I first connected with Nathan Dube in 2009 when I fell in love with his now-famous destroy your printer contest. This guy has a knack for making something out of nothing and is the ideal person to talk about guerrilla marketing and the social web on our next installment of Community Week on {grow}:

Guerrilla marketing is about eclectic combinations of music, mystery, art, culture, humor and social dynamics coming together into a sales pitch that doesn’t appear to be a sales pitch. It manifests itself as a hip invitation to join or to be part of a movement.

One of the most infamous recent examples of guerrilla marketing was when the adult swim Network placed electronic signs for its Aqua Teen Hunger Force show around Boston, resulting in a bomb scare and eventual arrests. It didn’t work, but you get the idea. I’ve had to resort to guerrilla tactics myself in my job with Expert Laser Services, primarily because I needed to sell more stuff, but had no money for marketing. I had to get inventive. I had to get guerrilla.

An idea sprang from my own frustrations of having to deal with office laser printers and copiers which simply didn’t work … when you needed them most. In fact, I genuinely developed a hatred for certain pieces of office equipment.

Through Twitter, blogs, Facebook and LinkedIn, I promoted a contest that would award a small prize to the video depicting the most creative destruction of a printer. People blew them up, tossed them out of windows and crushed them with a backhoe. In essence, the social web was providing my content. Remember, I had no budget!

Soon, the project was featured all over the web and was the top video story in an online trade magazine for several consecutive weeks. We actually generated sales leads and new customers from this promotion.

But the most fun guerrilla social media tactic had nothing to do with business, it involved my band, Jabooda.

When the band formed four years ago, I produced several thousand stickers that read “What is Jabooda?” Through friends of friends of friends, these stickers made it on to random spots throughout the United States and even Europe.

When we came out with the second generation of stickers I included a small URL on each one to help people connect with us on the web.  In addition to hitting the streets with the sticker, we got guerrilla with the distribution process, too.

Two of the guys from the band worked for FedEx and started to put a supply of stickers in every truck they unloaded or loaded. Over the course of the year “what is Jabooda” became a bit of a sensation and we gained new fans at FedEx hubs in nearly every state and many countries around the world.  FedEx had become our own personal social media network!

The stickers drove people to our website where we were able to collect names for our mailing list.

About two years ago some of our new fans built a page on Facebook to lobby to get us on the bill at the Wormtown Music Festival, one of New England’s longest-running and most popular music events. We did not get the slot, but we were moving in the right direction.

The following year the competition heated up and Facebook alone wasn’t going to do it. To get into Wormtown’s Strangecreek festival lineup the next year, we had to win a battle of the bands competition. We actually made it to the finals but to win, part of the criteria was the size of our fan base. It was time to use that mailing list!

We got the word out to all those crazy Jabooda fans and were able to attract a large crowd from several different states. In fact, it was the largest crowd of the night and we won, securing our place on the festival bill.

Don’t have a marketing budget? Don’t let it get you down. Go guerrilla!

Nathan Dube has been a long-time member of the {grow} community and is a marketing and sales professional at Expert Laser Services near Boston.

I have one of the world’s best points of brand differentiation — I’m the only business blogger you know old enough to have a daughter-blogger! Lauren is entering her senior year as a journalism major and has been having some intriguing social media experiences. When she told me the following story I was frankly a little weirded-out.   Let’s see what you think about using Facebook as an investigation tool after reading my daughter’s guest post …

Since my last post on {grow}, I’m a year older, I’ve aced all my classes, started my own blog and developed a fondness for coconut ice cream.  Hope you have all been doing well.

But my hiatus is beside the point. Today I am here to tell you a story of intrigue and revelation … a story that might forever change the way you think about Facebook.

This summer I’m spending my time as a development intern for a private, non-profit foundation. One day I was asked to research a professional sports player — who was associated with my foundation — as a potential target for donations. Through public information, a little resourcefulness and my best pal Facebook, you may be amazed at what I found …

The hunt begins

To protect the innocent, we’ll call the professional sports player Dijon Shmoogley.  Fundraising is a sophisticated process and my large nonprofit foundation subscribes to many lists, archives and search engines to determine who might have a “potential to give” (i.e.: who’s got property, boats, salary, stock,  etc.) After exhausting my search through these traditional databases, I reached a dead-end. I found no indication of Dijon’s financial status.

Turning to the Internet, I learned that:

• His brother’s name was Reginald, and he also had played sports in college.
• His mother and father, Sarah and Frank Shmoogley live in Minneapolis.
• Dijon was newly-married to a girl name Jenny Smith from Minneapolis, MN
• His Facebook page is private.

Although I could not pin-down Dijon’s financial status, once I found that he was recently married I immediately began to look for his wife’s assets (isn’t that a vow … “I promise to share my boat, stock portfolio, antique china…”?) as an indication of his economic status.

Facebook takes over

Turning to my best pal …

1. I searched Facebook for “Jenny Smith”… Ha!  2,000 entries.
2. I searched Facebook for Reginald, Dijon’s brother. Found him. His Facebook isn’t set to completely private so I can view his friends (Thinking that he would be friends with his sister-in-law). He isn’t friends with any “Jenny Smith” but he is friends with his mom, Sarah Shmoogley who, in her Facebook picture, is next to a blushing bride … I just found a picture of Jenny Smith!
3. I returned to the search for “Jenny Smith” and quickly find a matching picture of my bride. I opened her profile and it confirmed that her hometown and current city is Minneapolis.

I then went to the online site for the Hennepin County Assessor’s Office (Minneapolis) to search for properties owned by Jenny Smith. (THIS IS COMPLETELY PUBLIC! Go see for yourself!)

There are about 20 Jenny Smiths in Hennepin County who own property, but 16 are registered with spouses who aren’t Dijon Shmoogley. I search the remaining four properties on Google maps and rule out at least three of them for various intuitive reasons. Finally I get down to one rational possibility. But it is a shared homeownership with another woman — Amelia Bedelia.

Hmmm… If the two women are close enough to buy a house together, wouldn’t they be Facebook friends too? I go back to Jenny Smith’s Facebook page and sure enough there’s Amelia Bedelia. I have now confirmed Dijon’s home and am on my way to discovering a significant portion of his net worth.

Game.  Set.  Match.

Even with a name as common as Smith and Facebook’s security settings, I was able to confirm Dijon’s home ownership, value of the home, and other valuable information about the assets of the couple. Social media status updates also can provide other important clues — discussions of vacations at the lake house, promotions, investments and purchases. With this information, I tailored an appropriate fundraising approach and suggested giving level for the Schmoogley Family.

Another fundraising friend of mine grabbed a list of over a thousand new potential donors because a competing charity posted the names of their 1,500 largest donors on a Facebook event page.

I admit this is all a little weird but it’s real and it’s time to wake up. Facebook is not just about social networking. It’s also about social investigating.

Are you feeling a little nervous about this?

Lauren Schaefer is the world’s greatest daughter and will be looking for a job in about six months. I can vouch for her.

In the rapid-fire world of the social web, blogging will surely evolve. What might the future hold for our beloved blogs and how should companies prepare for inevitable change?

Will blogging die? It was trendy a few months ago to predict that micro-blogging (like Twitter) would kill blogging. But Twitter NEEDS blogging. Twitter is like the movie trailer but you still want to watch the movie. About 70 percent of all tweets link back to a blog.  Content publishing through blogs is important.

Publishing platforms tend to last for a long time and I think in many cases blogs have supplanted newspapers, magazines and even books. It’s not going anywhere but it will evolve.

Make me laugh – Blogs won’t die, but boring blogs will. The pressure to produce entertaining content will be keen as the roar of competing content on the social web becomes deafening.

Consolidation — There are too many blogs and it’s becoming difficult for individual bloggers to compete against companies with a staff of paid bloggers.  Look for consortiums to emerge and thrive.  An example of this is the Social CMO blog. A group of individual bloggers contribute to the content of one themed-site.

This approach also creates diversity of thought, consistency of quality content, regularity in publishing, and a greater opportunity to get the critical mass needed to monetize. For corporate blogging, this might mean deputizing many people in your company to blog (IBM is a best practice), or joining others in your industry to contribute to online “trade” content.

Aggregation — Sites that aggregate vertical-themed content are becoming popular time-savers for readers. For example, aggregating top industry headlines can make your blog more attractive as a customer stopping point.

Integration — If you’re working the web well, you probably have content in a number of places like YouTube, Twitter and Slideshare.  Provide a mechanism on your blog for readers to find your content wherever it might be. Look to integrate  features like video, podcasts, forums, job boards, classifieds, chat features, and voting tools to increase value for readers.

Mobile — Today, consumption and creation of content happen not just on traditional computing systems like a laptop, but also on highly mobile devices. Imagine the volume of information we’re going to create and consume when we have ubiquitous broadband speeds on our on-the-go devices.  This trend is making creation even more immediate  and collaborative.  Posterous and Tumblr are trying to tap into in-the-moment blogging but who knows where it will lead? How about instantaneous video blog comments?

New journalism — Blogging is already filling legitimate journalism niches left vacant by the decline in traditional media.  The edges of what is, and isn’t, blogging continue to blur. What does this mean to the corporate blogger? Blogs will increasingly be an important source of news stories, leads and product placement.  How does your industry traditionally get information? If it is through dying institutions such as trade shows and publications, can your blog help fill the gap?

Facebook — No discussion of any aspect of the social web can exclude a mention of Facebook.  This platform has leveraged partnerships, momentum, and an intuitive interface to become the web’s most important social networking property.  For millions of people. this is their ONLY home on the web. How its ubiquity and growing power will affect blogging remains to be seen … but it probably will.  A presence on Facebook has augmented — and sometimes replaced — traditional websites. probably the only thing keeping Facebook from being a dominant blogging platform is the issue of ownership — Facebook’s terms of service dictate that they would own the content.

What ideas and trends do you see out there?  Will blogs evolve or die away?

While President Obama’s use of the social web to connect with voters and raise funds has been well-documented, it may be Scott Brown’s impossible 2010 senatorial win that cements the social web’s role in politics — and perhaps sets it at the forefront of social web innovation.  

To set the stage, this was one of the most important state elections in American history.  Healthcare reform was the centerpiece of the Democratic platform and its success hinged on the simple fact that the party held 60 seats in the U.S. Senate, the majority needed to overcome procedural tactics from the opposition that could prevent a vote. That tenuous balance of power shifted when Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts died of cancer last August. The future of healthcare reform and the political makeup of the Senate apparently would be determined by a special election in that state.  

This Massachusetts senatorial seat has had a Democratic incumbent for 57 consecutive years and Martha Coakley, the state’s well-funded attorney general, was considered a prohibitive favorite to continue that trend.  Yet the victory went to Brown, a little-known Republican state senator, who surged in the final two weeks of the campaign and overcame a 30-point deficit in just over two months.

What could have caused this amazing turn of events?  While his election was certainly aided by growing concern over Democratic policies, tireless campaigning, and some timely Republican funding, his use of the social web, as documented by a new study, may be the tactic that will imprint state and local elections forever.

According to  research conducted by the Emerging Media Research Council, Brown’s effective use of social networking tools including Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. could have been a factor in his surge.  Here were his numbers as of election day:

Facebook Fans:  Brown (70,800), Coakley (13,529) He received 10 times more Facebook interactions than his opponent.

Twitter Followers:  Brown (9,679), Coakley (3,385)  Brown’s Twitter feed dominated his web page.  Both candidates tweeted about the same amount, but Brown offered twice as much original content, providing a more “engaged response.”

Ning:  The “Brown Brigade” had 6,000 members. The platform created a campaign community to announce events, organize outreach, and compile blogs about his campaign.

Blogging:  Did not appear to be a factor. Brown did not have one. Coakley’s discussed campaign events and received few comments.

YouTube Video Views:  Brown (578,271), Coakley (51,173)

While visits to both candidate webpages were about equal, the study concludes that Brown’s use of social media helped drive his election in several ways, including boosting name recognition both in Massachusetts, and out (which helped fundraising). They note that just 51% of Massachusetts voters had heard of Brown in a Nov. 12 poll, and by Jan. 14 his name recognition was at 95%.

An irony of this development is that Democrats have received the bulk of the credit for progressing campaign-oriented social media networks, but were out-done by the Republicans.  In fact, a report released this year found that Republican lawmakers were using Twitter more than five times as much as Democrats.  Leading tweeters are Sen. John McCain and South Carolina Senatoe Jim DeMint, who was determined by one algorithm to have more Twitter “clout and influence”  than any other senator.

Clearly, the use of social media will now be inexorably linked to political campaigning.  But the more interesting prospect may be what is yet to come. With the intense research, resources and scrutiny given to the use of the social web as a tool of stakeholder engagement, could political parties emerge as principle technology innovators?

 Politics as social web innovator and driver brings up some other interesting questions:

• How do social web lessons from the business world translate into the world of politics?
• How will social media policies apply to political campaigns … to prevent potential embarassment from over-zealous tweeters, for example? 
• How will these lessons translate in other countries, especially where social media adoption is just beginning?
• Why weren’t blogs more important as a mechanism for political response and establishing a voice of authority? Are they afraid of putting their stands in writing?
• What business opportunities will emerge from this insatiable need for political social media consulting?

Illustration: New York Times

Neicole Crepeau is among the smartest bloggers on my social media radar.  Imagine my surprise when out of the blue she sent me this email: “Your blog made me think about some things and I’ve written an article for you. Here it is.”   Isn’t that cool?  So I get to take the day off and we can all enjoy Neicole’s unique perspective today …

Mark’s post Does the social web primarily benefit service companies? discussed some of the obstacles to greater use of B2B social media marketing, particularly by small and medium businesses.  As he points out, businesses must do a better job of integrating social media into their overall marketing strategy.  However, there is an even bigger obstacle to an expansion of business use of the social web, and it is in the networks themselves. 

Wake up, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and even LinkedIn.  You might have started as a lark, a side-project done just for fun.  Now, you’re a business.   But you’re not acting like one.

These popular social networks have failed to recognize where their bread and butter is going to come from. Even YouTube, under Google, continues to focus on ads as its potential source of income. It has yet to make that work. Chances are, that model will never be successful enough to turn the profit they need.

I see a clear evolution of social networks, as outlined in my video and blog post of December 8th. It begins with a great idea, like micro-blogging or connecting friends via status updates. That draws an initial, small set of users. The customer base expands as the social network transforms and improves.

But end-users won’t pay for these services—not enough, at least. The social networks now need to look to the corporate world to make a profit.  Remember, you have two customers, guys:

• End-users
• Business users

You’ve correctly focused on building a great tool for end-users, and you need to keep doing that. However, you also need to recognize that business users are an equally important customer. Now, go focus just as fervently on them!

Google built a great search solution that end-users love—but weren’t going to pay for. They turned to innovative corporate solutions and found a goldmine.  Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn need to do the same. But NOT through the same tired technique of ad serving.

These companies need to take a page from the marketing 101 handbook and listen to their customers — business customers — and find innovative solutions for them. What do businesses want to do via your site? Marketing … maybe customer support?  What do they need in order to do that successfully?  Ways to engage and maintain contact with consumers?  The ability to find/target the right consumers? Mechanisms to track and measure their engagement and ROI over time?

They are your customers.  Solve their problems. Make money.

Look at Ikea’s photo-tagging campaign on Facebook. There’s a creative new revenue stream.  How can you make that method available to lots of businesses, with a low barrier of entry/use? How can you monetize it?  Could YouTube do something similar, by making it possible for businesses to find and tag their products in user-supplied videos? Or make it beneficial for users themselves to do product placements in their videos.  Businesses would love to promote those user-created placements!

When social networks treat the corporate world as a key customer, the innovation will really start that will drive businesses to the social web in droves and drive profitable new business models from themselves.

Neicole Crepeau is a 25-year veteran of the tech industry, with experience in technical writing, usability testing, user experience/interaction design, website design, and product management. Her outstanding blog can be found at http://nmc.itdevworks.com/

One of the questions I hear frequently is, “Should I have one or two social media accounts for family and business?”

My strong recommendation is that you keep family and business separate.  The information needs of your family are going to be much different that those of your clients, right?  Why clutter customer feed streams with news of family dinners and disclosures about your husband’s snoring?  On the flip side, why bore grandma with re-tweets from the Wall Street Journal?

The argument I’ve heard against this is that you should simply be authentic and talk about whatever is going on in your life.  I’m hoping most social media participants are growing beyond this naieve  and simplistic view of the channel.  Nobody in business really wants you to be “authentic” if that means disclosing every little fact of your life.  I think a more accurate and practical goal is to remain “open and honest” in your communications.

Another argument against the complexity of two ( more) accounts is the risk of confusing accounts and disclosing something personal on a business account when you thought it was a family account.

Still, I’ve found the best strategy is to keep it clean.  Respect business accounts by minimizing the family details. That’s not to say you shouldn’t be personable and refer to family details on a business account, and by all means establish multiple accounts (if you have the time!) and enjoy all that the social web has to offer.

Thinking I’ll have a few arguments about this one?

Illustration: Christy Tanner