Seth Godin's post about mass marketing does a great job of lining out what's crazy about the way marketing is done today. Want to go in the opposite direction? Social media tools like blogging don't have to be used like your old marketing tools. You don't have to do the same things that came before. Here are some ideas.


If you're blogging for your company, mention specific customers and talk about them and what they do. Don't even bring up your company and how it applies. People know that you're doing business with that customer. Can you share in their news? Imagine your customer waking up to a blog post about how you see their business helping its customers.
Start thinking like the media when it comes to your events. Encourage photos. Give people a relevant tag for the event so that if they post pictures or videos online, you might be able to find them via tags. Want to go a little further? Start a Flickr photo group for the overall space where your company plays (which encourages more interaction than if you just start a group about your company).
Write posts about people in your company and what they're doing outside the company. Talk about Surya's bike race. Cover Monica's graduation ceremony for her MBA. Don't write like you're a proud company. Write like a person covering interesting moments in a person's life.
What does this bring back to your company? It brings a sense that you're human, that your organization contains humans, and that every message from you isn't a pitch or a sale. Instead, you're someone who not only markets, but cares about the people inside and outside the organization.
Need some more ideas to start? Here's a post I wrote about blog topics for marketers that should get you going.
What do you think? Is your company ready for this level of engagement?