Social media is unique in that it is the only medium yet conceived where companies are playing in the exact same sandbox as we’re playing personally. Your employees and customers aren’t making TV ads on the weekend. Nor are they making their own magazine ads for fun at night, while watching Real Housewives of Omaha (a new show where everyone is sensible and nobody wears makeup). But indeed your employees and customers ARE messing around on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and blogs on their free time, the same space you’re trying to invade (and admit it, profit from) for corporate purposes.

That’s never happened before, and it puts marketers in the strange situation of not just littering the airwaves with TV commercials, or blighting the roadways with billboards, but of peeing in their OWN cheerios, of gumming up their OWN newsfeed with company messages of oft-dubious intent and relevancy.

Which Side Are You On?

I know the economy remains tight. I recognize that marketers are challenged with feeding leads and opportunities to the sales team like a mama bird regurgitating worms. But we have a once in a generation chance to set the trajectory for a new medium, and we’re blowing it.

Why? Because fundamentally, doing social media “right” with equal doses of speed, caring, delight, and panache is not simple. It’s both difficult and incredibly resource-intensive. As Gary Vaynerchuk said in a keynote once “Giving a shit doesn’t scale.” And he’s right.

Every time we opt for simple by pre-programming tweets, by purchasing likes, by turning our Facebook wall into nothing but a coupon machine, by using marketing automation software to auto-contact prospects in social media, we are flying in the face of what we know other social media users would prefer.

It’s up to the social media practitioners to fight back against this trend toward simplistic social marketing automation, the invitation avalanche, and buying love instead of earning it. We are trying to force social media marketing into an automated, customer acquisition focus that it wears like a suit of armor at a nudist colony. You can put a stop to it.

Killing the Culture of Simple

At every turn, you need to be communicating to your management that while indeed social media can generate incremental sales and leads, it is – at its heart – a loyalty and retention tool. You need to be communicating to your management that even though social media happens fast, benefits accrue slowly and cumulatively. You need to be communicating to your management that that numbers you need to be paying attention to are lifetime value of customers connected to your company via social media, not your total number of likes. You need to emphasize that none of this is simple.

Are those conversations easy to have, and is the instant gratification mindset taking hold in social media easy to dislodge? Nope. But the surest way to not change attitudes is to not talk about it at all.

NOTE: I’m not part of the social media unicorns and rainbows brigade. I’ve said forever that if you’re not profiting from social media, why are you doing it at all? But I’m also a lot older than many of the other social media gadflies, and I’ve seen this new medium movie before. I’m trying to make companies understand that social media is a long-term play about turning customers into advocates, rather than a short-term play about creating customers out of thin air with magic tweets.

Ask Yourself This Simple Question:

At the operational level, you can make a day-to-day difference in how social media unfolds and unfurls as well, just use this simple test:

The next time you’re thinking about what to put on your Wall, or how to get more likes, or what blog posts to green light, or anything else related to social media, ask yourself a very simple – but critically important – question:

“I use social media all the time. Would I personally respond to that? Does it make me care about this brand more?”

If no, then find another way.

Marketing has been historically hamstrung by the fact that the people doing the marketing were often intellectually and socio-economically different from the people to whom the marketing was directed. Today, that’s less true than ever. As social media reaches ubiquity, and we continue to use the same tools for business as we use for pleasure, your own ability as a marketer to define “effective” vs. “pointless” shouldn’t be discounted.

Run your social media decisions through that filter, and you’ll be amazed at how different your outcomes can be.

I grant you, none of this is a layup. But settling for simple is how we got here in the first place. Remember, nobody said social media was easy, just that it was awesome.

Are you ready to take a stand against simple? Can you?

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How did we “engage” and “interact” back then? How did companies possibly succeed in that technologically challenged epoch devoid of touchy-feelie buzzwords?

We succeeded by actually – not metaphorically – engaging and interacting with our customers.

We can learn a lot from the past, when instead of humanizing our companies, we just deployed actual humans. Instead of listening software, we just listened. Instead of measuring influence, we just treated our customers well, and with respect.

Did we do a lot more with a lot less?

Today, we spend considerable time and effort and emotional capital on how to construct the ultimate online community, festooned with custom tabs and iframes and videos and the sparkling Christmas ornaments of social media.

I suggest we should largely eschew all that, recognizing it for the tip of the iceberg it really is.

Let’s shift our focus under the water line where the real mass of online community floats.

Our customers want to be informed in a relevant, timely fashion about companies they support. Occasionally, they’ll tell their friends – but usually they won’t. And if they have a problem, they want an alternative to soulless call centers and maddening email runarounds. That’s how customers see online community and “engagement” and “interaction” – in a practical, “what’s in it for me” way.

Most businesses massively overestimate the bond between company and customer in social media. Even your robust online community with appropriate social media staffing doesn’t create a blood oath among fans. Recognize that – especially in Facebook – your brand is literally competing for attention with friends and family and close confidants. There’s not been a company-authored status update ever written that I care more about than routine updates from my friends and family.

Social Media Staffing is the Overlooked Success Quotient

So the way to win that game for business isn’t through apps and case studies and metaphor and magic. It’s with social media staffing, populating your online community with a cadre of truly outstanding employees who can inform, entertain, and assist your customers. That means you don’t base your social media staffing plan on who is the least expensive resource (interns) or who “grew up with this stuff” (interns).

Does that drive up the cost of the human capital managing your social media? Of course. As Charlene Li once said, social media isn’t inexpensive, it’s just different expensive. Why would you manage an online community that is the epitome of multi-faceted, real-time communication with people who possess a paucity of actual customer service or communications expertise?

Until companies realize the key to online community success isn’t technology, but rather a culture of caring and skilled labor, social media will never fulfill its true promise.

And while it’s on one hand a positive that we’re stating to see some norms and best practices emerge within social media, it’s a tremendous mistake to restrict your social media activities to just the “Big Five.”

There are literally hundreds of other places your customers could be talking about your brand within the social Web, and it’s imperative that you hear all of them. If a subset (even a small one) of your customer base loves Tripadvisor, or Yelp, or FriendFeed, or their Ning group or whatever, that does not make them less important to your brand’s perception than people on Twitter or Facebook, it just makes them a different segment of your audience.

Remember, there is a REASON they spend their time within the social ecosystem on Yelp and not Facebook – because that’s the community they PREFER. And in fact, people that make choices that are less conventional tend to defend those choices more passionately than the “me too” crowd. And, because there are fewer total users, the opinions of any individual are magnified.

Further, regardless of where the content is posted, it will be found and indexed by search engines, becoming part of your brand’s permanent record, like that crappy tattoo of a hummingbird you got in Cancun.

Dear Marriott: Pay Attention

Consider this horrifying example for Marriott. I did a quick check of Google Sidewiki (a plug-in for Firefox and Internet Explorer that lets you comment on Web pages, and those comments are “stuck” the Web page like a Post-It note). I found this solitary post, ripping Marriott for not removing this guy from their email newsletter list. I’m not sure what’s worse, the company not paying attention to secondary and tertiary layers of the social Web and thus not finding this, or knowing about it and not leaving a reply. Either way, their silence is deafening.

Do millions of people use Sidewiki? Not yet, but since it’s a Google project, there’s a fair chance it will take off. And for the people that are already using Sidewiki, doesn’t this impact how you perceive Marriott? And now I’ve shared it with all of you, so a comment on a “minor” social outpost continues to fester, unabated.

I realize it’s a hassle to monitor your brand across all of these places. It takes time. Time you probably don’t have. But you know how municipal police forces crush graffiti problems? They paint over it immediately, wherever it occurs. It’s a lesson that applies equally in social media.

The days of “if we answer back, it just gives them credence” are over. Take off the blinders, remove the earplugs, and defend yourself.

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