A few simple points I want to make that I hope most of the people reading this can agree upon:

1. Social media, in both a personal and business sense, should be authentic. No matter what social platform you are using, it should sound as if a person is managing it. A voice with a personality. Not a computer or a salesman looking to close a sale or generate as many downloads as possible.

2. Nobody likes the man or woman who is always trying to be someone else. Everybody knows at least one person who is afraid to be their own person, latches on to someone else (or a few people), and copies all of their interests, habits, etc. Essentially, someone who is unauthentic… or as we like to call it, “fake.”

Why should social media be different?

If successful social marketing requires authenticity and a voice with personality, why would you copy another brand? Copying somebody else is unauthentic and there’s no way you can have your own brand voice if you're just taking another brand’s voice.

For those who are new to social media marketing, it’s totally fine if you check out a few brands that you like to try to understand how they're speaking to their customers online. It’s really important to learn from other brands and understand the pros and cons to their strategies, especially if they are more successful than your brand currently is. I'm not saying you shouldn't be aware of the strategies of competing brands, I’m just saying that you shouldn't copy them.

Let’s say you're launching a startup that’s going to offer a new CRM software. You must be doing this for a reason. Maybe it’s because you think Salesforce sucks or maybe you think there’s a general hole in the CRM market and there’s room for a new, better product to shine through.

The reason we start or maintain a business is because there’s an opportunity in the market. You think you can do it better than the competition.

With that said, why would you base your social media strategy off the competition? It’s really easy to do also. Here’s what happens: You see Salesforce posting inspirational quotes and customer management driven articles, you know that Salesforce is the biggest player in the market, so you decide to post the same type of content. It’s very relevant to your new CRM software and Salesforce has 337k likes on Facebook while your new company has 4k likes. You’re thinking to yourself, “they must be doing something right.” Once again, it looks tempting but you have to remember why you started your business… to be better than the competition. Not just as good or the same. I'd imagine you'd be posting some customer management related articles, just like Salesforce, but that shouldn't be your primary strategy.

We see this a lot in the web design and consulting industries. A company will set up Facebook and Twitter accounts and auto post/tweet articles about the interesting businesses topics, the importance of web presence, etc. You'll just end up being another consulting firm. Be creative, get out there, and instead of reposting those articles, start conversations on the blog pages they are on.

Be different, be yourself, be social.