I know our clients get tired of hearing this, but I can't say it enough: social media is about networking and building relationships, not about broadcasting your own message incessantly.  Nobody cares about you and your product.  They care about how you can help them - whether it's solving a problem or just having fun.

A friend of mine is a good example: he followed a link in an email to read a story by an awesome artist whose work he admired, then reached out in the blog comments section saying he enjoyed the story. Then he tweeted the story to his followers. Guess what?  The blogger followed him back after that, and ended up asking him to participate in a project he was doing. You just never know who you might meet through social media, just like you never know who you might meet at a party.

The other night we presented the first workshop in our Social Media Workshops series; in this workshop we presented an overview of social media, illustrated how it has always been used in society but the tools are changing, showed examples of successful campaigns, and talked about how social media should fit in your overall marketing plan.  As a part of the discussion we stressed that you should address negative comments in a way that is communicative rather than defensive and that you should not delete negative comments but should use them in a way to try to turn them into a positive. The very next day several local residents made disparaging remarks about the workshops in comments on a local newspaper's site, calling out our company by name and accusing us of being paid to present the workshops as a political payback for supporting a new local meals tax.