The Social Media Strategist/Guru Has No Clothes

“Social Media! Social Media!” they all cry. It’s everything. It’s all-important. It’s capitalized. If you don’t have a Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, WhateverIsNextThatYouHaven’tHeardOfYet account for your company or organization or clambakesale, you can’t possibly function or be successful, right? And if you don’t have someone that understands all of it, you can’t possibly pull it off by yourself—you need a Social Media Strategist/Guru/Mahatma to run point and decipher the turbo-complicated, multi-leveled world of the big, wide web. 

Only you don’t. 

You don’t need those sites and you don’t need that guy on your team. You need to find The Mission and do everything in your power to ignore the voices that compromise it. If social media can help support The Mission and drive it forward and reach more people (which it typically can), then by all means, use it. But it will only help if you already have something truly remarkable going on. If you don’t, your social media strategy isn’t any different from a 13 year old girl posting on her BFF’s Facebook wall. Only it’s way more embarrassing.

And the guru? Maybe they are indispensable. Just be wary if their only strategy is “if you blog it, they will come.” Quantify the strategy. Set measurable goals and hold people accountable to hitting them. Otherwise you’re paying someone to play on Facebook and Twitter all day, and no matter what they say, that just ain’t business.