It’s all the rage.  Everyone wants to dive head first into social media…and many do, without so much as a glance into the water before they jump.  The backlash is coming.  It shouldn’t be a surprise, really.  It happens when a new idea excites the market.  Everybody does it, and does it wrong, then everybody gets disillusioned, and then some percentage of “everybody” figures out how to do it right.  And life goes on, sans hype.

It happened in the late 90’s with e-commerce.  With the arrival of the Internet, everyone saw their cash cow in the cyber haze.  E-Commerce web sites popped up like crab-grass in a clean yard.  The unspoken (or, in many cases, actually spoken) mantra was “if you build it, they will come.”  Billions of dollars were spent…most of it on highfalutin outlets such as Amazon.com, Toys.com, Pets.com, and kazillion other “.com’s”.  I was CEO of an e-commerce software firm during this boom, and the sheer volume and ridiculous scope of e-ideas that came across my desk between ‘96 and ‘00 still amazes me.  Every freckled-face kid with a pen and a pizza napkin had hands in the bottomless VC cookie jar.  It was a fun time, no doubt.

But alas, the bubble burst.  The cookie-crumb-handed kids and their elder angels, once equally gleeful and now equally shocked and shaken, awoke to the age-old fact that without strategy and sound practice, success is lost in the smoke and mirrors.  And…ahem…a web site is NOT a strategy.  It’s a tool….much like the idiot investors who sank millions in ideas that had no real business merit.  Slowly, over the next 5 or so years, the hype and disillusionment was replaced and balanced by an understanding of what it takes to make the e-commerce tools work.

What I can see forming in the back of the social media ball-rooms today is a similar grumbling among those who lept without looking that “we’ve wasted tons of money and this social media BS just isn’t going to work.”

Well…..duh….

Social media is not a strategy.  It is a tool.  As with all marketing tools, it must be used within the context of tactical initiatives that are part of a larger branding strategy.  When they are used in such a manner, success follows.  Dell is a great example.  Barack Obama’s ‘08 presidential campaign is a great example.  When they are not used in this manner…when they are employed dumbly by those who (yes) understand the web world but (no) do not understand sound marketing and branding practices, then of course they will not produce results.  it’s as simple as that.

So, mark my words….a backlash is coming.  The social web is in the early stages of a massive dry-heave that will eventually purge the idiots and leave the rest of us to do our jobs in a far-less-muddy environment.

Bring it on.