The Writing Life

A recent blog posting on another site discussed social media as a tactic that some companies engage in without benefit of an over-arching strategy.

There are a couple of problems.

It was Sun Tzu who stated that strategy without tactics is the slowest road to victory, but tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.

Engaging in a social media effort, without knowledge of exactly what social media is and what it can - and cannot - do, is a set up for failure, as is engaging in social media without clear objectives of what you wish to accomplish.

This worries me because I fear that companies are rushing to Facebook, Twitter and other outlets because they are the "new hot thing." I also fear that these same companies will measure in a manner similar to how they measure traditional media - newspaper and radio ads, etc.

The end result being the development of an attitude that social media is "neat but that's about it."

Hopefully, this will not be the case, as social media has the ability to allow a business to engage directly in a conversation with customers and prospective customers, unlike any other method that has come before.