This is a Guest Post by Ran Van Den Bel of vandenbel.com. Ray has a very different approach towards Social Media and over the years, he has developed various Social models. He is one of the leading strategists and speakers in the field of Social Media, web 2.0 resources, strategy and communication.  

Stating that Social media has become a 'hype' is somewhat of an understatement. Over the past few years I must say that I have been amazed at the growth in interest, not just by people wanting to share their social life, but also by companies trying to find new marketing openings.

As with everything that people don't fully understand, social media also comes with a lot of assumptions about 'how to best achieve corporate value'. It also amazed me to notice how long it took before there even was a discussion raised about the ROI of social media activities. In fact, we just 'did it' hoping that we would get something in return, in the long run. '..Give and thou shall receive..' seemed to be the gospel.

When we noticed that just 'doing it' didn't result in any meaningful growth in new business leads, we were quick to point out other, more softer values to target such as general brand exposure and probable positive brand sentiment fall-out. Or newly self-proclaimed social media experts convinced everyone that we were doing it wrongly and provided us with new models in which all the best-practice key-words such as 'listening, learning, interacting, participating, sharing, etc. etc.' where brought together with beautiful arrows in charts, looking very plausible indeed. Naturally they pointed out the odd social media success-stories of Brands like 'Old-Spice, Nike and Obama', resembling no similarities with the sexiness of your Corporate Brand whatsoever, but ...it sounded soooo good!

Again, no-one seemed to really care for the hard numbers, no one really focused on the one and only central question we all should have asked:

How much Time and Effort does it really take in order to achieve what ROI?

Management Boards are now discovering for themselves that social media for companies is quite something different than just having fun and sharing socially on a personal basis.

Finally, we do seem to realize that we can measure things like Content and Brand impact in social media, their added value in generating new business. Also the softer data can become 'hard' data e.g. by analyzing social sentiment about our corporate projects, products and we even found out what the Impact of our Advocates online where.

Yet we suddenly realized that we have incorporated a huge new workforce of social media enthusiasts with no real knowledge of your company processes and expertise and thus had no real sense of corporate value. it was just impossible for them to make the transition of their actions towards planning a business case in social media.

An eruption of anger and disappointment in social media expertise is therefore imminent, just because it is valid. I expect the current social media industry to erode away as soon as this Knowledge becomes mainstream. Only a few will be able to survive and they probably will abandon the words 'social media' completely and adopt 'corporate e-dynamics' instead.

So isn't there any Value in social media? There is, and frankly that is my little secret. But I'll give you a little hint of why I am so successful in creating value for my customers.

As said, the focus on the tools such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn were non-interesting ego-aspects such as amounts of 'followers' and 'fans' rules, will not likely result in meaningful business. Instead try to focus on:

1. 'Customer journeys' and try to translate these into social media content co-creation strategies. It is all about creating content for your purposes and involving strategic partners in that.

2. Furthermore; expect co-creation of content to be generated from deals you can make with these business partners, not by the few people who will indeed participate in the concept.

3. Keep the value of generated content, don't let it slip away to social media portals. Use these to get people in from these Portals towards your Goals, not the other way around. This seems obvious yet the most social media experts are focusing on just getting more 'fans' on your corporate Facebook fan-page creating value for Facebook, but very limited value for your corporate goals.

4. Web-care can be a valid motif to be active in social media. Yet measure the Time you'll need in order to service what amount of clients this way. You will probably discover that you invest a lot of time in just a few social media 'shout-outs', instead of servicing the customer who really needs your help. Keep this in mind and make Web-care part of your normal Service/Call Center, applying the same rules and the same personnel. Don't be afraid of social media 'shout-outs' and other Trolls.

5. Thus; focus on valid Advocates and Influencers, not your Brand-Trolls.

6. Just treat social media as any communication tool, disperse it in your company, measure everything, every interaction just like you would with e.g. your call-center.

7.Think strategically, focus on R&D and creativity. Only very few can. Try to get these experts in your company, they will build your future from the Rubble of the social media explosion.