I’m sure you’ve played the telephone game before…one person tells another person something and then it goes through several people, one-by-one, until you get to the end to find out the story has changed. That’s a good game to introduce you to social media.

If you tell one person a story and then try to control every word they pass along to a friend then you’re doing the exact opposite of what social media is built to do. Companies struggle to let go of control, but sometimes that’s where the success lies. Just out of reach from your press release.

I spend hours upon hours on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, blogs, and other social media sites each week, sometimes for work and sometimes for fun, but almost always to plug into the telephone game.

If you’re unwilling to a) share your story or b) have that story altered, social media is probably not a place for you or your company. But, from what I’ve seen with leading companies in the last few years, this pretty much explains why social media has become one of the best things to happen to brand-based businesses.

Case in point, unless you were under a Twitterless rock and don’t listen to NPR or read the New York Times, you probably heard about the South by Southwest (SXSW) Festival here in Austin, widely considered the biggest week in live music.

Sure, the 1,900 indie rock bands, rappers, DJs and singer-songwriters who descend on Austin each year, sounds impressive but the mere 9,000 badge holders reported last year sure doesn’t…even if they did have 20 percent growth this year. But did I mention SXSW pulled in more than $100 million for the Austin economy last year?

SXSW’s true attendance figures are possibly best captured by Twitter. SXSW was “Tweeted” so often this month that one reporter found 1,500 mentions in a single hour. The site froze on numerous occasions.

Of course oversaturation becomes a concern, but ask any major brand if they’ve ever had a problem with too much awareness of their product…

Thanks to a willingness to share their story (and have it manipulated by “followers”), SXSW was the king of awareness in March. And who benefitted? Everyone. Certainly the festival’s coordinators, the City of Austin, the bands, film producers and sponsors of all the parties and events throughout the week.

And especially the customers, be they badge holders or party crashers.

The sponsors (i.e. GuitarHero, Rolling Stone, etc.) update their Twitter pages and their followers, at least the ones at SXSW, make plans to attend their events. People outside of Austin catch the buzz about the film, interactive, and music festival in the fourth-biggest city in Texas. And major brands like Pepsi, RayBan, Levi’s, American Apparel make sure to be in front of their target audiences when they arrive.

So when superstar bands and acts like Metallica or Kanye West show up for this festival aimed mostly for unsigned and lesser-known bands guess what happens?

It’s as if the star quarterback and the head cheerleader were the two people starting the conversation. And when school let out, everyone stayed in the parking lot to talk about it. At that point, all you have to do is show up with your product and a camcorder. For YouTube, of course.