[Jay Goldman]: Twitter is an easy entry point because it’s so easy to setup searches and follow what people are talking about. I’d recommend grabbing a client like TweetDeck (http://www.tweetdeck.com/) and setting up columns for searches based on your organization’s name, your products, competitors, etc. Blogging is more of a serious time commitment but will also drive more traffic to your website so it’s well worth considering. I suggest a quick exercise: list out 100 topic titles about which you feel you know enough to write a one to two paragraph post. Distil those topics down into 10 categories and you’ve now got enough to write a blog for nearly a third of a year if you publish one per day. The 100 is easy to hit if you think about doing series of posts on a topic, and lists are particularly good for driving readership and traffic.

[Manoj]: How can an individuals push social media strategies in a large corporation where there are numerous levels of decision makers

[Jay Goldman]: Two strategies seem to work well with varying results on a case by case basis. The first is the simplest: shoot first and ask questions later. Move ahead with simple experiments that have low risk to the organization without asking for permission, then use their success to get the go ahead for bigger projects. If they fail miserably, never speak of them again. Alternatively, you can build a case for yourself using examples of other campaigns that have worked, especially if they were run by competitors or other organizations for which your company has a competitive rivalry.

[Manoj]: How do you think Canada is progressing in Social Media strategies vs. the rest of the world? (are we ahead or behind)

[Jay Goldman]: We are largely ahead. Toronto was the Facebook capital of the world for a long time and still continues to rival other major cities on a per capita basis, with many Canadian cities placing highly on that scale. Our adoption of Twitter has been significant, and a number of events like #hohoTO have really shown the rest of the world how powerful it can be ($25,000 raised for the Daily Bread Food Bank in a single night at an event organized by a loose coalition of people, largely over Twitter).

[Manoj]: What are some of your favorite tools to measure social media activity within Twitter and Facebook?

[Jay Goldman]: Facebook includes a pretty powerful Insights tool for app developers and advertisers, but you can’t beat Kontagent (http://www.kontagent.com/) if you’re building your own apps. I use a combination of Twitter clients (Tweetie on my iPhone, increasingly Beak on my Mac — www.atebits.com and http://www.beakapp.com/ respectively) to interact with Twitter and to monitor my searches, and a URL shortener like Tweetburner (http://www.tweetburner.com/) to track clickthroughs. I’m liking a lot of the stuff coming out of the Hoot Suite (http://www.hootsuite.com/) project lately if you’re in more of a corporate setting and need tools for multiple authors.

[Manoj]: MySpace seems to be losing steam, do you think they will remain in the picture in the next 3-4 years?

[Jay Goldman]: That’s a big window to try and predict, but I think they’ll continue to leverage their position in the music world even if it means becoming an increasingly ‘niche’ network. Friendster is still alive and well in a number of countries, so it’s difficult to discount the staying power of a network comprised of your closest friends.