Today, you can start by publishing the content and exposing it directly to partners, customers, and the press alike. As your community of employees, peers, and customers interacts with it, they may share and build upon it – this part may be very uncomfortable for those who have not yet given up on controlling the message.

However, the interaction does not need to occur without you. You can be at the center of it by facilitating, listening, and participating to the conversation. In fact, the more active you are in the social spaces, the more likely it is that your content will be shared among people with a Creative Commons mindset – they will give you credit.

Which in turn will stimulate more pull for your content (RSS), higher search ranking (Google), and potentially buzz that could attract the attention of the press and get you published in places that have a wider distribution (but not necessarily a higher engagement).

In Wave, I see more than a new generation of email cum wikis cum Twitter cum groupware. Because it can feed blog and web pages and Twitter, I see a new way to create content, collaborative and live. I see a new way to make news.

Imagine a team of reporters – together with witnesses on the scene – able to contribute photos and news to the same Wave (formerly known as a story or a page). One can write up what is known; a witness can add facts from the scene and photos; an editor or reader can ask questions. And it is all contained under a single address – a permalink for the story – that is constantly updated from a collaborative team.

# the content – what value components will allow your publics to derive self-worth and interest?
# the multimedia – this goes way beyond the social media release to access and potential community involvement
# the conversation – what’s the story from the point of view of the community?
# the social aspect – this is where the information generates engagement

Engaging recipients is powerful but because the they are most likely swamped with information, it pays to know the right conversations the audiences want to engage in.

Twitter is today’s fashionable way to get the news out, she says some newer platform may take its place: “It will morph, but it’s still all about relationships.”

Neither of these studies venture outside of traditional “news” databases to analyze the impact of using social media, blogs and so on, to disseminate news. My guess is future studies will prove that the impact on markets comes from getting the word out, by any means, as long as you are reaching the investing audience.

Bottom line: Issuing news has a measurable benefit for public companies in the capital markets – increasing volume, reducing trading costs and reducing volatility. More frequent news is better. Getting more reporters or news outlets to write about the company amplifies the benefit. That’s what the quantitative evidence says.

# 1) Do research in existing social networks to find out what communities are talking about the most in context of your brand
# 2) Match that with your own corporate website and enable users to login with their existing social identies
# 3) Start with a real time event or conference that gives you a limited period of time to trial and experiment. 5) Realize the way brands measure leads in the future won’t be by name and email rows in databases –but perhaps by friends, fans, and followers.
# 4) Demand that your community or CMS vendor provide the tools needed for this to work, or work with vendors that provide this service rather than manage yourself.

Social Media has evolved beyond a series of platforms that enable content publishing, sharing, and discovery into a genuine, peer-to-peer looking glass into the real world conversations that affect the perception, engagement, and overall direction of the brands we represent.