The last thing any company getting on the social media bandwagon should do is adopt best practices established by practitioners and "experts" in the consumer space. Consumers and enterprises have very different objectives so here are 6 reasons why enterprises should write their own playbook rather than borrow from the consumer space:

1. Numbers do matter: I recently wrote a blog post on how folks are getting too obsessed with their Twittercount. I still believe that when you aren't selling something, the obsession with Twitter and Facebook numbers is just an ego trip. Individual social media activity should be focused on quality of engagement rather than quantity. However, when you are a business - quality is important but so is quantity, perhaps more so. If you're running social media campaigns or activities for your company, you're expected to deliver results. One way of measuring results is by looking at customer engagement numbers, but how will you engage when there's no one to engage with?
2. Consistency is important: I remember when the Motrin/Twitter Momscontroversy erupted, well-known blogger Louis Gray had a great blog post on how "Brand Reputation Management is Not a Monday-Friday Gig". The same applies to social media in general. You can't say, I am taking the week off, so the corporate blog can languish until I get back or the unhappy customer who has been tweeting about a product issue will just have to wait. When you're doing it for your business, you have to make sure the show goes on regardless of what's going on in the background. Can you imagine, shutting down your company website just because the guy who manages it has gone on vacation? That becomes even more critical for social media, which is a much more dynamic media and people expect consistent real-time updates.
3. It's a team sport: Unless you're a company of one, your social media team should involve many other cross-functional folks. so that you are representing voice of the company not just your individual thoughts. Having an individual voice for a personal blog is fine, but ideally you want to have consistent messaging even through your social media channels. As a business, you want to ensure you're not confusing your customers by having conflicting points of view from two different employees from the same company. To make the content authentic, input on social media content should come from subject matter and content experts, not just the best communicator/blogger on the team.
4. It's not personal: Like it or not, enterprise social media is all about business, so companies shouldn't go crazy trying to emulate personal blogs in their content and approach. Your company's social media content needs to be authentic, by which I mean present truthful information without any marketing or PR spiel. Being professional is also right up there with authenticity. As your customer, I don't want to know about your six cats unless I am buying cat food from you and even then, I don't care unless the information is relevant and interesting to me. Your customers come to you for value (no matter which social media channel you choose to use) and it's your job to make sure you deliver that value..minus any spin or personal stories, please.
5. You can't fake it: I cringe when I see social media enthusiasts trying to conjure up a fictitious fun persona for their corporate social media accounts, especially when their company culture is anything but customer-centric. This warm and fuzzy approach works for companies like Southwest Airlines or Zappos, because their brand IS fun and customer-oriented, so are their employees. However, if your company is notorious for lousy customer service, no amount of cutesy tweets will help your cause.
6. Last but not the least, it's NOT free: When you're writing your personal blog, it's a fun hobby and since most social sites/tools are free, there's no financial cost involved. However, if this activity is for a company account, it's costing the company money because the company still has to pay their employees, right?! So it's essential to put some productivity and business outcome metrics around social media activities to ensure that these activities are aligned with company's financial objectives and goals.

Enterprises are in business to generate value for their stakeholders, whereas personal/consumer social media activities are not encumbered by those responsibilities. Enterprises should ignore the social media hype and do right by their customers. They should leverage the social media sites/tools to deliver value to and engage their customer base even when it's perceived as being "uncool" to do so.

Originally published on Marketing Mystic.

Past Articles by This Author:

• 6 Reasons Why Enterprise Social Media Needs its Own Playbook
• Ford Case Study: Control is an Illusion in the Social Media Age
• Peter Kim, Charlene Li & Jeremiah Owyang on Why Social Media Fails at Web 2.0 Expo
• Guide to Enterprise 2.0 Tools, Frameworks & Platforms at Web 2.0 Expo
• 10 Essential Tips for Successful Social Media Launch
• To Blog or Not to Blog