I remember the day in early 2010 like it was yesterday.   After a horrible year for our industry, the company called in all of the associates to mention that the firm’s corporate marketing platform was shifting to adopt very unique selling strategies incorporated within social media. For the firm, social media would be the horse to pull the cart for the indefinite future.

As an avid participant of social media marketing techniques for several years prior, whereby utilizing it as a defined percentage of my overall personal branding strategy, my reaction was not one of rejoice.  It was not that we were implementing 21st century technology to benefit our organization and its associates; we were.  My discontent was that we would dilute ourselves and our profession by largely incorporating social media’s bold, yet sloppy entrance into the internet as our preferred method of corporate branding and potential client interaction.

Why?  In my mind, social media is, and will always be, in whatever form, utilized as a simpler, more cost-effective alternative to professional corporate public relations and marketing.  Therefore, if I am in the majority on this, which I certainly believe I am, using social media suggests to an educated, informed public, especially within the ranks of healthcare and commercial real estate, that our message, any message, is important.  It is not.

Utilizing a “free” media campaign as a large percentage of the company’s brand and product distribution is simply recipe for disaster.  In business, through education it is realized that just because someone else is, or is not doing it, does not make it a sound business decision (or even profitable). By exclusively implementing social media, simply because it is the easiest way to promote your product or service, or worse, to gather fiduciary relationships, suggests that not everyone should actually be in business. Remember the expression — Talk is cheap, well, social media is essentially cheapening our words with each egregious talking point or reference.  The thought that forwarding material by clicking buttons just because someone else’s story line looks appealing is a good idea, it is not.

So, how can social media work for you?

A few suggestions:  Build a profitable brand prior to implementing social media.  This takes years of effort, but when your brand is ready for mainstream, implement it wisely.  Because, in the end, it truly depends on the time spent utilizing it (or abusing it) and what you are delivering that separates you from the noise. So, if you are in the widget business, you should advertise your widgets or help people understand how your widgets work, or how your widget is worth something over your competitors widgets.  Be realistic though, no one wants to hear your message again and again.  If so, the “any message” just gets lost in a verbal chaos known as social media and time could be wisely spent in more productive, profitable ways for yourself, your company and, especially, your clients.

See, social media is free because it has no direction, no purpose, no unique selling points to deliver to its customers; large or small.  It resembles an enormous disfigured mass of molten hot lava that swallows each unsatisfied marketing campaign or underfunded budget and dilutes it through over absorption.  Using this analogy, the heat eventually cools and turns into a hardened object called igneous rock.  The rock signifies time lost chasing a passing fad.

So, is your time better served Twittering or working?  We think working.  Remember the days when companies told their employees not to use the internet in lieu of working.  Still true today.

By the way, I just missed a potential client’s call writing this post.

This is an educated opinion written by Robert S. “Bob” Lowery.