Authentic. You can’t turn around in the social media echo chamber without bumping into this word. The problem is, beyond the social media land of unicorns, authentic isn’t relevant.

As I explored in Don’t Be Authentic: Real Social Media Marketing Advice on SpinSucks, we don’t really want to see authentic in social media. It is an idealized view that for most organizations is as unrealistic as it is attractive. (Aaron Wagner makes some great comments about this in the discussion here on Social Media Today as well).

Authentic is the wrong objective. What is the right one? [Read more…]