More brands are waking up to their social responsibility and doing good work through cause marketing campaigns. Yet too many still go about it the wrong way. I mean 'wrong' in two senses. Firstly, they are marketing ineffectively, and secondly, as a consequence their positive social impact is not maximized.

The social business marketplace is effectively forcing brands to engage with consumers on the basis of something that is meaningful to them. More often than not, this takes the form of some core value that finds expression in a non-profit cause.

The simple act of saying 'thank you' is a demonstration of gratitude in response to an experience that was meaningful to a customer or citizen.

The United States is at a critical juncture in time. Our government is riddled with historic debt, and the limited resources of philanthropic and non-profit efforts cannot meet the scale of social challenges we face with necessary force.

By linking with friends and ultimately strangers and building those relationships, social media is reweaving the social fabric that can then be used to scale your non-profit efforts.

When thinking through who to bring together to generate new ideas, it is more effective to combine specialists from very different and unrelated disciplines rather than a variety of people with different skills sets in the same field.

Corporations, consumers, and citizens must begin acting in concert to create a powerful third pillar of social transformation if we hope to meet the social challenges we currently face with equal force. This begins with corporations that choose to alter how they practice capitalism in two ways to serve the greater good.