Mr. McGuire: I want to say one word to you. Just one word.
Benjamin: Yes, sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Benjamin: Yes, I am.
Mr. McGuire: Plastics.
Benjamin: Just how do you mean that, sir?

To me, corporate social media astroturfing is about as interesting as Benjamin Braddock being recruited into the Plastics industry by his dad's friend.

I've long held the belief that "more" is not necessarily "better". I recently overheard two women having a lunch discussion about how they can best utilize "as many free tools and communities as possible" to help "socialize the corporate message". (Ok, enough with the quotes, before I go all Matt Foley here.) One thing companies need to realize is that most people are at least a tad hostile to the ham-handed corporate presence at what are typically non-corporate environments. It's not hard to figure out why people ignore your corporate-shill facebook posts with titles like:

"Attending [name removed] Conference! Come by and say Hi and get a free mousepad!"
"Looking forward to version 6.6! Great new features you should check out!"
"[name removed] receives an analyst upgrade!"

To me it's the equivalent of a chiropractor at a street fair giving out "free spinal evaluations" (there I go with the quotes again). Do you think he's going to tell you there's NOTHING WRONG with your spine? It's more than a little creepy having a stranger offer to put his hands on you to drum up business. Ok, maybe it's a stretch but...I think you get my point.

Don't get me wrong...there are plenty of reasons why companies SHOULD make use of social media sites to socialize the corporate message (!). If you're a company like Apple, it certainly makes perfect sense for obvious reasons.   People actually care and want to actively consume the information Apple is providing.  For far-less-sexy companies...not so much.  Who knows?  Maybe there actually ARE people who care very deeply about their storage strategy to the point where they would want to actually tweet about it.  I've not these people, and I've been doing this kind of work a pretty long time now.

To be fair, I do understand that people can choose to ignore the information these companies are bombarding the social media sites with, but to me it comes down to good manners.  If you display good manners and concentrate on goods and services that people will get excited about, you have less of a need for tacky PR and astroturfing.  If you want to articulate your marketing message to an unaware public, buy advertising.  I've never purchased anything I've learned about via social media.  I think that says a lot.