Decide what’s important. Decide if it’s personal.

The bigger the news in social mediaville, the grander the assumptions for what social media is and isn’t. For example, there was a recent reporting saying 40 percent of the tweets on Twitter were pointless. Pointless for what audience? Who decides?

When it comes to your social media activity, or any marketing activity for that matter, your audience decides what’s pointless, what’s important, what’s fun to know and what’s unnecessary. You learn by the activity, comments and links generated from your efforts. That’s the bottom line and that’s what’s important to know and understand out of this whole social media hairball. You have to figure out what marketing activity is right for your mix, and how and what those right mixes are in your strategy.

Here are two areas of advice to get you started right. You figure out these two things and the rest will flow.

1. Decide what’s important. Take this opportunity to talk with your clients and prospects about what they would like to know about the area in which you are the expert. What is important for them to know? How can you help them filter all the information that’s out there and learn what they need the most? Now deliver the goods and keep asking regularly.
2. Decide if it’s personal. What voice does your marketing deliver? Is it funny? Is it uber serious? Don’t be something you’re not and don’t make your company’s marketing message something it’s not. If social media is forcing anything at the marketing table, it’s authenticity.