In fact, at the recent Social Media Advertising Consortium Social Media Salon that we hosted in the Razorfish offices, it was a key theme too. Pauline from IBM put it nicely when she said that social media is becoming like the telephone. Every department and every person needs it. Imagine if only the marketing department had telephones. How absurd that would be!

The conversations reminded me of the above slide that was part of a presentation that I presented to a Fortune 20 company CMO two years ago. I used it to explain the fact that every employee is an interface to the customer and companies need to think about them as untapped assets to leverage. Her organization had well over 100,000 employees so explaining that each employee has an influence network of at least 20 people translating into a circle of 2 million people really resonated with her. In that moment she got social influence marketing.

As we move through 2010 and figure out how to leverage this hidden asset, the question is when how do you manage your brand in a world where employees can (and I believe should) be your brand advocates. Is this even possible? Does it run the risk of doing more damage to your brand than you can handle? I don't think it does and nor does Best Buy and Starbucks. Both are brands that I discuss in my book as ones that are leading the way with the creation of social voices - real people that speak authentically on behalf of the brand. Most importantly, they can't just be marketers but need to be from all facets of the business.

An industry where I believe we're going to see the next big movement - hospitality. It is inherently about relationships and that's where every employee in a hotel chain for example, is going to need to be the social voices for the brand.