On the last day of Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, Charlene Li of “Groundswell” fame spread the gospel of the transformative power of social media for business organizations. She gave a preview of her new book, “Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead” to a packed house. As expected, she was very quotable. Here are a few gems:

[On your customer’s current condition] “Last month more people visited Facebook than Yahoo!” (cited Compete tracking)

“Have the confidence and humility to give up the need to be in control. It’s a fundamental reality that you aren’t in control anyway. This is difficult for brand marketers.”

“Inspire the commitment from people to do what you want them to do. You can’t command customers to buy products. You can’t command employees to do things … you have to inspire them to follow you because you have given up power, you have given them control. No where does this happen with greater speed than where social media touches these organizations.”

[In the future] “Social networks will be like air. We’re just at the beginning of this. We’re seeing that you can be social anywhere. You can take those relationships anywhere you want.”

My advice: Always stay for the Q&A, if you can. An audience member asked a parting question that yielded good insight. Should the social network be named for the individual or the brand? Li’s take was that employees come and go, but the brand remains. She recommends branded social media presences with the use of co-tweets so customers can know who they’re interacting with 1:1.

If you’re hungry for more, Li is leading a webinar based on her book tomorrow, May 7, at 10 a.m. Pacific.