Turn earned media into a managed asset

Earn, Aggregate and Re-Use
Earned media resides in dozens of formats ranging from tweets, comments, status updates and reviews. With emerging standards like Facebook connect and OpenId it is possible to aggregate and make these interactions available in many contexts.

This is not to say you completely turn your site over to social media like Skittles.com. Rather, think about the placement of earned media to support learning, buying or seeking help. This is how the corporate websites should evolve.The challenge in doing this is the number of places earned media exist. Each time you would want to re-purpose this content into a new experience like a display ad, micro site or email requires a small development effort.

Most companies already have invested in a content management system for the creating and publishing corporate content. These tools usually have the capability of consuming content from third party source via RSS and XML. If you are tagging favorite tweets or bookmarking earned media, why not hook this feed to your CMS.

Turning earned media into a managed asset allows you to re-use and re brand this content in many contexts. This is another benefit that can be claimed for dedicating resources to listening, learning and earning.