You Can't Buy Lists for Social Media

I think one of the best things about social media is that you cannot buy marketing lists. I personally don't like the idea of buying direct mailing lists at all, but I understand that there is a time and place for it. With social media though, it is just not possible to purchase a list, content truly is king.

Unless you are famous and have that going for you social media makes you start at the bottom and build your way up by having value-adding content and intriguing posts (I can say this with confidence because I'm to new to actively participating in social media to know where this actually applies to me). Adding value is the one theme you see in almost all PR blogs about successful social media strategies which makes me think that all the other tips and tricks are icing on the cake. Sure, writing a social media article with an eye towards SEO will increase your searchability and using hash tags on twitter will allow your tweets to be seen by more users, but this doesn't matter unless you have a solid and strong base of content that matters.

What does this mean for companies whose content cannot be generated by marketing? In higher education high-value content comes from faculty, most of whom will have little direct contact with marketing. In this case, what is marketing supposed to do? Piggy-back faculty whitepapers and articles? rewrite this information in a more marketing-friendly manner?

So what do you think? Can a company be competitive and truly benefit from social media without all the extras?