LinkedIn's Gamson Details How Web 2.0 Can Work for Your Business

The Big Ideas
According to Gamson, there are four pillars to social media: social context, precise targeting, viral distribution and creative content. Gamson cited the following ways these concepts can be applied to your business’s social media strategy:

1. Social context: Set up a “recommendation from friends” tool, as Amazon has done — to great acclaim — with its books recommendations.
2. Precise targeting: Members of your network self-publish, saving you from having to go to great lengths to find your target audience, Gamson said. And it's more cost effective.
3. Viral distribution: If you get just one person to pass on a positive recommendation, it's incredibly powerful, Gamson noted. “It turns into a mini-ad when broadcast over your network.”
4. Creative content: Gamson cited a campaign from Mazda where instead of using display ads, it ran the following poll to LinkedIn subscribers: “What's most important to you when buying a car?” This can provide the company with a lot of data.
   Another example came from Southwest Airlines, which ran a sponsored question on LinkedIn: “How can we make you a more productive business traveler?” This created dialogue between Southwest and potential consumers.