I couldn’t agree more with transparency. For me (at H&R Block) being part of the community is paramount. What that means to me, is that we tailor our participation so we are relevant to which ever community we are present. For example, Twitter is a very personal one-to-one connection and by contrast YouTube is more impersonal entertainment driven community.

The other thing that I would add to transparency is that in the fast moving web world, not everyone pays close attention. While a company may believe they are being transparent, consumers may not have picked up the cues. Truman Greene (www.youtube.com/trumangreene) was a persona that we created for the YouTube community. While we believed we were being completely transparent (every video ends with H&R Block and there is even a video that explains that he is a creation), some visitors did not pick up on those cues and thought he was a real person (who happened to love H&R Block).

So my advice to any company going into social media is

a) Try to look at any of your activities from a consumer’s point of view
b) Think of the outcomes – If you ended up on the front page of a newspaper from these activities would you feel good about they would write about your company