I'm all in favour of the contrarian perspective and here, Robert Strohmeyer has a warning about those professing expertise in the Twitterverse or Facebookology including himself. Beware the Social Media Charlatans

Unfortunately, the dirty little secret about using social networks like Twitter and Facebook to promote your business is that, with the rarest exceptions, nobody wants to be buddies with a company. We live in a society that is absolutely sick of being advertised to and marketed to, and most of us turn to social networks to escape the forces of commercialism. We have a word for people who use social networks to send out unwanted offers and announcements about their business, and that word is "spammer."
In a few unique cases, some companies have managed to create a Twitter presence that actually appears to have beneficial results. Comcast is a notable example.

With its ComcastCares team on Twitter, the cable giant monitors the Twitterverse for negative comments about the company and then reaches out to the commenters to try to resolve whatever issues have raised their hackles ... I can imagine that this approach might occasionally work with some customers, and probably justifies the relatively small expense of having a few people monitoring Twitter at that enormous company.

For a smaller business, the benefits of social media are far less clear, and the relative costs can be much higher. A company operating with fewer than 50 employees can hardly afford to dedicate any full-time staff to posting updates on Twitter and Facebook.

If you're going to start a Facebook or Twitter account for your company, give the responsibility to someone with poise, maturity, and tact, and then give them the freedom to do it their own way and figure it out for themselves. Ignore the "rules," avoid the "gurus," and let common social courtesy be your guide.

More importantly, approach social media with reasonable expectations. ... Ultimately, it's wise to accept that time and treasure spent on social media is unlikely to reap measureable rewards for most businesses. But that hardly means it's not worth trying. Just approach it with a modicum of reservation and take the advice of so-called experts (yes, including me) with a very large grain of salt.

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