The article is essentially about companies who jumped on the tablet bandwagon before putting together a real strategy around how they really plan to use them – or in some cases, why. As the article demonstrates, a lot can go wrong when a company implements a new platform (or technology), without a strategy.

The same goes for social media. I can’t tell you the number of conversations I’ve had with some very smart marketing folks, who, when asked about the strategy or even reason behind their social media use, can’t give me a good answer.

Inspired by journalist Shara Tibken, here are three of the biggest mistakes companies make when jumping into social media:

No. 1: Failing to have a plan before rolling out the campaign

Too many companies jump on the social media bandwagon without first having a clear plan of action or strategy. Doing it because everyone else is doing it is not a good reason to do it. A social media strategy should be just as well thought out as a marketing strategy – and in fact, they should tie into one another. Clearly defined objectives, tactics for achieving them and measurement methods should all be determined before creating a social media presence.

No. 2: Not understanding what social media is – and is not – good for

Social media is a great way to connect and engage with target audiences. But it’s not a total replacement for tried and true relationship building methods. Social media is a wonderful way to show another side of a company’s personality, but it cannot successfully be the only way that a company communicates with target audiences.

No. 3: Thinking social media is cheap (or free)

Social media is not free, or even cheap, it’s just a different kind of expensive. Just like most things in life, you get out of it what you put in. So to really make a social media campaign work, it takes time, a lot of it. And as we all know – time is money.

Ultimately, companies need to realize that social media should be part of the marketing mix and be thought out and about as much as other marketing tactics. Don’t assume that good things will happen just because your company now has a presence on social media. It takes time, strategy and work to reach success.

Advent of Social Media

The wide adoption of social media has fundamentally changed how people communicate and share information, and how brands communicate with their customers. When we started the company, Twitter was a relatively new tool that no one really knew what to do with. Most companies did not have a Facebook page yet – in fact, many people didn’t have a Facebook page yet. And LinkedIn was for recruiters.

Today it’s a given that companies and brands will have a social media presence. It’s also a given that journalists and bloggers can access company information and news easily online. It is now essential for up to the minute information to be at people’s fingertips.

It’s About the Journey, Not the Destination

Sorry to quote Aerosmith, but they have it right (in this instance at least). It used to be that a PR campaign would build and build and build until, WHAM – the big story in (insert your dream publication here). But that’s not how it works anymore. A mention on small blog X results in a Tweet by person Y, which results in a retweet by more influential person Z, which results in a guest column request by online publication A, which results in multiple “likes” on Facebook, which results in a link in blog B… which may or may not ever lead to national broadcast or big-time print. But that’s okay, because that’s probably not where you need to be. It’s nice to get your company name in an Old Guard publication, but that mostly likely won’t impact your business as much as a mention in one of the smaller, but very targeted outlets will.

Infographics

Who has time for words anymore? Based on the proliferation of infographics, not many! With the speed of content generation, it’s nearly impossible to get the attention of your target audiences. Infographics get your message across in an efficient and effective manner.

The Press Release Survives

Every year I read a new blog entry about the “death of the press release,” but after five years of reading the various reasons it’s no longer relevant – it’s still here. And I have to say, better than ever. Multimedia releases are more informative and useful than their cumbersome predecessors, including instant tweets, hyperlinks, embedded video, quotes, images and various ways to share information socially. Perhaps all the press release needs is a new name.

ROI is King

In the first half of 2007 the economy was still booming and companies were spending big time on marketing. In those heady days, there wasn’t a magnifying glass over marketing budgets like there is today, and much of PR was still unmeasured. Now, decision makers need to see ROI for all services and as a result the PR industry has become much more measurement-focused. Presentation of campaign results to a client must also include metrics and reports that demonstrate how the PR campaign also made the needle move. The old standard clip report no longer makes the cut (and thank goodness for that).

There are numerous other ways that the PR industry has changed over the last five years. I’d love to hear what else you think has been impactful in changing the PR landscape. And I look forward to embracing future tools that come our way in the next five years.

With a full-time team of five, the social media staff spends all day online reading tweets, Facebook posts, blog comments and foursquare check-ins. Because of the urgent and sometimes desperate nature of people when they’re doing their taxes, the H&R Block social media team prides themselves on urgent and timely responses.

If you check out their Twitter feed, you will see that they are actually responding to people in real time. In some cases they literally know which H&R Block location someone is tweeting from because they have also checked in on foursquare.

They also have a very active blog and Facebook page because they get that people should be communicated with on their channel of choice.  And it’s worth mentioning that they have over 83,000 ‘likes’ on Facebook. Not to shabby for a tax preparation service.

According to Zena Weist, Director of Social Media at H&R Block, the goal with people who are using social media to complain is to take them offline with a customer service representative. Once this happens, most people’s issues are addressed, and a majority go back online to express their gratitude.

The social media savvy of the folks at H&R Block is worth emulating for a few reasons. Not only are they extremely responsive and on top of all channels, but they also know how best to respond. First, they show empathy. You’ll notice in many of the responses on Twitter, they first acknowledge that something is “unacceptable” or express that they are “sorry you feel that way.” Second, they provide a solution. Sometimes it’s a number to call, sometimes it’s a request for more information about which location they are in or specific person they’re working with. The idea is that they are going to do something to solve the issue. Lastly, they work to transform a bad experience into a good one because they know that good experiences typically result in referrals, which is just about the best thing you can ask from your customers.

It’s also worth noting that not only are they problem solving in the moment, but they’re also using Twitter as an early alarm system. If more than a few people are having the same issue, they make a change before it becomes a bigger problem.

Despite the fact that no one like doing their taxes, those of us in the social media trenches can at least admire this aspect of the season, thanks to H&R Block.

McDonald’s handled this by ultimately pulling the hashtag.  Rick Wion, McDonald’s social media director said:

“Within an hour, we saw that it wasn’t going as planned.  It was negative enough that we set about a change of course.”

But there is something to be learned from McDonald’s misfortune.  Social media marketing can be guided, but only to a certain extent.  This could have happened to anyone, as social media marketing depends so greatly on consumers, stakeholders and the company.  It is how you respond that will define your company.

While social media marketing can unveil consumer grievances, it also allows for a way to reach individual consumers to solve problems.  With Twitter, McDonalds had the opportunity to reach out to each person who complained using the hashtag.

A great example of using a company Twitter account to resolve consumer complaints is JetBlue airlines, explained in The New York Times article, “How to Fight Back When your Flight is Canceled.”  After suffering from constant flight cancellations, consumers turned to Twitter to express their frustration.  JetBlue offered support through social media and followed-up on specific consumer problems to make sure they were solved.  JetBlue used social media to reform what would have been poor consumer sentiment.

Social media will play an integral role in getting out the vote in 2012, mainly due in part to social media outreach. Although the 2008 Presidential election may go down in history as the first “official” social media election, 2012 candidates are more educated than ever on the power of social media and plan on connecting with voters (both young and old) through a variety of social media platforms.

In 2004, political campaigns began to realize the important correlation between internet usage and reaching voters.  One of the main focuses during this election was the use of blogs.  Both John Kerry and George W. Bush actively took to blogs to reach their voters, writing about their campaign views and plans for the United States moving ahead.

In 2008, candidates took to facebook, myspace, youtube and twitter to get their message across and reach as many voters as possible. Although social media was still somewhat “new” to political campaigns, Barack Obama managed to dominate the social media platform.  According to a snapshot that was taken on November 3, 2008 (Election Day) Barack Obama had 380 percent more supporters on facebook and myspace, 905 percent more views on Youtube and 240 times more followers on twitter than John McCain. This alone can arguably be one of the main reasons, along with historically high new voter registration statistics, that won Barack Obama the election.

In the 2010 midterm elections, social media played a major role in how voters received and shared information about the election.  To get a better sense of exaclty how effective social media was, below is a chart issued by PEW Charitable Trust highlighting political social networking activites by age group:

Since 2008, twitter has become a social media game changer for political campaigns. With twitter receiving on average 460,000 new accounts per day, more people will turn to this social media platform for up to the minute campaign news. Although not very popular four years ago, Barack Obama now has almost 10 million followers (in ’08 he only had 112,474) and this number is expected to grow in the next year.  @BarackObama recently announced that he will be tweeting regularly while on the campaign trail. In addition, he will be utilizing foursquare and facebook where he plans to check in and share tips with voters along the campaign trail.

Social media has been so influential that the @Whitehouse even has its own Department of Social Media. Recently, President Obama made history by hosting the first ever Twitter Townhall. During the event, President Obama made the first live presidential tweet ever and the highest trending topic that day on twitter was #askobama. Below is footage of President Obama making history:

While the use of television was a huge way to reach voters for the likes of John F. Kennedy, social media will be the driver for 2012 candidates as they begin to launch their campaigns to the White House. Come 2016, social media will continue to evolve and dominate voter outreach efforts. Who knows, with additional technology advancements and support from Congress we may just be able to cast our vote online by then!

We have seen time and time again that people resort to social media to check out what’s going on and who else is talking about it. While it is an effective way to spread false information, it is also an extremely efficient way to get information fast. It is so fast that it is possible to see a tweet about the earthquake before you feel that same earthquake.

This was my first time experiencing a social media melt down, but I can’t say I didn’t enjoy it. It was a little shaky at first, but then I enjoyed the ride. My phone wasn’t working initially, so I just sat back and followed the hashtag #earthquake. Twitter was chirping away during the crisis.  Just check out this awesome map that shows all the tweets from the time the quake hit through 30 seconds after.

Social media gives people the information they can’t get anywhere else, including rumors, lies, personal accounts and jokes, such as photos of quake casualties like water bottles and lawn chairs. If there were real casualties, there would not have been any humor in the situation, but since this is the East Coast, we were lucky and yes, a bit dramatic.

The entire West Coast is cracking up over East Coaster’s shaking in our shoes over a 5.8 magnitude earthquake. However, that’s why I live in Philadelphia and suffer through four seasons including the seismic snow storms and wicked hot summers; I don’t want to live in fear of earthquakes, tsunamis, tornados or wild fires.

Now excuse me, I have to go prepare for Hurricane Irene.

MediaSync: is a free online reporter resource with a database of more than 500,000 media contacts and 9 million articles and blogs. The site allows PR pros to quickly identify, connect with and track reporters, editors, analysts, bloggers and others in the media/analyst community who are assigned to a specific beat and/or write on specific topics relevant to your marketing activities. If you don’t subscribe to expensive services like Vocus or Cision, this is an alternative. However, it seems you get what you pay for when looking for media relations databases.

TweetStats: is a free application that calculates various stats of your tweets and displays the information in colorful graphs for free. This website only requires a twitter username (no password or profile required) to compute statistics, which makes it very useful when analyzing twitter activity for clients or competition.

EdCals, by CisionPoint: is a site offering free editorial/media calendars from CisionPoint’s database of nearly 500,000 editorial opportunities in North America. Yes FREE! While not the most attractive service out there – who cares? Our intern loves this program because it puts the information in an easy-to-download Excel file too.

MuckRack: Tracks the short messages on Twitter written by the journalists who do the muckraking for major media outlets. Muck Rack makes it easy to follow one line, real time reporting. A great way to skip having to make your own twitter lists.

Prezi: is the zooming presentation editor. Prezi lets you bring your ideas into one space and see how they relate, helping you and your audience connect. Zoom out to see the big picture and zoom in to see details — a bit like web-based maps that have changed how we navigate through map books. A very cool program, if you know how to use it. If not, your presentation will give people motion sickness.

SimilarSites.com or SitesLike.com: is a related content engine, displaying a list of related sites for any site that you submit. SimilarSites.com takes past user opinions into account when sorting relevant sites. Each search result has “thumbs up” and “thumbs down” buttons, letting users help us determine a site’s relatedness. As more users search and submit feedback, the results get increasingly accurate. These programs help me widen the range of outlets when pitching… and it is kind of fun to look up the sites you prefer to visit for fun.

SlideShare: is the world’s largest community for sharing presentations. Upload and share on blogs, Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn. 50 million people use SlideShare every month for research, sharing ideas, connecting with others, and generating business leads. SlideShare also supports documents, PDFs, and videos. Why didn’t I have this site in college? You can search any topic and find hundreds of presentations –genius.

NewsBasis: is an online service for media professionals and businesses. Companies, agencies, non-Profits and academic Institutions can easily and efficiently promote story ideas to the media and content publishers and respond to their specific requests. This works like HARO  and ProfNet but with in a website with a search function. While interesting to sort through, I tend to find other services are better.

The social ask is when those within a social community asks an individual for some sort of subsequent action. When signing on to our multiple social networks we are signing up to be bombarded with requests to friend, follow, like, donate, scan, forward, etc. These requests have leapt out of our inboxes and onto virtually everything – TV commercials, napkins, products, store windows and anywhere else people can squeeze one. Sarah and Alterian, an interactive solutions provider helping marketers engage with customers, set out to find out to how many times a day people are potentially hit with a social ask. The answer? 107,945 time a day. Find out more in this infographic:

Infographics not for you? Click here to the social media release.

As an avid twitter-er, I can relate to this cartoon. Now that we have Twitter, Facebook and a whole gaggle of applications at our fingertips, thoughts have been reduced to 140 characters and activities summed up by twitpics. Not that I think my followers are hanging on to every character I tweet, but it is fun and somewhat comforting to share in the interconnectivity of social networking.

We all remember the confusion and Armageddon when Twitter was down for a morning (yes JUST a morning and people freaked out- “but how will my followers know what I had for breakfast?”). If you don’t recall, Twitter was attacked (so dramatic) and the site was down- here is a NYT blog post about it. As much as I poke fun, I was one of those people feeling in the dark that morning. I was not wondering what @mikegross144 was doing at the moment though. I was missing my usual stream of RT-ed news articles, odd findings, area events and hilarious commentary. It is a living and personalized daily RSS feed of anything and everything from friends, icons, strangers and the lovable weirdos- and I think it is here to stay.

Oh and by the way- I had a muffin for breakfast.