When you think about social media, think about it in terms of pizza sauce. Sounds absurd, but hear me out. Pizza is a delicious and wonderful thing to eat, you've got warm, fresh dough, sauce, cheese a a variety of toppings to choose from. Now if you take away cheese, toppings and dough you're not left with much. Just a bunch of pizza sauce. This is exactly what social media is. It's not bad on it's own, but it's not the complete package without other components, namely marketing, public relations, SEO, advertising and other related branding factors.
If you're going to launch a social media strategy, you'll need to consider how it can fit in with your overall marketing plan. Use it as a tool to build your brand and elevate conversations about it. It's misleading to think that social media alone will transform your brand into an overnight success that generates ridiculous amounts of revenue. It is simply a good marketing option that can augment your existing efforts.
That's not to say that using social media as the sole mechanism for pushing your brand is a bad thing. There are a handful of companies that have successfully managed to accomplish an impressive ROI through social media alone. The thing is that they are typically well-established brands to begin with and the likelihood of experiencing outlandish results is not commonplace. In fact, it's about as rare as a snow storm in Hawaii.
Before you embark on a social media frenzy, put some thought into what your current efforts consist of and how social media might boost them. Think about the amount of time that you'll need to dedicate to building your community, interacting with fans, sharing new content and maintaining and active and consistent presence. Social media can't and won't run itself. You are the catalyst and if you don't contribute the human element to your social media campaign your brand will be most likely fade into nothing in the social media sector.
So, on it's own, social media isn't bad, it's just not that great. If you want to hit a home run, don't forget to add some cheese and mushrooms, oops, I mean, public relations and search engine marketing.