There are many people that believe that social media is some sort of new religion.  In fact, many believe that adopting social media will somehow take them to the promise land, and make them successful beyond their wildest dreams.  This I’m afraid to say is not actually the case.

Joshua Porter has posted entitled “The Problem with Social Media Marketing“.  This is a great common sense approach to social media marketing, and well worth the read to get a very practical look at social media marketing.  I want to “amplify” his statement:

In other words, it’s better to think of social media tools as amplifying customer opinion rather than improving it.

You can’t simply set up social media tools and expect your business to get better. You have to change your business for your business to get better.

This is the lesson I want to get out to everyone about this post.  Social Media tools simply enable businesses.  It’s not an injection of coolness for your service or product.  Social Media is about community.  Building your community around your product or service.  As your community grows and your product becomes more well known, it will also be successful.  That is of course if you listen to what is being said in your community.  If you have a cool product or a cool service, it will be more cool in a larger community.  If it stinks, guess what it will stink more in a larger community.  Social Media is not some magic you turn on to make your product or service better.  It’s a tool that you use to tell people how good you think your product or service would be to them.