Editor’s Note: This is a guest post from Simon Esler, Co-Founder & Managing Partner of ConvoNation.

As companies become increasingly pressured to move towards greater transparency, social media users are becoming more and more aware of how social networking environments are being utilized to either encourage their awareness of brands, products and services, or to gather information for target marketing. As someone who works in social media I am obviously also a committed user, and I have to say that these two parts of me have often felt both at odds and strangely ready to collaborate.