posted by Mark

Social networking is every online marketer’s favorite new toy, and that’s a good thing… mostly. After all, anything that lets you find new customers, improve your search engine positioning, and possibly even spread your message virally is going to be a useful tool. And really, that’s why it’s at the top of so many experts’ “must try” lists for 2010.

It’s that last bit that gets us in trouble.

The second the majority of us brand any idea as something you need to try, there’s a temptation to feel like you… well, need to try it. While that’s the wrong idea to approach to take to any marketing effort, it’s especially true with social networking.

The beauty of working with blogs, as well as sites like Facebook, Twitter, and others, is that they allow for a kind of informal give-and-take. In other words, they let you reach behind the curtain a little bit and engage your customers in a friendlier way.

The quickest way to ruin that is by coming at them with something that's boring – or worse, overtly commercial. And yet, that's exactly what tends to happen once you start to treat social networking like just another item on your "to do" list. Your posts and ideas become more and more stale, until all that's left is a steady stream of fluff that few people would actually take the time to read.

With that in mind, think of social media the right way: as a tool for engaging customers in spreading the word about your company in a semi-personal way. Don't treat it like an ongoing press release or just another piece of business communication – the moment it becomes uninteresting to you, you'll start giving that impression off to the buyers you're trying to attract.