There's an old anecdote that if you drop a frog into boiling water, it will immediately jump out because of the intense heat. But if you put the frog in lukewarm water and slowly dial up the heat, it will gladly be boiled to death.

What does boiling frogs have to do with digital marketing, you say? Well, I had the pleasure of listening to David Kirkpatrick discuss his new book, The Facebook Effect, the other night and was reminded of this old anecdote. Particularly as he described Mark Zuckerberg, one of the founders of Facebook and its current CEO, you get the sense that Zuckerberg is the master chef, boiling up his tasty concoctions and we, the 500 million of us that use Facebook, are the frogs.

It's obvious that Zuckerberg has a distinct vision for Facebook, and that is to be, in the most pure sense of the word, ubiquitous. Besides amassing shear numbers of people (nearly half of all Americans and one third of the world's online population are users), the desire is to weave Facebook so deeply into our lives that it almost goes away because it's everywhere (kind of like the Internet itself). To forever change what we say, share and do with our friends.

To achieve something so lofty takes ambition and also the resolve to deliver what your users want and need, even if they don't know it yet themselves (as Henry Ford once said, "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses"). As we have seen when the news feed was first introduced, Beacon was enabled, the homepage changed, or recently with privacy settings, abrupt changes upset people.

They protest (in the irony of ironies, on Facebook), forming groups and Fan pages asking for things to go back to the way they used to be. And sometimes they are successful in getting features rolled back or removed. But sooner or later, we end up there anyway--it just takes longer and with a more gradual adjustment of the proverbial heat. As Kirkpartick mentioned in a blog post about a year ago, "Facebook has no choice but to keep updating the service as user behavior and the Web evolves rapidly." Evolve or die, yes, but tread lightly when you bring it to the masses.

The lesson here for the rest of us? Oftentimes, we as marketers know what our people want (we've seen the data, mined the insights, sized the market, etc...) but need to deliver it to them in a way that they will embrace, not revolt against. If Facebook has shown us anything, it's that if you turn the heat up too high, the frogs jump out, but warm it slowly and we'll happily stay in the water.

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Last week, I had the pleasure of joining Jim Dayton, Doug Levy, and Stephanie Noble in a panel discussion at the "Social Media for Pharma" conference in Princeton, NJ, and one question that we were asked to answer has been rattling around in my brain since then: can pharmaceutical and healthcare brands participate within foursquare?

Foursquare—a social network where people "check-in" to physical locations, earn points based on their activity, and "unlock badges" based on the type and frequency of their check-in—is surging in popularity, with nearly 1.5 million users. While it may have a fraction of the users of larger networks like facebook (400 million+ users) or twitter (100 million+ users), foursquare has shown that people are willing to engage when you add geo-location to social networks. That Twitter has added and Facebook is adding location-based services only emphasizes the trend.

Naturally, marketers and brands see this growth and want to capitalize on the opportunity. But it heightens an issue that many still struggle with—how can I, as a brand, participate and engage within social environments?

We know that banner ads are not particularly effective within social networks, even with more sophisticated targeting and relevance capabilities, because of the nature of the environment (to use an often-used analogy, if social networks are like a cocktail party, imagine someone wearing a sandwich board, jumping up and down, trying to get your attention, while you were chatting with a friend at a cocktail party....is this going to be interesting or relevant to you?). Engagement is possible when brands are able to provide something of value to people, whether it's customer service, helpful tips, cost savings, or a Whopper.

Which brings us back to foursquare and whether or not healthcare brands could ever play in this space.

As I mentioned during the panel discussion, like most digital examples within our industry, we can look to other verticals like packaged goods and "pure" consumer brands for inspiration and guidance. Starbucks is probably the most obvious example of a brand that has seamlessly integrated themselves into the foursquare experience, both with their Barista badge (which I have proudly unlocked) and the special it offers to the mayor of each store ($1 off a new however-you-want-it Frappuccino), but many other examples exist on both a national and local level:

• Pinkberry offers points towards exclusive events, and 10% off your order in NY and TX
• The state of Pennsylvania has partnered with foursquare to create new badges and "inspire people to take road trips, traverse the state, and uncover the best eateries, shopping spots and historical venues."¹
• Here in NY, Tasti-D-Lite offers points and rewards towards your "TastiRewards" loyalty program, plus discounts at certain locations

Will we ever see an "I have Erectile Disorder" badge for 3 refills of your Viagra at the same pharmacy? Um, probably not. Using foursquare's leaderboard to add a little healthy competition to making better lifestyle choices like exercising and making better food choices? Why not. OTC brands offering coupons for the mayor of the local CVS or Walgreens? Probably.

The bottom line is that brands, regardless of the category, can play here if they respect the environment that they're in (unique places for social interaction, not advertising), get creative with their approach, and bring value to the people they are trying to reach.

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The 140 Character Conference—the "largest worldwide gathering of people interested in the effects of the real-time internet"—took place April 20 and 21 here in New York. Unlike many other conferences, the #140conf (as it's tagged) is built around our short attention spans and the pithy, "bite-sized" nature of Twitter, limiting speakers to about 15 minutes on stage and jamming more than 70 sessions in over two days.

While a day full of meetings prevented me from attending live until Tuesday afternoon, I was able to follow the buzz on Twitter, follow live via Ustream, and watch archived video of any of the presenters (a few of my favorites were Ann Curry, Gary Vaynerchuk, and MC Hammer). The sessions that I did catch left me with a few interesting thoughts to consider, especially as I think about our clients and how social media can help transform our idea of wellness.

One in particular is an idea called "Co-opetition"—that businesses which normally compete with each other can find ways to cooperate that are mutually beneficial. This was brought to life by Alf LaMont, who is responsible for marketing and development at The Comedy Store, on the Sunset Strip in LA. Like most local businesses, The Comedy Store competes with other local venues (The Roxy, The Viper Room, etc...), for their share of foot traffic and discretionary dollars that are spent in the neighborhood (do I go have a beer while watching a comedy show? or while listening to live music?).

Then in the mid-to-late 2000's things changed ("the regulars" got older, rents increased, people went elsewhere, and worst of all, the economy took a nose dive) and everyone found themselves fighting a new enemy: an overall decline in revenue and sales that was forcing their neighbors to close their doors and applying pressure on all of them to survive. Rather than look internally at ways they could independently weather this storm, venues like The Comedy Store looked externally, found common ground with their competitors, and took action so that they would all benefit.

Realizing that a healthy block was good for everyone (as they say, a rising tide lifts all boats), the venues on The Strip saw that by raising the overall value of the neighborhood, it would become a much more desirable and fun place to come to in the first place. Through joint efforts on social platforms like Twitter, they promoted each other (not just themselves), leveraged each other's followers, and were able to organize local events (a "Tweet-crawl" through everyone's location, a music festival). Life returned to the neighborhood and the businesses are still around to talk about it. In Art's words it's "the ascent of a community-based model and the descent of a corporate model."

This, of course, got me thinking about our clients and if there was an opportunity to replicate something like this. Could, say, competitive brands from different pharmaceutical companies work together to create something like a compliance and persistency program? Wouldn't it be better for them to pool their resources to create comprehensive diet/lifestyle/wellness content that they could all take advantage of (and therefore invest the savings in other areas), than for them all to bear the cost of creating practically the exact same thing? Programs like the Partnership for Prescription Assistance get close to this, but it seems like there is an opportunity for more (as counter-intuitive as it may sound).

Whatever the outcome may be, we can all benefit by looking outside our own four walls to find potential solutions. What happened in LA is the perfect example—they built a community that is stronger through co-opetition than it ever could have been if it was done by one of them alone.

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Unless you were living under a rock on Wednesday, chances are you saw coverage of Apple's new iPad—a half-inch thick slab of aluminum and glass that, in Apple's words, fills a niche between small mobile devices (like an iPhone) and a full-sized notebook. With built in wireless (via WiFi or, in some models, 3G) and thousands of apps ready to install (thanks to it's ability to run iPhone and iPod Touch applications from the App Store), the device has the potential to transform—or create new—markets and industries.

Obvious potential exists with the sales force (at least, while there are still sales reps out in the field). Most pharma companies have shifted to digital promotion via Tablet PC, and detailing on Apple's new device seems like a logical (although potentially expensive) extension. Features like location awareness, always-on connectivity, long battery life and a light-weight form factor surpass most hardware that is deployed today, but it's missing key pieces on the software side of the equation, like CRM integration, interaction measurement, and fulfillment.

Digitizing the physician's office and hospitals is another huge market. Companies like Phreesia have focused on waiting rooms, using their devices for patient intake, triage and payment collection, but compared to the rich video playback capabilities of iPad and it's ability to run other applications (for example, symptom assessment tools, patient education content, etc...), this area seems ripe for new ideas. Then there are electronic health records and the potential to transform how patient data is captured and displayed (look at how the New York Times was able to replicate the essence of flipping through the paper version of the news...now imagine the manilla folder your doctor uses to keep your patient record).

We find wellness beyond the doctor's office—in real places like retail environments, gyms, and museums, and virtual ones like social networks—and iPad can, and will, find a home in these environments too. Will it be revolutionary? Or just a lot of experimentation in search of a purpose? Time will tell.

Innovation happens when there are unmet (or unknown) needs in the marketplace and someone has the willingness, time, money, and creativity to fill those needs. For all the features and services that iPad doesn't have, it DOES provide a new platform for marketers to innovate. For those who are adept at identifying new opportunities, seizing them before competitors, and delivering beyond the expectations of their people, this is the device they've been waiting for.

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So many brands today compete in commoditized industries, forced to fight tooth and nail with each other for every customer as they tout similar product features and benefits. Nowhere is this more visible than in the mobile phone industry where prices, apps, and coverage maps are the ammo used to fight the competition.

Customers are fickle, and the only thing keeping them from switching providers are exclusive phones and early termination clauses. It's rare to see these brands demonstrate true value or customer-centricity, and why should they when they have these virtual nooses around their customers' necks? Which is what makes my recent experience with T-Mobile even more remarkable.

Over the past few weeks, my BlackBerry had been crashing unexpectedly and on Christmas it did it again, although this time it wouldn't start up anymore (I was greeted by a perpetual hourglass of death). The next day I went to a local T-Mobile store and found out that the 1 year warranty expired two days prior (of course). My last hope: a phone call to Customer Care.

After explaining the situation (and politely reminding the very nice representative that I've been a happy and loyal customer for the past 7 years) T-Mobile did the right thing. They put the customer first and honored the warranty.

But the representative I spoke with didn't stop there. Because I needed to renew my service agreement, she was able to switch me to one of their new "unlimited" plans, saving me money each month. She wasn't just going to fix or replace my old phone, but offered me a brand new device (any one, my choice). Oh, and they'll ship that to me priority service at no charge (after all, it's the holidays and I don't have a phone). And while we're at it, Mr. Martino, the next month is on us. Wow. It really was Christmas on the 26th.

Besides being overjoyed at how lucky I was (after all, the other way this could have gone down ended with me spending several hundred dollars on a new phone), I kept asking myself if other companies would have gone this far. Would AT&T value me as a long time customer the same way? Would Verizon have honored my warranty, even though it expired (I happen to know from past experience that they would not have)?

Commoditized plans and services come and go. Sexy (and exclusive) new phones are always being introduced. But putting a premium on customer service and delivering on it when it matters? That's a rare trait that sets one brand apart from the others and it's why I'll be loyal to T-Mobile for a long time.

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I was in a meeting the other day and caught myself doing something that, in hindsight, really made me stop and think. In the course of presenting ideas on how to engage a particular audience, I kept using terms like "patients," "customers," "consumers," and "targets" almost interchangeably, as if the label didn't matter and that one way of describing these groups was just as good as the other. I realized how limiting and narrow minded all of these labels are in describing anyone and tried to think of a better descriptor.

The answer that hit me was the obvious one: our job is to communicate with PEOPLE. Human, individual, unique people.

Of course we have to recognize that at different times throughout their days and lives, yes, people are our "customers" or our "consumers" (just look at the way goods were consumed on Black Friday), or any other label we want to apply. But these are just glimpses of a much more broad and interesting view. We need to take off the blinders and look at the whole picture.

Looking at this bigger picture makes our jobs as marketers a bit more challenging. Greater differences between people are revealed and the neat little groupings that we assemble for ourselves are now less meaningful than they used to be. Our "segmentation strategies" aren't the only things that are losing effectiveness—so too are the mass media channels that we rely upon to reach people, like TV and print. To succeed in this world, we need to make personalized content available within targeted channels to truly engage effectively.

Why have the rules of the game suddenly changed? I would argue that they haven't—people have always wanted to be treated like individuals, not as segments or targets or by attributes (which marketers make up) that lump them together with a bunch of other strangers. The game is different now because we have the means to do something about it. Whether it's the environments where we can interact better or data that helps us understand better, we have an unprecedented ability to treat people as the unique individuals that they are.

Yes, it's harder to engage and connect with people as people. But by dropping labels which narrow our focus, and looking at how we can relate to them within a larger context, our approach evolves and so does our ability to create things that truly resonate. Gone are the days where we launch messages at targets. Now, we must think about how to create and share unique experiences, in whatever form they may be.

I'm taking the first step. From now on no more labels like patients, customers, or consumers. They're just people.

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Mac vs. PC

Star Wars vs. Star Trek

Boxers vs. briefs

Outside of the agency world, bring up any of the above and it's sure to spark a heated debate over a cold pint.

Inside the agency world, however, the fastest way to pick a fight is to pick a side in the "traditional" vs "digital" agency debate. Case in point: the recent AdAge blog post by Ana Andjelic, titled "Why Digital Agencies Aren't Ready to Lead," which is setting off a firestorm of debate from both sides of the aisle.

There is a natural tendency to over-simplify and stereotype each kind of agency—labeling the digital agency as innovative, fresh, and nimble but not very strategic; characterizing traditional agencies as having creative and strategic strength but lacking in terms of experimentation, technology and speed—and these stereotypes are usually the first things people challenge. A quick scan of the article's comments will show you exactly what I'm talking about.

But arguing over the accuracy of a stereotype or debating the merits of one agency type over another overlooks an interesting concept that the article introduces, which is a theory of "exploration vs exploitation". As described by James March, organizations, in an effort to evolve and grow, must balance the "exploration of new possibilities" against "the exploitation of old certainties." Do they invest in an unknown future at the expense of current profit? Or do they play to current strengths and reap immediate benefit while sacrificing in the long term? As someone who has helped an agency change over the past several years, I know all too well how challenging it is to find the right balance between these two opposable forces.

Whether you agree with the overall sentiment of the post (that digital agencies just don't get it) or not, it's clear that the rapidly changing needs of our clients are the driving force behind this evolution. They need agencies that are capable of generating innovative ideas while mastering execution, and ones that can demonstrate success in both mass channels and more precise and measurable ones. Regardless of how they are labeled, agencies that "get" this will succeed; those that don't will struggle.

Time will tell if it's the digital agencies or traditional ones that ultimately "win" this battle to balance exploration and exploitation, but everyone stands to benefit as a result. Continued evolution, and therefore competition, leads to a stronger marketplace, where ideas are better, the solutions more innovative, and our clients are more successful in achieving their goals.

When that happens, not only will agencies and clients win, but our consumers do too.

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Despite working in the healthcare space and all the attention our industry receives on a daily basis, it's very easy to keep yourself at arms length from some of the issues and concerns we debate regularly. It's only when you are thrust into the system that these issues are a lot closer to home than expected.

About a month ago, when my wife and I happily welcomed a new daughter into our lives, I found myself in the middle of industry change—where traditional, paper-based systems were slowly being challenged by modern, digital ones. We gave birth in a hospital in New York City, and were surrounded by technology at every turn both leading up to the birth and throughout the delivery (everything from 3D ultrasounds and fetal heart monitors to "LoJack" tags that are worn by newborns so they don't leave the safety of the recovery floor). But despite the existence of all that technology, I couldn't get past how it was juxtaposed so starkly against mounds of paper and antiquated systems.

The inefficiencies of these legacy systems were almost mind numbing. A few examples:

• Filling out our new patient forms ahead of time, only to have to do it all over again because our info was never put "in the system" by hospital administration
• Having to find somewhere I could download and print a consent form (which we completed and gave to our doctor a week prior) that was mysteriously missing from our chart (Funny aside: I found a Staples Print & Copy Center, which was closed, and ended up begging the manager to let me in. Bless his heart, he did and didn't charge me to use the computer or printer. Having a wife in labor really is the perfect excuse! Talk about a brand leaving you with a positive experience...)
• And my favorite, receiving my daughter's "Health Record"—a yellow piece of paper the state uses to track things like immunizations and screenings—and being told by the nurse, "Don't lose this—you have to bring it to EVERY doctor appointment. They won't let her in school without it." Now, I don't know about you, but the thought of carrying around, and not accidentally misplacing or spilling coffee on, a single piece of paper for the next 18 years doesn't seem like the most reliable way to track someone's medical history

I kept thinking to myself, "there has to be a better way." Why couldn't I register with the hospital online? Why isn't there a central database that tracks things like my daughter's immunizations so I don't have to worry about losing a stupid piece of paper?

Of course, there IS a better way. Over the past several years, companies like Google, Microsoft, Web MD, and Revolution Health (among others) have launched a variety of Personal Health Records (PHR's) and other web-based systems to help patients take control of their health data, share it with their healthcare team, and ultimately make informed decisions about what it all means. The days of calling your doctor to retrieve your chart are slowly coming to an end.

These solutions, however, are not without their own challenges and controversies, the biggest of which being patient privacy. There is nothing more intimate than one's own health and the thought of personalized health information being used against you by employers, insurance companies, or opportunistic marketers is a scary one. As I fantasized about how cool it would be to manage something like the above mentioned Health Record digitally (yes, this is the kind of thing a digital strategist fantasizes about)—where I could grant access to various physicians to update it, automatically track my daughter's height & weight against growth curves, get contextual help about what the data means, etc—I couldn't help but think about her privacy and whether I would really be comfortable with that data sitting out "in the cloud."

A recent article in Wired opened my mind to the other side of this debate—all the benefits that we can reap by responsibly collecting, sharing, and analyzing this data. Rather than protect this information, what if we were able to analyze it to identify patterns and trends that can help shape our future in ways we never imagined? Sites like PatientsLikeMe, for example, give us a glimpse of what data driven health might look like: drug companies can study real-world results, in addition to clinical trial data, to improve therapies; patients can compare experiences and connect with other patients to build powerful new support systems that are based on more than just anecdotal feelings; and, as the Wired article suggests, physicians would know what other practitioners are prescribing and see the effectiveness of those decisions, ultimately improving patient care.

This debate continues, but we can look to other industries for a glimpse of how it may end. There was a day when the thought of managing our finances electronically was just as frightening (heck, I know a few luddites that still don't trust it), but now it's commonplace and I couldn't imagine my life without it. Any concerns about identity theft and privacy, while still real, are overshadowed by the speed, convenience, and efficiencies of a paperless world. But it was only when the various financial institutions got on board and we reached critical mass in terms of access that the scales tipped and adoption spread.

Whether from the top (by technology companies), from the bottom (empowered patients), or simply because of time (younger generations who are much more comfortable sharing their life data), pressures are being applied to the healthcare system—much like they were applied to the financial system—and the day is coming where a digitized system will be the only system. Physician offices, health insurance companies, hospitals, and pharmacies will either change the way they do business or they won't do business at all.

Until then, I'll have to find a safe place to keep that Health Record.

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This past Thursday (Sept 24th), I had the pleasure of participating in the ANA's 2009 Agency/Client Forum as part of Advertising Week here in NY. Moderated by Steve Rubel, SVP, Director of Insights at Edelman Digital, I joined Paul Dunay, Global Managing Director of Services Marketing at Avaya, and Phyllis Joseph, Senior Lead, Communications at Unilever, as we discussed "Who Owns Social Media?"

Although social media has been with us for a few years, the space continues to change and evolve at an incredibly fast pace, so our discussion was rich with questions to answer and areas to explore. Beginning with our own definitions of social media, and ranging all the way to how agencies and clients are selling and buying it -- we covered a lot of ground, but we touched upon two areas specifically that I find intriguing.

The first is about agencies, and which type of agency is "right" for social media. Personally, I don't think there's a right or wrong answer, although some agencies are better suited than others. As an integrated marketing agency, I feel strongly that our proximity to brand strategy, coupled with our ability to identify and understand consumer insights, puts us in a position to create opportunities within the social space that are truly engaging and relevant. We love big ideas and innovative tactics, but when they are not strategically grounded or tied to brand goals, they are misguided.

We're certainly not the only agency with these capabilities or this point of view, and great thinking is coming out of a variety of different shops, be they digital, PR, or integrated; independent or part of a large network. Clients should be less concerned about the type of agency they are working with, and more concerned with the people within these organizations.

Do they have a passion for (not just knowledge of) social media? Do they have a presence in the space where they experiment and share a point of view? Do they use these technologies day-to-day, as an indispensable part of how they do business?

This industry has always been about people and team chemistry, and it's no different now that we're creating Facebook pages instead of TV spots (if anything, it's MORE important).

The second area is about organizational change, which I feel is the single biggest obstacle standing in the way of companies fully embracing social media. As I mentioned during our discussion, a radical shift in thinking and working is now necessary—from an approach where it takes 4 months to create a stand-alone piece to thinking and acting like a content publisher, where the dialogue is rapid, the expected response time is immediate, and your work is never finished.

Thankfully, agency teams and brand teams alike are starting to make necessary changes so their people and processes can be more nimble, flexible, and better equipped to live in a social world.

Paul and Phyllis touched upon how they are facing these challenges within their organizations, and their approaches, while a little different, mirror the two major philosophies that I see when working with our clients.

One, which is similar to what Paul is doing, is to centralize the thinking so that best practices can be shared across teams and there is clear accountability in terms of leadership. Whether these types of teams are formally created or organically grown, I'm seeing more and more of them sprout up.

Contrasting that is a decentralized approach, which is similar to what Phyllis shared. Here, the thinking and empowering is "pushed down" so that individual brand teams have the autonomy to do what's right for their individual needs and the people that are closer to the customer handle the major decision-making.

There are advantages and disadvantages to each: centralized thinking can certainly help unify a company's approach, making sure thinking from one brand can be applied to another, missteps are minimized, and efficiencies are gained. But it can also paralyze teams, making them timid to try anything unless they have the green light from above. 

Decentralized empowerment fosters healthy trial and error, experimentation, and unique solutions that solve unique needs. However, effort may be wasted and success may not be shared across teams without clear leadership or if lines of communication are not open.

Just like identifying the right agency to partner with, companies must look at their distinct needs, culture, and people to define an approach that is right for them.

Despite the healthy discussion, I think we all left with more questions than answers, which is indicative of a space that is maturing by the minute. But after letting our conversation sink in for a few days, I realized that we never really answered our primary question, which was "Who owns social media?"

The reality is, CONSUMERS own social media, not brands and certainly not agencies. Whether we like it or not, we now must market our brands in a landscape where consumers have the tools to make their voice heard, and the technology to hear what everyone else is saying. Any more hesitation on the part of a brand to participate and engage in dialogue with their consumers is extremely risky. It's not about waiting to get this "right", but about participating now (ie. small pilot programs with a focus on learning, experimentation, and quick wins), and doing so with a spirit of honesty and transparency.

Our consumers expect this dialogue and if they don't get it, they're going to vote with a lot more than their wallet.

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Perhaps it's a coincidence, but I noticed two articles last week which discuss a "backlash" against Facebook.

The first, from Elizabeth Bernstein at the Wall Street Journal, wants us to think before we post—all of the useless/silly/boring/"too-much" information we share in our status updates are ruining the relationships people have with each other. Over at the New York Times, Virginia Heffernan points to things like privacy concerns, losses in productivity, and yes, even us marketers, as reasons why people are abandoning Facebook.

Whether you agree with the sentiment in those articles or not, it's clear that social technologies like Facebook are making us question the nature of our friendships and radically changing what that label means. People who we've lost contact with—whether intentional or not—are coming back into our lives, loose acquaintances are now privy to the sometimes intimate thoughts and actions of our day, and we are coming to realize that "six degrees of separation" is probably more like three or four.

Our circles of friendship are suddenly a lot larger than they used to be, but are the relationships we have with all these people the same?

British anthropologist Robin Dunbar theorized that there is a limit to the number of people that we can maintain a stable relationship with, based on the size of our neocortex. This number—Dunbar's number—is about 150 people. I don't know about you, but most people that I know on Facebook have at least that many friends in their network.

Facebook themselves have conducted research to better understand our growing social graphs, including the number of friends we have, how tightly we're connected, and how often we communicate with each other. The results are quite interesting:

The average network size is about 120 people, with women typically having more friends than men (of course, the range is quite large—some people have networks in the teens, others in the thousands).

In a network of that size, most people only "maintain a relationship" with less than 20 of them (this number goes up as the network gets larger).

The number of people you passively communicate with (browsing status updates or photos, for example) is between 2 and 2.5 times as many as the number of people you actively communicate with (exchanging email, for example).

Clearly, there are multiple meanings in how people define a friend. On one end of the spectrum, there are the casual connections that are causing our networks to swell (friend-of-a-friend, co-worker, etc...). But on the other end are our "classic" friends—the people with whom, even without technology, we would still have deep relationships.

Our wellness is greatly influenced by the people we surround ourselves with, and this mix of different types of friends is a key component. There is strength and reassurance (and maybe a bit of ego) in large numbers—we feel a sense of security in knowing that we are (or at least can be) in touch with so many people, if necessary. But volume can't compensate for quality, and we still need a core handful of people that we know we can trust and rely upon.

Brands that are engaging in social media need to understand this mix as well. Chances are, they are a casual connection and not in the "inner circle" of friendship. They need to respect where they are in the social graph (understanding boundaries, levels of intimacy, when it's OK to intervene, etc...), otherwise they will lose their friendship altogether.

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Making choices for others. Visit a museum and you will experience this first-hand. The curator—the person responsible for overseeing the museum's collection—combed through the museum's archives to present you, the viewer, with a cohesive display of what they felt were the most important and significant pieces out of the entire collection. His (or her) job is to simplify choice.

The digital world is no different. We are all surrounded by an abundance of information—news, status updates, tweets, text messages—and sometimes need help curating. Particularly when thinking about wellness, the need for help in simplifying choices—and separating what's relevant from what's not—is even more significant (what foods to eat, different ways to exercise, trying homeopathic vs pharmaceutical treatment options, etc.).

Relevance, of course, means different things to different people. Google has made a living out of scouring the world's information and delivering relevance (and usually targeted advertising) based on complex algorithms and page ranking scores. Others, like Facebook, are trying to solve this by using the wisdom of your social network (family, friends, co-workers) to help separate the wheat from the chaff and provide a different kind of relevance to you.

We as marketers have our own opportunity to help simplify choice through relevance.

Sometimes it's by actively doing something to simplify life (one recent example: J&J created an iPhone application for healthcare professionals, called BlackBag, which aggregates news feeds and conveniently delivers that information to the palm of your hand).

Other times, it's about getting out of the way (for example, by giving your customers an opportunity to voice their opinion, like rating and ranking your products, so that others can see what "people like me" think).

What choices are our customers making? What information is relevant to them in making that choice?

The only way to find the answers to those questions—and understand our role among them—is to place the wants, needs and desires of our customers at the heart of our decision-making.

Like an experienced curator, we must think in terms of what is valuable to THEM as opposed to what's valuable to US.

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Would you hire a plumber who has a leaky faucet in his own home?

This is essentially the question that Rupal Parekh asks in her recent AdAge article, where she is quite critical of several agencies (big and small, traditional and digital) for their presence (or lack thereof) on Twitter (and by extension, other social media like social networks and blogs).

Her main argument is simple: how can these agencies rightfully preach the value and advantages of social media when they can't successfully "master" the spaces themselves?

It's a question that sparked a tremendous amount of debate in the accompanying comments with opinions from both sides of the aisle. I find myself agreeing with 2 comments in particular.

The first, by robbywells, argues that you wouldn't judge the advertising work from these same shops based on their own self promotion ads (could you imagine if THAT was how Cannes lions were awarded?), so why would you judge them by their Twitter accounts?

The other comment, from carlenlea, rightfully asks the most important question that both the author and most of the commenters overlook: what were these examples trying to achieve and how are they measuring success?

All too often, the lure of engaging in social media has the unfortunate side effect of performing a "marketing lobotomy," where the fundamentals of what we do go right out the window.

Business objective? What's that? Who cares.

Strategy? What strategy? Twitter is HOT right now!

For our agency, social media is another way (in addition to places like PR, conferences, and trade press) to "own wellness marketing."

One of our strategies, "have a dynamic voice," lent itself perfectly to a blog and places like Twitter and Facebook. And we're monitoring things like web analytics to see if the content we're creating is really raising our voice in the marketplace (having clients call to share their enthusiasm over the blog doesn't hurt either).

As I've said before, there is no "one way" to participate in social media—what works for one person (or brand) doesn't necessarily work for another. But our approach as marketers should always be the same: tie your efforts to clear business objectives, identify a strategy that will help you succeed, and determine early on what success looks like and how you will measure it.

That's what we should be evaluated on, not page views and followers.

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As Twitter increases in popularity (both in mainstream press and in actual usage), so do the number of questions I'm asked about what it is and why it matters. The first thing I usually hear is, "But William, why do people feel like it's necessary to tell everyone what they had for lunch? Who really cares?"

To the outside observer, that's about all Twitter is good for. But if you dig below the surface and actually use Twitter on a daily basis, you realize that it's way more powerful than that.

Like most social networks, Twitter helps you connect with "people like you"—ones you actually know in person (like friends or family) and others that you discover because of shared interests (working in a similar industry, affinity for the same products and services, etc...). In addition to Twitter's own search functionality, sites like wefollow.com, which is a user-powered directory, make it easy to find other users based on how they have categorized the things they write about.

The key reason I use, and love, Twitter is that it lets me follow other thought leaders in the healthcare and marketing industry, helping me to stay current on the challenges they are facing and the ideas they are wrestling with. Could I read their books, articles, and blogs to get similar insights? Of course. But Twitter adds a layer of convenience (and brevity) that make it much easier to follow—and contribute to—this dialogue as a part of my daily work flow.

Several of the thought leaders that I follow happen to work in the same agency as I do, and as much as we try to share ideas face-to-face, it's often difficult due to workload or travel schedules. Now we have a way to share links, thoughts, and random musings—and have a discussion about it—independent of geography (it also spares us from sending company-wide emails to tell everyone about interesting things that we've seen. Other people at the agency know to follow us).

Twitter has also transformed how I participate at industry conferences. Although I didn't attend the Manny Awards a few weeks ago, I was able to follow everything that was going on, and knew within minutes of it happening that we had won two awards. At the AdAge Digital conference a few weeks ago (which I did attend), they were smart enough to suggest that participants tweet in questions for the speakers and panel discussions. Not only was I able to discreetly ask questions, but I was able to see and follow the audience commentary on what was being presented.

Individual results may vary, however, so how I use Twitter may not be what's right for you. Jump in and experiment! Find people that are relevant to you and follow them (you can follow me at @wmartino). Post about what's on your mind. Share interesting content that you've seen or read. In time, you'll "find your groove" and with it, the value that Twitter has for you.

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