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That's what Chris Heuer tells us during the closing session of BlogOrlando.

He makes a great point:

Social Media is tearing down the walls that keep us apart and changing the rules that have kept us from being human inside our companies.

Chris also offers some rules for human organizations:

• Start with the presumption of trust
• Make clear your intentions
• Give people a chance
• Provide power for people’s passions
• “live the life, love the life” (as Jake said earlier)
• Participate in your market’s conversations
• Personal pronouns are OK
• Social Media creates opportunities to be found and to connect
• Trust the conversation

Clarification - to trust the conversation, you have to trust the people. In working with many of my clients, this is one of the first things we do - work to establish trust with their target audiences.

We do this by showcasing their real world, hands-on experience - the credentials that make them a true expert. We also use their experience and credentials to differentiate them from their competition.

There are a lot of people that profess to be experts but when you start drilling down, it turns out they are really just regurgitating what they've heard at a seminar, read in a book, or listened to in a podcast.

It's easy to declare yourself an expert: simply tell everyone you're an expert. It's much harder to maintain expert status if you don't have the experience to back it up.

We've heard from a lot of experts today (the "real" kind) and it's been, as expected, a very educational and worthwhile day. I'm already looking forward to BlogOrlando 2008!

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