Lon Safko, author of the Social Media Bible has written the 10 Commandments of Social Media on the Fast Company website.
As I read the article I heard myself saying no, no and thrice no.
The conclusion I reached is that the headline should have in brackets, “For Social Media Marketing Consultants only.”
I consult regularly with companies wanting to develop a social media strategy and one of the most common misconceptions are business people who are hearing about social media all over the place and think they should get some.
My favourite clients are the ones who come to me and say, “I have a problem, can social media solve it?”
Because I am known for helping websites get links I usually get asked to implement a social media based link building strategy.
But to have a list of ten things you must do or else God will strike you down with furious anger is not helpful.
If you are in the social media business, absolutely you should at least try all these things. But I get by without podcasting, uploading videos and quite a few other things which the social media inteligentsia say should be done.
Look at your social media options as a pick and mix, not a list of commandments. Intelligently pick Better still, think of the specific problem you have to solve and then look at how social media can solve it.
This is where the social media consultant can earn their crust. By helping you develop a workable strategy, someone who has real life experience in social media techniques can lead you down the correct path. For the regular, normal businessman to be able to do this is nuts.
Social media has become extremely complex with many options available and business people need to be advised on developing an efficient road map. There are plenty of social media experts around who can help, but there are also a lot of people/companies who say they are social media experts because it says so in their Twitter bios.
So how do you know who can do the do, well that’s for another blog post.
Before I go,
Hi Lon, I know your reading this as you have your alerts set up 
And yes I do have your book and it’s a great reference.
Tagged as:
Social Media,
social media bible,
social media consultant,
social media strategy
