Five Lies About Social Media Marketing

Social media has caused businesses to set up, or to feel they have to set up, Facebook Pages, Twitter accounts and blogs to connect with as many customers as possible. Waylaid somewhere along the way, however, were the fundamentals of public relations, marketing, corporate communications and sales, giving way to erroneous assumptions about how businesses should manage their social marketing, some would argue.

Among the five biggest misconceptions is the notion that somebody other than you knows "social media," and is qualified to give you advice, argues Mikal E. Belicove is an "Entrepreneur" magazine columnist.

That might seem a "harsh" judgment, but for most smaller and start-up businesses, it is true enough.

The problem is that the art form still is developing. Some people have more experience, it is true, but at this point we all are still experimenting.

Perhaps one analogy is parenting. Some do it very well, almost instinctively, while others have to work at it. But humans wouldn't have been around very long if "parenting" were really so difficult that it had to be "outsourced" or conducted only by specialists. Some amount of common sense is needed, but social media is a tool like any other. Parents learn to be parents by doing it. Social media is like that, as well.

Also among the five top myths is the notion that social media, though "new," also represent "new media." As Belicove argues, all successive generations of media are new for a while. Then they just become "media." The implications are that social media can be approached just as any other medium can be: a tool.

Five Lies About Social Media Marketing