Social media, sophisticated customers, and lack of control of the conversation are all pointing to the same direction - brands can't afford to be faceless. But now they also need a soul, a spirit and a person that people can relate to.

If in the past, brands could use anonymous models, with shiny teeth and great curves, to lure eyeballs, If in the past brands could use celebrity presenters as a pillar of emotional attachment, now things are different.

You see, when brands are involved in social media tools, they are exposing themselves. They can't afford not to be there, but their involvement make them more accessible. Their involvement in Twitter and such has one more effect - as people using Twitter in order to communicate with friends, when a brand is getting into their personal space they expect the brands to be, well, real.

But what's real?

People are real. Individuals in the companies that are representing the values and position of the organization. But they can't be just a front.

AT&T's Blogger ads, explaining why iPhone customers are facing network issues, could have been great several years ago. The ad shows an AT&T blogger who explains why there are network issues. But then people realized two important things:

1. This blogger doesn't have any authority to solve those problems. Meaning, he is nothing more that a glorified spokesperson with touch of social glare.

2. He isn't  even employed by AT&T

I am certain it would have worked better if C level AT&T guy had taken the stage.

Think - who is the true face of Apple? Is it the dude from "I'm a Mac" ads, or is it Steve Jobs?

Being real is tough. Really.

But brands can no longer hide behind fancy ads and shiny logos. They need a soul.

If they want to talk - they have to keep it real.

Another great post on this topic can be found here.

Monitor something on the web

There's a lot going on, on the web, all the time. New companies, technologies, conversations, ranking schemes and more are created daily. You can pick one and start monitoring it over time. I monitor around 800 blogs' Technorati rank for over eight months now. I publish precipitating results to my Twitter @blogmon account and accumulated results in here. It is not just helping me to weed out good blogs from the rest, it is also helping me to learn a lot about the blogsphere, Technorati, mashup challenges and more. There is still a lot to do in this little project but it help me to establish few, but very interesting connections through working on it. Few ideas: monitor tags from Delicious, the top 100 blogs on Technorati list (here), use Google Trends, Alexa, Twingly blog rank. If you have some programming skills you can automate most, if not all the steps and scale the process. If not, that's OK too. You can start with only few. The added value is that you'll keep consistently monitoring it over time and finding the right way to present the results. Where to report results? Read on...

Lifestream

From one of my favorite blog ReadWriteWeb I learned that there at least 35 Ways to Stream Your Life and counting. Pick one or more and join the conversation. The key is to do it right and here I'm still learning.

Few ideas:

One way is to keep current, riding new waves of conversations - start with Twitter Search's Trending Topics or if you are in Europe use Twingly's Hot right now. You can also see interesting tags on hashtags.org (Most Popular, Recently Added) and then search for them on Twitter Search.

Report results from your monitoring project: You can use Seesmic, Twitter, Jaiku, FriendFeed or any of the other life streaming tools. An interesting one that allow you to present your data using timeline is Swurl. You can use Google Docs to build online document that could be published and embed (using iFrame) inside a blog post, web page, pointed using a link from Twitter. A more demanding option is using Google Chart - good for automation.

Share interesting experiences, links, books, movies, knowledge - think what might interest others to follow.

It is amazing that all these great services comes for free. What that is more fascinating is how easy people with common interest find and subscribes to your feed and or vice versa.

Start a knowledge base, join and participate in a community, online book club or group

There are so many groups open for new members that are looking for active participation on Ning, Facebook, LinkedIn and many more. You can also start and lead one.

Examples: I joined Your Inner CEO Community on Ning. This is not just a good book but also a very active community. I'm also working building a knowledge base around Salability and Performance using an unbelievable smart service (armed with powerful semantic search engine) called Twine. I joined bloggers communities like Pijoo or MyBloglog.

I have to admit that things are going slow for me in this section - see the Bonus tip #2 for the reason why.

Become a beta tester

There is nothing more exciting (for me) than shaping new product functionality, look and feel. As an early adopter you have a chance to interact with extremely talented and creative minds building new technologies. You can contribute from your experience, and unique thinking, helping building a great new product. Be ready to deal with challenges such as poor performance, trouble getting subscribed, on-boarding, product crashes and hangs. Yet, be merciful, look at the bigger picture. Give feedback on both the details and the overall functionality. This is my favorite activity and the one that requires the most of my time. I wish I could do it more. You'll be amazed how suddenly you mostly interact with the CEO, CTO and the VP of engineering (some time it is the same person :)).

Few ideas: use Mashable Beta Invite section to find candidates. Subscribe to Techcrunch feed, or subscribe by email (I consume it in this way) to learn about new companies. Some start-up companies’ offers private beta invites through Techcrunch blog.

Write a guest post

I could not help a little recursion in here :) Now, seriously, write something compelling and offer it to some of the larger and established blogs out there. Having a guest blog post is a win win. You get to be noticed and the host to be perceived as the patron for upcoming new bloggers.

If you noticed I did not mention the word blog. I recommend having one even just because today this is the best way to create your web identity. I see mine as the home base. Yet, you don't need to have a blog to establish web presence and blog also require some effort. Thanks to the great blog platforms available today it is not so heard to start from a very good place.

Two bonus tips:

Be patient - if you do start a blog Google appreciate the age of the domain and that you'll consistently write blog posts. I noticed a significant change not before 6 month of blogging.

Focus - don't do all these five at once unless you are single, have no kids and don't have a life. Each one of the activities listed here demands time and should be done with care. It is better to do one or two as best as you could to build positive, meaningful web presence

I will not get into existential philosophical discussion about the why in this post (please create your meaning) but I will finish this post saying that I have a lot of joy doing so. I learned a ton and still learning constantly. I made new connections all over the world that otherwise could not have happened. So, give it a try.

Keren Dagan is a professional software developer manager and an amateur blogger. He likes to think both strategically and tactically on web technologies, trends, and phenomena. He mostly write about data and search engines technics. You can read his blog http://webnomena.com/ and follow him on Twitter http://www.twitter.com/kerendg. Keren brings to the blogsphere more than 10 years of experience in software development and management building highly scalable solution for the enterprise and his unique way of looking at things.

One of my best friends decided to make a move and start blogging. He asked for my guidance, and instead of keeping it between us, I decided to post it here. So, here we go - welcome to the Ten Minutes Blogging School:

1. Choose a Platform - you are looking for a combination of flexibility and stability. Flexibility is the ability to add widgets, video players, badges and so on. Stability is the total uptime of the system. Therefore you need a well known service. I am using wordpress.com as it offers a good enough flexibility (they approve every application separately so not everything is working on their platfor

m out of the box) and they provide a reliable service. Another great thing about WordPress is that you can later install your own version of the platform and get maximum flexibility with zillion plugins that are av

ailable for the WordPress platform but not implemented in wordpress.com

2. Buy a Domain - so now you have a blog in wordpress.com. Its address looks like xxxx.wordpress.com. You don't want that. Buy a domain (from Godady for example), upgrade your wordpress.com account by buying 10 credits ($10), and redirect the blog to that address. So instead of having a long and annoying address, you will have one tailored for you. It is very important to get this thing done first - so all the links to your blog from external resources will be done to the new URL.

3. Go to Feedburner and create an RSS feed - find the RSS feed address that wordpress.com gives you and "burn" it with Feedburner to get an independent RSS feed. The reason is that your RSS address is very important in order to maintain readership over time. If tomorrow you will decide to move to your own hosted wordpress platform, or change your bloggin infrastructure, you will still need to keep the original RSS feed address.

4. Choose the template you like and start writing!

That's it for the technical stuff. Now for the real thing - Community and Promotion

5. Identify other blogs and sites in the same topics. Comment on them regularly with your blog address in the identification. other readers will find your blog this way, and you will get more incoming links

6. Add your blog link to your Facebook profile, and import its RSS feed to your notes. You can also open a Facebook group and invite your friends to it. Use it to keep in touch with your readers.

7. Add the blog to your Linkedin profile, in case it is relevant to your business, or you believe your business contacts will be interested in it.

8. If you are on Twitter, use TwitterFeed to push your post to your Twitter friends. Use it carefully, and try to communicate using Twitter for other topics as well.

9. Constantly post your posts to Digg, Del.icio.us and StambleUpon

10. Answer your comments - it is the way your readers communicate with you. It takes time but it worth the effort.

Is that it?

No, there are many strategies, and technics to write and promote a blog. But these things are the basics to get you going. Remember - write about your passion, you will have the best posts if you'll do that.

Good luck to all the new bloggers among us!