Five Deadly Sins of Social Media

Attend any marketing conference today and you're sure to hear lots of excited talk about social media. And for good reason--social media presents unprecedented opportunities to extend your brand's reach, build customer loyalty and generate revenue--at minimal cost.

Unfortunately, when it comes to actually participating in social media, many marketers either rush in with no objective or strategy, or become stuck on the sidelines, fearful of losing control of their brands.

In reality, social media is a very forgiving marketing platform--if you play by the rules and have a considered strategy and reasonable expectations: realize there will be some "learning as you go" and that you'll likely have to implement several iterations of any plan before enjoying significant results. And be sure to avoid these five "deadly sins" of social media:

BLOGGING FOR ITS OWN SAKE
Make sure you have enough to say to sustain a blog. Users expect a blog to provide value--insight, humor, information--and to be regularly updated. It's extremely time-consuming. Putting up uninteresting posts just for the sake of updating your blog will greatly diminish the impact of those posts which do have value. If you're not prepared from a resources or value proposition perspective--hold off.

THE WRONG VOICE
Consumers care about your products and how they impact their daily lives. Instead of using the CEO as the voice of your company, perhaps a more junior level employee in product development--someone with a passion for social media--will be better able to relate to, connect with and engage your customers.

FACEBOOK FATIGUE
I'm a huge proponent of Facebook and LinkedIn, but don't be the company or the person who does anything and everything to get in front of people at every opportunity, whether it's the group that sends out multiple messages each week or the person who updates his profile daily. Be sensible about updating your corporate and personal online environments--or people may tune you out.

THE RUSH TO BUILD
Instead of immediately building your own community, create a subgroup on an existing social network. Leverage the network's infrastructure and traffic while learning what it takes to engage your audience and whether the community ads value--to you and your consumers. Then think about building your own.

JUMPING INTO THE POOL BEFORE LEARNING TO SWIM
Before embarking into social media, you must have some personal experience with these environments. Subscribe to some RSS feeds, read a few blogs of interest (and jump into the conversation) and participate in a social network or two. Until you understand the psychology, language and etiquette, you'll never have the mindset required to successfully navigate these waters for your company and brand.

Aaron Kahlow is chairman of the Online Marketing Summit. He can be reached via e-mail at aaron@businessol.com.