I’ve touched on this in the past. But I now have the quintessential blog post on when companies, organizations and the like should not even think about using social media.

Unfortunately, I didn’t write it. It’s brilliant, believe me. I really wish I would have written it.

But I have no problem pointing you to it, because not only do I think it is brilliantly written, I agree with 99% of it. Here it is, at the ever-excellent ReadWriteWeb. Go read it (don’t worry – that link opens in a new window so you won’t lose this post), then come back here.

Of the five points made in this post, there’s only one that your company won’t be able to help (if it even falls in that category) — the first one on high-ticket businesses. With the others, if you can put your company/org/government agency in any one of these, you should:

1. Hang your head in shame
2. Work like heck to change the situation
3. After the situation is changed, get into social media

There is one exception – companies with compliance issues. We’re talking about insurance, financial firms, etc. While one can still probably have social media in those cases, it’s much more difficult to do.

The only line I disagree with in the post is:

Of course, having more Hollywood celebs sign up for Twitter couldn’t hurt either.

I made how I feel about celebs on Twitter pretty clear in this post. Read it only if you’re ready to see what I’m like when I get on a bit of a tear! There’s also a good lesson in the post for companies/organizations that are not using Twitter in the right way, either.

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On a completely different note, anyone who is in public relations should read this post on how PR is totally mucking it up, when it comes to social media. Since I know that several PR people read this blog, I’ll let this article stand on its own, without comment. Because I like it when those people buy me beer.

Plus I have to admit, I like the name of the blog: Flack Me.

This is the second in a series of re-purposed posts on social media, content generation and business building. A version of this post was originally published at Portalfuze Blog.

Contact Bob Woods at Infonitum.