There are a lot of misconceptions and preconceived notions about social media, so we thought we would put together a myth buster list and throw out a tip here and there for ways that you can make social media benefit your brand. We compiled these myths from various resources and our collective experiences.

Myth 1:
Social Media is free. Yes, most social media sites are free, but the time it will take you to create an effective social media presence is far from free. Very far. To have an effective social presence, you have to put the time and effort into your various social outlets. Creating interesting and relevant content is key and can be time consuming.


Myth 2:
Social Media is a fad or doesn’t work. Many people feel like the efforts they put into social media accounts have been timed wasted. If you are one of those people, chances are you put time into the wrong activities. Social media creates an opportunity for marketers to bring the message to the place where consumers are spending much of their day already, but often companies just use the same sales pitch and message as if marketing is news. Its not, and you should lead with your specific knowledge and cultivate an attitude of being a brain trust.

Myth 3:
It’s all about the tools. While it’s a little about the tools, it’s more about figuring out clear and concise goals. (“more leads” wouldn’t be considered concise) The tools are just that. Tools to help you measure the campaign size, strength, and how people are reacting to what you are saying. The question is how many fans, followers, feeds, or subscribers would it take to make a successful campaign.

Myth 4:
Social media will replace real networking or marketing. Social media and social networking compliment the traditional networking and marketing that you are engaged in. Having a diversified, well-rounded marketing plan is the best strategy. Stick with what has worked and try new things such as social media to get new data and exposure.

Myth 5:
You can’t build media meaningful relationships online. Building relationships online is a way to connect face to face with your target audience. Whether or not it results in sales, it stills give you the opportunity to have open, honest communication, which can lead to very valuable insight about your product or company. Also keep in mind that running to set up a twitter account and then only using it once in a while to announce a tradeshow or discount will not produce meaningful relationships.

Myth 6:
It’s for the kids. While myspace may be crawling with high school kids, sites like facebook and linkedIn are geared toward an older audience. In fact, according to facebook’s statistics, the fastest growing demographic is 35 and above.

It's no secret that Twitter has made a huge splash in our world, recently jumping from tech community darling to full blown mainstream awareness. Since it first began to gain popularity, supporters and critics alike have debated as to the use of this new tool.

While it is foolish to simply write off Twitter as a growing number of people both inside and out of the tech community have, the proliferation of useless 'what I'm doing" tweets that are at best borderline narcissistic do raise serious questions as to just what Twitter is good for. But is Twitter simply getting the wave of fallout that anything that reaches critical mass receives, is there a real value to the service it provides?

The glut of "OMG, I am still waiting for my latte" type tweets have certainly taken center stage as the biggest complaint levied against Twitter, but it seems that it shouldn't be so much of an argument against using Twitter, but rather a point at which Twitter loses its usefulness. At its core, Twitter is simply a communications tool; a way for people to transmit information to a filtered group of people. To argue that that kind of tool isn't useful seems shaky at best. What really needs to happen is to look not at whether or not Twitter should be used, but what Twitter should be used for.

This leads to a very informative article over at Harvard Business.org. During a study, they uncovered several interesting trends, such as that 80% of the userbase follows or is followed by at least one person, and that men typically have more followers the women, something that is counter to almost every other social networking community in which you find that women typically have more followers, both male and female, then men.

Perhaps most interesting, however, is that the 10% most prolific "Tweeters" account for over 90% of all tweets, which begs the question: Is Twitter a means for everyone to communicate, or is it instead a "many-to-one" publishing network, more akin to a blog? It is a very interesting article, and a highly recommended read.