Let’s face it, there are a ton of social media sites out there and trying to participate in all of them may spread your resources and your budget way too thin. Instead of trying to be everywhere, take some time to analyze each platform and their potential benefits and then develop and entrance plan for those that meet your needs.

Ahhh…reinventing the wheel. It’s an age-old tradition for a lot of organizations, especially when it comes to changes in technology. Some new class of productivity software comes along and the entire IT organization has to come to a grinding halt while a new strategy is defined. Remember stopping to define an ECM strategy? Or maybe it was an ERP strategy. Or could it have been an CRM strategy. Don’t even think about that amount of time and energy devoted to developing a .com or eCommerce strategy!

Engaging in social media means preparing for potential crisis situations. Whether it’s an angry customer, a mistake in a tweet, or some other situation, you need to have a social media crisis plan in place to determine who will handle the situation, how it will be handled, and what process will be followed.

If you’ve ever tried to advocate for social media in an environment filled with “old school” media folks, you might empathize with the social media strategist in this new cartoon. While more and more marketing dollars are shifting to digital, there are still people who believe that traditional television, radio, and print are the best for their brand. And maybe they’re right…if they sell televisions, radios, or magazines 😉

Each day, it seems that more and more folks are dipping their toes into the world of Social Networking by creating Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, and LinkedIn accounts. And each day, we’re entertained with stories of folks who get “Facebook fired”, shoot off an improper Tweet that lands them in hot water, or and share confidential information on their personal blog. Recently, Helen A.S. Popkin wrote an excellent article for MSNBC.com called “Twitter gets you fired in 140 characters or less” which details some of the follies of folks who have overstepped the boundaries from responsible social networking into, well…just TMI.

Freedom. It’s the single principle that the United States of America was founded on. Freedom from tyranny, freedom from being told what we can and can’t do, freedom to choose our pursue life, liberty and happiness. A few things were missing, though, when the original framers penned the constitution, the most important of which have been added over the years.

One social media myth that I frequently hear is that young employees (often interns) are good employees to manage your social media properties. What some Managers fail to understand is that placing your organization or brands reputation into the hands of employees who have little business knowledge or experience can lead to disastrous results.

I have been meaning to write this post for quite some time, but it seems as though every time I make my top 5 list of social media myths, I hear a new one that feels like it should make the list. But rather than keep pushing it off, I have decided to go ahead and publish my top 5 favorite social media myths, but I reserve the right to update the post and expand the list beyond 5 in the future. In fact, if you have an addition to the list, let me know and I’ll consider adding it.

Dairy Queen and Edge Shaving Gel have created terrible ripoff commercials based on the Old Spice Guy platform. Lame.

I recently participated in a conversation on LinkedIn entitled “Should Employees Be Allowed To Use Social Media?” in one of the social media groups where I participate. While the responses where overwhelmingly in favor of not only allowing, but encouraging employees to engage online, I was befuddled by the fact that this question even exists.