These days social has become so important to business, such a focus, that marketing has convinced its self ending a billboard, flier, TV or radio advertisement with a link over to Facebook or Twitter is the must-have call to action.  I can see the arguments – customers will “like” the page and end up someone you can message time and time again. UGC from other fans will authentically validate the product and make people buy. People know and trust social sites so they’re more likely to go there. But is that what we’re really doing?

It’s like we’re screaming “we’re at the party too” in the hopes that people will think we are cool because we’re there, except this party doesn’t have a guest list and everyone has shown up.

What we’re really doing when we broadcast our social sites is sending a very loud message – go somewhere other than our corporate “home” to see how “authentic” we are. We didn’t open up the doors in place where everything is suppose to be tidy and perfect so we’ve rented out this space down the street and that’s where you can find the “real” talk.

At the same time, by the mechanics of social networks plus along with our fangating and page settings, ask everyone who comes over to like us – even though they don’t even know us. We’re preaching engagement but requiring visible affinity to even ask a question and then wondering why people don’t respond when we do post something up to them.

And of course let’s not forget the difficulty seeing and using these channels in the first place – we run dozens of profiles for different products and regions – which one is right? We drop people off at a wall full of different types of messages that we expect people to sift through. If they don’t find what they wanted, it’s waiting for a response from us or someone else or clicking a link over to our website where interested customer probably wishes they had gone too in the first place.

In the era of social the word control has been become taboo but controlling the experience by aggregating is not a bad thing. So rather than trying to look relevant by telling people you’re on XYZ, be relevant by giving them the all the information they actually need – and putting it in a place that is identified as yours — that’s transparent, that’s useful.

Social is about the opportunity to engage – not the requirement to do so. Short comments, full reviews, check-ins, photos, all of the features that exist out there can come right into your site [from those networks in fact] and extend, validate without the need for a visitor to click away from your brand. You’re creating all of this great content, why limit the exposure? Why mix your fan base with people who are just looking? Instead build your own community out of what people are already doing and bring it back.

You can’t call your brand social, expect to grow from social, and yet have social be a silo that lives outside of your brand.