Social Media Strategy - Are You Doing This To Get Social Media Signals To Your Site

Interesting article, most of his observations are in line with my experience. I agree with the power of social media to foster "brand loyalty and word-of-mouth referrals" -- both of which for me are among the top driver's of my company's success.

That said, I don't necessarily agree with his recommendations.

Having an active presence on a lot of social media channels is great -- but if you don't have the time and energy to manage these channels effectively, you're probably better off concentrating on the one or two channels that are gonna be most effective for you. This also goes for a company blog. Do it if you're gonna do it well, but if it's low quality, nobody will read it and it won't do anything for your search engine rankings. I'd rather have a great, engaged presence on only Facebook (or whatever your favorite channel is) than a poor, disengaged presence on every channel there is. Virality works like compounding interest, so it's easier to get to 500K followers in just one place than trying to spread them out.

And when he said: "Hire a college intern. Most of today's college students are very familiar with social media channels and how to effectively use them" I couldn't disagree more. I would never, ever, EVER trust my brand and the number one way I interact with my customers (and the way they interact with others) to an intern who doesn't know my business and my customers and will probably only be with us for three or four months.

And I'm sorry, but just because you know how to effectively share drunk photos of yourself at a party it does not mean you'll be an effective social media writer in a business context. That's like saying that because young people take a lot of video on their smartphones, they'd make great directors of Hollywood movies. We use interns for other things -- and sometimes they draft content for us -- but they aren't gonna manage our Facebook page!