for W3c validation

I’m going to disagree that the following point in the Debunking Six Social Media Myths Business Week article is a “myth”:

4. You can do it all in-house. Wrong! You need strategy, contacts, tools, and experience—a combination not generally found in in-house teams, who often reinvent the wheel or use the wrong tools.

It is rare indeed to find an in-house team that can not only conceive and execute a social media campaign but also drive traffic to it with effective e-mail segmentation, search optimization, blogger outreach, blog advertising, Google ads, and more.

Social media can and has been successfully tackled in-house by numerous companies. Make no mistake, it takes resources in the way of headcount, but it can be done. From my point of view, social media done in-house will always be more effective than outsourcing it. It’s pretty simple; social media is all about genuine conversations and relationships. An external social media firm may be able to generate some quick traffic and create a little bit of viral buzz, but they cannot speak for a brand and build long term, valuable relationships with influencers on behalf of a company. Actually working for and representing a brand is important when it comes to social media marketing. If whoever you are talking to knows that you don’t work for the company, they know you have virtually no say with the management team or clout with developers to get things fixed (relevant to web companies) — which means there’s not much you can offer them other than marketing speak.