This is a reposting of my original guest blog written for GreenBuzzAgency.com.

Have you ever walked into the middle of a conversation and suddenly had the awkward feeling that everyone was talking about you?

Motrin has. About a year ago, they became a trending topic on Twitter when Moms, one of their key customer groups, were talking about the insensitivity the company displayed in arecent ad campaign. The consumers summed up Motrin and its use of social media this way: “They don’t get it.”

One year later, we see Motrin exerting an active presence on Twitter and other social media sites and doggedly determined to become “Part of the Conversation” rather than the “Topic of It.”

But just “Being” on social media does not necessarily mean you are “Doing it Right.”

As someone who helps companies wade into the social media waters, but do it in a way that is authentic and in alignment with their brand, I have picked up on a few red flags that I would like to pass along. I call it:

The 5 Ways to Know if You’re Using Social Media Wrong

1) Your Twitter page reads like the CNN ticker. Social media is NOT the place to post your newsfeed! That has become a staple of many homepages, where it is ideal for SEO bots that are scouring the web for updates and new content. But social media is about interaction and one-to-one contact. Nothing says “impersonal faceless corporate entity” like following your favorite brand on Twitter and receiving the Tweet “Thanks for following us. For more information, visit our website.”

2) Your company Facebook friends are also your kids’ Facebook friends. Like any marketing initiative, social media campaigns should be targeting Quality over Quantity. With more than 370 million users, chances are that you have actual customers on Facebook. A simple step many companies overlook is the proactive promotion of their social media sites to gain targeted customers and build relationships with them. Do not let it become a web-based popularity contest where every fan, follower and contact is weighted equally.

3) Your Social Media Marketing is something you’ve assigned to the Interns.Successful marketing campaigns always stem from being integrated across the company. That requires buy-in from the top down! I get very nervous when an executive tells me the company is already on “MyFace” or “SpaceBook.” Too many execs think that new technology is beneath them and refuse to take the initiative in learning what it can do for their business.

4) It Doesn’t Seem Like Your Social Media Profile is “Doing Anything.” Although social media functions in areas like SEO and PR, it is, at heart, a marketing device. And somewhere along the lines, people have forgotten that marketing’s job is to create sales. Which means that social media should be attached to business objectives! That actually generate revenue! A strong advantage of social media over traditional marketing vehicles is its built-in trackability. There are great tools out there to set goals and determine ROI on any social media marketing efforts.

5) You tried social media and it didn’t work for you. I have heard more than my share of marketers explaining, “It detracted from our messaging” or “It’s not a good fit for us.” 9 out of 9 times, what they’re really saying is they didn’t like it or understand it, they didn’t integrate it into an overall marketing campaign and they got tired or bored of it after a few half-hearted attempts. My favorite is when I later find out that the boss’ 16-year-old niece put them on Facebook. I’ll be the first to admit that for many companies, a Facebook Fanpage makes zero sense–so don’t waste your time. But you are missing valuable customer insight if you are not monitoring these powerful online conversations. Effective use of social media, like traditional media campaigns, requires an intelligent strategy tied to real world objectives, executed consistently over a long period of time.

If these all made perfect sense to you, congratulations, you are among those who “Get it” in the new media environment. If any of these sound like you or your company, I would encourage you to re-evaluate what you are doing or who you’ve put in charge of it. Like so much in life, there is more to success than just “being there.”

Shawn Butler is a campaign strategist at Relevant Social Media based in Atlanta. You can contact him at Shawn@RelevantSocialMedia.com.

Also: Interesting related reading from Jeremiah Owyang, Altimeter Group
“A Chronology of Brands that Got Punk’d by Social Media”

“Levitt and Dubner’s SuperFreakonomics: Rather than a Sequel to the Original and Uncanny Economic Stories We Presented in Freakonomics, We’ve Created a Dry Scientific Journal of What Other Economists are Doing and How They’re Passing It Off as Pop Psychology. Also, We’ve Included a Bonus Guide on How to Start Your Own Business as a High Paid Escort Including Suggested Services and Hourly Rates.”

The full title is very long, but funny in a “pick it up off the shelf and show your friend to get a laugh” marketable way. SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner.

Levitt, the economist and presumably “the source” for the material again pairs up with Dubner, the storyteller, to rekindle the magic they made together four years before with Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. I loved Freakonomics. It was, in so many ways, the right book at the right time. Like lightning striking, many factors came together to create the perfect conditions for a dramatic effect. Freakonomics published on the heels of Gladwell’s counter-intuitive bestseller, Blink, into a general resurgence of interest in pop psychology and pseudo-educational non-fiction.

Levitt and Dubner grabbed some literary headlines with their sensational, statistically-based assertions, including the deliberate counter-argument to Gladwell’s explanation of decreased crime covered in The Tipping Point. They had a lot of fun, fresh and surprising discoveries that were shared in a punchy and “radio-friendly” way that is a tribute to Dubner’s writing ability—he was able to convert Umberto Eco into Dan Brown. The masses could enjoy Freakonomics.

But like the old adage about lightning striking, Superfreakonomics is a miss.

UNLESS you are looking for financial data to support your transition from your current career into the thriving industry of High-Paid Escort Service Providers. In which case, the first 55 pages are a “must read.” In these pages, a world-renowned economist will explain to you that prostitution is not about buying sex, but really about limited suppliers seeking to satisfy a decreasing demand for a price inelastic service. It is virtually a cut-and-paste business proposal for you to take your Brothel plan to the investors for your A round.

If you have the time and interest to learn more about effectively selling yourself on the street at an hourly rate, this book is for you. If this does not currently align with your career goals, borrow it and read chapter 5 about global cooling, as this will be the water-cooler topic sometime in the near future where you can impress your friends.

My rating for the book is 20,000 otherwise stable housewives turned drug addicted prostitutes because of inalterable economic incentives out of a possible 50,000 otherwise stable housewives turned drug addicted prostitutes because of inalterable economic incentives.

Also, in my extensive research for this blog (i.e.- “reading wikipedia“), I learned they are making a film adaptation of the first book. This will be bad. I look forward to writing another Inexpert Review in the future, apparently sometime around August 2010.

Because, as a thoroughly indoctrinated believer in the fast movement towards the “inexpert web,” I will contribute media reviews for which I am fully and openly unqualified to make. This is my review of the movie The Princess and the Frog.

I saw The Princess and the Frog with my wife and two-and-a-half-year-old daughter. We went with friends who had three daughters, ages 2, 5 and 8. I had already been warned that the movie was “going back to Disney’s roots” and that it was a little “over the head” of the carefully targeted young, purchase decision driving Disney audience.

But my wife had been prepping our princess-obsessed 2 year old for more than a month about a “new princess movie” and we were excited about her first outing to the great American tradition of paying for television, so we headed into the appropriately marked theater and took our seats. Even though we arrived twenty minutes early, we missed the first few minutes of the show (to be explained later), but this proved to not be a problem.

I feared that I had missed a few key plot drivers that would be significant later. These fears were unsubstantiated. Many key plot drivers were missed throughout the show and it had nothing to do with me. I wasn’t confused at any moment about WHAT was going on in the movie, but I often wondered WHY it was going on. Some of those questions include:

• Why is the prince making deals with a voodoo priest?
• Why is the prince’s servant suddenly such a willing accomplice in fraud, kidnapping, deception and eventual attempted homocide?
• Why is this kid’s movie telling me so much about how to work voodoo magic, make deals with evil spirits and otherwise begin my own practice in the dark arts?

This last question occurred time and time again during various voodoo magic scenes in the movie where I saw beautiful animated sequences set to catchy songs filled with chorus girls and colorful flashing lights while characters performed blood rituals, fortune telling and otherwise sold their souls to the underworld. I kept tapping my feet and fighting the urge to shout, “Boy, black magic sure looks fun!”

At least there was an overt moral lesson near the end of the movie where the voodoo practitioner’s soul is violently, albeit colorfully, harvested by his demonic overlords. A valuable scene that clearly states to viewers of all ages, “Black magic isn’t ALL fun and games.”

On the ride home, while curtly checking the offspring over for signs of long-term mental and emotional injury, I determined she survived unscathed. I believe her two-year-old mind was confused during the film as well, but her recurring questions may have been more along the lines of:

• Why aren’t there more princesses?
• Why are we watching these boring frogs so much?
• And What happened to the princesses?

Interrupted by the occasional thought, “When Genie did magic in Aladdin, he did it without human blood, voodoo dolls or apparent soul bargaining. Was that even REAL magic or was it just pretend?”

My overall rating for the movie is 3 and a half shrunken head voodoo talismans on a scale of five shrunken head voodoo talismans.

Rating: 3 and a Half Shrunken Head Voodoo Talismans Out of a Possible 5

And my summary statement is: “The Princess and the Frog: Not at All a Re-telling of the Beloved Fairytale, but Rather a Beautifully Animated Infomercial on How to Start a Career in Black Magic and Be Your Own Voodoo Priest. With an Occasional Princess.”

Here at Relevant Social Media, we’re from Georgia and we love college football. That makes this week a significant one. You see, the two top football schools in the state, Georgia Tech and the University of Georgia, have a long-standing college football rivalry. And usually, the game where they play each other is steeped with tension and, um, even a little, shall we say, animosity?

Well, this year, Tech is a top-ranked team and headed to a BCS bowl regardless of how they play on Saturday. Meanwhile, UGA is having one of its worst seasons and has suffered some significant losses, including the unexpected death of their mascot Georgia Bulldog, Uga VII.

Well, we decided to add insult to injury and share our slightly veiled opinions of how the usually heated rivalry will play out for the 2009 game. This Mac vs PC style ad highlights that for Georgia college football fans, this is the Most Important Football Game that Doesn’t Matter at All.

The Georgia Rivalry game will be played this Saturday, November 28th. Kick-off at 8pm at Bobby Dodd Stadium.

Or Leave Us a Comment on YouTube: UGA vs GT 2009 “Obviously”

With Web 2.0, where every individual can be both producer and consumer, it seems that the talent should rise to the top. In it’s purest form, what self-regulated social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are creating is a talent-based meritocracy where your peers are your harshest critics.  The good are lauded, the bad ostracized and the inauthentic are ousted before the masses. It is truly dog-eat-dog.

I set before you the rawest example of peer moderation in a laissez faire environment where every man (or woman!) considers himself Simon Cowell:  the YouTube collection of results for “Female Guitarist Acoustic Covers.” I’m pretty sure this is where Simon got the idea in the first place.

If Kelly Clarkson were “starting out” today (and she could play guitar this well!) she would probably be one of the girls below. Check out each video, read the comments beneath, rate your favorites and let the virtual cat fight begin!

The YouTube Results for Top Female Acoustic Guitar Covers.

1) Ash Soular soularashs

2) Kelly Rosenthal KellyIsMusical

3) Lilian Bui lilianbui

4) Elizabeth Laural elizlaural

5) Leesha Harvey LeeshaHarvey

Please vote for your favorite. And feel free to let loose and tell these girls what you think of their skills. After all, it’s Web 2.0. Doesn’t that mean we’re all experts?