Some marketers are hesitant to embrace brand communities as user generated content can be both powerful and unpredictable.

Still, if the buzz is good, you want to be participating in the conversation, not watching from the wings.

That’s the idea behind BzzScapes.   BzzScapes is a collection of member-generated brand communities, where people (BzzAgents) talk about products they like.  This can be blog posts, videos, coupons, etc.  Once a BzzScape is created, other members can contribute content, rate your content, or add comments. There are also BzzCampaigns,  where eligible BzzAgents weigh in on new products and influence how companies market them.

As a brand, there are several ways to participate on the site.   First, you can register your company with BzzScape.   There is a subscription service, but the payoff is direct access to BzzAgents and their insights.  You can run a BzzCampaign, hold a promotion through the site, or get intel on the performance of two competitors.   The other option (which we admit is somewhat dubious) is to create your very own brand BzzScape.   The idea being, you kickstart the conversation and let other BzzAgents participate.

BzzScapes operates as an influence community, rewarding members that contribute heavily with coupons, dibs on certain BzzCampaigns, and prominence within the site.  No money exchanges hands; BzzAgents are paid in honeycombs and ascend in bee ranking.  We enjoy a hard working pun, but we’ll let you discover the intricacies of the BzzScapes system (and what that means) on your own.  The gist is the more you contribute, the more good stuff you get.

There are lots of of active BzzScapes on the site and no shortage of big brand participation (including Ford and Proctor & Gamble).  Most of what we see is positive feedback.  Unfortunately, we are a lowly worker bee at the time of writing this article and cannot demo most of the site’s features (like BzzCampaigns) until we participate more.  This is by design, so casual ranters don’t abuse the forum.

Collaboration can be difficult when your workforce is scattered across offices.  Sure, there’s email and online chat, but these communication tools often make public conversations private knowledge.

Stay connected to projects and people, regardless of your location or level of involvement, with Socialcast.  Socialcast is an enterprise productivity tool.  It’s similar to Yammer, an idea we discussed in Everything looks like a nail, but whereas Yammer has a strictly Twitter flavor, Socialcast is a full-on social networking platform.

Employees have profile pages and the ability to follow each other.   Through the “what’s on your mind” status update, they can publish work activity, ideas, questions, general musings, etc, and other employees can view, comment, or attach files to those updates.  There’s also a groups functionality that can be used to manage projects, departments, or location-specific conversations.

The best part?  Everything is public and searchable.  No guessing who is working on what or what stage of development a project is at.   You can follow all conversation threads on the homepage or opt-in to receive email notifications.  The latter keeping you in the know, even when you’re not actively participating in the community.

The even better best part?  Socialcast is free.  The basic version comes with unlimited users, data ownership, administration rights, and more.  There is an enterprise version for companies that want to take the platform behind their own firewall, but we’re pretty impressed with the level of features you get with the basic version.

Socialcast is a great tool for fostering employee communication (think Yahoo Answers for your company) and creating a real sense of community. You can use it to share information that is often left out of the employee handbooks (e.g. best lunch spots, best times to avoid the line at the local cafe, wi-fi dead zones, etc.) and even to coordinate employee initiatives (e.g. carpooling, happy hours, recycling challenges, baby sitting programs, softball teams, etc.).

Traditional search engines are having a tough time keeping pace with social media. Of course, a number of tools have emerged to fill the gap, offering real-time search results for Twitter, Digg, and the likes.

Three notable mentions are OneRiot, Tweetmeme, and the latest contender, CrowdEye.   The idea behind all three being web search engines (like Google and Yahoo) can only tell you what people are – technically, were – searching for.   Social media search engines can tell you what people are talking about now – and what they are willingly promoting.  From a viral marketing perspective, this measure of influence is often the missing ingredient.   But I digress, let me give you a quick rundown of these services:

OneRiot crawls the links people share on Twitter, Digg, and other social sharing sites.  Search results reveal a bevy of information, like the exact date/time in which a tweet or bookmark was shared, who shared it (links to their profile), the number of times it was forwarded, and the link provided.  There’s also a sidebar for “Most Shared Items Today” and a trending topics tag cloud.

Tweetmeme is the most link-centric offering of the three, focusing solely on Twitter tweets.   You can run a basic search, check out the most popular tweeted links, view a live activity stream, or narrow down your focus by channel (e.g. Iran or Swine Flu Outbreak).  You can also browse by categories like Comedy, Gaming, Sports, etc.

CrowdEye offers a straight-forward dashboard view of Twitter activity.   You can view popular links and tweets, as well as a graph of your term’s Twitter saturation over the past few days.  Clicking on a related term in the tag cloud filters those results further.   CrowdEye also throws in a Top Hashtags and Top Searches feature.

A great case example of how to use one, if not all, of these products is the recent SquareSpace Twitter promotion.   SquareSpace is a simple website solution (and feed growth! topic).  To drum up visibility for their product, SquareSpace is giving away 30 iPhones in 30 days (06/08/09-07/07/09).  Participants need only include the #SquareSpace hashtag in any of their tweets to qualify.  Since the contest launch, SquareSpace has gone from negligible mentions on Twitter to over 12,000 tweets a day.  The #SquareSpace hashtag is now a top “trending topic”, and the company is receiving the type of publicity most social media strategists would salivate over.

We’re curious to see how many new signups SquareSpace generates off this promotion (feel free to share with the class); that’s the true litmus test.  Still, social search engines like OneRiot, Tweetmeme, and CrowdEye are providing play-by-play action of this marketing tactic, and if the numbers are any indicator, SquareSpace should do nicely.

If you’re a Twitter newbie, mastering the art of the tweet is second only to the process of building your network.  After all, how can you use Twitter as an effective marketing tool if no one is listening?

Try TwitterMass. This service automates the process of following – and theoretically, the process of being followed – on Twitter.  TwitterMass locates followers based on keyword and hashtag searches.  The idea being people with similar interests will yield more meaningful connections.  So while it’s fine and dandy to add your friends to your Twitter account, a random follower with the same interests could potentially expose you to even more followers with the same interest.

TwitterMass is free and a pretty straight-forward tool to use. Login with your Twitter account and access the “Manual Follow” feature in your Toolbox.   Plugin your keyword(s) or hashtag.  Hashtags are a grouping convention used by the Twitter community; it’s a quick and dirty way of categorizing tweet content (e.g. #digitamarketing). TwitterMass will return a list of candidates and basic background information, like their biography and how many people are following them.   You can choose to mass “follow” or “block” these candidates.   You also have the option of sending a personal message.

As an added bonus, you can put an expiration date on your new followees.   If they don’t follow you back within a set time, TwitterMass will automatically unfollow them for you.   This may seem extreme, but the goal here is to be a leader, not a follower.

I use several services to stay on top of industry tropics and trends.  However, combing through all the feeds, tweets, and bookmarks can get overwhelming.   I’m not ready to make cuts (what if we miss the “it” story or application?), but it would be nice to filter out the riffraff.

That’s the idea behind Popego, a social aggregator that only serves up content that is relevant to your interests.   The service is free, and it takes about 2 minutes to setup your personal feed (maybe longer for the true social service junkie).  Simply tell Popego what your interests are (technology? health? entertainment?) and which, if any, tags you want to include/exclude from you personal tag cloud.   Next, plugin the web services you subscribe too.  Popego works with:

• Blogs
• Google Reader
• Friend Feed
• Flickr & Picasa
• YouTube & Vimeo
• Twitter
• Delicious
• Last.fm
• Digg & StumbleUpon
• LinkedIn
• And more…

You can also adjust the level of influence certain web services have over your tag cloud.

When everything is to your liking, flip the switch, and Popego will generate your personal feed (http://popego.com/username).  This displays stories by relevance (percentage of interest match) and can be filtered by video, posts, or links.   You can also access content through your personal tag cloud.

The more you interact with Popego, the more it learns.  For example, my primary focus is web applications and new media.  I want to know what’s new and how to use it.  I’m less interested in venture funding and social commentary, but I don’t want to discount these articles all together.  By rating the content Popego serves up and fine-tuning my internal settings, I can actually train the service to focus on my interests.