Launching a new business is always a challenge. Many of the issues one faces though, are intimately entwined with the concepts underlying social media. Reputation, trust and your personal social network or graph become keys to success or failure.

The old saying, “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know,” is really true. But it’s become more true, as we become more connected.

And as our connections grow and expand, as we become more visible online, so more and more of our offline lives becomes visible too.

One of our confirmed speakers at Social Media: The Marketing Summit, Tara Hunt, lives and breathes this to a greater extent than almost anyone I’ve heard of. Via her blog at www.horsepigcow.com and Tweets at http://twitter.com/missrogue she has explored new frontiers, sharing life-detail with any of us who wish to visit.

If you haven’t read Tara’s blog, it’s a terrific read.

She believes completely in the power of relationship-building, and brings that power to bear in her own life through the company she co-founded, Citizen Agency (http://citizenagency.com/), and through her work in the Open Source community, the EFF and other organisations as well.

She’s brave, smart, funny and I couldn’t be more excited that she’s going to be speaking at Social Media: The Marketing Summit.