It’s time to go beyond the Five Original Rules of Social Media.

Rohit Bhargava did a great job outlining some foundational pieces for social media optimization in his seminal Five Rules for Social Media Optimization blog post that, as far as I am concerned, generated an entire marketing movement. Business is booming as small companies look to market themselves cheaper and turn that marketing into sales more quickly than ever before. Social media offers small businesses the best opportunity for marketing themselves and growing sustainably in modern times. It’s actually that powerful.

The landscape is changing, and more and more people are becoming involved and looking to make some money from this growing industry. This is leading to some practices that are clearly not sustainable. It’s amazing to think how much this marketing approach has changed since Rohit’s first blog post. There are tons of auto follow services, and just as many scams to teach you how to grow your twitter following to tens of thousands in a month. Social Media, when used artfully, is not about blasting the world with your ideas. Social Media is about sharing your ideas, and having an opportunity to interact with your customers and potential customers in a new and exciting way.

As such, here are Five Amendments to the Rules of Social Media Optimization:

1. Do not set your direct messages to send an auto reply when someone follows you. Take the time to see who they are, learn about them, and thank them for following you. Take the time to check their tweets and then perhaps say something about their profile.
2. Do not auto follow people based on keywords. This will lead to an abundance of useless followers that are mostly spambots. It will quickly cripple your ability to see the posts that mean something to you.
3. If you determine someone is a spammer, unfollow them. It’s not worth having the inflated follower count to keep these people on board. Vote with your “unfollow” and “block” keys.
4. Build a community that means something to you. If you have a small business that relies on having several loyal customers that love what you do, focus on getting a few more loyal customers rather than 10,000 followers.
5. Be yourself! The organizations that succeed at social media do so because they let their employees be the face of their organization, trusting them to be leaders and not dictating their every word. Your Twitter account doesn’t have to be totally sanitized.

Remember to have some fun, to treat people respectfully, and to focus on growing your social media presence in relation to the size of your organization.