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Debunking Five Social Media Myths

socialmediatoday.com blog debunked the five social media myths and I agree with all of them.

Here are my thoughts.

Myth 1: E-Mail Is Dead

Over my dead body and email is far from dead. In fact, if you are looking to increase awareness of your social media campaign, email is by the most effective way to reach out to your database.

Why? Simply because it is easier and more effective for somebody to click a link to the social media platform from an email than for the campaign to made via print or even an online ad.

Most of the fan pages that I am responsible usually see spikes in fans joining the page when an edm goes into the mail box of the targeted audience.

Email isn’t dead, it is striving form of communication and social media needs it to very badly.

Myth 2: The CEO Needs to Blog

Blogging is tough and lots of CEOs I am aware off can’t sit down for 15 mins to string a 300 word post.

I recently approached a CIO who promised to participate in my FST interviews and for the last six months I have been chasing him and his PR team for the answers and each week the reply I got is that the CIO is working on questions.

At the end of six months, the CIO said he had no time to answer 10 questions. Shocking it took him six months to realise he had no time for 10 questions.

Blogging is also tough for CEO and it really isn’t easy to blog.

My suggestion to these CEOs and their PR team is to take on the newsroom2.0 approach where you get me to interview the CEO and feature the posts as a third party report.

It solves the CEO problem of the time issue and it removes the stigma of having a ghost blogger as the blog post will openly say that the CEO is being interviewed by me.

Myth 3: MySpace Is Where the Young People Hang Out

Many think social networks are for young people and this is not really true.

For one of my successful fan page of more than 1200 fans so far (No advertisement but with pure constant content delivery), 61% come from the age group of 25-34 and 16% from the age group of 35-44.

A recent Pew Internet survey found:

“The median age of a Twitter user is 31, which has remained stable over the past year. The median age for MySpace is now 26, down from 27 in May 2008, and the median age for LinkedIn is now 39, down from 40. Facebook, however, is graying a bit: the median age for this social network site is now 33, up from 26 in May 2008.”*

Myth 4: Social Media Communication Is Informal

Formality is important to social media because it represents your brand.

Imagine the perception if you used Singlish in trying to be local in your social media communication.

Even in my communication to blogger, I placed importance of being formal to the bloggers as it creates the proper perception of being a professional.

This blog itself can be quite formal.

Remember, perception is reality and your tone of language can create the right/wrong perception for your brand.

Myth 5: It’s Going to Go Viral

Not all of you social media activities are going to be viral, regardless of how big your brand is.

The more you focus on hardselling your brand, the less chance of it going to be viral.

To go viral, you  need to ask yourself why would the next person want to share the link to your social network site to their friends.

Would you post it on your own blog or  share it on your own personal Facebook account?

One thing i learn is that the more amateurish the effort and less hardsell, the chances of the social media activity goes viral increases.

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