"Engaging in honest and meaningful conversations in social media will earn the credibility to participate within communities, gain advocates and increase sales through word of mouth."

Philip is a Chartered Engineer, a Founding Partner of Meanwhile, the ‘venture marketing’ company and author of The Business of Influence: Reframing Marketing and PR for the Digital Age. Philp posts on a wide range of topics including:

• Influence and PR
• Social media measurement

"If media is interesting because it facilitates communication, whether that communication is mediated or disintermediated, then communication is most interesting when it facilitates influence."

Albert is one half of socialmedia-blog.de and co-founder of Simmobi. He's the former head of marketing at an e-commerce tech company. Albert posts, in German, on:

• Social strategy
• Curated weekly round up of social media posts

"1% Ihrer Nutzer sind für die Verbreitung Ihrer Inhalte verantwortlich."

("1% of your users are responsible for the distribution of your content.")

Christophe is social media manager at Acti, a Lyon-based digital agency. He's also an excellent blogger (and our youngest Dream Team starter). Chistophe posts on:

• Community
• Social technologies

"Si dans une stratégie commerciale, le client est roi, alors dans une stratégie communautaire, le membre a toujours le dernier mot."

("If in a commercial strategy the client is the king, then in a community strategy the member always has the last word.")

Roger has grown Content & Motion into one of the UK’s top social media agencies in a very short time. Their blog and thought leadership content shows you why. C&M posts on:

• Social media marketing
• Content, SEO and PR

"We all need to up our game. Engagement and creative needs to be better researched, more innovative, useful and entertaining. Otherwise it will sink."

Ian consults (and blogs) in the zone where sales meets marketings. He's a well-regarded coach and trainer on everything from sales strategy to selling and pitching skills. Ian posts on things like:

• Lead generation
• The sales pipeline

"The most powerful use of Linkedin is to find new clients and business partners through the search function or directly via your contacts connections."

• Chatter – the private social network for your business
• Desk.com – the social helpdesk for smaller companies
• Rypple – social employee performance management
• Do.com – the shared mobile To Do list