I’m very confused by brands that think “doing social media” means creating a content calendar with regular Facebook posts at the same time, every day, “engaging” with their fans things with posts like “what’s your favorite color?” or “share this picture of a Coke with all of your friends.” I’m sorry, but that’s desperate and ridiculous. If one of your friends posted that and you saw it in your newsfeed, honestly tell me you wouldn’t at least consider unfriending them.

This is a typical (read: lame) attempt at social.

Social is a way of life, it’s a culture. If you’re going to be a social brand, be a social brand. Be authentic. Have a personality. Be accountable. Make mistakes. Be real. Take risks. Be relatable. Be relevant. Be interesting.

There have been thousands of blog posts written about this and I’m amazed by how many brands still embarrass themselves in the social sphere. Are you really not ready to admit you’re clueless yet?

Social is all about people and it’s funny to watch brands trying to be people in their attempts at being social. Instead, they miss the mark and are, at best, vaguely relevant.

Do you have any friends who keep a calendar of uninteresting posts that they make at the same times every weekday? Of course not. Because, frankly, nothing is more antisocial than that. So why do brands think those kind of activities make their brands social?

The best kind of social media marketing is the kind that your customers do for you. It’s always been this way and it always will be. Be a social brand and people will be social about you. Encourage a social culture—openness, transparency, authenticity. It’s sad that I’m having to spell this out.

So…what does it mean to have a social brand culture?

Your brand cannot reap the rewards of social unless you commit. And the rewards are great. Trust me when I say you want them. You get the most enthusiastic fans who love to rave about you, who will be loyal to you, and who will help propel you into the future.

Being social has to be more than just acting social. You can’t just have a Facebook Page that you post on, you can’t just upload videos to YouTube, you can’t just sprinkle “like” buttons all over your website. Your brand needs to be social, show its personality.

Look at what Starbucks has been able to do because they’ve built a social brand. With My Starbucks Idea, they’re crowdsourcing their business development. Do you not realize how incredible that is? Starbucks’ fans are so enthusiastic that they’re willing to take the time and put their ideas on the line to grow the brand. Not only that, but Starbucks has paved for the way for its fans to start social experiments like Jonathan’s Card, pushing the boundaries of social. And this shouldn’t be too puzzling for you. Humans are social animals, after all. We love to talk. We love help each other, and we get pleasure from doing it. Brands can take advantage of this as long as they don’t try to take advantage of it.

My Starbucks Idea gives anyone the chance to give Starbucks their next great business idea.

Social looks different for every brand (at least, it should), just like every person has a different personality. Another brand that comes to mind when I think social brands is American Express. They’ve tapped into foursquare to run unprecedented campaigns, they launched the OPEN Forum that has proven to be a hugely valuable community for small businesses. They’re really showing their commitment to becoming a social brand and these days, they’re truly living social. They’re not just executing social tactics. They’re shifting their brand to a social brand.

So I ask you: When is your brand going to stop “doing social media” and start living as a social brand?

I’ve been dying for the chance to use “Google+” in a sentence, so here it goes. I’ve never been a fan of Google+. And here’s why.

5. Circles

Sure, the idea that you can individually place your friends into separate circles sounds appealing, and users even say they like this feature. But then they go and try to place people in their lives into “circles,” and suddenly, they realize it isn’t convenient, it isn’t easy, and it doesn’t make much sense. People think they want options, but when they get them, they feel overwhelmed.

Google has no idea how people interact. Sure, they like to think that ideally we have “circles” of friends and that each circle is privy to only certain information. And that’s what a logical world is: ideal. But the world isn’t logical, it’s messy with emotion and irrational behavior (that we try to rationalize).

How do I decide who to put in which circles? Do my roommates get their own circle? Do I also put them in close friends? What makes someone a close friend instead of a friend?

People don’t think like this, no matter how much they want to. Google+, please get with the program.

(Besides, Facebook has had this function in lists, which no one really used anyway, even when they were revamped after the launch of Google+. Also, Facebook clearly understands social and still doesn’t insist users categorize their friends the way Google+ does.)

4. Design

Go to Facebook and what do you see? Social content. Your friend’s statuses, comments on those statuses—pictures, videos, everything. When Google+ first launched, its interface was social content competing with contextualizing elements (timestamps, level of visibility, words like “comments,” “shares,” etc.).

Sure, Facebook has these things too—social networks need these things. But Facebook has always downplayed them and let user content shine. They used color, text decoration and placement to let their contextualizing elements support content, not overshadow it. On Google+, books elements looked the same. Same font, same color, close placement. It wasn’t easy to follow, even if users couldn’t quite realize this was why they found Google+ difficult.

On the left, social content in Google+ is almost overpowered by all the nonessential contextualizing elements. On the right, Facebook uses text color, background color and placement to make social content king.

Google+ took the focus away from social and put the focus on classifying. While things have gotten better with the latest redesign, contextualizing elements are still difficult to distinguish from social content. And even worse, Google+ now uses a frame-like interface, fixing the top and left parts of the screen to the window, allowing users to scroll through only a fraction of their browser screens. I see fixed elements caving in all around me and I feel claustrophobic. I don’t like it.

3. Coolness (Hey, I can use that word.)

Myspace was a place for kids to express themselves away from authority. This was the beginning of Web 2.0 and parents had no idea that their kids were up late writing “bulletins” and sharing their interests with mostly strangers.

A big reason why Facebook was successful was because it started out being exclusive to only college students. And because people talk to others like them, it expanded to include everyone in that exclusive group very quickly.

It just so happens that these are the very groups—teens and young adults—responsible for deciding what is and isn’t cool in our culture.

They made Myspace cool, and they made Facebook cool.

Google+ started off exclusive, too…to huge geeks. And let’s face it, geeks aren’t cool. At least not in the mainstream sense of the word. (Trust, I was one.) So by the time the “cool kids” joined, all they saw were posts by their social media friends and Google employees.

Update (November 28, 2012): Google+’s phased launch also seems a poor choice in retrospect. It forced exclusivity for no reason other than to trottle membership. Myspace and Facebook would never dream of that.

2. Language

Google talks to me like I’m a robot. Which is fantastic when I’m looking for a tool to do a task, like read email or create a document. It’s not so fantastic when I’m trying to be social, a completely emotional (read: irrational) behavior.

Hey Google, I’m not a mathematical operator, I’m a person. I interact emotionally, not logically. People like things, they don’t “plus one” things. Calculators “plus one” things.

Twitter got it right with “follow.” That’s something people do. Facebook got it right with “add friend.” People add friends to their lives. Google+ thought it was doing us a favor by letting us add people “to circles,” but there is nothing social about adding your friend to a circle. If anything, it’s antisocial.

1. What’s the point?

Myspace was a place for friends, Facebook is all about making the world more open and connected, and Google+? Well, Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible, and Google+ seems to be about “new ways of sharing the right things with the right people.”

But that’s not social. That’s logic over emotion, which, again, is great for Google’s other tools. But Google+ is no Facebook killer.

And let’s be real—their only mission was to compete with Facebook. (And even if it wasn’t, that’s the perception, and perception is reality.)

To put it simply (or REALLY complex, if you’re not a geek):

What Facebook thinks my thought process is:

“Hey, this is cool! I’m totally sharing this.”

What Google thinks my thought process is:

function share(thing,people) { if(thing=”right thing”,share(thing,if(people=”right people”,people,no one)),nothing) };

Or something like that. Did I miss a parenthesis?

My Google+ advice?

If you’re a person, don’t bother with Google+. I promise you’re not missing anything. If you’re a brand, don’t bother with Google+. It just shows you only “do social media” to “do social media.”

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5. Circles

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