Vocal consumer communities can be effective extensions of your sales team -- if you know how to get them on your side.

Less than 10 years ago, consumers were viewed by most brands as passive targets to be inundated with marketing messages. Today, however, consumers are not just wary of advertising, they are downright mistrustful of it. What's more, consumers have it within their power to broadcast negative brand experiences to a massive audience via Facebook, YouTube, MySpace and any number of blogs or product review sites. These consumers are not just savvy, they're connected -- two facts at the core of a challenge now present within the marketing industry.

Underneath this challenge, however, is a rare opportunity to connect with your customers and empower them to become not only brand advocates, but ultimately an extension of your sales team. Read on for five tips on using social media as platform for engaging with consumers and engendering brand advocacy.

1. Listen and understand
Once you've identified the individuals you want to engage with, as well as the online communities they inhabit, it is important to sit back and observe before interjecting yourself into their world. Understanding who they are, how they communicate and what compels them to discuss a particular brand or its products will allow you to engage with them on their own terms, and will ultimately result in a rewarding dialogue.

Disney followed this philosophy for the 50th anniversary edition of "Lady and the Tramp." They ran a successful advertising campaign geared towards the canine lovers on social networking site Dogster.com for the film's release. Understanding Dogster's key demographics -- female, well-educated, high income -- allowed for a targeted campaign geared towards individuals who were likely to be responsive to the message.

2. Show the mutual benefits
While the most opinionated consumers are most likely to welcome a chance to share their opinions and ideas with their favorite brands, everyone enjoys being recognized for their contributions. Creating a symbiotic relationship in which consumers are rewarded for their time is a key element in creating true brand affinity.

An easy way to do this is simply by sharing the results of your engagement and allowing the participants to see how their insights were used. Earlier this year, Starbucks launched MyStarbucksIdea.com, an online community of brand enthusiasts who submit ideas for improvement. Users are then able to see how many community members have voted on their suggestion, if it is being reviewed by Starbucks and, ultimately, whether the idea will be put into action. 

3. Fight the urge to sell
Cultivating a meaningful relationship with your customers means checking all agendas at the door. Interaction via blogs, social networks or other social media platforms will bear the most fruit when treated as a conversation and not as a sales pitch. Moreover, as studies have shown, simply listening to your customers' feedback fosters brand loyalty.

Procter & Gamble was able to boost sales of its Tampax and Always lines by creating BeingGirl.com, a website dedicated to providing information to teens about feminine care and health. Procter & Gamble has built a loyal community of teen girls who are able to get their questions answered by a team led by Dr. Iris Prager, a Ph.D. in women's health studies.

4. Outreach is appealing
It's difficult to feel any sort of attachment to a nameless, faceless corporation -- consumers are much more likely to feel loyalty towards a brand when it has a human face.

Services like Twitter are great for forging one-on-one connections with your customers. Comcast, a brand that has become synonymous with appallingly bad customer service, has used Twitter as one component in its efforts to turn the company's image around. It recently charged employee Frank Eliason with monitoring the micro-blogging site for customer service complaints under the name ComcastCares. Eliason and his team search member "tweets" for comments about Comcast and then contact the individual directly asking if they can help.

5. Invent new metrics
New outreach deserves new metrics. Focusing on eyeballs -- even targeted eyeballs -- misses the value that brands should be aspiring to draw out of online communities. It treats an active member of a passionate community the same as a couch potato watching TV. The right metrics should be derived in conjunction with the site, to ensure that what you want is within the scope of the community's natural activities.

For example, as a consumer research site, ExpoTV gives partners metrics that revolve around whether our presence helped consumers along a purchasing path. These metrics include whether our visitors initiated click-to-buy, pursued more product information, asked questions of other consumers who own the product, left comments or uploaded videos on the brand pages. These help direct our partners toward the impact we think they can have on the activities our community naturally enjoys. 

Daphne Kwon is CEO of ExpoTV.