. It’s planned to launch in Q1. I look forward to having you on my show, probably several times since there is so much to discuss on this topic.

I did not mean to imply that testing is the approach every business should take. I was simply reporting what IBM is doing to attempt to become a social business. I think they have achieved some positive results but I am not suggesting that this is appropriate for every business, or even many businesses.

I do hope to see marketing play a leading role, no matter what approach we take.

Thanks for your patience with my blog comment issues and for the great insights.

To Elaine’s point, there have always been employees (and customers) who were natural evangelizers for companies and brands, and to Jonathan’s point, those people are going to be your best candidates to become social media ambassadors. Not everyone is going to want to do this.

There is absolutely a top down issue. If people love coming to work every day and believe in your company or product, you will naturally have more who do. Social media is then just a platform (or collection of platforms) for bringing the voice of the evangelist to a wider audience.

Administering a test to find these people sounds both clinical and cynical, and I can understand why Elaine would see that as an attempt to form a mercenary army of social media ambassadors. No doubt many companies will approach it that way, which is a somewhat chilling thought! But, people can smell fakeness on social media and that’s not going to cut it.

I do agree with you that there is a big role for marketing to play in identifying these people, and equipping them to use social media to do what they would do naturally. The social media landscape can be overwhelming, even for the pros, and that keeps many would-be evangelizers relegated to promoting companies and brands person to person.

This is going to require a different skill set, and a different approach from the marketing department. Marketers will need to let go of the idea that they alone are the creators who control the brand and the messaging. Instead, they’ll need to become trainers, coaches and leaders for many independent creators. It may be a tough transition for some, but helping people spread the word in their own voices will ultimately be far more powerful than any ‘messaging’ the marketing department could dream up.