Do you have Foursquare? If not, why not? It’s the latest trend, you know, and it’s going to be even more popular than Twitter. All your competitors have Foursquare so why don’t you?

Whoa, hang on there, if you’ve already opening up Foursquare in another tab and signing up for a company profile, then ask yourself why? Could your company be more interested in jumping on the latest bandwagon then setting up a successful social media campaign?

Social media isn’t about joining the latest fad, or at least it shouldn’t be. It should be about building successful online marketing solutions for your company, and if Foursquare and Facebook don’t suit your demographic then don’t sign up. If you’re still not really sure what I mean then this great post by SEO Chick, Sarah Carling explains it. Essentially Twitter isn’t a social media strategy, because the strategy of social media is to build a community around a specific passion group and this isn’t something that Twitter necessarily does effectively. Foursquare doesn’t build communities, you can’t build a successful community by simply gaining points for checking into a restaurant.

Just because it’s new and cool doesn’t necessarily mean that it works, and often an old forum that lets your customers interact with each other will be the most effective social media tool for your company. For all these reasons, I was shocked to see British Airway’s latest attempt at jumping on the social media bandwagon. Okay so it’s pretty, it’s clever and I’ve no doubt that, like both Twitter and Foursquare, it will be branded by themselves as a huge success, but is it social media? Well, I’ll let you answer that…