When and why to be antisocial on social media

Discretion is the better part of marketing—and keeping your brand untainted

Everyone wants you to be social. If you’re a marketer, you have heard about a million times in recent weeks, months and years about the power and necessity of social media. Get a blog, get on Twitter, create a fan page … every piece of advice seems to point towards being more social, more open and more transparent.

Let’s take a deep breath together. This post is not the kind of advice you’d expect to get from a “social media guy” like me. In fact, it’s downright antisocial. To put it more accurately, it is about the right times to be antisocial.

Engaging with social media is an imperative for most brands (though the way you do it can and should vary depending on your business and goals). As marketers we want to avoid the landmines—the situations or instances in social media that may be likely to blow up in our faces. Those are often the situations where being antisocial is the best strategy.