Google, Pandora, Digg, and Facebook to offer their products to hundreds of millions of people without charging anything. The marginal costs of adding your millionth user and your twenty millionth user are roughly zero. That is because bandwidth, storage, and processing power are cheap, and they get cheaper every year.

Free is no longer a marketing gimmick, but a necessity for most online businesses.

When you get into the mindset of a consumer, cheap and free are completely different from one another. If Google had decided long ago to charge a single dollar for their services, consumers would have found somewhere else to search the web, manage their email, or read the news.

Free-conomics:

The old way to look at a market was to examine how supply of a product and demand for a product would change as the price shifted. Today, free has become an economy of its own as the marginal cost of doing business online has nearly reached zero.

When you charge the online consumer anything at all you move into an entirely different market with far fewer customers.

In the free economy, attention and reputation are what matters.

The goal is to build your reputation in hopes of earning more attention. Consumers have millions of choices to make when they decide where to spend their attention online. A company's reputation dictates how consumers choose whether to spend time on Site A or Site B.

"There is, presumably, a limited supply of reputation and attention in the world at any point in time. These are the new scarcities - and the world of free exists mostly to acquire these valuable assets... Free shifts the economy from a focus on only that which can be quantified in dollars and cents to a more realistic accounting of all the things we truly value today." - Chris Anderson - Wired.com

The good news: your reputation is not beyond your control.

A huge part of your business should be focused on social media campaigns and word of mouth strategies that maintain and build upon your reputation. The idea is to first create the buzz then sell the crazy fans your $100 vinyl album or your exclusive product features. Let 10% of your fanatical fans support your business and use the other 90% to spread your message.

You may have a great product, but it doesn't mean anything until you build the kind of reputation that will make consumers want to try it.

"Make your record cheaply (but great) and GIVE IT AWAY. As an artist you want as many people as possible to hear your work. Word of mouth is the only true marketing that matters." - Trent Reznor in a post on a NIN forum

For more information, read Chris Anderson's article: "Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business," on Wired.com.

Notes: I appreciated Brian's participation in the discussion, even as some have cited our agencies as competitors. It was affirming that Ignite is working through many of the same issues we are with respect to the tools. Hopefully, there is a nugget or two of insight here for others considering how they should evaluate the options. As one of our partners once put it to me, "it's always preferable to combine our powers for good instead of evil."

More to the point, it's something you don't do as a responsible marketer. The thing is, the rules are easily bendable, the tactics are highly tempting and the ethics are typically questioned. After all, what "harm" can it really do? Well, actually a lot -- and I have a fresh and unfortunate story to share with you about it.
To give some background: One of the main activities we do as a social media company is key influencer identification and blogger outreach. Our outreach efforts are always about approaching people on a personal level. In other words, asking for permission, being short and sweet about our agenda, and even apologizing up-front in the event our outreach is perceived as irrelevant to a blogger's interests and audience.

Recently, we came across an influential blog that posted about our client's product. But before we could start slapping high fives, the blogger made an additional post that specifically called out one of the commenters. Although the commenter in question had good intentions, clarifying some false statements made about the product, his enthusiasm took things to the point of spewing marketing jargon in his comment. Dead giveaway.

As one of the shark commenters clued into the chum, the blogger was inspired to do a little investigation. You know where it goes from here. What he easily found was the commenter in question was using a fake name with a standard email address. From there, the blogger not only identified the commenter as a marketer, but even discovered when he was hired.

So of course, he owed his readers a juicy post about this discovery. Today, that marketer was fired. And as many might agree to that being an over reaction, the reality is the marketer's company and client was dragged into a search engine index-able conversation among far more than a normal room full of people.

Could it quickly smolder out and go nowhere? Absolutely. Could it be dragged to other blogs, becoming the latest meat puppet case study in social marketing? Absolutely. So the harm, aside from possibly losing your job, is not only the potential of short-term brand damage - but also long-term search engine results associated with the brand, its' products, services, etc.

From my position, I understand how someone could be reasonably fired for this. At the same time, I believe this particular person simply made a naive mistake that blew up like a firecracker in a child's hand.

If he would have disclosed who he worked for up front, this all could have been avoided. In all fairness, the most obvious things are sometimes the hardest to see - and in the world of internet marketing, learning on the job is commonplace.

This just in (this post has been evolving throughout the day as I've written it): the marketer wrote an apology to the blogger today. The blogger responded by emailing an apology regarding the job loss, removing his original post about the client's product, and the post that called out the marketer as deceptive. Wow.

What is your take on this? How would you have respond as the blogger? How about the employer or client?

1. Monitor Google. I've read that if you only monitor your brand through Google, you'll receive 70-75% of the conversations surrounding your business. That's a lot of chatter that you might be missing that involves your brand and/or products. You will want to do a Google Blog Search for your company name, prominent keywords for your business, name of your products, name of executives, and other important factors you find relevant, but make sure to start with at least those four. Grab the RSS feed for these and you'll be on your way to getting the latest and (hopefully) greatest things consumers, clients and potential customers have to say about you on their blogs. Don't forget to do the same for Google News.
2. Tweet Scan. I just started Twittering myself and will no longer question the power of Twitter. Someone might mention your product in one quick update and it could spiral into a conversation among dozens of people. After subscribing to the Tweet Scan feed revolving your business, keywords and products, make sure to set up a Twitter account for yourself so you can follow the people twittering about you.
   
3. FriendFeed. Another new tool that I've grown to love. If you just want to set something up that will simply do work for you, FriendFeed is it. Although you will want to eventually be tracking SumbleUpon, Technorati, digg, Tumblr, del.icio.us and other social media sites, FriendFeed is a good starting point.
   

Now organizing your reader and subscribing to various blogs that are important for market research, customer interaction, product ideas, industry trends and other insightful conversations and learning what to do with those conversations is another post for another day.

Guy Kawasaki points out FeedHub as great concept going for those people tracking a lot of feeds.

The comments and feedback on the post are that people don't trust the system, the filtering will eliminate something they might have been interested in, someone now has data on your personal surfing habits, etc.

I've signed up for the service and will see what happens, before I post my concerns.

The pearl in FeedHub is inspiration and trends. Often times we have clients running reputation management systems that still have a hard time sorting through all their feeds, where they are not necessarily trying to be an A-list blogger, but still seeking to be relevant in current discussions. Put it this way, they don't have a RSS reader obsession, but do have highly interesting and relevant information to bring to the conversation.

Here's a great way to leverage the FeedHub system, and avoiding a complete indexing of all of your RSS feeds.

Go to MonitorThis where you can subscribe to 22 different search engine fedds at the same time, pulling data from Google Blog Search, Google News, Technorati, del.icio.us, furl, Flickr, Yahoo News, etc.

Enter in the search term that is most relevant to your blog and MonitorThis will create the opml file. I use Dreamweaver to save the file in xml.

Upload that xml file into FeedHub and you've got an instant reputation management system set up to give you ideas and inspirations for your blog posts.

His comfort with new media is another notch in his ability to reach out to millions of Americans.

I will admit, when I first came across this post, I was a bit skeptical. The first items listed were ones that I've seen ad nauseum on many other sites such as "write well" and "be an expert". While those are indeed important things to have in order to create and maintain a successful site, I wonder how many people out there think "I'll just write really poorly about things on which I have little interest and even less expert knowledge"? But then, in a stroke of refreshing originality when it comes to such lists, author Tony Hung goes above and beyond the other lists I've seen. He starts with the obvious, which are indeed important and a good foundation for success, and builds upon it with many, many (40 total!) other suggestions--a good number of which I haven't seen on other such lists.

Among his many suggestions, some of them require a bit of work on your part--such as doing research to be the first to break those big news stories. The payoff for accomplishing this task is huge, however; if you are the first, you have a good chance of being linked to by those coveted A-list bloggers. I also like his suggestions to interview other bloggers, invite guest bloggers, participate in contests, create your own giveaways, and make social networking work for you.

Mr. Hung goes into greater depth than I will here, so if the above sounds interesting (and it should--there is ALWAYS something more you can do to increase blog quality and traffic), I urge you to check out his post and take advantage of as many of his suggestions as are applicable/feasible. I think the biggest thing to take away from how-to articles of this sort is that persistence pays off. If you take the time and make the effort to better your blog, it will show. It's easy to say and not as simple to do, but success must be earned, and your readers will know if you take pride in maintaining a great site.

Journalist and good PR professionals know that great stories have three elements:

1. Differentiation
2. Emotion
3. Simplicity

Well TOMS Shoes knocks it out of the park in all three areas.

Founder Blake Mycoskie, who appeared on CBS's The Amazing Race ended up in Argentina where the local footwear and poverty inspired him to launch a TOMS Shoes.

So here's the story from TOMS Shoes website. Pay special attention to the mission - it captures all three of key elements of a great story.

"Inspired by a traditional Argentine shoe and challenged by the continent's poverty and health issues, I created TOMS with a singular mission: To make life more comfortable. TOMS accomplishes this through its unique shoe and my commitment to match every pair purchased with a donated pair to a child in need...no complicated formulas, it's simple...you buy a pair of TOMS and I give a pair to a child on your behalf."

I bought two pair, and recently received the following email from Shannon Douglas at TOMS Shoes

Dear TOMS Customer,

disclaimer: you will not when the rat race wearing TOMS.

I was one of 391 people included in the email distribution list.

Oh and by the way, I read about TOMS in Outside Magazine

Take a look at the shoes - Blake's right - they're simple. It's the story that sold me.

In addition to such benefits as increasing visibility and improving connectability when searching within the site, Guy's #1 and #2 items, taking advantage of the service and fully filling out your profile can have a few side benefits such as improving your Google PageRank and search engine results. Since LinkedIn is indexed by the search engines, it provides one more way to provide visibility when users search for information relevant to you or your field.

Many of the items listed are directed towards those who are either hiring or want to be hired--you can use the service to check out your prospective employee/employer and find other references within the company. But one of the uses that is often overlooked is that of tracking your competitors. You can get info on people within your field, see if they are initiating new startups, and use it as another handy tool for keeping track of the latest goings on.

If properly filled out, your profile becomes another asset in your Reputation Management repertoire. You will make it easier for people to find useful information about you and your business, and by keeping track of your connections and competitors, you can stay abreast on any major developments.

Not just for researching those potential employees or basic networking, take Guy's advice and see what this tool can do for you and your business.

Why is this significant? In our experience talking with organizations about online reputation management, they often respond saying they monitor online conversations using Google Alerts. The previous version of Google Alerts failed in capturing the online conversation due to the lack of blog tracking. Now when anyone signs up for Google Alerts they will have the option of tracking blogs in addition to Google News, groups and the web. Even better, the default is set to the Comprehensive Alert to track all, giving communications professionals the ability to track a deeper thread in the online conversation.

My issue with Google Alerts is that its still an email-based deliver system. Why not put an RSS feed directly on the Google Alerts sign up page?

As Google is rolling out advanced features in many areas of its business, we can only assume there will be a RSS tie in with Google Reader.

Our biggest concern from a usability standpoint is blog spam. We'll be testing this out to see if the quality of the results from blog posts are good or not. There are companies out there like Collective Intellect and Umbria that have entire systems to track the blogosphere and in our opinion their greatest value is eliminating blog spam. Try doing a Technorati search on a specific topic, 90% of the results are irrelevant, maybe popular, but irrelevant. Google Alerts is no way a substitute for a brand monitoring systems like Collective Intellect and Umbria, but it is a first step into understanding the impact.

So it's still up to the Communications Analysts to take the data from search that is relevant, the data from blogs that are popular and craft a strategy to identify and converse with the influencers.

Note to PR Firms: Google Alerts just upped itself a notch to becoming your clipping service - and it's Free.

Others in the Google Alerts conversation:
TechCrunch
Google Blog

This indicates a shift in the way the business travel industry is doing business. They are catching on to the fact that if they don't disclose surcharges in a transparent manner, change policies, or provide other instances of inadequate or frustrating service, the bloggers will quickly relay the information. This viral spread of information can of course have quite a negative impact, especially among the tech-savvy business traveler demographic.

The article goes on to state that some business, such as Mariott International, have embraced the blogosphere and reach out to the bloggers in a consistent, not just reactionary, manner. Marriot asks bloggers to speak to their teams, attend press meetings, and offers them advance press info.

In addition, the company is doing something that we've stressed the importance of in several of our previous blog posts--they follow the buzz. There is an employee in the company whose job it is to monitor the blogophere and report back on the buzz. Marriot has also utilized bloggers as a way to quickly disseminate new plans. As one might imagine, the word spread within minutes.

Business travel bloggers have still not reached their potential in terms of influence, but it seems only a matter of time. As of yet, many have simply not had the time to blog, or else have not seen the immediate benefit. As more and more companies make it apparent that they are heeding the words of the business travel blogger, I think we will see an increasing number of bloggers.

I think that's great news. I am one of those people who often consults the opinions of the blogosphere regarding companies and products, and with the increasing power of business travel blogs, the industry will most likely have to stay honest and at least a little transparent in order to continue to flourish.

"More and more, corporations find themselves in the headlines because they ignore two realities of the information age:

1. A company's attempt to covertly influence opinion is only as effective as the reaction people have when they find out who's behind it and why.
2. Yes, they will find out."

He's right. Transparency has become the currency of online reputation. Simple oversights can make your company look clueless, and attempts to conceal, misdirect, or misinform often generate outright scorn -- causing lasting damage to your reputation and your business.

Here are my tips for transparency in conversational media. These apply to PR/marketing pros as well as news organizations, bloggers, citizen journalists, and, well, anyone...