I read a great post this morning on the Wall Street Journal’s small business blog Independent Street about social media. Basically it talks about the ways that some businesses are messing up their social marketing efforts. Though some small businesses are familiar with the Web 2.0 world, many still don’t fully grasp the concept and its impact. So I wanted to highlight two points from the blog post that I think can be applied to social media in a broad sense.

The first is that businesses need to lighten up—a lot. Social media is all about personality and creating a fun and engaging environment. So don’t bore your customers with “dry facts about your business.” The second is that promoting your business shouldn’t be the one, main force driving your social marketing efforts. Why? Because people aren’t stupid. They can see through the fluff, and if all you’re doing is blatantly selling yourself, people will be turned off. Instead, social media is “about making connections and creating credibility so that people will like you and trust you and eventually want to buy from you.”

So if you keep things fun, personal and all about your customers (not you), you’re in a good position to make social media work for you.

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