The first venture into social media for many companies, whether a small start up or a big brand, is to create a Facebook page to ‘experiment’ with social media, which is seen as an add on to other marketing activities.

But just putting a page up onto Facebook, with no coherent social media strategy, is unlikely to do anything for a brand.

For many companies, their very first venture into social media is the decision to create a Facebook page; uploading the company logo, posting photos of the office, and writing status updates from time to time.

This is true of a massive number of companies, ranging from small entrepreneurial start-ups, to big corporate businesses.

The paradox is that most of these same companies would not undertake offline marketing activities on a whim, but carefully plan their campaigns to the smallest detail. They are scrupulous about targeting their direct response campaigns, and every word of a print advertisement is carefully chosen.

When using pay per click, they use all the tools available in order to get their adverts in front of the specific audiences they want to reach. But social media is viewed as an add on, something to be done “if we have time…”

Creating and managing a page in this ad-hoc way, in the hope of becoming a hit on Facebook, is likely to be as effective as being in a stadium at a world cup match, trying to shout about your products over the roar of the crowd and the deafening drone of vuvuzelas. Nobody wants to listen, and if they did, they wouldn’t be able to hear you anyway.

Social media can, and should, involve identifying your target audiences and the platforms they already use. If you are a B2B company, LinkedIn and Twitter are likely to be much more useful than Facebook.