I spent the morning at a Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council session called “Sales & Marketing Roundtable: New Online Strategies.” The focus was on social and community media and how it can be used in marketing. Bottom line: you should be at least paying attention to and probably participating in this world.

Here are some highlights from speakers Todd Van Hoosear, chief blogger at Topaz Partners and Julie Woods, VP of product strategy at Cymfony, a vendor of market insight services:

• Great stats from Van Hoosear:

• more people now belong to online special interest groups than to professional organizations or clubs;
• over 25 million Americans have sold something online;
• 10% of Internet users read blogs regularly (plenty of room for growth there!);
• in December alone, Wikipedia readers added more than 45,000 entries;
• 59% of CEOs say they find blogs useful for internal communications and 7% are bloggers;
• 83% of corporate execs who blog say their blogs are written or drafted by someone else (hey, give me a call!);
• you can now call an 800 number and create a podcaston Audioblog.com (Thanks for this referral, Todd. Awesome idea!)

• Interesting technologies and governance procedures are emerging to create structure in blogs. We’re moving toward a Personal Information construct, in which content packages are personalized for each user based on his or her interests, behavioral patterns, demographics and choices. For a somewhat chilling animation on where this is headed, see EPIC.

• One person can do a lot of damage online.

• The Internet shifts economics toward the “long tail.” Basically, those are the products, people and issues that are too specialized or small to be addressed by conventional media. Online communities can cost-effectively address the long tail because the economics of online publishing are different. This is why online is a better medium for targeting. Marketers should know this.

• One-to-one has long been held out as the marketer’s Holy Grail. But it should really be many-to-one, where individuals can receive many customized messages. Online communities are a step toward getting to that.

• Companies that don’t engage with the blogosphere because it’s too small are missing the point. While any one blogger may have limited reach, the links between blogs can create large special-interest audiences. And if a prominent blogger picks up a story, it can spread like kudzu.

• Your community media strategy should cover the entire buying cycle. Banner ads are good at creating awareness. Blogs and podcasts become more valuable as the buyer moves closer to a decision. That’s because peer advice is so important at that time. The community also plays an ongoing role in validating and complementing product support. In fact, one of a company’s greatest vulnerabilities to online criticism is in customer support.

• Many, but not all companies should support employee bloggers. You should only do it if transparency and customer engagement are part of your culture. If you start a corporate blog, use it to respond to issues, get ahead of the buzz in the market, dispel inaccuracies and promote your thought leaders.

• DO NOT be argumentative, sell, overreact or make unsupported claims. You’ll shoot yourself in the foot.

• Don’t ignore this stuff. If you type “Cisco” into Google, the fifth result is a user-generated FAQ and the 14th is a blog entry. If you type “Verizon customer service,” the ninth search result is headlined “Verizon Customer Service is a joke.” Not to single out Verizon. A lot of companies would have the same issue.

• Use automated tools to filter and navigate the blogosphere. Freebies include Bloglines, PubSub, BlogPulse, Technorati, Podscope and many others. Cymfony, Intelliseek, BuzzMetrics and others offer sophisticated paid services.

• The Teflon cancer scare of last year is a good example of how a company effectively responded to a problem through online media. “Important Facts about Teflon” helped counter rumors and calm a growing public outcry. Woods showed a nice chart of blog activity that dramatized how DuPont helped manage the reaction.