Anyone who is anyone is tweeting. From Stephen Fry to President Obama, the internet is flooded with micro-blogs from across the world. Twitter traffic has rocketed 974% in the last year, according to Hitwise, and now brands have started to join the micro- blogging party.
Look at Twitter and you can get daily updates from Amazon, the latest news on Coca-Cola or even follow the activities of the Andrex puppy.
It is little wonder. From E4's work for Skins on MySpace, which attracted more than 50,000 fans for the show, through to Cadbury relaunching Wispa on Facebook, we have already seen enough examples of social media's ability to change consumer perception of brands to know it is a genuinely powerful force.
Celia Pronto, marketing director at STA Travel, who set up www.statravelbuzz.co.uk to aggregate content produced by STA travellers, says: "Social media has revolutionised the way people plan trips and share tales of their adventures."
Energy provider E.ON, which developed a Twitter campaign in 2007 and started advertising on
Facebook in 2008, is hosting open debates on the future of energy on its blog. Paul Squires, online and new-media manager, says: "Social media activity is useful for increasing brand awareness and generating sales, but also for proving ourselves to be an accessible company and to facilitate debates."
But we should bear in mind that today's social media will be surpassed by more potent forms.
Tim Gibbon, director at consultancy Elemental, says: "Twitter has interesting competition such as Jaiku and Seesmic waiting in the wings. These companies can gain traction and ground if Twitter doesn't fulfil the needs and expectations of its audience."
So, social media owners are looking carefully at how they can best work with brands. Twitter is examining different advertising models and, last month, it announced the imminent unveiling of a business model with enhanced features for commercial users. And, in what some see as a response to the Twitter threat, Facebook redesigned its home- page specifically to make it more useful to brands.
In the same way, brands must discover how they can best work with social media, as too many rush in without proper consideration. To save brands from the potentially disastrous consequences of ill-conceived campaigns, Media Week canvassed four experts for advice on how brands should approach the brave new world of social media.
Trevor Johnson, Facebook's head of market development, is convinced the March redesign of the social network's homepage has made the site a more attractive proposition for brands.
He says: "Facebook began life as a way for students to connect with each other. Then it spread to colleagues, friends and family, and now brands are joining the party."
However, he stresses that these brands are not gatecrashing the party. "A user can choose to become a fan of a brand and so receive updates from that brand on their homepage," he says. "No one is pushing brands onto them."
Johnson offers Coca-Cola as an example of a brand that is getting its social media strategy right. He says: "Some people set up a group - completely independently of Coca-Cola - where they talked about the drink and the brand. Coca-Cola eventually took over the running of the site and expanded membership from 1.5 million to three million, purely by giving consumers what they wanted on Facebook."
However, he argues that Facebook can be used for more than this type of demand harvesting.
There are a growing number of ways in which brands can use Facebook to generate demand: advertising on the homepage, ads that users can comment on and the opportunity to run events and invite users.
For example, MTV ran engagement ads on Facebook in the four days leading up to its Video Music Awards in September 2008. Damon Burrell, vice-president of consumer marketing at MTV Objective, says: "I was extremely pleased with the engagement ads we ran on Facebook.
"They allowed the audience to comment on what they liked and didn't like in real-time, and so we constantly had a good feel for how well each ad was performing. We'll be advertising further on Facebook."
Pringles, McDonald's and Nutella have all built Facebook communities of more than one million users by understanding how best to use the medium. "Don't use Facebook for campaigns," Johnson advises. "You need to make a long-term investment in understanding your audience, learning from them, adapting your messages to a global platform and letting people know what you can do for them on Facebook."
He is particularly enthusiastic about Facebook Connect, launched in 2008, which allows other websites to use Facebook content. So, a user could be on Netflix and see what his Facebook friends have said about a particular film.
Johnson concludes: "This is the first time Facebook has begun to exist elsewhere on the web and so it is a very important development for us. I expect to see interest in Facebook Connect explode over the next few months."
Ann Longley, digital strategy director at Mediaedge:cia, believes successful use of social media by brands should always begin with an assessment of the existing buzz around that brand. "Social media is a huge area," she explains. "It encompasses blogs, micro-blogs, social networks, Wikis, forums and so on.
"Before any brand wades in, it needs to take time to find out what people are already saying about it in all these spaces. It is only from there that the brand can work out how best to add to that conversation."
Longley has recently worked with Orange, using social media to promote its Orange Wednesdays offer. "Although this is a long-standing offer, it had a low take-up rate," she says.
"So Orange has invested time and money in building film clubs on Facebook and Bebo. The strategy reinforces the brand's association with film, allows users to invite friends and, crucially, builds an active online community."
In the same way, Longley believes Dell's long-term approach to engagement through a wide range of social media is paying dividends.
Dell has picked out the most influential bloggers in its area and spent time ensuring they understand the company's products and customer service activities. It has also entered forums, where it looks for complaints and resolves them and, most famously, Dell has launched IdeaStorm, a site where users can suggest product and service innovations.
Meanwhile, many brands are rushing to use Twitter to disseminate customer service updates and some are linking this to Facebook groups by using the Twitter micro-blog as their Facebook status update. While these are exciting developments, and Longley believes we are at a tipping point where more and more brands will grasp the potential of these media, she warns against rushing in too quickly.
"Dell has spent years getting this right," she says. "It has invested carefully, ensuring it has the skills and infrastructure in place and, crucially, it is doing more than just using social media to tell people how great Dell is. The company is listening to its consumers and building a community through dialogue and relevant action."
"Brands need to avoid getting caught up in the hype," says Gavin Reeder, head of digital strategy at BLM Quantum.
"Far too many brands are saying they want to do something on Twitter, simply because it's the latest buzz.
"Instead, they should work out what they want to achieve and then decide on the most suitable medium. For example, Skittles got a lot of press coverage through its recent Twitter experiment, but what benefit did it produce for the consumer?"
Reeder is referring to the experiment conducted by Skittles on 2 March, when it replaced its home page with an online portal featuring a live Twitter feed alongside content from Facebook, Flickr and YouTube.
Hitwise reported a 1,332% increase in traffic to the site on the following day, but Skittles had to abandon the experiment within two days after users deluged the site with inane and profane tweets.
Reeder contrasts Skittles' strategy with his campaign for Fly Thomas Cook. The company has a smaller marketing budget than rivals such as British Airways and has historically struggled to build a brand, relying on price to increase sales.
Many of Fly Thomas Cook's routes are to places popular with 18 to 34-year-olds, such as Ibiza, and BLM Quantum research showed people in this age group like boasting before and after their holidays almost as much as they enjoy being on the holiday itself.
Reeder says: "We built a widget users could upload to their social media to help them show off to their friends. The widget includes a countdown clock, resort weather updates and the chance to upload photos once holidaymakers have arrived, so they can make their friends back home even more jealous."
Since the campaign launched in September, the widget has been downloaded 13,800 times, creating an 8% year-on-year increase in traffic to the Fly Thomas Cook website.
Reeder concludes: "We will see more of this type of campaign over the coming months and years. Applications will no longer be fun novelties in the vein of the iPint; they will be genuinely useful to consumers, will involve e-commerce more fully and will offer great opportunities for brands."
"There's nothing radically new about social media," says Kieron Matthews, marketing director at the Internet Advertising Bureau.
"Ten years ago, you would have had a couple of people sitting in a pub discussing a brand or a marketing campaign. Social media is no different to that, other than that it is easier for consumers to use and so happens on a larger scale."
Matthews is aware that getting social media wrong can have disastrous consequences for advertisers.
He advises that brands must recognise that social media has not been designed for their use and that they must give consumers a service or content they are unable to find elsewhere.
His three rules for getting the most out of social media are: allowing people to be creative, recognising consumers' contributions and enabling users to share.
Matthews chooses O2 as an example of a brand that has successfully followed these three guidelines.
He explains: "O2 offered a £50,000 party as a prize to the university whose students were most active on Facebook. The company then ran another campaign where the group that drummed up the biggest guest list won the prize of a party at O2 Indigo. Both were massively popular, because they included all three elements of successful social media, and they also raised awareness of O2 among non-users."
He adds: "Brands need to work out where their audience is spending its time. They need to know what those consumers want when they are there and then they need to give them exactly that in a way that is relevant, engaging and straightforward.
"Too many brands make the mistake of being over-elaborate on social media."
However, Matthews cautions that getting all this right takes time and that "too many brands are rushing in".
He concludes: "Just because the campaign is on social media doesn't mean you should abandon traditional marketing best practice.
"We will see many brands having great success in this space over the coming months, but I'm afraid we will also see many ill-conceived campaigns crash and burn."
Top media tweets
"I think I got away with it. Thank goodness Dawn [Airey] does her cuts tomorrow. First good thing she has delivered for me."
Imposter post pretending to be Michael Grade, executive chairman, ITV
4 March
"Mad Men on again tonight. I wonder what non-event we'll be treated to this time. Maybe Don will enigmatically buy a washing machine."
Rory Sutherland, vice-chairman, Ogilvy Group UK
31 March
"Writing speech for ISBA conference Wednesday on the ‘future media landscape' in 20 mins. Ulp."
Richard Eyre, former chairman, GCap
2 March
"If anyone is worried about condoms on TV, remember there used to be a time when a toilet tissue ad was considered too risky and intimate."
Tess Alps, chief executive, Thinkbox
26 March
"How did that happen? There's a new iPod Shuffle in my bag. Someone must have drugged me and dragged me to the Apple store in Manchester."
Simon Waldman, group director of digital strategy and development, Guardian Media Group
16 March
"Grammatically speaking, tweet is an intransitive verb, whereas twitter can act as a transitive or intransitive verb."
Biz Stone, co-founder, Twitter
27 March
"Gonna cut down on the number of celebs I'm following as they're really starting to become annoying and contrived."
Trevor Johnson, head of market development, EMEA, Facebook
9 March
"Enjoying watching the F1 live through the BBC website - perfect stream (no jumps or freezing)."
Nick Burcher, head of social media and audience messaging, Vivaki Nerve Centre EMEA
28 March
"According to today's Sunday Herald I'm a ‘leading advertising guru'. My 10-year-old daughter thinks I now have to wear sandals and a smock."
David Lloyd Reid, managing director, Because Brands Matter
12 April
"Had a lovely long weekend, playing with my new loo roll and chasing my tail in the sunshine!"
Andrex Puppy
14 April
"Hell of a day. Non-stop meetings. Making things better, bigger. Everyone's working hard. Good stuff."
Evan Williams, chief executive, Twitter
8 April
Fools rush in: Four cautionary tales
1. "A Ryanair employee, responding to a blogger who had posted comments about an apparent mistake on the airline's site, called the blogger ‘an idiot and a liar'. The blogger may have been wrong and Ryanair did gain some kudos from its forthright position, but most would agree that calling bloggers ‘idiots' is not the best way to build a loyal and engaged online community."
Colette Wade, marketing director, WebTrends
2. "XFM launched a dedicated network for its listeners, but it was not significantly different to anything else that was running and it closed down after 12 months. The lesson is that creating a successful network or community is not just about getting the standard social networking technology and putting a brand on it. It must add value to a brand and offer its members something unique."
Simon Larcey, managing director, social media consultancy Martech
3."Chevrolet gave users the chance to create their own Chevy Tahoe ad, providing audio, video, pictures and an upload mechanism for publishing, but no means of pre-moderating submissions. Within days, there was an influx of alternative ads that blamed Chevy for global warming, among other crimes. Brands need to put proper controls in place to avoid opening themselves up to risks such as copyright, libel and generally inappropriate content."
Dominic Sparkes, managing director, online moderator Tempero
4."A Conservative party staffer altered the Wikipedia entry for the artist Titian, changing the year of death, so that a barb by David Cameron towards Gordon Brown would appear factually correct. Wikipedia users traced this back to Conservative Party HQ, the national papers got hold of the story and it caused great embarrassment for the Conservatives. The lesson is simple: authenticity is key when interacting on the social web."
Luke Regan, head of social media, Latitude