In 1996, the social media site to be on was America Online. In 2005, it was MySpace. And to this very day, we are under attack from the social media giant that is Facebook. Along with that site, there is Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. But if you remember all the way back to 2005, who were the companies using MySpace? Not too many. Just the music industry and maybe a handful of movie studios.

Nowadays, companies are using sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest as their corporate mouthpiece. They have become the PR and the voice of the company. But one of the sociological failures to MySpace was that it was a narcissistic image of ourselves shot online for the millions. Yes, the bathroom self-shot at that time was a quite a negative act of narcissism. Fast forward to today, the bathroom self-shot has become standard operating procedure for most of the world. Now what does this have to do with companies? If you use social media, don't make it all about your company.

To the chagrin of a company, social media can become its downfall. Sometimes, an overzealous intern or upset marketing manager may post something deemed not corporate, politically incorrect or just asinine. That will happen especially in this quick, reactive world. But on the other hand, robotic posts coming straight from PR or from corporate RSS feed may be the only post coming from companies. No one likes monotony. No one likes constant press releases. Social media should have a personality.

So how do you balance this? Understand that social media can be a platform for social change. But unless your company is in for social change, do make it into a pulpit. But you can make it into a voice for customer service. With good customer service and feedback to the consumers, you can make a great online reputation for your company account and for the company itself. A lot of companies make a good name for themselves by being efficient at customer service. Perhaps with social media, you can do that yourself.

When companies use social media, it shouldn't be about themselves and what they have coming up. It should be about what they can do for the consumer. It should be a 24/7 customer service platform as well. Whoever you have running your social media account should not be solely interested in hash tags, pretty pictures and inspirational quotes. It should be about reaching out to consumers and making fans of the company through good customer service and thorough feedback.

Image credit: Bob Dass on Flickr