There are different disciplines of social media. Broadly they can be broken down into - Listening, Talking, Supporting and  Innovating. I think all organizations can (and should) do the  listening piece,  if for nothing else than as a planning tool for future activity or simply seeing what is being said about them, their competitors and their industry –basic research.

However, maybe the time actually isn’t right for your organization to start ENGAGING. The social media echo chamber is noisy at the moment and some companies have done their brand more harm than good by getting into it when they shouldn’t have. So, even though it may seem that every man and his dog is now ‘doing’ social media, if any of the following sound familiar then maybe your business isn’t quite ready to jump on the engagement bandwagon.

1. You don’t have the resources

Plain and simple, if you don’t have the money, the time or the man power to dedicate to social communications then you won’t be able to execute it properly. In spite of what you may have heard, social media isn’t free. It takes the same level of resource as any other marketing or communications initiative and so you need to find budget from other areas of the business that maybe aren’t performing, you need to include social in staff’s job role’s or hire the skills you need and you need to put in the ‘hard yards’ in terms of time. There are real, financial benefits from implementing social programs into your organization, but it won’t happen by magic and doing anything ‘half arsed’ is going to fail in the long run.

2. Your customers aren’t using social media

I know its hard to imagine that anyone in the known World isn’t on social media but, while the numbers seem impressive, the fact is not everyone is! You need to do the research before any program to determine if your customers are using social technologies and if so, which ones. You can throw up a Facebook fan page, create a Twitter account, jump on Foursquare and upload videos to your YouTube channel until the cows come home, but if your customers aren’t there then it’s a waste of time. Fish where the fish are, otherwise you are just creating noise.

3. You have no idea why you are doing it!

As with any marketing and communications program, you need a clear strategy and execution plan. Going through the planning stage will help determine whether social is going to be effective for your business, will make sure your business objectives are aligned with the activity and help determine what measurement metrics need to be applied. If you luck out and manage to create a thriving, engaged community by simply creating an account and ‘joining the conversation’ (I am hating that phrase a lot as well!) then …High 5, but you are in the minority! Some sports brands, celebs, fashion labels etc might, might be able to pull it off but I would advise spending the time doing the planning.

4. Your staff aren’t trained how to use social communications

Unless you are planning on outsourcing all the engagement (which I highly advise against and could actually be another point all of its own) then your staff are going to be on the front line, talking with your current and future customers…so they better be ready! There are countless social media shockers to draw upon where the underlying reason for the ‘fail’ is lack of training and understanding of how to use the technology or the rules of engagement in a given community. You wouldn’t let an untrained intern lead your marketing programs, so don’t let them do so with social. There is a world of difference between using Facebook, LinkedIn or a blog for personal use and running a successful social program for a business.

5. You’re not seeing this as a long term initiative

If you are from a marketing or advertising background, then you will be comfortable with campaigns. Campaigns are planned, executed, measured and then they end. Social is a continuum. It’s an ongoing process of interaction with your customers (or at least it should be). If you manage to create a community around your brand, product or industry then you need to keep fuelling it to get to the real gold nuggets of business intelligence and advocacy, the last thing you want to do is lose contact with the people who can help sustain and innovate your business with you.

What have I missed? What other reasons are there for a business to not start engaging with their customers through social media? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

The Old Spice campaign is the latest social media case study held up as a shining light of how to conduct an integrated social program that uses all medium available to delight its audience.

The original ad  launched back in Feb and was followed up by another 30 sec ad (both are embedded below for you viewing pleasure) before this month, when they began a social media engagement push by making personalized videos which were sent to influencers like Ashton Kutcher, Kevin Rose, Alyssa Milano and Evan Williams, so a good mix of tech and celebrity, plus a bunch to other ‘normal people’ who had posted or tweeted comments.

Personally, (and I know I am not alone here) I think it was one of the best campaigns I have seen in a long time that uses social at its core. The original message was funny, engaging and appealed to both sexes, it was placed well, they assigned the correct budget, they targeted the correct mix of ‘influencers’ (subjective I know, but humour me) and used the social channels to continue the engagement. What is even more impressive is their attempt to totally rebrand an outdated product and pitch it at totally new audience of under 40’s females compared to over 50’s males!

The results seemed equally awesome. The original ad received over 12m views on YouTube and won various awards, the YouTube channel was the most viewed last month, the follow up videos garnered a ridiculous amount of online buzz…but guess what?

….sales are down…wait…or are they? It seems that sales for all Old Spice products took a dive from Feb until June but have seen resurgence this month off the back of the fan engagement push (the response videos). The numbers aren’t 100% clear at the moment and we need a few more months of sales data to make an accurate call.

What is clear is that the social media spend from this point on, should be on trying to build a community that can help define future product and maybe that is what the Old Spice crew are planning…I hope so!! They have captured a huge amount of attention and are now well placed to activate the 5^th P in Brian Solis’ new marketing rules – People.

The long term value of social for a business lies in research, intelligence, support and innovation rather than ‘campaigns’. Using traditional marketing techniques are still vital to build awareness but the new marketing techniques need to be activated to keep the brand live and relevant to the customers.

Original

Follow Up

Last week I spoke at the social media and sports summit in Nottingham organized by the UK Sports Network. The name of the half day conference was ‘Breaking down the barriers’ as many in the UK sports industry are still tentatively feeling their way into social media. Keeping with the same theme, here are five of the barriers I have encountered when talking with sports clubs, but they apply to any organizations that are new to social media.

1. Too much hype

It is getting very hard to ignore the social media bandwagon. Each day brands and organizations are being bombarded with stats showing that Facebook now has more users than there are stars in the sky, businesses are making millions of pounds through Twitter and more people are watching YouTube than TV. The result has been many organizations jumping on the bandwagon without doing the necessary planning to work out how social media can help the overall business . It is easy to see the opportunities with social media and sales and marketing teams are always going to jump on these, but taking a step back, developing a clear strategy for social to: help sell more stuff, create better dialogue with the customers or improve the service will be far more valuable in the long run.

2. Social media is mislabeled

The boss still thinks social media is something his teenage daughter wastes her time on when she should be studying! Sound familiar? I think social media is currently mislabeled and (hopefully) will eventually become another channel that businesses use to connect with their customers. Businesses need agencies and consultants to come to them with business or communication strategies and programs that use social technologies to deliver better customer experiences, not social media campaigns. While it is seen as an independent program, it will be treated with skepticism by those who haven’t grown up with the new social tools.

3. Shiny object syndrome

This ties in the with hype problem. All we hear from the ‘mainstream media’ is the tools – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Foursquare and the phenomenal growth they are enjoying. This leads to organisations and brands focusing on developing strategies based around the technology, when they might not be the most effective channel to the customer. Organisations need to do their research on their customers and find out which networks their customers use, how they use them, what content they like producing and sharing and who is influential. Once they have this knowledge and have done some internal planning on what resources they have, then they can choose the technology platform(s) which best suit their needs. Also, be wary about marrying your communications to one channel. As we have seen with MySpace, Bebo and Friendster, the network of the moment can quickly shed users or change focus.

4. Culture

The biggest barrier to adoption at the moment is for businesses to become more social.  For centuries, business has been used to communications being a one way street and companies have constructed their internal processes accordingly. Successful social media adoption means a cultural shift away from controlling messages and staff communications and letting go of some of the notions that shaped the media landscape – brand identity, press releases, corporate policies. Yes, it sounds scary and yes, new processes and technology need to be used to help it scale but organizations need to buy in to the reality that customers are going to dictate how and what they want to buy and the type of service that is necessary for them to become a brand advocate and spread positive WOM. Once that sinks in, then social needs to be integrated from the top down or bottom up (depending where the spark happens!).

5. Confusion over measurement

There are no universal metrics for measuring social media yet, and there might never be. Measurement of social programs has to be in context to the individual business, it is not as simple as impressions and clicks. What equals success for one company might not for the next and that makes universal metrics very hard to establish. However, if you have done your planning and know what your business objectives (sales, foster dialogue, increase customer engagement, gain market intelligence) are, then you can track these metrics and work out what equals success for your business.

There also seems to be confusion over ROI. This could be a post in itself, but if you are confused about ROI of social media then check out this presentation by Olivier Blanchard. He explains it better than I ever could!

What have I missed? What other barriers have you experienced to social media adoption? I’d love to hear your thoughts…

We haven’t done a social media round up, or even a social media and sport round up for a few weeks now. There is absolutely no good reason for that so, without further ado here are six posts that caught our attention recently. I’ve tried not to make it a World Cup fest but there will be a couple in there!

1. Social media usage up 159% in the UK – Nathan McDonald

We all love to hear that social media usage is on the up (seeing as we spend a good chunk of time singing that tune to clients!), and this short post and infographic from We Are Social (via Nielsen) does a good job of showing that usage is up in the UK…and up quite a bit!

2. The Social Business Manifesto – David Armano

This post from David Armano was inspired by a post five years ago called the Social Customer Manifesto, but has been altered to focus on business in general and how businesses need to operate in the era of the social web and social communications. There are ten golden rules that companies of all shapes and sizes should pin on the wall. Check it out…

3. The Gradual Demise of Social Media Marketing – Louis Gray

This isn’t Louis Gray dissing social media, rather explaining (very well) that we need to stop treating social media as a special case and start including as a component of marketing and communications and getting rid of the shroud of mystery that still hangs over it. The video is below….

4. 13 Truths About Social Media Measurement – Amber Naslund

Amber Naslund at Radian6 knows her onions when it comes to social media measurement. This post addresses some of the myths and excuses that surround social media measurement and offers up some advice on how to start doing it properly.

5. There Are No More Blind Dates – John Jantsch

Business is all about relationships. Anything that can bring you closer to your client or customer or prospect makes life easier. Most people have a profile on one of the major networks, so there is very little excuse for not doing your research on the people you are going to meet. Sure, its not as fun as going on a blind date…oh wait, they aren’t fun at all and are much harder to win business from! Top post.

6. England’s World Cup Gaffe Gets the LEGO Treatment [VIDEO]- Brenna Ehrlich

Waited until the end to give you a World Cup post, and it isn’t really a post. More of a (awesome) parody in Lego of England’s hapless goalkeeper Rob Green letting a powder puff shot from Clint Dempsey of the USA squirm under him. England play their second game of the tournament in a few hours and we are betting Mr Green won’t be between the sticks! Anyway, check the video out…its very well done indeed

Come on England!

The UFC ‘do’ social media as well as any sporting organization in the world. There was a good post from Greg Ferenstein at Techcrunch today explaining that, when the mainstream media were shunning the sport as being too violent or not something they wished to associate with, UFC president, Dana White turned to grass roots, word of mouth and social media to harness a following for his organization and made MMA the fastest growing sport in the World.

You can read more about UFC’s strategies for building their brand on social media here and here . Sure, they partnered up with Digital Royalty who have a good track record when it comes to building fan engagement programs, but the secret (if you can call it that) seems to be two-fold…

1. The CEO is championing social media. This is a huge one as most brands are still looking for the concrete evidence that social media will improve their bottom line before assigning the appropriate resources to make it effective, whereas Dana White is telling the fighters to “Tweet their asses off”

2. The athletes are given the freedom to express themselves and engage with the fans. Again, huge if you want to be successful in social media and the very thing that is scaring the shit out of most mainstream sports. They are terrified of an athlete or employee breaking ranks and going ‘off message’ that may impact their perceived brand. What Dana White has cottoned on to here, is that every one of his fighters that promotes themselves, their fights, MMA, the UFC brand or any sponsors is adding to his marketing clout.

It would be great to see more teams, athletes and CEO’s being as frank with the media and fans as Dana White is in the below video. It is probably an unfair comparison as he is clearly an outgoing, fan centric guy who loves his job and the sport, and they are rare…but it is a good example of what can be done by letting go of control and allowing authentic, un-spun communications with your fans or customers.

Any up and coming, developing sports or organizations should take note!

Daniel McLaren is founder of ‘The UK Sports Network’ and is a consultant here at Spearfish Labs. He also runs several groups on LinkedIn including ‘The UK Sports Network’ and ‘Social Media & Sport’. You can follow his tweets on @danielmclaren. This is his first post for Spearfish Labs so leave him some comments and let him know what you think!

Some of you may wonder why I have chosen Reading Football Club for this article. Well it has been my hometown for the last 10 years and I’ve been following the team for a large proportion of that.  I was there at the Madjeski Stadium watching the big screen when they were promoted from League 1 after playing away at Brentford…. great memories.

Since then the club has played in the Premier League for two seasons and this year ended up a comfortable mid table (after a very shaky start) and went on an FA Cup run that included the scalps of West Bromwich Albion and Liverpool before bowing out to Aston Villa at the quarter-final stage.

Despite this I have found myself drifting away from the club as the prices went up and work/home took up more of my life.  I keep meaning to go to games but just not made it down to the stadium for a game.

Reading Football Club

The club has a bright future ahead of it; a good young manager in Brian McDermott, a young talented team, a prudent and wise Chairman and a modern stadium with the hotel, training ground and all the facilities a team needs.  The income streams are in place for merchandise, events, conferences, hotel stopovers and sponsorship.

The Thames Valley area is one of the wealthiest in the UK and with the likes of Microsoft, HP, Nokia, Vodafone, Oracle and Dell on the doorstep so sponsorship should be an area in which the club should prosper.

To give you an idea of the clubs local reach before I delve any deeper.  The nearest football clubs of note are Swindon Town and Aldershot.  Beyond this you are travelling into London hence why the majority of Reading locals support Tottenham Hotspur, Chelsea and Arsenal.

Social Media

In terms of Social Media the club does not have any official presence.  Not on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube…. not even a fans forum on the man www.readingfc.co.uk website.

There is a fair amount of unofficial activity going on with over 5,000 fans following the Reading FC fan page on Facebook.  That is a large number of people that are showing a great interest in the club, want to talk about what is happening and want to engage with the club.

Add this is to unofficial players fan pages of Noel Hunt, Shane Long, Sigurdsson and Matejovsky this brings the Facebook activity for Reading FC up to almost 10,000!  That is not a small, inconsiderate number considering the average crowd at the Madjeski was 17,408 for the season just gone.

There is obviously a life away from Facebook where more activity is going on.  If you search YouTube for Reading FC content this brings up over 9000 results.  This is another sign that the fans want to engage, show their experiences from their point of view.  On Flikr, the photo uploading site from Yahoo, there are almost 2000 photos from fans that have been added.

A quick look at that other major social media platform, Twitter, shows that @ReadingFC and @Reading_FC have already been taken by fans.  With almost 1,500 followers between them with little content being offered this is another place in which the conversations and updates are taking place.

What should Reading FC be doing?

The first point is always to listen first, which is what I have started to do with in the section before.  You have to look at where the fans are, what they are talking about and how best it is then to engage with them.

It is not about just adding a Facebook and Twitter page with your club RSS feed plugged in because everyone else is on it and it seems the thing to do.   Without a strategy in place that ensures the aims of the business are being serviced by this new marketing media and that it dovetails with the other marketing and PR activity the club has planned then the chances of it being a success are reduced.

Content is something the club is not short of, as with all sports organisations.  You have players, training sessions, events, awards, journeys to games and much much more.  Fans want to see what is relevant to them – not players rambling about their inane thoughts but them talking about football.  They want to feel part of the club, see/hear what is happening behind the scenes, the chance to win prizes and ask questions.

One of the keys is to give the power to the fans…. a scary thought I know and an issue that crops up time and again within sport in the UK.  The fans are going to talk about it anyway, so instead of hiding away and pretending nothing is going on why not participate in it?  You can’t control the conversation but you can be part of it; give them a platform to use, listen to their suggestions, answer their questions, offer them content and exclusives.

• How much would Reading fans love to listen to a live chat before a game with Shane Long and interact using UStream or Vpype.
• Be able to follow the twitter game updates if they are away from the TV or radio via their mobile.
• Hear what key executives and players are doing via Twitter and Blogs.  How much of a hit would Sir John Madjeski, manager Brian McDermott and Director of Football Nicky Hammond on Twitter!  Look at what Tony Fernandes does with Lotus F1.
• Have some player interaction through Facebook with their own fan pages with pictures, video and messages to their fans…. Nadal and Federer are two of sports biggest stars and use Facebook brilliantly.
• Invite key twitter/bloggers to games and bring them closer to the club.  It is publicity and with more and more sports content online you want to encourage insightful positive comment/reporting.
• Acknowledge fan twitter pages and blogs who offer great content and post links to them from the main site.  Manchester City has a page dedicated to their fan blogs, something that I am sure has caused more positive publicity and built new bridges.
• Drive traffic back to the club site by creating stories around product launches, season ticket dates, game ticket offers and player appearances to encourage sales from Facebook/Twitter.
• Use the platforms as an additional sponsorship activation tool to acknowledge sponsors, run competitions and inform of offers.  Liverpool have over 1.2m Facebook ‘likes’ which be the cherry on the cake to any sponsor coming in and can access this additional area

And you can measure it!  There are many tools out there, both free and chargeable, that can help in making sure you are where the chatter is and making positive moves towards your goals and many more hitting the market all the time.  For free you can use Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, YouTube Insights and Swix (whilst in beta phase). Or use paid for searches such as Radian6 for a more detailed analysis dependent on your budget size.

Bring the fans closer

When I used to work for a cricket club one of the constant issues with fans if the feeling of being left behind, that no-one was listening to them.  Social media gives you the tools and opportunity to bring them in and nip any arguments, negative reaction in the bud.  Sometimes you have to stay silent but most whisper campaigns can be silenced by a quick tweet or message.  It can make some ones day to have a reply from their favourite player or their club – it makes them feel special, included and leaves them with a positive experience…. which they will tell their friends about and the ball starts rolling.

If you can bring in the capabilities and content already out there on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flikr and blogs then this will become a major fan interaction, sales and marketing tool.  It is not a quick fix but can grow the fan base, create more positive associations, increase sponsorship sales values, help focus advertising spends and much more.

I hope that the club wants to learn more about the possibilities and make a decision to look at these new areas and how they can benefit the club as a whole.  The 2010/11 season could be the best one yet for the fans and the club….. on and off the pitch!

Normal service has resumed this week with six posts that came on the radar this week from the world of social.

1. Altimeter Report: Social Marketing Analytics (Altimeter Group & Web Analytics Demystified) - Jeremiah Owyang

One of the biggest challenges of the embryonic social media industry is, how to measure the ROI of programs and activity. Here, Jeremiah Owyang introduces a framework for measurement of business objectives and KPI’s. There is also a pretty meaty slideshare doc to check out.

2. South Africa’s World Cup to drive record social media traffic - Etan Horowitz

We are only about two months away from the World’s biggest sporting event and social media activity will explode during June. Four years ago, Facebook was still finding its feet and Twitter had just been born so the activity and interaction we are going to see from fans and, hopefully, teams and players is going to be on a different level to last time out. Watch this space!

3. You’re A Marketer, Deal With It! – Jonathan Fields

Do you consider yourself a marketer? If you are someone who “earns money or attention in exchange for value” then you are! A good post demystifying the definition of marketing.

4. Brands are Bull – Doc Searls

A great post here from Doc Searls (author of the Cluetrain Manifesto) on how people aren’t brands and companies who marry their brand to celebrities can face the proverbial can of worms when the person, in variably, de-rails…taking the brand with them.

5.  Don’t Let Strategy Be An Excuse - John Jantsch

You’ve got to have a social media strategy, right? And it absolutely has to come before tactics, right? Well, maybe not. A good one here from Duct Tape Marketing having a look at how sometimes focusing too much on the strategy and planning can be prohibitive to the doing. Some companies should just get stuck in!

6. Social media war rooms (and why you need one) – Ari Newman

At some point, every company who gets into social communications will have a shocker. There is nothing you can do about that but what you can do is be prepared for when the shit hits the fan. Call it crisis management a war room…whatever you like, but this post gives you some pointers to how to set up and manage the pain.

Have a good Bank Holiday (if you are in the UK) weekend.

The last seven days have been quite busy in social media. Twitter announced their first advertising play, the UK had its first live election debate which was covered furiously online and all aircraft have been grounded for two days over Britain thanks to Icelandic Volcanic ash. Here are six posts with only one mention of one of those stories!

1. 12 Social Media Marketing Myths – Pamela H Dyer

The ‘social media penny’ is dropping for more and more brands and while in many cases, the executive suite are getting to grips with it, there are still a multitude of naysayers and social media myths flying around. This post looks to addess some of the more popular ones such as, ‘social media is free’, ‘is a fad’ and ‘can’t be measured.

2. TV Viewing’s Shift to the Web [STATS]- Jolie O’Dell

This one from from Jolie O’Dell at Mashable looks at a study of 1,000 US consumers and their TV viewing habits. There is a shift in motion away from the TV and towards watching the same content online. The most telling stat is that 43% had considered cancelling or had cancelled their cable service as a result of the availablilty of online TV content.

3. The Key to Social Media Success is Just 2 Letters – Jay Baer

Probably the winner this week is this one by Jay Baer, an excellent post on how social media programs should focus on being useful to the audience first and not chase the sale. As he points out, there is only two letters difference between ‘helping’ and ‘selling’ but in reality they are a world apart. Good stuff, check it out.

4. 10 Essential Rules for Brands in Social Media – Taddy Hall

We are going for numbers based posts this week! This is a nice checklist of best practices for any brands about to get stuck in to social media. Not exhaustive or necessarily right for every brand, but a useful set of rules to start the planning process.

5. How Companies Should Approach the New Twitter Advertising Model – Dallas Lawrence

Couldn’t really leave this one out, even though everyone is probably aware by now! This week Twitter moved into the paid advertising space with select brands now able to pay for their sponsored tweet to appear at the top of the Twitter search results. This post looks at how brands should approach the new opportunities…which is very different to display, paid or push marketing.

6. Don’t Make Social Media Another Silo – Daan Jansonius

Social Media is most successful when it permeates through an entire organization and isn’t lumped in the marketing, PR or communication departments as a silo. This post looks at how social media needs to be integrated into departments, employees and internal communications to provide the most value.

OK, that’s it for this week. Have a good weekend and whatever you do, do it safely!

Written on a Friday but posted on a Saturday, here are six posts from around the blogosphere that caught our eye this week. As always, if you have any thoughts on these posts or would like to point us at some of your favourites then let us know in the comments.

1. Remarkable Stats on the State of the Internet [VIDEO] – Jennifer Van Grove

Thought we would start off with a video (made by Jesse Thomas) – mainly because we are too lazy to write the stats out plus we all prefer to watch a video than read on a Friday.

JESS3 / The State of The Internet from JESS3 on Vimeo.

2. The Strategy Trap: Why focusing too much on strategy could be killing your ability to execute – Olivier Blanchard

An excellent post from the Brand Builder on how there is a huge amount of focus on strategy and not enough on implementation which means that the customers never get the experience that was laid out in a strategy. Brands need to plan their social media programs from start to finish and look for additional value propositions outside of talking to customers on Facebook and Twitter in an authentic way.

3. Ten of the World’s Strangest Social Networks – Kristin Burnham

This slideshow of some of the most niche social networks you can think of is, A – fun to look at and B – a good example of how like minds are finding eachother online and defining their own communities. Expect this to continue and for brands to seek them out more and more as a more efficient alternative to the major networks.

4. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Social Media Marketing - John Jantsch

Read the quote in the post by Douglas Adams, it’s a good philosophical thought on the perception of new technologies depending how old you are. A sweeping generalization, yes…but nice none the less!

5. Do websites even matter any more? – MARK W. SCHAEFER

Of course they do. A good post highlighting the need to make use of your ‘homebase’. It is probably possible, for the first time to be engaged with your customers online and not have a website. But the website is still the best place for registrations, transactions and ‘official contact’.

6. 3 Crisis Survival Lessons for the Social Media Age - Dallas Lawrence

There has been a number of high profile brand social media implosions in the last couple of years and this post looks at the new rules for crisis management and response. Walls of silence, advertising your way out of a crisis or being slow to respond are not viable tactics brand protection tactics anymore. Social media loves spreading bad news and people have got each other to get the ‘truth’ from.

This popped up in my Twitter stream yesterday via @Christinekorda , ‘A list of the 10 most bizarre social networks’ and I think it highlights, if we didn’t already know, how niche and contextual the social web is. This is extremely important to remember for brands looking to engage with potential customers.

It is so easy to focus on the latest ‘shiny tool’ or the biggest network, as we are constantly being bombarded with eye watering usage stats that lead to a ‘everyone else is doing it, so we must’ mindset, when the sensible strategy should be ‘a lot of my customers are doing it, so we must’. Yes, half the universe is on Facebook and however many billion tweets per month are about brands (exaggerating for effect!), and these shouldn’t be ignored but the challenge as a marketer is to figure out what is the best community for your customers,  where  can we have the most impact, what will provide the best context for your product.

If you sell mustache combs then wouldn’t http://www.stachepassions.com/ be better than a Facebook group?

If you are launching a new vampire show (and that is every network and channel in the known World right now) then maybe http://vampirefreaks.com/ would be better than MySpace?

If you have a product aimed at Christians then you should have a presence on http://lineforheaven.com/

Of course, it shouldn’t be mutually exclusive and presences with the major social networks won’t do you any harm, but some cost benefit analysis on where you will get the most value for your time is a major factor for SME’s. The value in your marketing efforts are going to be diluted big time if you are just part of the noise and unless you have a solid value proposition and offering, it would be naive to assume that customers will come and seek you out on Facebook or start enaging with you on Twitter.

There are tools (free and paid) to help you find where the fish are, and who the fish are. This should be the corner stone of any social media strategy and implementation plan, otherwise you run the risk of ‘fondling the hammer’ as Jeremiah Owyang put it. Some proper research and social profiling of your customers online behavior will be worth its weight in gold when it comes to ROI time…

Oh yeah, and once you have found where to fish, please don’t dynamite fish…Spearfishing is so much better!