The main office finally wants to activate social business programs – great. Now, are the front lines ready to follow through?

Dachis Group consultant Tom Cummings has proposed a panel for South by Southwest 2011, titled Leveraging Social Media Middlemen. Tom has worked with clients to structure social business operations and will share that experience in this panel.

In Tom’s words: For B2C companies, almost all social media strategy and advice is aimed towards how the corporate brand can leverage the unprecedented opportunity to interact directly with consumers. But as adoption of social tools increases – and new applications like Foursquare and Yelp combine online and in person interactions – corporate brands will need to make sure that all employees who engage with consumers are familiar with and understand the implications of social media campaigns. The frontline employees who interact directly with your target consumers will have to be increasingly familiar with social tools. They will be your social media middlemen. This panel will help you to identify them, train them, and develop ways to best leverage these employees who your customers will go to for help when their online and offline worlds begin to merge.

His panel will address these questions:

1. What are social media middlemen?
2. How can you identify your brand’s middlemen?
3. How will leveraging middlemen increase effectiveness of your social media campaigns?
4. How will leveraging middlemen increase the effectiveness of your traditional media campaigns?
5. Why are social media middlemen the critical missing link for all future successful social media campaigns?

If that sounds interesting to you, I encourage you to give a thumbs up to Leveraging Social Media Middlemen.