As part of the latest “Back to School” podcast series I do for my company, Powered Inc., our goal is to focus on the intersection of business and social. The speakers are smart people who run the gamut of bloggers, authors, analysts, journalists and business practitioners. This months flavor focuses on tapping into social to drive purchase consideration. My guests were the smart (and fun) Jackie Huba and Rob Harles. Jackie is an author and business blogger while Rob is the VP of community for a company you may have heard of called Sears.

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During our conversation, we covered the following topics (hat tip to Doug Haslam of SHIFT for helping me craft these interview questions):

• Consideration may seem like the part of the buying cycle most helped by social media: agree or disagree?
• How do we let customers “Consider?” How much of it is an active engagement (for lack of a better word) with the customer, rather than a more passive approach of letting them consider?
• If passive is an approach, how hard is it for companies to let go and let customers do there thing, trusting they will stay in the cycle?
• How vital is content in the consideration cycle?
• Brand-produced vs user-produced?
• One over the other?
• A preferred mix ratio?
• Types of content that work best
• Might consideration be used as a tool to make existing customers more profitable (repeat buyers)?
• How do you measure Consideration?