“You can’t put a price on friendship”, that’s what I remember being said to me when I was growing up.  Look we all know the end goal of any business is to make money, it’s all about the bottom line.  But can your social strategy be just to drive revenue? Personally I don’t think so.  In some most cases you should treat your social strategy like your personal strategy.

Let’s take a look at the personal side of social media.  I’ll use twitter as an example, when I first started on twitter my goal was to find people to follow and engage with them on topics that we shared a common interest in. Through those conversations I have made friendships with people I would most likely never met in person. Just like “real-life” friends there may be things that we disagree on, but that is what makes the conversations even better.  These are people who’s input and suggestions I trust because I know they’re not just trying to sell me on something that profits them.

Now what happens if “brands” take the same theory and apply it to their online strategy? As a brand I need to go out and engage with people, whether that is customers/other brands/analysts/etc. whoever that is I need start building relationships with them.  I do that by sharing, either sharing my information with them or sharing their insights with the people that follow me.  After building this friendship, they will trust and value what I say and in my opinion that friendship is more valuable thank any dollar amount you can assign to a like or a follower. As a brand I can’t just create a online presence and expect them to trust what I say and just push out content for contents sake.  Yes, that does work for some companies, but for the most part it’s the wrong approach.

These are just my personal opinions, what do you think?