Everyone wants to talk about social media. It's so easy to do. The cliches are already in place. "It's a cocktail party," "Engagement builds ambassadorship," "Share your lamp story, earn a lightbulb badge."
Fill in the rest of the blanks.
Yuck. I feel nauseated.

I know, I'm the social media director for the University of Michigan, and three days before I even began my job, the local online paper wrote a story that essentially said I was going to be tweeting and playing and charging the taxpayers a whole lot to do it. They put my salary in the headline. There were over a hundred negative comments. It was a great start.

In reality, actually doing social media is hard. There are more failures than successes. Measurement is spotty at best.
I will tell you why a lot of what social media "gurus" are saying is just feeding you a line, and why making really cool stuff is really what this game is all about.