What I mean is, and I have said this before, these sites come and go. Today’s hot site is shutting down before you know it. The little up and coming site that you never heard of will have 100 million users by year end. If you get too tied to a particular site, you end up with the problem that clients are calling me on. When a new one comes along, you don’t know what to do. Do I switch or stay? Do I support both? Neither? Something else?

The key is to ask the following question: what am I trying to accomplish with my social media strategy? Is it to reach new customers? Is it to open a new market? Is it to provide better service? Is it to find out about issues faster? All are valid, and there are many more. But if you can’t answer that first question, you have no way to evaluate events like the Buzz announcement yesterday.

Is Buzz right for you? Maybe. Maybe not. But it won’t be the last of the social media announcements that your firm will need to deal with. Set you eyes at the strategy level. Then the tactical issue of which sites will fall into place.

I do not pretend I know all the answers on this subject. But I think it is something that all of us that play or work on line tend to feel at one point or another. And I know if my case, I have found a couple ways to deal with it.

1. First, and most important, come to grips with the fact that there is information that yes, indeed, you will miss. I find that one of the problems is that people continue to feel information overload because they are fearful that they are missing something. You are. But you know what? It is OK. Life will go on. Important information as a way of coming back to you and you will likely find it.

2. Much of the information you are worried about is not information at all. It is fluff. Not every tweet, every link, every status update is gold. Let them pass by. Again, the important information has a way of coming back to you.

3. Use tools to help. I like Seesmic Desktop and Digsby as two tools that work for me. They do not organize the info, but they alert me as I am working so that I know what is popping up on sites I follow. That allows me to respond to what I need/want to, and ignore the rest. Helping with point #1, above. There are lots of good tools out there to use. Some like to use Tweetdeck for managing Twitter. This allows tweets from people you might care more about (family or coworkers for example) to be seperated out from all the others. Look around and try some tools that work for you.

4. Develop a strategy for personal and business use of social media. Many people have allowed their Facebook and Twitter accounts to grow haphazardly. The result is that they have mixed their personal and business contacts. This may make it difficult to stay on top of messages that you really care about. As many of the sites add the ability to create user lists this may get easier. But even before that there are thinks to do. My colleage Ray Valdes has some interest ideas of this in many of his blogs and writing.

5. Find the social networking sites that you like and that work for you, and stay with those. One of the problems I find is that some users are experimenting with 4, 5 and 6 different sites. That makes it very had to stay on each and learn how applicable they may each be for your firm. Pick one or two and concentrate.

If you are reasonable, you can handle the information overload out there. Remember, it is not going to go away on it’s own…it will only get worse. Have a strategy now.

Thoughts on other ways to address this problem? I have several clients that would appreciate the ideas.

I say that because as I have been talking with clients, I have realized that while there are a lot of reasons why firms get into social media. Some are good, and some are not motivated by the best strategy. But there are some natural groupings. This list is not exhaustive by any means. In fact, I would be interested in know what other categories people see.

1. The first group are the Lemmings. These are where I think most firms are. They do social media because everyone seems to be doing it. They have no strategy, and usually their use of the media shows it.

2. Next, we get the Airline Flight Magazines group. These are firms that are doing it because someone in senior management told them too, usually because they read an airline flight magazine about it so they figured that they should do it too.

3. The third group is the New and Trendy group. These firms just love to do stuff while it is new. If it is more than 6-12 months old, they have lost interest and moved on.

4. Fourth, there are Money Makers. They see revenue in social media, and want to use it for Sales and Marketing. They don’t see much else, but the dollar (or euro or Yen signs) are driving them

5. Fifth, the Service Nuts. They don’t care as much about making money. They want to take care of customer needs. They are driven by immediacy of response, and care the most about customer satisfaction.

6. And finally, the last group are the “We just want to talk to our customers”. This group has no particular expectations. They are interested in creating a dialog. They throw comments out, they respond to comments back. And they want to learn.

I am most encouraged by the last group. There is a sense that says any reason you are on social media is good. And I do not disagree. But the fact that the last group knows they will make mistakes, and want to learn, means that they will go the furthest. Let’s hope more firms want to learn and are willing to make a few mistakes.

Many of the folks that contacted me seem to have a once and done mentality when it comes to social media and how it relates to CRM. By that I mean that they say things like “we have a Facebook page”, or “we have people monitoring Twitter”, or the ever popular IT view of life “is there a piece of software that I can buy that will do all this?”. In each case, they view social media as a project that they can finish, and then move on to the next project.

It is important for firms to realize that social media is dynamic, and is an ongoing strategic commitment, not a tactical project. This is important for a number of reasons, not the least of which each sub segment of the media has it’s own rules, and expectation, strengths and weaknesses. You cannot have a “one approach fits all” or a single project will put this to bed view of the area.

Firms need to ask themselves some basic questions:

1. What does the concept of a customer ecosystem (the bigger world that your firm is in the midst of along with your customers) look like?

2. Do I hope to use social media for revenue generation, brand support, or service (or some combination of all three)?

3. Do I have people on my team that understand this area, and use it in their daily life? If not, you should find some.

4. Are there things that we can apply from other areas such as mass media and direct marketing that might be useful in this arena? But at the same time, you should not view social media as just another form of either.

5. And finally, do I view social media as something disconnected from the rest of CRM? If so, time to rethink and restrategize, because it isn’t.

I am starting to realize that many firms come into this arena with the assumption that everyone out there is lying about their firm and the goal of this strategy is to set them straight. I believe that the successful firms will instead embrace the media as the best way yet to engage in meaningful dialogue with customers. Yes, some have issues that they want to air. But isn’t that part of having a relationship?

I pointed out that two years ago, if we were having this conversation, we would be talking about Second Life. Last year, we would be talking about MySpace. Next year? Possible XBox Live. The space is in flux and these sites come and go. Too much time worrying about one particular site is going to fail to set you up long term for this inevitable change.

Firms need to think about the fact that the ecosystem (to use an overworked phrase) that they are part of, along with their customers, is growing, and the rules and the power are shifting. What they need to do is think about how they are going to play in that customer ecosystem. That requires a strategy…long term and able to handle a changing marketplace. It will require software tools. It will require written policies. But mostly, it will require creativity and a desire to experiment and learn. Once that is in place, certainly firms will tactically address sites like Facebook and Twitter. But those tactical approaches should be driven by the larger strategy.

It put me in mind of when I started my first full time job outside of college. I went to work for a bank in Chicago, right about the time that PC’s were just appearing on the market. We had one, in the whole bank, buried away on the main banking floor of our headquarters. I was the only one who ever did anything with it. One day my boss found me and asked what I was doing with that “toy”. I always wondered what that guy thinks now about PC’s in the work place, and how long it took to change his way of thinking.

I am a big fan of social media. I use all the major ones, and a number of the minor ones. And I think in time firms are going to catch on. To me, however, you are going to get your advantage if you are into the market early, rather then later. Buying PC’s in the early 80′s gave you a chance to do someting different. So, to, does getting into social media in the early 21st century.

Scott