If you are following me on Twitter or a friend on Facebook you might already be aware that I am a heartless b@st@rd. OK so maybe that’s a bit extreme but the truth is, I think a lot of what mainstream social media users take part in is a waste of time. For example I don’t thank people for retweets, I don’t participate in follow Friday, and I don’t join every Facebook fan page that comes along. Why don’t I do all of these things? Because quite honestly they do very little to help promote my ideas and the people I believe in. And more importantly they add more noise to a medium that is already saturated to the rim with useless content.

In the video above Wanda Sykes talks about why (at the time) she isn’t a member of Facebook. She ask the question “since when did we get so social?” I think that’s a very important question to consider. 5 or 6 years ago if you wanted to connect with a family member or an old friend you might call them or send them a letter. Doesn’t that seem like a more genuine connection than taking a few seconds to approve a friend request on Facebook?

As new media marketers we are expected to bring new ideas and techniques to the table. So much so that I think some times we forget to stop and ask ourselves “is this a good idea?” A lot of marketers will say well what harm can we be doing? It’s just Twitter! The worst possible scenario for any social media marketer is to take a strong brand and make it irrelevant and annoying. Here’s the way I look at it. If you don’t have a clear strategy on how to add value to your brand in social media, they stay out of it! Otherwise you run the risk of adding to the noise and coming a across as ingenuous.