Earlier this month, Jason Baer over at Convince & Convert did a great post highlighting “6 Dangerous Fallacies of Social Media.”

The list identifies the following fallacies:

1. Social media is inexpensive

2. Social media is fast

3. Social media is “viral marketing”

4. Social media results can’t be measured

5. Social media is optional

6. Social media is hard

I really, really like that Jason addressed number five. As we continue to see online communication trends advance, social media really won’t be an option for anyone that wants to be successful in the public relations or marketing field. If not already, my prediction is that PR and marketing folks are soon going to find themselves in one of two positions:

A) Grateful that they’re engaging online and taking the time to learn about social media.

B) Way, way behind others in the field and playing a lot of catch up.

This is why number six on Jason’s list is also very important. Social media is not hard. It is complicated.

It does take time and effort to figure out how all these tools and technologies can be applied in a successful manner with the right strategy in place. But, from the onset, it’s not intuitively hard as many people make it out to be. There are slews of web programmers and digital gurus out there constantly creating new sites as well as improving tools, applications and user interfaces so that the rest of us can focus on developing creative ways to put these tools to use in building online communities.

That being said, don’t sit back and become a B. Dive in, get your hands dirty and stay engaged.

-Scott