Just like a shiny new toy, social media marketing is the hot new thing. But as I wrote about in Is Social Media Right for Your Business?,  it isn’t for everyone and can actually do more harm than good.

Last month I received this email:

The email is nice and clean and with a direct call to action; get involved with their social media profiles. Imagine my surprise when I clicked through and found this:

Their Facebook page at least has some current content, but not much and huge timeline gaps where nothing is posted.

What’s the big deal, right? If you don’t have anything to post, it’s better to not post anything, right?

I disagree. Social media is not a part time thing. If you’re not truly interacting and providing new and relevant content you’re either forgotten or seen as noise and ignored.

Looking at that twitter page, what incentive do I have to follow you? And if I did out of loyalty to the brand, I will quickly forget to look for anything from you because you’re not committed to it and actively interacting. Now, if you finally do get your act together and start getting involved, I’m probably not going to notice because I’ve already forgotten about you.

Talk about a lost opportunity huh?